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Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

dornsife.usc.edu

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Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#41

Post by nabbed »

epgui wrote: post #35
nabbed wrote: post #33

I watch (or listen to) a lot of youtube on my iPad (and sometimes on my TV, but not too often). I wonder if youtube watching is also correlated with the mentioned brain changes.

Obviously? Why do you think it would be any different?

Not sure myself.

There's more variety of content on youtube, whereas I think TV sometimes caters to lowest common denominator (although that's less the case in the era of streaming: TV is much higher quality than it was when this study started in 1987).

On youtube, you could watch lots of silly dancing videos, car crashes, etc., possibly rotting your brain. Or you could watch history lectures, book reviews, documentaries, etc.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#42

Post by nephihaha »

I could have told you that years ago. LOL. The problem is that as a medium it is so passive. Radio forces you to visualise to some extent or maybe do other things. Computer games and some of the internet (even social media!) require some interaction.

Reading and stage plays require heavier use of the brain too. In the case of reading, you both interpret the words and in many cases visualise things based on them.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#43

Post by al_borland »

haunter wrote: post #27

Interestingly there is no mention of semantics or what does actually "TV watching" mean. I have friends who self admittedly don't "watch TV" but they watch every single hyped up Netflix series available. Are they watching TV? By this study they probably not. Are they watching TV? I'd say most likely yes, they also use the device called TV to watch Netflix

Netflix is TV for the modern era, I don’t know who they think they’re kidding. It’s like the slogan, “it’s not TV. It’s HBO.”

I haven’t had home television service for nearly 20 years, but I watch my TV constantly. It’s the same thing with a different delivery mechanism.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#44

Post by nabbed »

haunter wrote: post #27

Interestingly there is no mention of semantics or what does actually "TV watching" mean. I have friends who self admittedly don't "watch TV" but they watch every single hyped up Netflix series available. Are they watching TV? By this study they probably not. Are they watching TV? I'd say most likely yes, they also use the device called TV to watch Netflix

>Interestingly there is no mention of semantics or what does actually "TV watching" mean.

Also, is one watching "The Real Housewives of " on Bravo or an author interview on CSPAN.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#45

Post by nephihaha »

analog8374 wrote: post #16
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both?

because the not-obvious is harder to see.

A fair point. I would argue that middle brow content is more dangerous. A lot of documentaries, news and political content will promote ideas which sound sophisticated or reasonable, but are no such thing.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#48

Post by nephihaha »

dd8601fn wrote: post #14
relium wrote: post #10

Now I'm curious if it matters what you watch.

Yeah... like, does watching an Attenborough documentary or two offset many hours of marvel movies? Asking for a friend.

I don't think these are a good comparison. The nature documentaries are primarily visual (and since it's Attenborough involve a lot of Foley work). His docs are extremely well made, but you could still use them as wallpaper as I have seen some do.

Maybe the same could be said about the Marvel films. You don't have to concentrate much, but you are guessing some of what is going on.

Some programmes do require some more imagination or interaction. A murder mystery, if it's any good will get you wondering whodunnit. If you are watching a better quality gameshow, you may be at least attempting to answer the questions. Or both may be wall paper.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#49

Post by nephihaha »

dredmorbius wrote: post #24
relium wrote: post #10

Now I'm curious if it matters what you watch.

Given the difficulties of random blinding, and the long-term (decades-long) duration of the research, studying that aspect (with the same post hoc brain morphology analysis) might help assess causality. There was some exclusion of other factors in the study per TFA.

The island of Saint Helena only started getting TV relatively recently, so some studies have been done on children there to compare effects.

Re: Heavy TV watching associated with smaller brain structures, study finds

#50

Post by nephihaha »

nabbed wrote: post #33

I watch (or listen to) a lot of youtube on my iPad (and sometimes on my TV, but not too often). I wonder if youtube watching is also correlated with the mentioned brain changes.

YouTube algorithms have a tendency to try and lead you down rabbit holes and watch AI generated content. I notice YouTube constantly trying to bias me in one direction or another. A lot of the political content on there is nowhere near as intelligent as it pretends to be.

If it notices you are interested in something, it will show you a glut of content on that particularly subject. Some of the videos are just churning out similar content. If you click on a Monty Python video, Python takes over your suggestions. Nothing against Python, I just want to watch a variety of things.

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