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The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

nature.com

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Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#151

Post by pocketsand »

dash2 wrote: post #13

The fact that they "controlled" for genetics using polygenic scores already is a strong sign of low quality research. Polygenic scores are powerful, but they contain very large amounts of noise compared to the true genetic effects. Controlling for genetics using them is like controlling for income by asking whether the respondents own a Porsche. Also, be aware that Scientific Reports is, if not quite a predatory jour…

If the noise in polygenic scores is random, all that will do is reduce correlations. Random measurement error always reduces the ability to observe relationships. To be clear, I do not know enough about polygenic scores to judge one way or another how the noise "works" vis-a-vis the entire analysis.

The Porsche comment is snide, but actually exposes a similar error in your critique. Sure, a tax return-derived measure of income would be superior to measuring if someone owned a luxury car. But, if you found yourself in a situation where all you had to go on for measuring economic wellbeing was (luxury) car ownership, your analysis is likely to improve by including it rather than excluding it, unless the measure itself had serious other issues with its accuracy.

Likewise, for SES, it is an imperfect measure, but it is the best we have for measuring social position in a concise way.

Having worked in research and universities for a while, the type of critique presented in this post is one you often see of new graduate students. They are able to tear down problems with research very well, but tend to overlook whether the study itself was still informative, or whether the opposite finding is likely to be true.

For example, suppose we wanted to know if video games or watching videos on the internet are making you dumber. A study like this may not convince you it's making you smarter, but it presents decent evidence they're not making you dumber. You can point out how the measures aren't perfect, but that is far from saying the opposite is true or the observed trends are completely spurious.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#152

Post by pocketsand »

dash2 wrote: post #126
jgalt212 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, these guys have correlations, not causation You can say that for almost every human study that's not drug based, or very short-term.

No. * There are tons of randomized controlled trials of policy measures (malaria bednets, minimum income). Many measure long-run outcomes. * Natural experiments can measure long-run effects. In economic history, sometimes that means centuries. * Many other designs are plausibly causal. The right instrumental variable, or a regression discontinuity design. In some cases, even a simple diff-in-diff with panel data. Thi…

The treatment here is regular social media use and video game playing. This not something where you can randomize people to treatment conditions, like you can with malaria.

Likewise, tell me -- what would be a good instrument for estimating a causal effect of video game playing? What measure would plausibly affect intelligence only through video game playing? Where is there a natural experiment that allows for an RD design where young people on one side of the discontinuity play video games and the others do not?

We get it -- you've taken a causal inference or econometrics course and want people to know it.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#153

Post by svnt »

AlexandrB wrote: post #146
nosianu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you seriously play the game you get good at... the game. Even within the same game genre that barely translates. People good at Starcraft I struggled with Starcraft II, people great at Warcraft made little headway in Starcraft II (e.g. WCIII players like Grubby or Happy). Given that, claiming that things even further removed than those other games, which closely resemble one another, requires quite a bit of proof.…

> Even within the same game genre that barely translates. People good at Starcraft I struggled with Starcraft II, people great at Warcraft made little headway in Starcraft II (e.g. WCIII players like Grubby or Happy). That might be true if you're comparing the top 0.1%, but someone who played a lot of Starcraft would be miles ahead of any newcomer in both Starcraft II and Warcraft III. Your example is like saying tha…

Maybe a world-class sprinter would be in the top 5% of the entire population who has ever cycled (not “the field”). Sprinting and cycling are so different you may as well be comparing snooker and darts and saying that wrist control is the determining factor.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#154

Post by svnt »

napier wrote: post #43
nicce wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost is no joke. ”Scientific Reports is an open access journal. To publish in Scientific Reports, all authors are required to pay an article-processing charge (APC) of $1,495.”

“Open access” journal fees are often accounted for by institutional affiliations or grant funding donors. The upside of upfront publication charges is that the research output isn’t paywalled and therefore ideally reaches more eyeballs and brainpans than the conventional route.

Most grants in the fields I’ve looked at preclude their use for paying publishing fees.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#155

Post by legitster »

christophilus wrote: post #5

I’ve tried to encourage my wife to choose video games over Disney+ when she needs to drop the kids in front of something, but she still has a strong resistance to the idea that games are better. To me, it’s pretty obvious. The kids problem solve when gaming, and are obviously engaged. When watching TV, they look like zombies. I think my wife’s biggest hang up with games is that she was always told that they rot your…

I definitely feel games have made me more intelligent, but at the cost of my attention span and work ethic.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#156

Post by _fat_santa »

brightball wrote: post #36
christophilus wrote: post #5

I’ve tried to encourage my wife to choose video games over Disney+ when she needs to drop the kids in front of something, but she still has a strong resistance to the idea that games are better. To me, it’s pretty obvious. The kids problem solve when gaming, and are obviously engaged. When watching TV, they look like zombies. I think my wife’s biggest hang up with games is that she was always told that they rot your…

Nintendo games on a console that don’t need an internet connection or include advertising. These have been the best combination for our kids where they have fun but aren’t addicted and can easily put them down. The moment games include advertising they optimize for all the wrong things. I won’t let my kids get free games on iPad, etc for this reason alone.

Not a parent but if I was, I would absolutely get them a Switch over an Xbox/PS5. While games can be hit and miss on XB/PS, Nintendo seems to really have their shit together when it comes to releasing consistent high quality games with no shenanigans.

The downside is the games never go on sale so you aren't getting any deals but the upside is that you can give your kid just about any Nintendo game and not worry about shenanigans around loot boxes, ads and other crap they stick inside games now.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#157

Post by svnt »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #142
dijit wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mindlessly I think this is probably more key than you think. Mindlessly watching junk food TV is not going to help you a lot. It's not very "nutrient rich" (to continue the expression) in terms of knowledge gained.. but you will probably gain some. Watching documentaries and, crucially, actively watching them is probably very good in terms of how much you learn.

It takes a certain kind of nerdy kid to sit down and watch a documentary (not judging, I was that certain kind of nerdy kid). With video games, the user, i.e. child is actively engaged. Video games require more from the consumer. I found myself much more likely to dig into history while playing civilization than I did while watching a documentary for example.

Actively engaged does not mean exercising higher cognitive function, and even less so developing higher cognitive function.

Imagine if e.g. basketball players never practiced but just played for all the marbles at the most competitive level every day when they stepped on the court. You would have chaos and exhausted players.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#158

Post by svnt »

DeathArrow wrote: post #109
dash2 wrote: post #13

The fact that they "controlled" for genetics using polygenic scores already is a strong sign of low quality research. Polygenic scores are powerful, but they contain very large amounts of noise compared to the true genetic effects. Controlling for genetics using them is like controlling for income by asking whether the respondents own a Porsche. Also, be aware that Scientific Reports is, if not quite a predatory jour…

Good points. If you'd want to find the impact of Digital Media on children's IQ, how would you proceed?

The question is too big and poorly defined, and IQ as an indicator is both incomplete and too narrow.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#159

Post by svnt »

pocketsand wrote: post #152
dash2 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. * There are tons of randomized controlled trials of policy measures (malaria bednets, minimum income). Many measure long-run outcomes. * Natural experiments can measure long-run effects. In economic history, sometimes that means centuries. * Many other designs are plausibly causal. The right instrumental variable, or a regression discontinuity design. In some cases, even a simple diff-in-diff with panel data. Thi…

The treatment here is regular social media use and video game playing. This not something where you can randomize people to treatment conditions, like you can with malaria. Likewise, tell me -- what would be a good instrument for estimating a causal effect of video game playing? What measure would plausibly affect intelligence only through video game playing? Where is there a natural experiment that allows for an RD…

Waldorf schools or Amish communities would be a place to start.

Re: The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

#160

Post by bnralt »

rapind wrote: post #71
dash2 wrote: post #13

The fact that they "controlled" for genetics using polygenic scores already is a strong sign of low quality research. Polygenic scores are powerful, but they contain very large amounts of noise compared to the true genetic effects. Controlling for genetics using them is like controlling for income by asking whether the respondents own a Porsche. Also, be aware that Scientific Reports is, if not quite a predatory jour…

> If you wanna believe that your hours on COD have made you a genius, go ahead, I won't stop you. Just don't imagine that this research proves it. Video games, like all things, should not all be treated equal. I could certainly see problem solving skills developing from world building or highly complex games (Civ, PoE, etc.). In fact, most (but not all) highly successful games have depth, which requires time investme…

In my experience, the vast majority of game play time, even with most complex games, is spent on relatively mindless repetitive behavior. This gets worse the more time is spent with a specific game. As a player improves, they start to know what they're supposed to do in more and more situations (compare the way a novice agonizes over an opening pawn move in chess with the way advanced players often speed through the opening moves). Games might be complex, but you might only be dealing with that complexity ~10% of the time (or less as you improve).
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