The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by micromacrofoot » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

idontwantthis wrote: post #38

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…

Some games are incredibly addictive though. Roblox for example can completely take over a kid’s mind.

Yeah surprised no one else here mentioned Roblox, they seem to be flying under a lot of people's radar but they're a completely terrible company.

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

#182

Post by rapind » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

bnralt wrote: post #160

rapind wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Some competitive (PvP) games are basically imperfect chess. Just like you'd learn chess, and eventually move on to studying matches, you would do the same with some (PvP) video games, like DotA etc.

On the other hand you could literally have a game to see how long you can keep pushing a big read button (dopamine inducing effects and sounds included of course!).

The variance is huge. We couldn't make a blanket general statement about brain development from tabletop games that include say Snap / War, Checkers, and Chess. And that's not even a sliver of the variance video games gave.

P.S. I'm by no means a gaming advocate. IMO video games are becoming (have become) Vegas 2.0 and I could list a huge number of potential negatives.

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

#183

Post by BeetleB » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

Reminds me of when I played SimCity 2000 as a teenager. In my first attempt I ran out of money and got kicked out.

So I decided to start again. I noted down the cost of all the necessary items: Residential, city, industrial zones, cost of building roads, power plant, and utility lines, and of course water. I put the game on pause, took out a notebook, and started calculating a somewhat optimal city with the initial budget I was provided.

I built the city very quickly, and this time round I didn't run out of money, and took the game all the way to archologies. I did skimp on fire stations and a disaster destroyed most of the city, but it still survived overall.

I don't think I could have succeeded without that level of planning.

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

#184

Post by hypertele-Xii » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

mderazon wrote: post #161

mrtksn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall, when I was a kid the games were extremely addictive for me and I couldn't just quit playing unless I absolutely have to. I had emotionally very similar experience when quitting smoking, the feeling that if I just can have this one more smoke I will be satisfied and live happily thereafter is very similar to the desire to have one more round. So I wouldn't call games "not addictive". If anything, watching so…

Today they're built to be even more addictive to push for monetization by ads / in app purchases

I.e. the problem isn't video games, it's ads, greed, and lazy parenting.

It's not that hard to find good games. Even our moms managed to know Nintendo. We were annoyed that every video game was a "Nintendo" to our moms, but thinking back on it, that meant mom walks into game store and asks for Nintendo, can't go wrong there.

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

#185

Post by hypertele-Xii » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #108

mrtksn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall, when I was a kid the games were extremely addictive for me and I couldn't just quit playing unless I absolutely have to. I had emotionally very similar experience when quitting smoking, the feeling that if I just can have this one more smoke I will be satisfied and live happily thereafter is very similar to the desire to have one more round. So I wouldn't call games "not addictive". If anything, watching so…

My addiction to video games led me to software development. Addiction is a peculiar thing. Anything that makes you feel good is inherently addictive. People get addicted to biting their fingernails. Is it bad to be addicted to reading? Or working out? If gaming is making your synapses fire faster, if for nothing more than to increase your IQ score (which is based on speed), is it a bad addiction? Addiction is a compu…

> IQ score (which is based on speed)

IQ tests are not based on speed?

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

#186

Post by bee_rider » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

the_only_law wrote: post #106

rapind wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 investment and problem solving. I’m a big grand strategy fan, mostly Paradox games rn, and I almost feel like these are worse for me because the depth keeps me engaged longer (and honesty waste a lot of time) compare…

Hades, played competently, is a nice little optimization problem with lots of arbitrary constraints thrown at you to keep it fresh. Well, it is mostly reflexes, but the optimization problem is also a significant part of it.

Grand strategy and 4x games always feel like too much depth, to me. I know I could do better if I pause and manually place every worker/micro everything. But that's overwhelming. I could try to be clever and only optimize where necessary, but the game is paused, there's no tradeoff for analyzing everything other than my time. Just give me the meaningful choices, game!

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

#187

Post by BeetleB » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

nicce wrote: post #34

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…

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.”

This is not an unusual charge for open access journals.

The New Journal of Physics, a respected open access physics journal, charges $2225.

https://publishingsupport.iopscience.iop.org/journals/new-jo...

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

#188

Post by DANK_YACHT » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #164

pocketsand wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point is not whether including polygenic scores is better than nothing. The point is whether it's good enough to justify the claims they are making. It's not. The same holds for SES. I disagree that this study presents decent evidence of anything. I don't claim that the conclusions are false. But they haven't backed them up. There are lots of ways that the observed trends can be spurious. I mentioned some. The st…

> The point is not whether including polygenic scores is better than nothing. The point is whether it's good enough to justify the claims they are making. It's not.

What is the justification for this assertion? If polygenic scores are simply "noisy," then, as the GP mentioned, they may be good enough when used in aggregate. There can be a lot of signal in noisy data. Ask any ML practitioner.

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

#189

Post by albrewer » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #141

the_only_law wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 investment and problem solving. I’m a big grand strategy fan, mostly Paradox games rn, and I almost feel like these are worse for me because the depth keeps me engaged longer (and honesty waste a lot of time) compare…

I wouldn't underestimate how much time people can sink into dumb gotcha games. Maybe not you, but others. IMO, the biggest problem with modern video games is how many of them are designed to keep you playing virtually forever. I think a game like Zelda (maybe not BoTW, but definitely OoT) is great for children, because it teaches problem solving and rational thinking, and it has a natural time limit! You might play i…

> gotcha games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game

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

#190

Post by bnralt » Tue, May 17, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #182

bnralt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some competitive (PvP) games are basically imperfect chess. Just like you'd learn chess, and eventually move on to studying matches, you would do the same with some (PvP) video games, like DotA etc. On the other hand you could literally have a game to see how long you can keep pushing a big read button (dopamine inducing effects and sounds included of course!). The variance is huge. We couldn't make a blanket general…

> Just like you'd learn chess, and eventually move on to studying matches, you would do the same with some (PvP) video games, like DotA etc.

Sure, but as far as I know there isn't much value (beyond personal interest) in studying high level chess (and from what I've seen, it's detrimental when people start obsessing over it). You're putting effort into getting better at playing a game.