Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 259 posts

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

#201

Post by watwut »

slothtrop wrote: post #143
watwut wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very very honestly, my experience with people who watch Disney too much is much much better then with excessive gamers. Only one of those groups yells, swears and is vent their anger at people around when they loose the match. For the record, my kids do play games, I never did complete ban. But, the gaming does not seem to be superior, does not zombify them less nor leads to more inventive play after session finished…

You might as well lambast sports on the conceit that kids might swear and get angry for losing.

If I had seen people act the same way in sport or other activity I would. Which actually also happen in real life, when some club or sport becomes source of bad peer pressure, many parents wont allow kids to participate.

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

#202

Post by watwut »

slothtrop wrote: post #172
svnt wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same. Sports have refs, coaches, and parents. Yes it is possible to get a bad outcome in sports but there is no container in competitive online gaming. It is Lord of the Flies by design.

> no container in competitive online gaming. Actually in competitive scenarios, e.g. tournaments, there are. Add to the fact ranked play is generally better behaved. Speaking of parents, from my experience playing hockey, they are usually the worst offenders. Yelling at not just the refs, but the kids too. I've seen intimidation in more than one occasion. At any rate, concern over the prospect of kids being "angry" i…

I am not concerned over them feeling angry. I am concerned over yelling, swearing, mistreating younger siblings or other family member after playing. If that does not happen, fine. But when it does happen, younger sibling or grandma are more entitled to not be target of aggression then someone else of gaming.

The exactly same way as with adults - whether they feel angry does not matter. Whether they demand everyone else to tip toe around them after/during playing, whether they loudly swear or hit the table with fists does matter.

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

#204

Post by DANK_YACHT »

dash2 wrote: post #197
DANK_YACHT wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Polygenic scores are themselves an aggregation. And they contain a ton of noise. From twin studies, R2 of the "true" polygenic score on education is about 40%. The R2 of our best actual polygenic score is 4%. IIRC these guys aren't even using the education polygenic score. They're using the PGS for IQ. That's even noisier (because it was created using smaller samples, and you need biiig samples for this to work).

> Polygenic scores are themselves an aggregation. And they contain a ton of noise.

Again, noisy data can still be useful. For instance, generate a perfect single-variable normal distribution, sample along the x-axis and perturb each point randomly in the y direction either up or down. Depending on the range of random values used to move the sampled points, you can still see the underlying distribution even though the data is noisy.

Two possible arguments you might make:

1) The data is noisy and the paper's authors haven't collected enough data to account for the amount of noise. Usually people will do something like null-hypothesis significance testing to measure this.

2) The noise isn't uniformly random and has some underlying bias that is affecting the results.

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

#205

Post by thenerdhead »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #196
thenerdhead wrote: post #65

If this study has you scratching your head about the impact of digital media, do have a read of "Four arguments for the elimination of television" by Jerry Mander. The arguments included in it are no different than many of these new studies coming out. If you grew up to be a latchkey kid and had your fair share of TV/video games/etc, it might give you perspective into things you never thought about. https://www.youtu…

Interesting perspective. One of the things he mentions is that TV is passive, and puts you in an alpha state where your brain stops trying to respond because there’s no point in responding. My partner and I do watch a few hours of TV every night now. But we don’t do this “alpha” thing, at least not exclusively. We pause frequently to comment on or joke about what we’re seeing. To the point that I think sometimes a 30…

Thanks for sharing. I'm sure there's plenty of counter-arguments to his, but the only thing I have to work with is my anecdote/experiences.

Ridding myself of TV over the last 2 years has been extremely hard. I'm down to watching a maximum of an hour a night. Most times I don't even try nor care to. I have seen significant improvements to my own life, but most importantly I see the effects it has had on my young kids and how much more creative they are because they aren't sitting in front of a TV watching shows like I was when I was their age. It was the only thing I knew as a parent taught by mine and I had to challenge that for myself.

Moderation is the key to everything, but this book woke me up to things I wasn't aware of and figured I'd share.

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

#206

Post by spookybones »

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…

I feel fortunate enough to have grown up playing point and click games, like Myst, 7th Guest, and Fate of Atlantis, and keeping a notebook on my desk for clues to puzzles. I think it had a positive effect on my development, comparable to playing chess, which I also did.

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

#207

Post by [deleted] »

bamboozled wrote: post #77
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…

What about neither TV or computer games and doing things outside like fishing, hiking, scouts, riding bikes etc ?

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by luckydata »

mrtksn wrote: post #33
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 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…

that just sounds like ADHD. the ADHD brain craves stimulation and games are a pretty easy place to find it. Modern life is kinda boring, especially if you grow up in a US suburb.

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

#209

Post by slothtrop »

watwut wrote: post #202
slothtrop wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no container in competitive online gaming. Actually in competitive scenarios, e.g. tournaments, there are. Add to the fact ranked play is generally better behaved. Speaking of parents, from my experience playing hockey, they are usually the worst offenders. Yelling at not just the refs, but the kids too. I've seen intimidation in more than one occasion. At any rate, concern over the prospect of kids being "angry" i…

I am not concerned over them feeling angry. I am concerned over yelling, swearing, mistreating younger siblings or other family member after playing. If that does not happen, fine. But when it does happen, younger sibling or grandma are more entitled to not be target of aggression then someone else of gaming. The exactly same way as with adults - whether they feel angry does not matter. Whether they demand everyone e…

> I am concerned over yelling, swearing, mistreating younger siblings or other family member after playing.

This is happening at home, presumably where it's the parent's place to discipline.

Post reply on HN