
Social media use has only minor effects on wellbeing: study - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/07/too-much-screen-time-hurts-kids-where-is-evidence
======
throw20102010
It only hurts kids as much as it hurts everyone else.

My 60 y/o mom is on social media for hours per day. That's harmful.

My 80 y/o grandma plays Pokemon Go four hours per day, which we initially
thought was good because it got her to go walking. Now we can't take her
anywhere without slowing us down. It's become harmful.

My 6 y/o nephew will totally tune out the world if you let him play Angry
Birds, ignoring his parents until someone physically removes the screen from
his hands. That's harmful.

I hosted a field trip for pre-teen middle schoolers and in our downtime
between activities there was zero social interaction because they all buried
their heads in their phones (okay, I did observe one student ask another for a
charger). That's harmful.

Screen time is hurting everyone and singling out kids is just old people
refusing to accept that screens changed humanity at all ages. I don't think
that our current old-timers lacking screens when they were kids made them any
better at life. It only made them worse at using modern technology. The
current crop of youngsters may miss out on face-to-face interaction, or maybe
their eyes will be shaped poorly for long distance sight. But they'll be
better at navigating the digital world, which seems to be where we spend a lot
of our time regardless of age.

~~~
solveit
>My 6 y/o nephew will totally tune out the world if you let him play Angry
Birds, ignoring his parents until someone physically removes the screen from
his hands. That's harmful.

> I hosted a field trip for pre-teen middle schoolers and in our downtime
> between activities there was zero social interaction because they all buried
> their heads in their phones (okay, I did observe one student ask another for
> a charger). That's harmful.

I did the exact same thing with books and nobody said it was harmful. To the
contrary, I was mostly praised. I'm not saying it wasn't harmful, it clearly
was in some respects. But the benefits outweighed the costs and _everybody
could see that_. Why can't we do the same with phones?

~~~
throwaway9d0291
Books have many clear benefits, like generally increasing reading and writing
ability and in particular, expanding vocabulary.

What are the benefits of extended phone use?

I'm not saying there are none but I'm hard pressed to think of a way staring
into a phone benefits me. 90% of the time I and the people around me seem to
be consuming drivel on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit)
which usually has none of the benefits of books and especially for young
people, seems to have very serious downsides, like depression and a feeling of
social isolation.

------
isoprophlex
There's also the aesthetic argument against raising a generation that never
played outside, never got bored so bad they had to invent new games:

a generation that completely abstract their bodies into vehicles used to get
data into their minds.

Pretty dystopic if you ask me.

(Edit: I mean young, <12 year olds, on phones and tablets. Elementary school
kids shouldn't be on social media for the above reasons, IMO. As an awkward
teen, the internet did give me so much good things, too)

~~~
therealx
I think part of it is that it's so kid-by-kid. There will always be those self
starters, and those mature enough to use the internet properly. Educating them
on proper web use is a parents' job and is something they can do together,
like reading.

------
frankydp
The parents screen time is probably more damaging than the child's screen
time, to the child. They are probably directly correlated, time wise.

~~~
bifrost
Screen time to the neglect of your child is, neglecting your child.

There are plenty of ways to balance it.

~~~
senectus1
This.

------
jovisjoseph
I'm a CS engineer graduated from a college in Kerala (South-India). The whole
course is 4 years long and in these 4 years, the administration didn't allow
students to bring Smartphones to the campus. Yes even for the students who are
majoring in computer science. And even laptops were only allowed from 3rd year
onwards.

Their justification was laptops and smartphones are just a distraction for
students. And the rules where quite strict and if you bring any of these to
the campus they would fine you heavily. All because of the notion that
internet and digital presence is bad for you even if you are studying about
these devices.

~~~
dagenix
> All because of the notion that internet and digital presence is bad for you
> even if you are studying about these devices.

Uh, ok. A number of colleges also have curfews and gender segregated dorms.
Those aren't good ideas either.

------
wtfrmyinitials
There’s still something to be said for the relative uselessness of most social
media. I don’t avoid it by any measure, but I’m also very aware that a minute
spent on a given social platform is usually a minute wasted. At least with
something like a movie you have a shot at remembering what you saw a month
ago. Do you remember what you saw on Instagram yesterday?

------
root_axis
The problem with this study and similar ones is that "use of social media" is
measured as a homogeneous activity when in reality the various social media
services have complex and important functional distinctions and usage patterns
that have a meaningful impact on emotional investment. Spending many hours
conversing in a private group chat on Facebook is completely different from
lurking photos of attractive people on Instagram or taking photos of every
meal for Snapchat or retweeting every celebrity you follow on Twitter.

There are other factors to consider as well such as the prominence of and
usage patterns of social media within the wider social heiarchy of the peer
group. If the in-person social network doesn't have much online cohesion then
it stands to reason that use of social media should have a smaller
psychological impact compared to peer groups where social media participation
is a significant part of socialization.

------
lefstathiou
I am not a fan of news sites delving into philosophical discussions on
parenting. The topics are too complex to cover in short pieces and the outcome
is to arm people on either side with weak material to support whatever
position they have.

We all know someone who either was or has a kid that was negatively impacted
by over consumption of XYZ. One observable instance of this happening meets
the threshold of evidence. The underlying question here isn’t a search for
evidence but validation of a prevailing societal “truth” or norm.

As it pertains to kids and screen times, many thousands of parents are
agitated by this problem (and have been with it’s equivalent for millennia)
which to me indicates a high likelihood that there is some human collective
view or conscience, that evolves with the times, on factors that positively
contribute to ones character and that in this instance, many (thousands upon
thousands) parents believe elevated levels of screen time do not do not
positively contribute to character relative to say drawing, creative play,
chopping down a tree to build a bow an arrow, etc.

If you asked my brother and sister who have 3 kids if making them do chores
around the house positively contributes to their character, they would respond
“undoubtedly”. I’ve never in my life met a parent who disagreed. But I haven’t
met all parents and my circles are different than others. I have their views
and my life experience but does any of this meet the articles standard of
evidence? In a way, I think it does.

The question of how best to raise children will live on for ages and I don’t
anticipate the guardian has the patience or will to explore it. Which makes it
feel like click bait to me (toss out quick piece on topics people are
polarized on, get clicks, move on).

Some questions I would ask of myself to understand this better:

0) what are solving for? Emotional balance, income, job stability, health?

1) what compromises “hurt” and how do we know it (is it short term vs long
term, how do we measure it)

2) what are the thresholds that determine a person has crossed into the state
/ process of “hurt” (how do we know it when we see it)

3) what threshold of children need to enter this state of hurt before we
qualify it as a problem due to the genuine causal link between elevated levels
of screen time and this state of “hurt” (10% 50%?)

4) as a parent, how do I know I’m right about any of this?

5) even if I believed the evidence I have is valid and the causal link
overwhelming, do I have the right to impose my values on other parents who
disagree?

Who knows...

------
caymanjim
I've never thought that screen time had any major detrimental effect on kids.
I was spending most of my days in front of a Commodore 64 back in the 80s
before it was cool. And most of it was "social media" in the form of single
and later multi-user BBS systems, and MUDs once I found the Internet around
1987.

I think a much larger problem is that kids aren't given free rein anymore.
Part of growing up needs to be time away from adults, getting into challenging
social and physical situations, and learning to fend for oneself. That seems
to happen far less.

I'm not just talking about overbearing helicopter parents (which is a whole
other pathology that has grown, but always existed for some unlucky subset of
peers). I'm talking about being out in the world and not having your parents
as concierges.

When I was ten years old, if I wanted to see my friends across town, I had to
walk there or ride my bike. If I wanted something to eat, I had to pack a
sandwich and bring it. If I wanted a new toy and it wasn't my birthday or
Christmas, I had to mow the neighbor's lawn.

What I see today are parents who drive their kids to every social event and
give them money for whatever they want. Not an allowance for doing chores,
just a stream of cash on-demand. They all have cell phones, and call their
parents for a ride whenever they want to be somewhere else. When I was a kid,
if the parents were at work and we got hungry, we made a sandwich or waited
for them to get home and cook dinner. Now they call them at work and whine and
some parent orders a pizza.

The biggest problem I see with cell phones is that a solution to any trivial
inconvenience is a text message away. If I'd called Mom at work back in the
day, I'd better have had a broken leg.

------
dagenix
Every generation finds something to panic about because it's going to destroy
their children. The article points this out: in the 50s, it was Elvis shaking
his hips, the 80s had Dungeons and Dragons, the 90s had video games. And every
generation is convinced that while every previous moral panic was nonsense:
this time it's different! Chill people. We survived hips and tabletop games
and videogames - "screen time" is no different and we'll be just fine with
that one too.

~~~
nfoz
To be fair, not everyone "survived" videogames. I know plenty of people who
got "trapped" by them as young adults and some lost years to it or never
really moved on. By which I mean, had them as an addiction/escape from
developing social skills or confronting other responsibilities.

~~~
dagenix
So, these people you know who got "trapped" \- if it wasn't for videogames,
they would have had no issues?

~~~
claudiawerner
That's really beside the point. GP isn't arguing that video games are the sole
source of their problems, only that video games could make it worse. And even
then, I can easily imagine situations in which without video games they would
have been fine. Since video gaming can be an addiction, perhaps you could
compare it to other addictions like alcohol. While you could say that an
alcoholic already had an addictive personality so you can't blame the alcohol,
it seems really odd to excuse the role of the addictive substance in the first
place. Nobody is arguing that alcohol or video games be banned.

------
friendlybus
Self reports as a valid measurement??

------
lacampbell
Didn't the generation currently raising kids get a hell of a lot of screen
time themselves growing up? TV and video games were very common in the 90s.

~~~
abraae
I certainly watched a lot of crap TV growing up.

However entertainment back then was so feeble compared to today's high voltage
stuff it didn't really command one's full attention, there was still time for
socializing.

By contrast, we had two teenage relatives staying last couple of days and they
are deeeply engaged with their devices to the point of near hypnotism.

~~~
baroffoos
Back before the internet I remember flicking through tv channels being bored
because there was nothing on, I have never really felt there was nothing left
to do on the internet.

------
gridlockd
> Where’s the evidence?

There's definitely evidence that we're getting less and less physically fit as
a population:

[https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19525386/why-your-
vision-...](https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19525386/why-your-vision-
continues-to-get-worse/)

[https://www.stateofobesity.org/childhood-obesity-
trends/](https://www.stateofobesity.org/childhood-obesity-trends/)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2016/06/13/4815909...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2016/06/13/481590997/millennials-may-be-losing-their-
grip?t=1563338766395)

Physical activity is in decline:

[http://www.phitamerica.org/News_Archive/Says_Says_19-Year-
Ol...](http://www.phitamerica.org/News_Archive/Says_Says_19-Year-Olds.htm)

Less physical activity is also correlated with worse cognitive functioning:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27182986](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27182986)

Of course that's not a direct link to "screen time", but then what else could
be drawing people to less and less physical activity? I doubt it is books or
board games. It's a known fact that many modern apps/games are engineered to
be addictive, exploiting loss aversion and reward mechanisms of the human
brain.

~~~
throw20102010
A lot of these things are assuming a traditional model of well-being (that
being fit and smart and long lived makes you happier). This is stuff that
doctors say I _need_ , but I don't actually _need_ them like air and water.
What if our model of well-being is wrong?

An obese person can be happy as long as they don't peg their happiness on
being able to do a bunch of physical activities. Plus, all the time spent not
working out can be spent on pursuing other interests.

A dumb person can be happy. There are billions of us.

A short lived person can be happy- it's more about the quality of life than
the quantity.

So if I can live in a world in which I don't have to do a bunch of physical
activity, can play with the screens that I want, and can enjoy my life? I
don't actually need a lot of the things that a doctor says I need. To be fair,
an obese person has a higher chance of being hospitalized, which sucks, so
being dumb and obese will probably lead to me being less happy.

~~~
gridlockd
Are you sure you're not just looking for a rationalization saying that you can
live any way you want and still be "happy"?

Of course I'm not ruling out that this is possible. An obese smoker might live
to 101 and laugh about it. An athlete might die of Leukemia at age 21. Life is
uncertain, you can make of the odds whatever you want.

On the other hand:

Obesity is associated with lower self-reported happiness

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24336235](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24336235)

Physical activity helps depression:

[https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1808](https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1808)

You also need to count in all the ailments that can result from obesity and
lack of exercise, none of which are going to contribute positively to one's
level of well-being. Of course it's not all about the length of a life, but
the things that cut lives short tend to be quite unpleasant.

~~~
King-Aaron
> Are you sure you're not just looking for a rationalization saying that you
> can live any way you want and still be "happy"?

This is how I see this argument.

------
defen
4K screens with instant, unlimited access to almost all video content humanity
has ever created are a relatively new thing. Instead of accepting "lack of
evidence of harm", I'd prefer to wait for proof that it's _not_ harmful before
letting my kids indulge.

~~~
dagenix
1080p is ok, though? Or is it the fact that you can access too much video?
Like, if you could only access every 3rd episode of Cheers, then 4k is ok? I
guess we'll have to wait for the scientists to weigh in on this one!

------
sytelus
Has search became so hard these days?

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_vis=1&q=screen+time+im...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_vis=1&q=screen+time+impact+kids&hl=en&as_sdt=1,5)

150,000 hits

~~~
arcturus17
The article authors are Oxford professors and they do mention that they’ve
reviewed the literature.

What’s your point here?

------
hkt
Screen time (which I know I had too much of, to my lasting detriment)
displaces other, better activities. Seriously.

~~~
bifrost
"Screen Time" is too vague IMHO.

I spent most of my time from 10-16 reading books and computer screens, both
solitary indoor activities. However via a computer and a modem I communicated
with hundreds of people regularly. I don't see that as lost time.

~~~
King-Aaron
I think what the comment above is getting at is that a Sedentary lifestyle can
prevent you from activities that may prove beneficial to your health.

~~~
bifrost
Cycling is a solo activity that I enjoyed. Its kept me quite fit. Especially
because I live on the tallest mountain in San Francisco lol.

------
tropo
As eyes grow, their shape is determined by what they see. Viewing lots of
black-on-white text (books, most web pages, etc.) moves the focal length one
direction. Viewing lots of white-on-black text would do the opposite, but that
has gone out of style.

That counts. I can't find the research right now, but I think it hit Hacker
News a year or two ago.

------
remarkEon
Where's the evidence?

If the people who actually work on and build this stuff are skeptical of
letting their kids, especially young ones, use it without limit then that
certainly passes the smell test for me that there might be a problem.

The revealed preferences of people who work in tech is all the evidence I
need.

~~~
dagenix
The thing is, it's not everyone in tech. It's once in a while, some single
person in tech denounces some service and there are a million articles written
about it. It's anecdata, not data. You shouldn't base your decisions on that
fact that some single person you never met and have no reason to trust,
decided to say some particular thing that was fun to report on.

~~~
remarkEon
This is a fair point, but just as everyone is not in tech not everyone has
time to read academic studies about the affects of screen use on children. A
click-bait article from Gizmodo is a terrible heuristic, sure, but is
observing the behavior of people who _do_ work in tech, who have kids, and
then calibrating your view of the problem really that bad of one?

~~~
dagenix
I someone that works in the meat packing industry comes out as a cannibal
because he thinks human flesh makes his children grow strong, would you listen
to him? Of course not - he's a one off and probably out for attention, but
he'll get lots of media coverage. But he isn't worth listening to. Random one
off's in tech aren't really any more knowledgable.

~~~
remarkEon
No, because a random guy who encourages eating human flesh is an absurdity -
never mind that, even if presented with evidence that it did make children
grow strong, there are plenty of other reasons to oppose it. Moderating screen
time for children is not like this. What I'm talking about is noticing
patterns, and positing a hypothesis based on the behavior of those who would
be closer to full knowledge of the instrument in question. That seems ...
perfectly reasonable.

~~~
dagenix
I don't know who would be better to judge the benefits of eating human flesh
than a canibal. It's not reasonable at all to say that you'll accept anecdata
from tech Bros seeking attention.

~~~
remarkEon
Who said anything about tech Bros? I’m talking about moms and dads that work
in tech.

~~~
dagenix
Unprotected sex doesn't make you an expert in anything.

