
Television viewing and cognitive decline in older age - casefields
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39354-4
======
papito
It's like when they say "wine is good for your heart". And then a study
analyzed over three million grocery receipts..

"The people who bought wine were more likely to place olives, low-fat cheese,
fruits and vegetables, low-fat meat, spices, and tea in their carts. Beer
drinkers, on the other hand, were more likely to reach for the chips, ketchup,
margarine, sugar, ready-cooked meals, and soft drinks."

Schatzker, Mark. The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and
Flavor (p. 155). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

EDIT: What I am saying is - yes, television shuts off the thinking part of
your brain, but then you also don't move, don't exercise. Causation here is
VERY flaky.

~~~
Spooky23
Maybe. What are old people watching? If it’s anything like what I see at my
relatives and at assisted living facilities, it’s also of cable news and
weather.

Staring at repetitive, content free crap cannot be good for your brain.

~~~
papito
Totally. But who's to say that watching dumb television causes most of the
decline, versus a neglected brain taking the shortcut to comfortable brain-
dead TV?

I would wager it's more of a vicious cycle, with other factors at play.

~~~
Spooky23
That’s a great question, and the conclusion I draw from observations are just
conjecture.

The thing that bugs me about these genres of dumb TV is that the constant
attention grabbing and little dopamine hits of whatever the crisis de jure is
has to have some impact.

My in-laws called me this summer genuinely concerned about thunderstorms
approaching some place in Alabama. We live like 1500 miles away.

------
Merrill
>Immediate and delayed verbal verbal memory were assessed using a word
learning task in which participants were presented with 10 common words by a
taped voice, one every 2 seconds. Participants had to recall as many words as
possible immediately and after a short delay during which they completed other
cognitive tests.

This is the measure that declined in heavy television watchers. It is also a
task that television watching doesn't require, since recall of previous spoken
words is rarely needed to understand the next video sequence.

It's also a task that I don't do well on. I do much better if the words are
presented in writing. I can watch a TV show and not remember a thing about it
later. It may be a way the brain has of protecting memory from being
overwritten by nonsense.

~~~
rightbyte
If your health is bad you probably watch more TV and listens to radio, though,
since you can't go out as easily.

~~~
Merrill
True, although I know people who neither watch much TV nor have lots of social
interactions with people. There engage in other passive activities like
reading or they have a variety of hobbies, sports, etc. Some people have
little need to listen to chatter, either from a box or face-to-face.

~~~
mlyle
The question is what causes what. We know that TV and cognitive decline in
this population are associated.

Does television watching cause cognitive decline?

Does cognitive decline cause television watching?

Does some other factor cause both television watching and cognitive decline?

Knowing some people are inactive and read books doesn't help much in probing
this. Because we're not asserting cognitive decline _always_ causes television
watching, or whatever.

------
copperx
Is there a reason to believe that there's a difference between TV viewing and
passive textual content consumption on the web? I used to think so, but
nowadays I'm not so sure. Passive consumption of media designed to entertain,
be it visual or textual, seems too similar.

~~~
newnewpdro
How does one passively consume textual content?

Reading engages the brain in an entirely different way than viewing images
does. When you read you interpret meaning from text and construct a mental
model of what's being described.

~~~
fiblye
Scrolling through reddit or HN threads takes almost no mental effort. I’d dare
say it’s the sort of thing people do to relax after reading “hard” content
like novels or research. Speaking personally, I can feel burnt out from
reading a novel for a while. On the other hand, I can mindlessly scroll
through internet comments, read them in full, and not notice that hours have
passed and feel zero exhaustion from it.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I don’t feel exhausted, rather: bored by fiction and non-fiction alike.

Having said that, it often feels like the internet speaks with one voice, even
when it’s disagreeing with itself.

Rarely does anyone say or write anything original.

I guess HN feels more familiar though, more like family. And we’re probably
driven by millions of years of evolution to seek _that_ out.

~~~
friendlybus
Yes the Internet's voice is very homogenous. I crave the tiny YouTube videos
that are posted by people that have truly different views and are articulated
well.

There's too much everyday garbage on the web, it's disappointing quantity is
trumping form and quality. If YouTube loosened up it's monetization rules and
went back to letting the producer set the form we could have more focused
videos. The ten minute spam videos are the plague.

HN is more rational and quantitative than other sites in general so I prefer
this as a counter to other more abstract information sources.

------
uberduber
I know a ton of these older adults. I think the true problem is that they are
not socializing enough which is the cause of the mental decline and often
paranoia.

Some of them have moved somewhere cheaper to retire where they don’t have many
friends, but most of the ones I know just watch tv instead of calling a friend
to do something. The friend is the same even though they would love to hang
out. I’ve tried nudging them with no success.

~~~
criddell
My grandmother fought against leaving her house for a retirement home for a
long time. When she was about 85 she finally gave in and was surprised to find
out she loved it there.

In her home she mostly passed the time watching TV and knitting. In the
retirement home, she joined a choir, she ate with friends every day, she took
advantage of regular trips to restaurants and shopping malls, and she was
constantly playing cards.

Having friends around and things to do with them was huge for her happiness.

------
john_moscow
I think, the problem is deeper than just watching TV. The real question is
what activities does it replace. 3.5 hours per day is a a significant portion
of one's day, if you subtract sleep, food, shopping, doctor visits and other
basic needs.

I wouldn't be surprised if those who watch less TV fill that time with
creative hobbies, socialization, reading of thought-provoking books, etc. As a
matter of fact, I would love to see a paper trying to structure those
activities and correlate the prevalent groups to the cognitive performance.

~~~
friendlybus
Roald Dahl the famous writer used to love reading news and the like, saying he
could do it all day. This problem has likely been around for a long time.

I'd be curious what people do in cultures without the drip feed and their
reaction to it.

------
Zenst
I've often wonder the effect of refresh rate. Back in the days of NTSC/PAL TV
days, Americans had NTSC running at 60Hz and the UK ran at 50Hz refresh rates
(same as the electricity supply runs out btw). This would yield American
friends/colleagues comming to the UK and for a few weeks watching TV would
complain about the flicker. Reason for this was their visual system had got
used to the higher refresh rate and suddenly seeing something lower, stood out
and once noticed, was hard to un-notice and would for them make for a
noticeable flicker.

I've often wondered what effects refresh rate has upon the brain and how
fast/how we process information and equally, how we adapt.

So with all that in mind, I wonder how old people who grew up with a 60hz TV
compare to those accustomed to 50hz and if the statistics of cognitive decline
are not the same - more interesting questions.

~~~
ygra
Personally, both 50 and 60 Hz are horribly flickery. Back when I used a CRT I
couldn't stand anything below ~85 Hz and would get headaches. Now that the
screen no longer flickers, I guess in terms of motion fluidity there's a
perceivable difference between 50 and 60 Hz. Something I personally cannot
unsee, though, is 2:3 pulldown, which is something you don't see in Europe (at
the expense of slightly faster movies).

~~~
joshspankit
I’m pretty convinced on the theory that some people see “faster” than others.
Most people can be taught to notice flicker, but I really feel like some see
more naturally.

------
Erlich_Bachman
"Watching television for more than 3.5 hours per day is associated with a
dose-response decline in verbal memory over the following six years,
independent of confounding variables."

 _associated_

Not "caused".

It is still an interesting study, but this should be the first thing to
recognize, whether it claims association or causation.

~~~
prox
I also wonder if the type of programming matters : if watching quiz shows that
jog memory and recall are different from watching soap opera, or sports, or
learning programs for instance.

~~~
Lerc
It might not be that simple. I think intellectual effort of these shows varies
more within type than across. Tipping Point and Only Connect are both quiz
shows but the first has questions like

How many degrees are there in a circle?

The latter has questions like; What can come fourth in this sequence?

All this happened more or less.

Sherlock Homes took his bottle from the corner...

There were four of us - George and William Samuel Harris...

~~~
petepete
To summarise; BBC4 - good, ITV - not so much.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Maybe there’s a progression though?

I have no idea what came fourth in the sequence, does that mean I should
expect rapid age-related cognitive-decline?

I’m probably going to blame that on all the hard drugs I’ve abused, rather
then my lack in other areas.

------
sitkack
The brain thrives on two things, movement and questions. Passively letting an
uncritical experience wash over the mind wipes the chalk from the slate.

Having active shared experiences with other people while asking and answering
questions is what keeps us us.

~~~
nkozyra
> Passively letting an uncritical experience wash over the mind

I don't watch much television but I think that consuming and processing
narrative is not entirely passive. Your brain is still doing work to connect
dots in stories, you're building internal networks of events and characters.

I think there's a lot more interaction on the receiving end there than you're
giving credit.

Truthfully what television removes (though not entirely) from story processing
versus reading is a huge chunk of imaginative work and some memory
requirements.

~~~
naringas
> consuming and processing narrative is not entirely passive.

while I agree with this, modern television requires far less "interaction on
the receiving end" than you give it credit for. It lacks novelty.

~~~
gruez
> modern television [...] lacks novelty.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “modern”? We’re in a golden age of
television, according to some. I can think of at least a dozen shows released
in the past few years that have deep and complex storylines.

~~~
robryan
I think it works both ways, we have some much choice now that you can easily
seek out both ends of the spectrum. There is no shortage of mindless TV for
people to watch if that is what they are after.

------
fortran77
Wow! I'm 57 years old so I'm already into the sample set (they started at age
50).

I wonder if my Sunday Afternoon TiVo binges of "Dr. Pimple Popper," "Below
Deck," and an occasional "Judge Judy" are making me dumb!? I hope not.

Oh, and I tried the new podiatric reality show: "My Feet Are Killing Me." _I_
think I'm smarter because of it.

Granted, I watch about 4-5 hours of TV a _week_ , not 3.5 hours/day. But only
because I don't have enough hours in the day. I enjoy television, and look
forward to my Sunday binges.

------
glaberficken
Anedoctal evidence. Source: My own grandmother (80yo in 2019)

I have observed in my grandmother that she displays markedly lower cognitive
decline when compared to her peers (friends and family around the same age).

Here are some (maybe biased) observations.

 _In the early 80s_ (at 40+yo) my grandmother was working as a secretary in a
small office and went through the change from mechanical typewriters to
electronic ones. While she was doing this the majority of her friends where
100% house wives.

 _In the early 90s_ (at 50+yo) my grandmother learned to use a T9 mobile phone
by herself. Her friends didn't have a mobile phone for years, and even myself
would only have a mobile phone much later than her. (in fact i remember her
teaching me how to navigate a Nokia that she gave me when she upgraded)

 _In the early 2000 's_ (at 60+yo) my grandmother bought a Windows XP PC,
learned how to use it from scratch (had never used a computer in her life) and
started to browse the internet, write emails, copy photos from digital cameras
on to the computer etc. At the same time, her friends had no clue how to use a
computer.

 _In the 2010 's_ my grandmother quickly transitioned to iPad to browse the
web / iPhone to keep up with grandchildren on social media. Her friends would
only come to have a smartphone and join the social media revolution in the mid
2010s.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
It’s not clear what point your trying to make here.

~~~
glaberficken
I'm not really trying to make any point =) I'm just presenting some anecdotal
observations.

~~~
skrebbel
Your comment started with the phrase "anecdotal evidence". Anecdotal evidence
for what?

Note: I think no one is minding the unscientific nature of your anecdote. I
just don't understand what point the anecdote is supposed to underline. Your
grandma likes technology and therefore she likes technology? Or something?

~~~
hirako2000
It is pretty clear the evidence, although one should call it an observation,
is that brain stimulation through change, challenging and active learning
activities kept an individual's cognitive abilities higher than peers who have
gone through less brain stimulations.

It's sharing this observation, not very scientific as it would need larger
samples and better controlled environment but it's an interesting anecdote.
Many of us perhaps see the same trend.

I think it's pretty clear that not stimulating your brain lead to drop of
cognitive abilities. Parallels are made between a trainned muscle and a
trainned brain. We teach kids to memorise poems to stimulate their memory. We
forget about stimulation as we grow older, we tend to retire and accept the
status quo that there is the active career and some day we quit and no one
expect anything to be done as retired folks.

I find my own cognitive abilities dropping after a few months of slope into
brain laziness. I find my cognitive speed and performance increased after a
few months of rather intense focus on multiple challenging projects. I also
find myself unable to perform at high cognitive levels, drop of concentration
if I've been on a burn up for months without much brain rest and relaxing
time. Again perhaps a good parallel with how muscles performance works.

Anecdotes are interesting, as they help see trends when in correlation with
other anecdotes. I rarely hear stories about the opposite phenomenon.

------
JohnJamesRambo
I don’t know enough to know the answer to this, but does the paper address the
chance that people that have a cognitive decline watch more tv and it is an
effect not a cause?

~~~
thundergolfer
They say in the study that they looked for reverse causality, and that they
checked for study participants that acquired a medical diagnosis of cognitive
decline (eg. dementia) during the study period.

------
littlestymaar
I wonder were the effect comes from:

\- is that the medium itself (and the fact we watch it passively)?

\- is that the fact that it replaces other activities?

\- is that the retarded content it shows?

\- is that the stressful content that appears in the news all the time
(crimes, natural catastrophes, war, terror attack, etc.)?

\- is that the way it's shot (with non-stop movement, even when nothing
happens,just to keep us watching)?

------
samantohermes
It's probably because overload of long-term memory is related to Alzheimer's
and other dementia:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12269167_Does_longe...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12269167_Does_longer-
term_memory_storage_never_become_overloaded_and_would_such_overload_cause_Alzheimer's_disease_and_other_dementia)

------
yalogin
Instead of watching TV what if i browse reddit or HN and keep commenting? How
is that any different? Sure I am not using my brain when watching tv but I am
not really turning it off. I am still trying to process the visuals and in
some cases trying to understand or predict what might happen. How different is
that from mindless browsing?

------
NPMaxwell
A randomized controlled experiment: Find a collection of 200 people who you
will be able to test 5 years from now. Send copies of this report to a random
selection of 100 of them. Send a similar article not about television to the
other 100. Test after 5 years.

------
viburnum
What else are you going to do but watch tv when your brain starts to go?

------
isuckatcoding
Perhaps I should curb my Netflix binging habits.

~~~
johnchristopher
The very definition of binging is about excess. That somehow it became a
normal activity is telling something else.

------
vorotato
Of course, cognitive decline could also cause television.

------
originalbryan2
Me watch many tv and have great word speaking.

------
kylek
Ma was right, it’ll rot your brain!

------
thundergolfer
I am surprised that 3.5 hours _a day_ is the threshold where decreased
performance begins, as in my little life bubble that seems like an abnormally
large amount of TV watching. However Wikipedia[1] tells me the average USA
"consumer" is watching 4 hours _a day_! Yikes.

To a layman like me this seems like great research. A lot of effort was put in
to draw a rigorous conclusion about the effects of TV watching on some aspect
of mental performance. I just read _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ though, and I
find myself compelled to be a lot more dramatic about the negatives of TV
watching, on the late author's behalf.

Yes it's pretty bad that (excessive) TV watching literally damages your
cognitive ability to some degree, but I would say (and please point me to
research) that before that damage starts to show it's already near devastated
your personal 'knowledge-base'. To try and paraphrase Postman, the content on
TV is either trivial or non-trivial but delivered in such a way as to keep you
from holding onto any significance, meaning, or theory. TV as a medium is
terribly fractured (commercial breaks, 'Now..This' segues) and fundamentally
visual (rather than typographic). Human minds thrive in connectivity,
interrelation, and continuity. Our minds thrive in the typographic world. At
his most polemic, Postman argues that TV at is worst is totally incoherent,
conferring basically no knowledge whatsoever. A person's mind might still
performance just fine in tests, but having been starved of knowledge it is
practically unintelligent.

Think also of the opportunity cost. At an average of 4 hours a day, as USA
'consumer' watches 1460 hours of TV a year. An average person reads 200-250
words per minute. Taking the upper bound, and the average non-fiction book as
50,000 words. They could finish that average non-fiction book in 4.16 hours.
So, they could be reading _almost 1 book a day for a whole year instead_. Now,
that napkin-math result seems implausible to me, but imagine if I was off by
an order of magnitude. Say this person could read 35 non-fiction books in a
year if that wholesale swapped TV for reading non-fiction. 35 non-fiction
books at ~42 hours per book. They would be enormously enriched by this
alternative behaviour.

As an extreme (but unfortunately not uncommon) example, instead of getting all
red in the face hearing about Socialism coming to the USA from Fox news, our
dear average USA 'consumer' could have read _Das Kapital_ , and _The Soul of
Man Under Socialism_ , and _The Road to Wigan Pier_ , and _Capitalism and
Freedom_ , and _On Liberty_ , and... etc etc. You get the point.

So yeah, I'm really onboard with the thesis of _Amusing Ourselves To Death_.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption)

~~~
jarfil
I'd also wonder how that "watching" time gets counted.

For example, I know of people who would turn on the TV, then go about their
chores, but they aren't paying attention to whatever is on. Would that be
better or worse, from a cognitive point of view, than intently watching a
program?

As a different example, I like "watching" films or series while doing some
work, as in watching for a few minutes when I get stuck on something, then
hitting pause and going back to work. Other times, I'd just stare at a blank
wall for a couple of minutes. Would that count as daily watching time?

~~~
matwood
There was another study recently that indicated a high percentage of people
have a second screen up when "watching" TV. I think your question is a good
one to ask.

My wife and I have something like The Office literally playing all day while
we go about doing normal day time things like work, chores, etc... If we do
find time to really watch TV, we may watch one or two hour long shows before
bed.

------
gingerlime
Interesting that the threshold is at 3.5. 3 hours or less is fine.

I wonder if there’s a way to have TVs with watch timers. For better self-
control.

I notice at my parents house that the TV is almost always on. It personally
drives me insane. I think they want to curb it down, but it’s a habit that’s
hard to break... so maybe a screen-time app for the TV can help??

~~~
wj
TVs have sleep timers where they turn off after the set amount of time. Or at
least they used to. You might be able to use an Alexa plug between the TV and
the wall to the same effect.

~~~
gingerlime
Yeah, but it's something you actively need to activate every time, and it
doesn't count accumulated time over a 24 hour hour period... anyway, was just
toying with the idea. (inspired by the iPhone screentime)

~~~
matwood
The streaming services will present a dialog asking if someone is still
watching after a period of time. If I do not respond to that dialog, my ATV
will eventually turn off which turns off my TV.

~~~
gingerlime
That sounds like a variation of a sleep timer. I'm talking about measuring
(and maybe even alerting/stopping) excessive watch time. i.e. if someone is
actively flipping channels for 5 hours a day, that's not healthy (according to
this research)...

Streaming services sadly have the reverse incentive in this case, to actually
make you watch more.

------
subroutine
The amount of TV watched might be correlated with cognitive decline, but is
certainly not the cause.

I doubt there is any activity that can accelerate the rate of decline apart
from the things we put in our bodies (food & drugs). It's better to think of
cognitive decline proceeding at some baseline rate and the mental and physical
activities we engage in act to buffer this pace. Watching TV happens to be a
poor buffer, especially over such long stretches of such passive stimulation
(requires little mental or physical exertion). You would get the same low
buffer effect staring at a wall, flipping through a picture book, or knitting
a scarf for 3.5 hours. This might be obvious but TV isn't causing decline,
it's just not helping to prevent it.

~~~
Cougher
"is certainly not"

What do you base your certainty on? It's certainly not fact.

"I doubt there is any activity that can accelerate the rate of decline apart
from the things we put in our bodies (food & drugs)."

You missed oxygenation.

~~~
subroutine
Yes, oxygen goes inside our bodies. Also liquids.

I base this certainty partially on my expertise in the field of cognitive
decline, but mostly common sense principles. Cognitive decline is a natural
part of aging. It happens to everyone regardless of how much TV one watches;
even people who watch no TV whatsoever cannot avoid cognitive decline. Thus
our best estimate of what causes cognitive decline points towards the aging of
the underlying biological apparatus that supports cognition. Furthermore,
there are likely to be infants and young children who watch as much TV, and
view programming geared towards learning; and as they mature will see gains in
cognitive abilities. How is that explained it TV _causes_ cognitive decline.

