You should also add in the fact that the study found 19% of only 150 total 17-23 year olds responded to a written, university study after 24 hours that they were distressed. Only 11% said they were feeling isolated. There are so many things wrong with the conclusion that its a disgrace to any reader. That somehow equates to addiction to smartphones for a large amount of young people?
It's also pretty poor form to ask for a citation on something when you can easily find it on your own. We aren't talking about a generic topic here. A five-second search on "smartphone withdrawal" brings up tons of relevant results, including the study mentioned by parent.
edit: I guess expecting people to do their own work is offensive to some people...
This introduces the additional complication of a back-and-forth exchange about whether we're talking about the same study before we can have a meaningful conversation about the contents of that study (ie, "was the methodology good", "were the results statistically significant", etc.) It also introduces the additional complication that a search engine might tailor my results differently from yours, and therefore not show me the study at all because (for example) it thinks I'm searching for an app to help with caffeine withdrawal because I searched for Pepsi last week.
Best practice is to provide an unambiguous reference to whatever study you're discussing. That can take many forms -- a link, the name of the authors and journal, or the full title. Making every single person who wants to be involved in the discussion have to do their own search and make sure they've found the exact right study simply isn't conducive to productive conversation.
>>Best practice is to provide an unambiguous reference to whatever study you're discussing.
In formal debate, yes. This is an informal discussion. The OP started the sentence in question with, "I can't remember when this experiment was done but..." which set the tone in that particular thread to a conversational one. Do you ask your friends for citations when casually chatting about random stuff over beer? Observe the same protocol here. If you get really curious, just look it up yourself.
> "Do you ask your friends for citations when casually chatting"
Yes.
If they reference a study that I'm interested in, I absolutely do ask them for details. And none of them are stupid enough to tell me to "just google it" without giving me adequate information to be sure I've found the right study.
In particular, if they happen to be at a computer at the time, I'll ask them to look it up for me.
I think it's interesting (euphemistic) how you imagine my friends and I interact. Given that I have actual experience interacting with my friends and you have only your imagination, perhaps you should reconsider the casualness with which you've insulted me. My conversations do not infact involve lots of "I don't know", "...", annoyed responses; people describe the details as well as they remember and then either they or we as a group try to look things up.
Next time, try asking questions instead of imagining or assuming.
>>Given that I have actual experience interacting with my friends and you have only your imagination, perhaps you should reconsider the casualness with which you've insulted me.
Are you seriously saying this with a straight face right after suggesting that someone (i.e. me) who tells you to "just Google it" when you ask for the citation for a casually mentioned study is stupid?
You really are a piece of work. I think I'm done here.
I'm saying that any of my friends who told me to "just Google it" would be stupid, and the rest of my friends would let him know. Because all of my friends know that, if you're having a conversation with us and you reference "a study" you're going to have to back that up with a clear enough description that we can actually find the specific study in question and discuss it. (I think that's also the ethos on Hacker News -- it's generally expected, even in casual HN conversation, that people will give enough information that interested parties can follow up without confusion. Don't tell people "google it"; take the 5 seconds to google it yourself and give them the link.)
I expect people to ask me for citations, and I expect people to give me citations when asked, because that's the sort of social circle I've cultivated (and that's the expectation HN has cultivated as well.) You clearly run in a different social circle than me. I would not call you stupid for not having cultivated the same habits and expectations. But I would appreciate if you didn't criticize me based on how you imagine I socialize.
If it's only a 5 second search, then why didn't the OP provide that study and chose instead to say google it, yourself? Both answers take about the same time after all.
