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Study of 500,000 Teens Suggests Association Between Excessive Screen Time and Depression (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Depression and suicide rates in teenagers have jumped in the last decade -- doubling between 2007 and 2015 for girls -- and the trend suspiciously coincides with when smartphones became their constant companions. A recent study places their screen time around nine hours per day. Another study, published on Tuesday, suggests that suicide and depression could be connected to the rise of smartphones, and increased screen time. Around 58 percent more girls reported depression symptoms in 2015 than in 2009, and suicide rates rose 65 percent. Smack in the middle of that window of time, smartphones gained market saturation.
In Twenge's new study, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, the researchers looked at two samples: a nationally representative survey by ongoing study "Monitoring the Future" out of the University of Michigan, which is administered annually to 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, and the Centers for Disease Control's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a sample of high school students administered by the CDC every other year. (Both surveys began in 1991.) Altogether, over 500,000 young people were included. The study authors examined trends in how teens used social media, the internet, electronic devices (including gaming systems and tablets), and smartphones, as well as how much time they spent doing non-screen activities like homework, playing sports, or socializing. Comparing these to publicly available data on mental health and suicide for these ages between 2010 and 2017 showed "a clear pattern linking screen activities with higher levels of depressive symptoms/suicide-related outcomes and non-screen activities with lower levels," the researchers wrote in the study. All activities involving screens were associated with higher levels of depression or suicide and suicidal thinking, and activities done away from a screen were not.
In Twenge's new study, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, the researchers looked at two samples: a nationally representative survey by ongoing study "Monitoring the Future" out of the University of Michigan, which is administered annually to 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, and the Centers for Disease Control's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a sample of high school students administered by the CDC every other year. (Both surveys began in 1991.) Altogether, over 500,000 young people were included. The study authors examined trends in how teens used social media, the internet, electronic devices (including gaming systems and tablets), and smartphones, as well as how much time they spent doing non-screen activities like homework, playing sports, or socializing. Comparing these to publicly available data on mental health and suicide for these ages between 2010 and 2017 showed "a clear pattern linking screen activities with higher levels of depressive symptoms/suicide-related outcomes and non-screen activities with lower levels," the researchers wrote in the study. All activities involving screens were associated with higher levels of depression or suicide and suicidal thinking, and activities done away from a screen were not.
Well, I think that explains facebook users a bit! :)
Why UNIX?
The suicide rate also coincides with the great recession, the increase in opioid use, the popularity of the Kardashians, and the Obama administration. Take your pick.
This was touched on in a discussion between Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson: https://youtu.be/4IBegL_V6AA?t=4624
Ugly teenage kids also have less sex than attractive teenage kids. From this we can conclude that if you don't have enough sex, you become ugly.
Back in the day, before computers, the same news would've said there was a correlation between excessive TV-watching and depression, and before that, excessive radio-listening and depression. Can you figure it out?
With all the repressive SJW crap that's going on, staying close to a computer screen makes you realize how repressive the society is. It's also why the younger ones are becoming more conservative rather than centrist. So sad.
I looks like editors learned their lesson.
If you read carefully, in the summary, no mention is made of any causal relationship so the following possibilities are still open :
1- excessive screen time causes depression
2- depression causes excessive screen time
3- what causes depression also causes excessive screen time
This correlation doesn't tell us much about the relationship between screen time and depression. Also, is it just screen time that's significant or more specifically social media time? 2009 happens to coincide with the great recession. Perhaps that has a more tangible role in this small uptick in suicide rates? Suicide rates have been at an all-time low since the mid 20th century and this recent uptick is more prevalent among 25-55 year olds than teens. If you want to have a stab at mobile phones and social media use, there are better ways to do it than this, social media addiction and parents being distracted from giving their children the attention and interaction they need to grow up smart and psychologically healthy.
Screen time to me is misleading because what if I have merely replaced newspaper time and book time with one device that happens to have a screen. My underlying behaviour has not changed.
Also, does an increase in teen suicide rates ever correlate with a decrease in adult suicide rates? I wonder if their is simply an ultimate biological cause for the depression and eventually those afflicted will find a way and a time. Maybe things like social media and online bullying just accelerate the process.
Teens see all their so-called friends' styled up, filtered and photoshopped pictures, so they think everybody has a better life than themselves, small wonder they get depressed.
Nobody posts pictures of themselves from Monday mornings, when the shadows around their eyes make them look like a Panda.
So while there does not seem to be a direct argument that there is a causal relationship where "screen time" causes depression, the lie is implicit. First, the "screen time" is called "excessive", i.e. "bad". Then the direly needed warning that correlation is not causation is noticeably absent. To make this worse, it is not called "correlation", but the far less well defined term "association" is used.
This is just another example manipulative writing. That is indeed bad, because it obscures reality and replaces it by the preconceptions of the author about what must be "bad" (and hence everything must be either proof the author is right or must be ignored).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If youre that type of person. At a time when basic school should be over with, and those teenagers should be pursuing independent and specialized studies, its more drudgery. Good for all the teenagers that committed the bravery of suicide, this world is a system fucked over by parental aliens and parental adults that can't handle the physical and neuro physiological freshness of the teenage animal.
"The rise in depressive symptoms and suicide-related outcomes was exclusive to females. This suggests that screen time, perhaps especially social media, may have larger effects on adolescent girls’ mental health than on boys’ (and that is indeed what we found, with social media significantly correlated with depressive symptoms only among girls in some analyses and stronger correlations in others). The pattern for males, with increases in suicide deaths but not in depressive symptoms or suicide-related outcomes, suggests that boys’ suicide deaths may be driven by other disorders and risk factors not assessed here."
So what is really behind this is obsessive gossipping?
(Since I have 3 daughters, I suppose I could word that less flippantly. "chronicling the accounts of their peers and reporting to each other on social media". Nah, that failed to sound less flippant. I'd insert my anecdotal evidence now, but my n=3 (4 if you count my son) is not going to help much.)
Aside from that vital information, correlation != causation, but it does point out a possible area for more study in this case.
Their summation is pretty weak:
"In conclusion, adolescent mental health issues rose sharply since 2010, especially among females. New media screen time is both associated with mental health issues and increased over this time period. Thus, it seems likely that the concomitant rise of screen time and adolescent depression and suicide is not coincidental."
So ya, more work needed.
I figured it was just because I was an old fart that I appreciate being "offline" now and then. :D
I know that when I have been working too much and spending too much time inside and/or "connected", I need put the phone in airplane mode, get out and get some fresh air and do something, otherwise my mood drops. It was just above freezing last night and I felt sort of down, but I went on a bicycle ride for 2 hours with the phone turned off.
It is really doing wonders for my mood and lets not ignore the pleasure of getting back home to a hot shower and a comfy couch afterwards. :D
I have opted out of a job where I needed to be available and on call. We did get paid for that and I recently had a weekend where I had to be on standby, and it reminded me that it was annoying and not worth the money. I was biking in my local forest and all the time had to remember to not go further away than I could be home and logged on at work within an hour.
I deleted my Facebook account almost a year ago. After weighing the pros and cons of doing it, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't an worthwhile "investment" of my time and attention as it didn't really improve my life quality that much. There were a few benefits of staying connected to people and getting updates about things in the local community but all in all, it was mostly robbing my time. Also, Facebook's website, app and features(like notifications) have been constructed in such a way that they are "teaching" you that you have to check it all the time. If you don't do that, it will "ping" you that someone you know did something and you should check it out. If you decide you don't want that, they also won't tell you when someone is contacting you directly.
L'Idiot
Wow the idiocy here is amazing. You should realuze research uses more sophisticated techniques than you learned in fresher statistics. Have you any understanding of structural equation modeling as a research method? They incorporate causality.
And not enough time living in the real world
Ahh. Not surprising at all. "excessive screen time" for teenage girls exposes them to far, far too much third wave feminism for any of their egos, identities, or careers to remain intact unless they're prepared to toss the whole mess out the window, in which case they're suddenly "homophobic" and "transphobic" and at the center of an attack wing of Antifa wannabe's.
I'm watching it happen to my daughter and her circle of friends, and it's *nasty* once it sets in. I've been trying to introduce to my friends who actually *were* feminists in the 80's and even some of my oldest gay and transgender friends, to try and defuse the damage. It's nasty out there.
What part of "The rise in depressive symptoms and suicide-related outcomes was exclusive to females" did you fail to understand?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Space is fake. The Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.
All that muck you just wrote is based on a lie.
... just watching people walk around with the damned things glued to their face. Crikey - you can't even have a normal conversation anymore with anyone!
Also, does an increase in teen suicide rates ever correlate with a decrease in adult suicide rates?
Yes. Teens who commit suicide rarely go on to become adults who commit suicide.
It's a (((nasty))) world out there.
Teens are old enough to understand that there will be no jobs for them when they are old enough to work, they will have no economic opportunity whatsoever, and social mobility is impossible. They have two choices: kill themselves because the world has no place for them, or kill all of you for creating their hopeless situation. No wonder they are depressed.
Does anyone here think there could be an equal or greater number of teens who became happy from excessive screen time? And that ultimately, computers and the internet are a force for good and the key to understanding ourselves and all things? Could happen ... ;^)
If you're not into your local scene...
Then you may invest time in being online to surround yourself with people you enjoy participating with.
Just going off my experience as a year shy of being a millenial:
The options at my time for being social were: Vampire LARPs/Warhammer (neither of which I could afford/wanted to get into), Religious activities, social activities with the popular kids (usually involving drinking, drugs, theft, etc to prove you're 'cool'), Community service (overlaps with Religion, but also local Trek community, and unaffiliated groups), sports. Basically everything required money, or a vouch from a member of the clique, or knowledge/enjoyment of the community, or all of the above.
None of those worked for me. As a result the internet was the only place I could find people I enjoyed interacting with, as my former friends split off into cliques based off the groups above and we had less and less things in common.
The modern social media craze is similiar. Gone are the days where people were just friends from hanging out in the same abandoned lot, or cruising, or loitering around the same part of town. All of those activities have either been corrupted by the fallout of the drug war, or stupid kids getting injured/damaging property, or properties being fenced because it was cheaper than the (lack of) liability risk in the past. As a result there are less opportunities to meet people IRL, fewer people will trust/interact with strangers, and most people won't get along even if they do.
The depression isn't caused by the screen time, it is caused by people being unhappy with their lives, spiraling further when they become unhappy with their online lives, and then affecting their biology in their real lives. The problem is everybody is trying to make it out as an internet epidemic, rather than realizing it is a global sociological epidemic resulting from a combination of factors among the poor, middle, and upper class, as well as the policies and choices made in managing various countries for the past 40 or so years. What has made this MORE devastating is the effecient worldwide transportation network, which has made the world seem far bigger than most people can fathom, and the loss of personal interaction as the trees are lost amongst the forest.
Trolls might get depressed: I can see that on /. - how/why? E.G. Pikoro https://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11346751&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=55552693/ & Barbaricow https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11356847&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=55554877/ (the 2 latest fools who tried to get the better of me only to FAIL hugely after coming after me totally OFF TOPIC).
ANYONE can read those 2 exchanges & decide for themselves on 'who got the best of whom' & it wasn't me "going down" (hell, I didn't even START it, I just finished it & them BOTH with it).
* Does it make ME 'depressed'? LMAO - Oh, HELL no - IF ANYTHING? It makes me elated to CRUSH them beneath my boot for taking potshots @ me & failing!
(I love it)
HOWEVER: I'd bet it makes THEM depressed for failing so much (but when you take 'their kind' into account, you'd think they'd be USED to "F'ing up" - it's just "what they do"/"how they roll" in every aspect of their bogus lives, lol!)
They don't seem to understand that WHEN YOU SLING SHIT in this life, you get it back 3 fold in return... some call it 'karma' (not bs karma like /. promotes).
APK
P.S.=> I actually have to THANK those 2 & all the rest of "their kind" (FAKE NAMES behind FAKE LIVES) for making ME look GOOD & themselves by way of comparison? Well, lol - "not so good" (more like total fools) - I understand their TRUE motives though - they're either webmasters OR advertisers (profiting by ads online even though they infect, track, annoy, & eat up OUR POWER running their shit scripts), inferior competitors (yes, they have TONS of sockpuppets to do so & I know it for a fact), OR even malware makers/botnet herders (which hosts files block their malicious shit) - @ this point, after my having UTTERLY ANNIHILATED THEM (starting up w/ me every single time no less)? I pity them... apk
We must find a way to get the female suicide rate up to the male suicide rate.
Could it simply be that as a person gets more and more depressed the4y spend more time on their phones etc.? Think about it. A person starts to get depressed and does not groom themselves as well and therefore decides to socialize on the net rather than in person. It can also be economic stress. A day spent with a phone, a laptop or a tablet can cost next to nothing whereas leaving the home always costs money one way or another. Further, our nation is showing the effects of an economic catastrophe kicked off by the Bush administration. Young people usually do not have the money it takes to get an apartment, a car, clothing, medical care and food. Young women in particular must either stay at home with the parents or find a sugar daddy or some young guy who has enough money and marry them. Young people who are not addicted to their phones probably are using illegal drugs these days. Looking at 20 year olds my bet would be that at least half use dope these days. People who avoid alcohol and drugs and live a more sane life may well be severely rejected by their peers.
But you could still see an increase in suicide rates among adults in the future despite more teenagers committing suicide. Otherwise, yes, I guess if we check back in a decade the adult rate will have decreased...
When I stay inside for a couple of weeks without doing something outside I get depressed too.
I don't think this is all that surprising.
Our bodies are not built for sitting around doing nothing all day.
They are depressed not because of technology itself, but because that technology is used to bring you REALTIME NEWS. And surprise! The world is a cesspool of depression -- HUMAN ON HUMAN hate!
Do we really need more beyond the fucking obvious fact that realtime news is fucking depressing, thus, it depresses people?
Hey man. You could grow a set of balls & not post as an unidentifiable anonymous fool projecting you're a drug addict too, junkie.
APK
P.S.=> "Your kind's" sheer lack of intelligence is totally astounding - especially attempting to project YOUR OWN PROBLEMS onto me (giving away those are YOUR PROBLEMS, not mine) - hilarious! Classic & priceless... apk
Maybe they'd cheer up if they could get girlfriends.
Unfortunately that's not possible because the girls spend all their time on TwitBook, or they're dead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's very simple: Teenage kids spend more time at home _because_ they are depressed, not the other way around. These days it's the computer, 20 years ago it was the TV, and 20 years before it was the radio, and none of them have anything to do with it, that's just how people tend to spend time when home alone.
The reasons for depression are typically centered around a perceived lack of self-worth and not being accomplished, good-looking, cool, smart, attractive, interesting, and all these things that American culture now almost demands of young people. This is the reason for increase in depression, nothing else.
what if you don't have sex *and* you spend all day reading slashdot? what happens then??
It's not possible for boys to get girlfriends because the girls see men are richer on the other side of the screen.
Clue: You prove you have NO BALLS seeing as you post totally unidentifiably anonymously & are ez to dust too!
* Seriously - See subject: Did you NOT see that coming?
Apparently not - you have ZERO wit to top off you having NO BALLS!
(Imo, the drugs YOU PROJECT YOU ARE ON (while attempting to project it onto me, dumb) are disintegrating what little amount of intelligence you may have possessed @ some point, what with you FALLING into the trap of this comeback of mine so easily)
APK
P.S.=> By the way - have some class - spouting your "StRaNgE DeSiReS" here publicly? LOW to NO class on YOUR part whatsoever... apk
Professor Matthew Walker, Director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, published "Why We Sleep" last month. http://www.simonandschuster.co... I devoured the book; it's good science and remarkably well written. It covers a lot of the current work, and that work would go a long way to explaining this effect. There is so much going on when we sleep that is key to mental and physical health, it's not just "downtime", and to a degree I had not imagined. Sadly, I now realize I must consume less of my beloved coffee. Gladly, my sleep habits were already pretty good and the kids in my house have an early bedtime, no tech in the bedroom rule.
How about the fact politics are non-functional, CNN runs, constant, endless murder and war and rape stories, and school is bankruptcy in a can?
This is likely a case of correlation instead of causation. 40 years ago, the same correlation was probably between TV viewing time and depression. If you are isolated and have no friends, you consume more content in an effort to distract or otherwise fill your time. In the era of TV, people watched a lot of TV to fill the time and distract themselves. In the era of the internet, people are online a lot more, and at least online, if you get into a hobbiest chat room or an MMO and join a good guild, you can still have some real meaningful human interaction.
Both are still a lot better than the centuries old method of alcoholism and drug addiction, that will definitely destroy you...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Because it could be either way.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
... and even the association, like someone who associates with a guy in a blue shirt was drinking beer.
What I don't see is causation.
Lots of things change over time, either in the same or opposite direction as depression.
Look at opiod abuse.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Wow the idiocy here is amazing. You should realuze
Jzanu, your gross inability to perceive your own hypocrisy is a constant amusement.
While the parent comment isn't particularly elegant, the message is insightful.
Women compete with each other in ways that men often do not notice. Look at your own female facebook friends and seek out how this is done.
A comment after someone posts their wealthy fiance's choice in engagement ring: "I won't marry a man unless he gives me a ring at least that big!". "My husband does everything for me! Find a real man that treats you right!" and so on.
They are all manifestations of two things: the grass is always greener, and a desire to show off the best possible version of their lives to others.
So now men not only have to compete with other men they know, they also have to compete with an idealized version of the most attractive man out of 100 facebook couples. No one, not even that real-world equivalent most attractive man can compete with that image. This leads to some men giving up, many women seeing themselves as being unable to attract "quality" men and thus feel bad about themselves, never realizing the expectations of average women have outstretched reality years ago.
In turn there are social consequences like the lower birth-rate, fewer marriages, less dating but more ways to find dates, the rise of tinder riding the wave of hookup culture, increased alcohol consumption, increased asocial behavior, and a feedback cycle of pretending to be happier or better off than we actually are on social media.
The hypothesis really explains a torrent of current social trends.
The enforced sadness of your own existence is painful from here, so you should really work on that. Otherwise you know, people do have careers with multiple jobs in multiple industries. I have lived more of life than you can possibly imagine, and gained more experience and education in a variety of fields than the newer crowds that gather here can comprehend. I can't help how fucking stupid people are but when they seek to injure others or cause others harm from their retarded beliefs and behaviors, well, then my favorite thing is to ensure they personally get to experience the results. That was the first job.
That isn't research, it is blind assumption. Look here and try to understand something. Direct address http://www.statsoft.com/Textbo... . This is as simple an explanation as exists, but it still requires you have some background in experimental design or equivalent field. Make sure you work out what the words and phrases mean in this context before moving forward. You will probably have to go backward a lot first.
If anyone bothered to take a look at the actual statistics ( https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/figures/m6630qsf.gif ), it's obvious that the increase 1975-1990 is *larger* than the increase 2007-2015, and the maximum for men is larger as well. Cherrypicking of periods is more than obvious.
The more interesting question is why did it *decrease* 1990-2007?
As someone who has attempted suicide twice, when you're depressed you don't feel like you have the energy to accomplish anything. So all you can manage to do is screen-type activities because there's so little effort involved. You feel like you're getting stuff done, just read another article yay, but you're not doing anything worthwhile so your life gets worse and worse which in turns causes you to become even more overwhelmed and ignore it even more. Learned helplessness is difficult to overcome. You see all your chores as a massive, single thing to do rather than something you can chip away at a little a time. If in the next 5 hours you would have to wash all the dishes you'd wash over the course of your lifetime, you'd never bother to start because it would be impossible to finish within 5 hours. There's no point in starting because you can't complete everything.
Many screen activities are slightly addicting too and you don't have the willpower to stop due to your poor self-image.
. . . before all this stuff started. I mean, I always knew I wasn't very popular, but at least I wasn't confronted with a real-time numerical readout of my unpopularity every minute of every day.
I have lived more of life than you can possibly imagine
Arrogant, aren't you?
gained more experience and education in a variety of fields than the newer crowds that gather here can comprehend.
Yes, you are arrogant.
I can't help how fucking stupid people are
That's but one of your many failings.
One expression describes you well: lolwut.
Correlation....
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
what happens then??
you're currently reading what happens.
right here.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
See subject: Is that some song lyric or something? I don't know it; no reference here ringing a bell so - You're "StRaNgE"...
APK
P.S.=> Sometimes, I wonder about some people & this is one of those times (regarding you unidentifiable anonymous troll)... apk