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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?
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?
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
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.
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.
Most likely answer highlighted. Makes one depressed to see how stupid people can get rich and famous without talent.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"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.
... 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.
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.
You're the one who's fucked up, if you can write misanthropic crap like that with a straight face.
Get yourself some help, please.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.