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Is Screen Time Good or Bad? It's Not That Simple (techcrunch.com)
TechCrunch's Devin Coldeway picks apart a new study by Oxford scientists that questions the basis of thousands of papers and analyses with conflicting conclusions on the effect of screen time on well-being. "The researchers claim is that the science doesn't agree because it's bad science," Coldeway writes. "So is screen time good or bad? It's not that simple." From the report: Their concern was that the large data sets and statistical methods employed by researchers looking into the question -- for example, thousands and thousands of survey responses interacting with weeks of tracking data for each respondent -- allowed for anomalies or false positives to be claimed as significant conclusions. It's not that people are doing this on purpose necessarily, only that it's a natural result of the approach many are taking. "Unfortunately," write the researchers in the paper, "the large number of participants in these designs means that small effects are easily publishable and, if positive, garner outsized press and policy attention."
In order to show this, the researchers essentially redid the statistical analysis for several of these large data sets (Orben explains the process here), but instead of only choosing one result to present, they collected all the plausible ones they could find. For example, imagine a study where the app use of a group of kids was tracked, and they were surveyed regularly on a variety of measures. The resulting (fictitious, I hasten to add) paper might say it found kids who use Instagram for more than two hours a day are three times as likely to suffer depressive episodes or suicidal ideations. What the paper doesn't say, and which this new analysis could show, is that the bottom quartile is far more likely to suffer from ADHD, or the top five percent reported feeling they had a strong support network. [...] Ultimately what the Oxford study found was that there is no consistent good or bad effect, and although a very slight negative effect was noted, it was small enough that factors like having a single parent or needing to wear glasses were far more important. "[T]he study does not conclude that technology has no negative or positive effect; such a broad conclusion would be untenable on its face," Coldeway writes. "The data it rounds up are simply inadequate to the task and technology use is too variable to reduce to a single factor. Its conclusion is that studies so far have in fact bee inconclusive and we need to go back to the drawing board."
In order to show this, the researchers essentially redid the statistical analysis for several of these large data sets (Orben explains the process here), but instead of only choosing one result to present, they collected all the plausible ones they could find. For example, imagine a study where the app use of a group of kids was tracked, and they were surveyed regularly on a variety of measures. The resulting (fictitious, I hasten to add) paper might say it found kids who use Instagram for more than two hours a day are three times as likely to suffer depressive episodes or suicidal ideations. What the paper doesn't say, and which this new analysis could show, is that the bottom quartile is far more likely to suffer from ADHD, or the top five percent reported feeling they had a strong support network. [...] Ultimately what the Oxford study found was that there is no consistent good or bad effect, and although a very slight negative effect was noted, it was small enough that factors like having a single parent or needing to wear glasses were far more important. "[T]he study does not conclude that technology has no negative or positive effect; such a broad conclusion would be untenable on its face," Coldeway writes. "The data it rounds up are simply inadequate to the task and technology use is too variable to reduce to a single factor. Its conclusion is that studies so far have in fact bee inconclusive and we need to go back to the drawing board."
It's always quality of content. We never worry about kids having too much book time these days. But novels used to be considered a waste of time, it was time that could be used learning a trade or honing essential skills needed for survival on a homestead. How does some fanciful fantasy help you slaughter a hog or get the harvest out of the ground? And let's not forget evil books have been banned and burned in the not too distant past.
If you calculate 1000 arbitrary correlations, you can expect a random 10 results to be significant to p1%. Let people publish only the interesting ones, and you get a flawed picture. This is why we need verification studies; such wide-sweeping big data analyses are good for picking up interesting questions, but for statistical reasons, you shouldn't necessarily trust the answer.
Being a parent gives you a pretty immediate answer to this question.
Some children are fine. Some children are not.
I have two children. My eldest (6) gets totally thoroughly addicted to video. As soon as he has a little bit, he just wants to watch more and more and more. My youngest one (4) will watch a little, get bored, play outside, maybe go back to it. This has always been true, ever since they were 1.
My eldest one will keep watching forgetting all about eating, peeing, or whatever. All those needs will literally jump at him at the same time, and he will routinely enter a major destructive tantrum when the video is stopped.
As a parent, I had to go for a video-free life. They are allowed very very little video on week ends, but that's it. Any more than that and my 6 year old will just. Go. Nuts. Asking for it every moment of the week.
I let them play VR (I have a Rift and a Vive), which has proven to be non-addictive (again, not scientific, just my experience with them). But, it'snot clear whether it's good or bad for the eyes...
I also contend that the phrase 'screen time' is poorly chosen. I prefer to differentiate between what she's doing with the screen. I count coding differently then watching Youtube vids, Minecraft different from reading a book on Overdrive, etc.
There's.a whole lot of nuance that tends to get lost. Also depends on the kid. Mine is fit and active (unlike her old man) so that feeds into it too.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
We can replace "screen time" with basically anything at all, and it'll still be true. Try it sometime...
Too much sleep is bad, the question is what is too much?
Too much reading is bad, the question is what is too much?
Too much outdoor time is bad, the question is what is too much?
Too much thinking is bad, the question is what is too much?
See how that works?
Let's try a novel notion. Let parents raise their kids, and only interfere when it becomes clear that their kids are a danger to others, or are in danger themselves.
And by "danger", I don't mean "not like the other kids", I mean the imminent death or loss of important body parts type of danger....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Ultimately what the Oxford study found was that there is no consistent good or bad effect, and although a very slight negative effect was noted, it was small enough that factors like having a single parent or needing to wear glasses were far more important.
Great. Those of us having a single parent and needing to wear glasses may be statistical outliers in the realm of no hope.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Let's see...
many people drown- bad
many people die without it- bad
used in pesticides- bad
floods cause billions of dollars damage- bad
great for bathing - good
great for boiling eggs - good
used in coffee- good
rain helps crops grow - good
Hmmmm. It's hard to say definitively whether water is good or bad.
The headline is "Is screen time good or bad?" and the answer is "No." The law of questions in headlines is alive and well!
Unless you're an adolescent or a moron it should be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that too much of anything isn't good for you. Sheesh, have we raised entire generations of idiots?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
'Screen time' is like sugar: sure, you like it, but overall it's bad for you.
Children should be exposed to this as little as possible. They should be physically moving around, playing with other children, becoming properly socialized, honing their coordination, so on: being kids, basically, not being drones staring at one screen or another.
Adults should not be walking around all day staring at their phones to the point where they bump into walls and telephone poles and other people and so-on.
It's tough these days to have any job or career that doesn't involve sitting in front of a computer doing whatever, but when that's done for the day people should spend time with and interact with other people not more screens. Personally I think many of the social problems we have today would be solved by people relating more to other people instead of staring at one screen or another.
But as stated above: it's like sugar. People like it. It's addictive. Technology companies know this, and like Big Tobacco, tailor their products/services to make them as attractive and addictive as possible, because that means more profits. They couldn't care less what it does to people's lives or our society in general, so long as they make as much money as they possibly can get away with.
Some people talk about so-called 'AI' being a threat to humanity. I say the 'threats' are much more subtle and literally in people's hands right now.
Passive video entertainment. For the most part this can be counted as TV time.
Social media. Like it or not "social media" has become a major part of socializing, especially for young adults.
active entertainment. Gaming scores higher in my book then TV time, especially creative or problem solving games.
learning. instructional websites, interest based communities and some youtube channels.
These are just a few categories of the many possible uses of "screen time"