The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use (2019) Orben et al.

Cheshire

Cheshire

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The widespread use of digital technologies by young people has spurred speculation that their regular use negatively impacts psychological well-being. Current empirical evidence supporting this idea is largely based on secondary analyses of large-scale social datasets. Though these datasets provide a valuable resource for highly powered investigations, their many variables and observations are often explored with an analytical flexibility that marks small effects as statistically significant, thereby leading to potential false positives and conflicting results. Here we address these methodological challenges by applying specification curve analysis (SCA) across three large-scale social datasets (total n = 355,358) to rigorously examine correlational evidence for the effects of digital technology on adolescents. The association we find between digital technology use and adolescent well-being is negative but small, explaining at most 0.4% of the variation in well-being. Taking the broader context of the data into account suggests that these effects are too small to warrant policy change.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0506-1

This twitter thread explains how data have been distorted to fit the preconceived views of the authors of the primary studies:


A few tweets:


 
Step 21496495944057 in the millennia-old "the youth are all wrong" struggle, aka the "get off my lawn" model.

It's really looking like pretty much all psychological research is cherry-picked and bias-driven. Not too much of it or most of it, nearly all of it.
 
Are we the first generation that has been so vicious in our contempt and scorn for the following generation? Having benefited from free university education which virtually guaranteed a good job, being able to get on the housing ladder, having a good pension to look forward to, and using all the plastic bags I felt like, it doesn't feel quite right to pour scorn on the following generation who don't have any of those things and have spent 10 years of their life under austerity because we fucked up, plus have to start their working lives heavily in debt to receive a crap education which guarantees them a job in a call centre if they're lucky. Slagging off millenials doesn't do us any credit, and going on about screen time detracts from a lot of other issues we should be thinking about.

I teach millenials every Monday and they are absolutely fine, and if we had grown up like them we'd be just like them. They can eat all the avocado they like for all I care.

Except last Monday one of them really was an absolute fucking snowflake.
 
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TiredSam said:
Are we the first generation that has been so viscious in our contempt and scorn for the following generation?
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Probably not. As a member of the 'teenager' and then 'hippie' generation born in the years after the second world war, the whole rock music, 'free love' and the pill, etc. generation were very much looked at askance by my parents generation who had been through the war and life was serious and you were expected to be grown up and sensible all the time, at least in my experience.
 
Trish said:
Probably not. As a member of the 'teenager' and then 'hippie' generation born in the years after the second world war, the whole rock music, 'free love' and the pill, etc. generation were very much looked at askance by my parents generation who had been through the war and life was serious and you were expected to be grown up and sensible all the time, at least in my experience.
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The phenomenon of an older generation complaining about the following one goes back to Antiquity:

“They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Rhetoric, Aristotle, 4th Century BC
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http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20...ple-have-always-complained-about-young-adults
 
Yes but normally the older generation have made a better world for the younger generation, so they are entitled to be resentful, jealous and moan a bit. We have made a worse world for the millenials and are now sticking the boot in and trying to blame them by pretending it's all about screen time, gap years, beards and lumberjack shirts. It just doesn't seem a very mature approach. Maybe it's because our generation never had to grow up and take responsibility.

But what do I know. I'm just an old man sitting on the sofa muttering grumpily to himself. Old men have always sat thinking moodily, I think I'm coming into my golden age.
 
Large quantities of data = High quality of science
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Wut? Well, that explains a lot. They truly do not understand how science works. Or just don't care? Or was that supposed to be sarcastic?
 
This twitter thread explains how data have been distorted to fit the preconceived views of the authors of the primary studies:

New paper out based on a massive sample (n = 355,358) finds that screens explain less than 0.4% of depression AND shows why previous research is deeply flawed - unless you are willing to believe potatoes and eyeglasses are also destroying a generation (Thread 1/13)
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Well, the eyeglasses aren't a cause but a correlation - obviously a result of the massive amounts of screen time turning the generation into myopic weaklings.

As for the potatoes, the Incas were into potatoes in a big way, and look at them now. :emoji_potato::cautious:
 
rvallee said:
Wut? Well, that explains a lot. They truly do not understand how science works. Or just don't care? Or was that supposed to be sarcastic?
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Taken out of context, yes, that is concerning. The full quote from her tweet though is (my bolding)
Large quantities of data = High quality of science. My new Nature Human Behaviour paper published today with @ShuhBillSkee shows that this could not be further from the truth.
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