Does more than 2 hours of screen time really harm children’s brains?

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It seems intuitive that children’s schoolwork will suffer if they spend too much time gazing at their phones instead of getting to bed or getting some exercise. And that is broadly what a recent study has found. But should parents be panicked into pulling the plug on their kids’ electronic devices.

Jeremy Walsh at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottowa, Canada, and his colleagues evaluated the lifestyle data  of 4520 US children, 8 to 11, and how far they  met various Canadian government guidelines on cognition.   These suggest limiting screen time to 2 hours a day, sleeping for 9 to 11 hours a night and spending at least an hour being physically active.

More than a third – 1655 children – met the guideline for limiting screen time, and their average performance in the cognitive tests was 4.5 per cent higher than that of the 1330 children who met none of the guidelines. The gain was even higher, at 5.2 per cent, for those meeting both the screen-time and sleep recommendations (The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, doi.org/ct95).  The US study is running for a further 10 years, and will enable researchers to track whether the children change their behaviour over time, and whether screen time depletes cognitive performance.

Two caveats:  What the the survey didn’t reveal was what the children were doing on their screens, which could be either educational or trivial. To truly understand the impact of digital media on children, researchers must understand not only how much, but also how, what, where and with whom they’re watching.  Secondly, the answers were self- reported by the children .  Can 8 to 11-year-old children reliably report their own screen and physical activity behaviour?

More research will make the data more reliable.   So far the lessons are sensible: parents should try to set some limits on screen time, especially prior to bedtime . Screen time before bed is doubly problematic because it keeps kids up later, and exposure to light impairs sleep quality, cognition and the general working of he brain..  (Andy Coghlan. New Scientist , 23 Oct 2018).

So now I am off to the gym, where I will find numerous young adults staring fixedly at their phones or treadmill screens – with exercising an incidental.  Epicurus never opined about exercise, as far as I know, but then there were the Olympics and the near- worship of physical fitness.  Add to that sunset and the difficulty of reading after sun-down, and I guess the ancient Greeks must have been psychologically well- adjusted.  They certainly produced some smart philosophers.

Mafia steals billions: surprise, surprise

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The Italian Mafia has made €3bn over the past ten years by siphoning off EU funds intended for farmers within Sicily’s largest national park, according to a former director of the park, who survived a Mafia assassination attempt in 2016.

In his new book, Giuseppe Antoci claims that Cosa Nostra clans use threats to deter farmers within the 210,000-acre Nebrodi National Park from bidding for land leases, then secure the leases at low rates through front companies to gain access to millions in EU subsidies. Anti-Mafia prosecutors say that, across Italy, the clans have expanded beyond their traditional activities of extortion, drug dealing and prostitution, and moved into the farming and food sectors. They put the value of the “agro-Mafia business” – which affects the entire food chain, from producers to restaurants – at more €22bn last year.  (The Week Feb 13 2019)

So the Cosa Nostra bullies farmers and get their hands on land and EU subsidies.  If you are a European this is your money that is being swindled from the EU.  On this issue I sympathise with the EU critics (who are not only British).  The EU seems incompetent to deal with fraud, which has been going on for decades ( centuries?).  The problem is that the EU citizens are not being swindled only by the mafia.  We can guess at the extent of fraud,  but know few details.  However, the mafia has always been with us and will continue thus.  The answer is not to scrap the EU, but to beef up law enforcement.

In contrast to media Wikipedia arguments are quite civilised

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An analysis of millions of Wikipedia articles suggests that ideologically diverse groups can not only cooperate effectively, but also produce better work than homogenous groups. How did Wikipedia succeed where much of the online world has failed?

Misha Teplitskiy and his colleagues at Harvard University looked at the editors of Wikipedia articles on politics, science and social issues and categorised them by their political and social attitudes.   The most active editors were clustered around the ideological extremes and the more editors an article attracted, the more likely it was to attract them from both sides of the political spectrum.

The team found that the intense disagreement that happens between ideologically polarised editors often led to a more focused debate, with editors on both sides admitting the process had improved the final article.  Meanwhile an unbalanced article attracts more offensive language on the Talk page.

Part of Wikipedia’s successful bipartisanship is down to design. “On Twitter, if you don’t like the climate change debate, you can go off to your own echo chamber,” says Teplitskiy. “On Wikipedia, if you want to talk about climate change, there is only one place to do it.”

The findings suggest that even ideologically opposed people can cooperate when working towards a meaningful goal, and that to make this happen both parties need to agree to a common set of rules, and have a clear arbitration process in place for when disagreements do flare up.  Tense disagreements can often lead to a more focused debate, with editors on both sides admitting the process had improved the final article.

The attempt to moderate 1 billion users on Twitter and Facebook  has failed because there is no consensus about the rules, and no clear objectives, either.  If people are not prepared to abide by rules of conduct all you can do is ban them.

Journal reference: Nature Human Behaviour, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0541-6 (Frank Swain, Gary Cameron, Reuters)

Raise taxes on the rich!

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A majority of people living in developed countries want their government to tax the rich more to help the poor, according to an OECD survey of 21 countries. “Too many people feel they cannot count fully on their government when they need help,” said Ángel Gurría, secretary general of the OECD, which polled 22,000 people. The UK was not included in the study, but almost 80% of people in Portugal and Greece wanted the rich taxed more, as did half of US respondents. Almost half of Americans in the survey said they would pay 2% more income tax to receive better healthcare, and one-third would be prepared to pay a 2% levy in return for better state education. (The Guardian, 12 March 2019).

Every day there are stories about heads of companies who pay themselves multi millions a year, while their low level employees have barely enough to live on.  This is unsustainable, and if the recipients of these massive salaries do not have the wisdom and human decency to acknowledge the huge disparities in wealth they will deserve no sympathy when the system upends, which I believe it must.

Under Eisenhower, in 1951, 90% was the top marginal rate of tax on high incomes.  (under a Republican administration, as well, although not many people paid it).  Even in 1980 it was still 70% In other words the rich had plenty to live on, but a big hunk of the top (or excessive, depending on your viewpoint) bit of top taxed income went to governments to support decent housing, health and education.  There was no mass famine or desperate suicides among the super-rich; at least, they were not  reported.

Over the years the rich have been able to reverse these high tax rates, pouring money at lobbyists and right-wing think tanks, to great effect.  The marginal rate is  now 37%.  The United States has morphed into an nationalist oligarchy, although most voters haven’t noticed it and still support politicians who constantly act against their best economic interests, responding only to their financial masters.

This, on top of climate change and the rise of illiberal China, will all end badly for the short- sighted and greedy.  I believe Epicurus would agree, were he with us.

 

 

One person’s (very personal) journey towards Epicureanism

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When I was seven years old I was sent to a boarding school.  There I was cheek by jowl with the other little boys, sharing ice-cold baths in the morning and crammed into small rooms with eight other boys, teasing and being teased. There was no privacy whatsoever.

On to the next school at 13, which was precisely the same, except the bullying had been institutionalised over four hundred years.  The little boys ran errands for the senior boys, you never cried in front of anyone and you were expected to excel at rugby, cricket and field hockey. Contrary to popular expectation I never came across any hint of sexual harassment (or sexual activity. Even smiling at a girl from the nearby girl’s boarding school was a reason for expulsion), Life at school was lonely misery.  The objective was to toughen a generation and erase messy emotion so that the kids could go on to be tough managers without misgivings.

After that I had two years in the Army, under canvas and in acute discomfort, commanding 45 men on active service, and, again, cheek by jowl with my men, with whom I had absolutely zero in common, but from whom I learned so much about man management and the importance of humour.

The above is a background to the reasons why I am now running this blog.  An average little boy (me) had to work out a means of survival that did not involve running home to Mum and Dad (Heaven forfend!).  I worked out in my little brain that everyone else was suffering too in this great concentration camp, designed to have you grin and bear almost anything.  Others too needed a sympathetic pair of ears, real conversations about real feelings, and I reckoned if I offered them, along with a good laugh, I would win friends.

I went to chapel every day when little, and have nothing against moderate, organised religion.  But it seemed to me that inter-personal relationships were key, developing empathy, trying to put yourself in the shoes of others, keeping your word to the very best of your ability, treating subordinates, workers, acquaintances and suppliers fairly and decently, and being moderate in all things – these were the priority for a life that you could look back on with (moderate) pride, a  sort of Christianity without the supernatural, the priests,  Hell and Damnation.

Years later I read the extant writings of Epicurus and immediately related to the words and thoughts. These are the very principles I’ve worked out for myself, I thought, without a single course in  philosophy or prompting from my betters.  As a result, this is my 2,500th posting on a blog that tries to apply Epicurean principles to modern issues.