4 Comments
User's avatar
DCLawyer68's avatar

Anecdotal evidence of n=1 vs mountains of social science data.

LV's avatar
16hEdited

Right. You could write the same essay about the kid who did hard drugs and went on to medical school, or the 80 year old who has smoked all their life without disease, or the person who gambles responsibly with pocket money.

I wish the author wrote more about how he found his way. Is he still addicted to games? If he stopped, how old was he? Did he intentionally try to end his addiction and succeed? How was he doing in school? Did he not neglect school during his addiction?

Some of us with kids are trying to imagine a path forward other than “let them lock themselves in their room for 12 hours a day and flunk out.”

John Lutz's avatar

Wonderfully thought out, experienced and written.

Akiva's avatar

Thank you very much for a very interesting article that runs counter to my impressions. I have I a PhD in biophysics and I'm a retired academic medical faculty member. DC Lawyer68 above is correct that your example is an n=1 however the data on which we base the idea of the harms of screens is an example of correlation not causation. However correlation will be extremely hard to prove given the nature of the experimental sample.

I thank you for giving me something interesting to think about.

Incidentally, I have another bit of correlation for you. I live in a community where none of the children have screens (really). Childhood obesity is vanishingly small.