Talk:Digital media use and mental health

Review of literature by Desmurget

The neuroscienticist Michel Desmurget has published a review of the literature on the effects of digital media use entitled La fabrique du crétin digital. Surely this would be a relevant inclusion? Munci (talk) 05:43, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. Seems to be a 2019 book, and dozens of other literature reviews on this topic have been published since then. That said, it looks a good book from a quick scan, so no objection from me if you wanted to add a few lines on it. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:09, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I shall get onto at some point. Which other literature reviews have since been published? Munci (talk) 08:34, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

You're most welcome. Sadly, while reviews were much scarcer back in 2019, it was easier back then to pick out reasonably coherent themes to present to our readers.

Rather than list the many review level articles that have appeared this last few years, it might be more helpful to share a little context, which I've picked up from sitting on round tables discussing this topic with policy makers and platform operators. Essentially, at least until the race to train AGIs is settled, every time impartial scientists like Jonathan Haidt & Jean Twenge publish something objective on the topic, funding is going to be found for multiple studies and reviews reporting there's no problem. Policy makers are often good at screening out such motivated science, but they're not going to do anything that majorly hampers Western tech giants while there's an AI arms race in play with China. Once developing AGI is no longer a pressing concern, there's a good chance the scientific literature will cohere on a clear consensus, and it will be easier to improve this article to present a helpful encyclopaedic overview. Huh, at that point, digital media may genuinely have become a net +ve for MH.

In case you still want to work on this, there's actually now hundreds of review articles on the topic. I already integrated some of the most useful review articles to the article in this edit. This umbrella review helpfully separates various reviews into systematic reviews, meta-analyses and narrative reviews (It found 25 review level articles, even though it's over a year old and focussed only on SM & MH in teenagers, a small subset of the article's topic.) It contains links to 3 other umbrella reviews too, also about SM & MH but not limited to teenagers. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:25, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Wow, that's very interesting, thank you. Munci (talk) 04:33, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

No citations?

this article could use some citations. Kwixotik (talk) 05:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The article has abundant citations. I guess you mean it could have citations in the lede? (i.e. the introductory paragraphs at the top). Per MOS:CITELEAD , citations are not necessarily required in the lede. This said, while I generally dont like cites in the lede, I'll take your view into consideration, and may add some later (as may other editors.) Thanks for taking the time to offer feedback on the article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:17, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

FAR notice

This article was promoted to FA in 2019. Since then, several additions have been made to the article, including off-topic information (see this diff, showing completely irrelevant information that I just removed). I haven't gone through the whole article, but I have removed a couple of large chunks of prose. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:15, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Given the that the FAR notice discussion was been closed back in December, I was hoping we could follow-up here on what steps could be taken to improve the quality of the article in general and back to featured article status if possible and to address the content that was flagged with the WP:NOR and WP:MEDREF maintenance tags and evolutionary psychiatry/evolutionary psychology content. I don't know what specific content in the article in general or the ADHD subsection specifically User:SandyGeorgia felt warranted the maintenance tags. In light of the concerns you raised in the FAR notice discussion had about the evolutionary psychiatry content, I was also considering restoring it but in a separate "Evolutionary psychiatry" or "Evolutionary psychology" subsection in the "Other disciplines" section and expanding the content with other research from evolutionary psychology about evolutionary mismatch and digital media.

@SandyGeorgia: Apologies to have to get your attention with a ping but I don't know any other way to contact other folks on here. :) Just hoping that you could chime in and let me know what your thoughts are, so I can attempt to address your concerns with the content considering that you placed the maintenance tags. I have removed all of the content summarizing primary sources in the ADHD, Autism, Insomnia, and NPD subsections and have added content summarizing only systematic reviews and meta-analyses that I found Google Scholar using specific search terms. I have also found many systematic reviews and meta-analyses now for depression, anxiety, and body image/eating disorders that I was hoping to add summary sections for. I noticed also that the Screen time and mental health and Social media and mental health subsections include primary sources which I intend to remove. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:09, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Structure

This is the current Table of Contents:

• 1 History and terminology
• 2 Problematic use
  • 2.1 Access to means of communication
  • 2.2 Screen time and mental health
  • 2.3 Social media and mental health
  • 2.4 Proposed diagnostic categories
  • 2.5 Related phenomena
  • 2.6 Assessment and treatment
• 3 Associated psychiatric disorders
  • 3.1 ADHD
  • 3.2 Anxiety
  • 3.3 Autism
  • 3.4 Bipolar disorder
  • 3.5 Depression
  • 3.6 Insomnia
  • 3.7 Narcissism
  • 3.8 OCD
• 4 Mental health benefits
• 5 Other disciplines
  • 5.1 Digital anthropology
  • 5.2 Digital sociology
  • 5.3 Neuroscience
• 6 Impact on cognition
• 7 Impact on social life
• Mitigation]
  • Industry]
  • Public sector]
• Digital mental health care]

I'm not finding this to be sensible.

So far, I think main topics appear to be:

• Not all screen time is equal
  • Some uses are better than others (e.g., watching funny cat videos is better than obsessing over your appearance)
  • Some amounts are better than others (e.g., Goldilocks hypothesis)
  • Some types have different effects (e.g., passive consumption vs active interaction)
• People are different
  • Effects by domain (e.g., on cognition or social life)
  • Effects on subgroups (e.g., boys vs girls on Instagram, kids vs adults, older people, people with disabilities)
  • Interaction with specific medical conditions (e.g., people with ADHD)
• Problematic use
  • Correlation is not causation (e.g., depressed people watch a lot of television, but that doesn't make television the cause of depression)
  • It's complicated (e.g., is it truly 'an addiction'? – could be a place for terminology)
  • Diagnostic categories
  • Related problems
  • Assessment and treatment
    • Delivering treatment online
  • Attempts to mitigate problematic use

(I don't object to the sections I've left out (history/terminology and related research fields; they just don't seem to have obvious places in this flow, so they could go at the top or bottom, or be split up, as seemed relevant.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello there! Sorry for a delayed response, but I got sidetracked by trying keep up with news coverage for the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse article and then noticed a content issue with the Biology and sexual orientation article about a week ago that warranted the article's expansion. I noticed that you removed the summaries of a fair number of citations from the Associated psychiatric disorders section of the article per WP:MEDDATE back on 26 March 2024. I deeply appreciate it when other editors, such as you have done, take the time to clean up my contributions so they are consistent with current content policy since I'm not immediately familiar with the specifics of many of the policies. However, after reviewing WP:MEDDATE, I am concerned about the removal of certain systematic reviews and meta-analyses from the Associated psychiatric disorders section.

A recurrent issue that researchers on this topic have noted is a need to differentiate between different types of screen time (i.e. social media use, television viewing, video gaming, general internet or computer use, mobile phone or smartphone use) when researching associations between different disorders and other human factors and digital media use issues, to examine sex differences in problematic digital media use by type of screen time, and to examine associations among adolescents in Global South populations. After reviewing the summaries of the 21 references that were removed, the following 5 are ones that I think may warrant being restored when considering the specific type of screen time, the associated disorder, and the research subjects included:

Anxiety subsection:

• The June 2015 BMC Public Health review on associations between screen time, television viewing, and computer use with anxiety in subjects not specified. Subsequent article (the April 2020 BMC Public Health review) is limited to reviewing studies examining the associations in youth only.
• The October 2016 International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity review on association with screen time in adolescents. Subsequent articles cited in the section examining associations between screen time and anxiety (the April 2020 BMC Public Health and June 2021 Clinical Psychology Review) were not limited to reviewing studies examining associations in adolescents alone but in youth and young people.
• The April 2018 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health review on association with problematic video game use with generalized anxiety disorder or social anxiety disorder in subjects not specified. No subsequent article included in the subsection reviewed studies on associations with problematic video game use for any specific type of subjects.

Depression/Insomnia subsections:

• The April 2013 Journal of Adolescent Health review on associations between screen time and depression and insomnia in adolescent females. No subsequent article included in the Depression and Insomnia subsections reviewed studies on associations between screen time and depression and insomnia in female subjects.

ADHD subsection:

• The September 2015 Perspectives on Psychological Science review on associations between problematic video game use and ADHD in children and adolescents. No subsequent article included in the ADHD subsection reviewed studies on associations with problematic video game use in children and adolescents subjects specifically.

As for the layout issue concerns that you've raised, I'm not sure I agree. While there are issues with the content in the Problematic use section (too many primary sources and layout), I think the current layout of the article as a whole captures the research just fine. As a side-note, I am currently working on subsections about body image and eating disorders, loneliness, suicide and self-harm, and evolutionary psychology for the article, but I'll hold off adding them until this discussion is resolved. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:55, 2 May 2024 (UTC)