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Comment by sambe | Hacker News Reader

The article says that after data mining a large dataset for correlations, the authors could only explain 0.4% of the variation in well-being by screen time. Is there really that much to worry about?

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Yes, well-being is only measured in the short term. How many people do you know who will readily admit they spent too much time looking at a screen when younger?

Well, I owe my entire career (as I imagine most people here do) to spending obsessive amounts of time on computers in my teens. So while it was "a lot", I have a hard time taking seriously any claim that it was "too much".

Only because its a lucrative career. If soft engineering paid 30k a year you would not feel the same way.

Well... yeah? If I'd spent my teens obsessively reading romance novels instead of learning how to build software, then I would consider that 'too much' time because the end result is useless (excepting the very few people who become rich by writing bodice-rippers).

I doubt only because of that. It’s quite easy to end up in an alternate reality where you get $30k/year for doing boring manual work, or indeed anyway sitting behind a screen all day.

Me too. But we all knew kids who weren't learning to code, right?

Yep, and that's why my kids will get unlimited access to computers for anything creative or productive, somewhat limited access to games, and strictly limited access to video streaming and social media.

That is begging the question (I don't habitually ask them, anyway).

I believe all of the source studies are multi-year at least.

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