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Comment by maehwasu | Hacker News Reader

> according to Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on screen time

And really, if we can’t unthinkingly trust Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital, what can we believe in???

The journalistic practice of inserting quotes from official-sounding people as “evidence” is epistemologically revolting.

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Sorry, what?

I agree that we shouldn’t have unquestioning faith in anything anyone says. However, that doesn’t mean we also need to assign equal weight to everyone’s ideas. If someone has relevant expertise—-and being the lead author of a professional organization’s guidelines is surely relevant here—it doesn’t seem bonkers to give their persepective a bit more weight.

Mentioning actual research would be better, of course. I would bet dollars to donuts that the next bit of the author’s conversation with him was “For example, in our 2005 APAM paper, we found that....” However, the newspaper article’s author probably doesn’t want to go on a long tangent trying to meta-analyze the existing research, all to make a point that’s incidental to the article’s thesis. In that context, a quote from an expert seems totally reasonable.

He's the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute, and a professor at the School of Medicine of the University of Washington, who has published over 170 research articles and also a pediatrics textbook, and whose research has focused on how early experiences impact children and their learning environments [1]. That seems like it should qualify him to offer a meaningful opinion on the topic at hand.

OK, to be fair, they didn't mention all that in the Times article, but they did mention that he is the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics's guidelines on screen time. As far as I am aware, the AAP has a good scientific reputation, so one would expect that they wouldn't get someone who doesn't know his stuff to author their guidelines.

The Times also has a good reputation, so I'd expect the journalist to have looked up Dr. Christakis and seen that he appears to be qualified on this subject.

You are right that we shouldn't unthinkingly trust...but we also to avoid being excessive about it, because no one has the time to personally check everything. This is why reputation matters. If you get your information from reputable sources, you can delegate more of the checking to them without much risk. This is one of those cases, especially since they gave enough information to trivial look up more about him if you don't want to go by the Times and the AAP reputations.

[1] https://www.seattlechildrens.org/directory/dimitri-a-christa...

American Academy of Pediatrics is a bit of a paternalistic joke. A lot of the “evidence” for their recommendations is from garbage observational studies. There’s also an ideological tilt towards whatever is the fad among upper-middle class parents (I am talking about their lifestyle recommendations and such, not obvious medical guidelines like vaccinations).

Indeed. I have a hard time believing that a child moving around in a full 3D virtual environment isn’t building spatial skills. Have you ever seen an “old” person play Minecraft or a FPS? Effectively playing a game like that takes immense spatial reasoning.

I could imagine that virtual environments do build some skills, but at the partial expense of others.

Both blocks and Minecraft require spatial reasoning Minecraft worlds, being larger, might even require more. However, young kids are still learning motor skills and sensorimotor integration, which will be very different when manipulating real blocks vs. an iPad. Playing with blocks could also offer different opportunities for practicing verbal or social skills, and needs a bit more imagination.

Figuring out the “best” amount of screen vs. real world time is tricky—-this sort of research is hard to do well—-and undoubtedly varies from kid to kid.

I agree that playing with real world toys like blocks still makes a lot of sense. I just think there's a lot to be gained from virtual worlds as well. If anyone has ever seen a very young kid play Minecraft, it's pretty amazing. Here's a popular link showing a three year old:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/1rcoqu/my_3year_...

Sure, but an iPad isn't a full 3D environment. And even what people call full 3D environments don't include all the stimulations of actual 3D real life, e.g. inner ear balance.

Some non-3D iPad game seems like a bad example to use in the article given the popularity of things like Minecraft. Why not discuss the impact 3D games have instead?

Also, playing with blocks doesn’t do anything to your inner ear.

Then there are things like sensatory feelings ... on your hands. Which can be different from a touchscreen..

There are experiments where they raise cats in an environment with only horizontal stripes or only vertical stripes. Cats raised with only horizontal stripes will avoid the rungs on a chair, but run into the legs. Cats raised with only vertical stripes will avoid the legs, but smack into the rungs with a mystified look on their face.

That old person already developed their spatial skills in an actual 3D environment. There is evidence that babies and toddlers need substantial experience to learn to see their environment properly.

In experiments, an infant will accept that an object transformed into a random other object while briefly out of their sight. They will not accept that one object turned into two objects.

This makes sense. A plate is flat from one angle of view and round from another. You change the angle of view, the shape radically changes. But it remains a single object.

Babies don't yet know which transformations make sense, so they will accept that a truck transformed into a clown toy. They will not accept that a truck transformed into two clown toys.

So I think you have that backwards. People with an already developed understanding of 3D spatial relationships based on lots of living in an actual 3D world can relate meaningfully to a virtual environment. This in no way supports the idea that simply seeing a representation on a screen of a 3D environment can help a developing child properly code up their spatial reasoning.

> There is evidence that babies and toddlers need substantial experience to learn to see their environment properly

This combined with the Lego talk above reminded me of having to constantly check my VCR slot for Lego bricks placed there by my toddler daughter.

We have 2 eyes and stereo vision... No matter what you put on a screen, it'll be 1-dimensional in the body's ability to discern distance and actual spatial awareness.

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