[HN Gopher] Children born in the pandemic have significantly red...
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Children born in the pandemic have significantly reduced cognitive
performance [pdf]
Author : kevin_hu
Score : 228 points
Date : 2021-12-19 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.medrxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.medrxiv.org)
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| They didn't test these children for antibodies. They just assume
| that infection is not the cause of the differences they see. And
| all the commenters seem to be blaming lockdowns.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I haven't seen any evidence for covid causing neurodegenerative
| problems, so it sounds logical to point at the change in
| environment.
|
| Even "Long Covid" sounds a lot like undiagnosed depression or
| chronic fatigue syndrome.
| Siira wrote:
| Isn't a major cause of CFS some initial disease in the first
| place?
| canjobear wrote:
| There's more to it than depression/chronic fatigue. See for
| example https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/on-the-
| heels-o...
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Seems early to be drawing conclusions here. Still good that
| they're gathering data.
|
| Can anyone speak to the robustness of these Mullen Scales?
| Especially in the 0-2 age group?
| smeej wrote:
| I wish the "Methods" section got a bit more info the assessments
| themselves.
|
| These kids are a _maximum_ of two years old. It 's not like
| they're sitting down with math worksheets. From my (limited)
| understanding, most cognitive assessments in children that age
| have to do with responsiveness to stimuli.
|
| It would help to know what they're testing specifically, and if
| it could be something extremely specific to the test that's being
| impacted by common covid practices, rather than the child's
| cognitive development as a whole.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| They are younger than that, this was from August
| persedes wrote:
| I would be interested too if those tests were performed with
| facemasks for the investigators or maybe fully remote. They
| mostly seem to focus on the modelling and not how they gathered
| the data pre/during pandemic.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _In this work, therefore, we specifically sought to explore
| individual and population-level trends in infant and early
| child neurodevelopment. Analyses of cognitive development,
| assessed using Mullen Scales of Early Learning [40], a
| population normed and clinically administered tool that
| assesses function across the five primary domains of fine and
| gross motor control, visual reception, and expressive and
| respective language via direct observation and performance,
| provides some of the first direct evidence of the developmental
| impact of the COVID-19 pandemic._ "
|
| https://www.pearsonassessments.com/store/usassessments/en/St...
|
| " _The Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) is a standardized
| assessment that is commonly used in clinical psychology as a
| developmental measure of cognitive development (Mullen, 1989,
| 1995). The MSEL is organized into 5 subscales: (a) gross motor,
| (b) fine motor, (c) visual reception (or non-verbal problem
| solving), (d) receptive language, and (e) expressive language.
| An early learning composite score can be derived from fine
| motor, visual reception, receptive language, and expressive
| language scales. For young children this early learning
| composite score is considered equivalent to a more traditional
| "IQ" score or a developmental standard score._ "
| (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/mullen-
| scale...)
| questiondev wrote:
| i know some people said that covid-19 infection can cause brain
| fog in adults months after they recovered. there were also people
| saying that the vaccines may cause this as well. not saying i
| know exactly the reason for this, just pointing out
| arguments/news articles i read.
|
| i will say that fear or how we handle fear can mess up learning,
| it's kind of hard to take the basics seriously when the message
| being sent out is one of impending doom. we go into survival mode
| which forces us to make snap decisions in order to ensure safety.
| fight or flight response. our amygdala plays a huge part in
| learning and memory recall/storage
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/93/24/13508
| Insanity wrote:
| Had not heard this about vaccines but definitely regarding
| COVID infections. Also a "long tail" before full recovery
| (anecdata only).
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| Perhaps, but the children of all the people replying to this
| thread seem to be excelling.
| visarga wrote:
| The pandemic was a big hit on the development of kids who were
| supposed to start kindergarten but stayed at home instead. They
| are on average less social and verbal as a result. I hope they
| can recover the delay as I am the father of a 3 year old.
|
| I bet a similar delaying effect is happening for adolescent kids
| who would have started being interested in the opposite sex but
| all they could do was Zoom into virtual lectures while being
| alone.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _I bet a similar delaying effect is happening for adolescent
| kids who would have started being interested in the opposite
| sex but all they could do was Zoom into virtual lectures while
| being alone._
|
| So in your opinion, attending class is about finding a
| heterosexual romantic partner?
|
| I know lots of teenagers had virtual lectures, but I don't know
| any teenagers who were 100% socially isolated from their peers
| for very long.
| visarga wrote:
| The age, not attending classes, is about having the first
| romantic experiences. And there were months of lock downs and
| almost two years of remote schooling cutting the
| opportunities to meet people.
| smt88 wrote:
| They still did those things. School isn't the only place
| kids socialize.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Movie theaters, shops, sports leagues, boy scouts, etc
| were also closed.
| yed wrote:
| The study in this post finds that to be not true (emphasis
| mine):
|
| > Overall, we find that measured verbal, non-verbal, and
| overall cognitive scores are significantly lower since the
| beginning of the pandemic. Looking further, _we find that
| children born before the pandemic and followed through the
| initial stages do not show a reduction in skills or
| performance_ , but rather that young infants born since the
| beginning of the pandemic show significantly lower performance
| than in- fants born before January 2019. Thus, our results seem
| to suggest that early development is impaired by the
| environmental conditions brought on by the pandemic.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| > One aspect also not investigated here is the impact of mask-
| wearing by the study staff during child visits and assessments
| [53]. The inability of infants to see full facial expressions may
| have eliminated non-verbal cues, muffled instructions, or
| otherwise altered the understanding of the test questions and
| instructions.
|
| They changed their methods in 2020, so they can't attribute this
| to their methods or other indirect effects of the pandemic.
| zelienople wrote:
| We often exclude obvious apects of natural selection in these
| studies. In this case, the decision to have children during a
| pandemic may be indicative of a predisposition to poor mental
| functioning in the parents, which would naturally result in
| poorer cognitive function, on average, in the offspring.
|
| More intelligent people would recognize the potential downsides
| to reproducing in a pandemic, such as (a) unknown effects of the
| novel coronavirus on the developing fetus, and (b) the role of
| excessive population density in fueling the pandemic. These more
| intelligent parents would tend to make the logical decision to
| avoid reproducing in adverse circumstances.
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| I predict a midwit curve. The low-intelligence/low-
| conscientious people will just have kids as usual; those of
| middling intelligence will think as you; and those of the
| highest intelligence will keep having kids as much as they did
| before.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| > ...Children born in the pandemic have significantly reduced
| cognitive performance
|
| In the COVID-19 pandemic means we're talking about 2yr old
| toddlers and younger. Assessing toddler's cognitive abilities is
| not trivial by any means, let alone using it as a basis for far-
| fetched projections. So first thing that comes to mind is
| sampling approach.
|
| Also a factor is a degree of social interaction, as it got harder
| to keep kids in peer groups esp. during the lockdowns and work
| from home stretches.
|
| Either way, at this age 'performance' is almost meaningless term.
| There's plenty of ways and time to 'catch-up'.
| brnaftr184 wrote:
| You're assuming linearity, which is almost certainly not the
| case over the span of a human lifetime. Catching up is going to
| require a lot of investment from a lot of different people over
| a long period of time, and in many cases will probably fail,
| and from what the evidence in this particular study shows is
| that the high impact group so happens to be (predictably) those
| of lower SES - read that as the poor get poorer.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Citing from the article:
|
| _"...Since 2011, 1224 cognitive assessments were collected
| from 672 healthy, full-term, and neurotypically-developing
| children between 3 months to 3 years of age. Repeated measures
| were separated by at least 1 year (mean = 384 + /- 41 days). A
| general overview of all child assessment timings are shown in
| Figure 1a. This dataset included 1070 assessments (from 605
| children) prior to March 2020; 154 assessments (from 118
| children) between March 2020 and June 2021; with 39 children
| who were born just prior to the pandemic in 2018 and 2019, and
| following during the pandemic to 2021..."_
|
| The cognitive assessment tool:
|
| _40. E.M., M., Mullen Scales of Early Learning. 1995, Circle
| Pines, MN: American Guidance Services, Inc._
|
| The age of the kids 'born during pandemic' in this context is
| up to 18months, not clear how many in count, but total is 39
| born from 2018 to 2021. Pandemic start considered March 2020.
|
| P.S. As for the Mullen Scales, citing from [1]:
|
| _"...Motivation can affect test results; therefore it is
| important to enhance motivation as much as possible in young
| children without affecting standardized procedures of the
| assessment (Koegel, Koegel, & Smith, 1997).
|
| ...
|
| When young children refuse to attempt test items it can be
| difficult to determine their current level of functioning..."_
|
| [1]: Use of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning for the
| Assessment of Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders,
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550495/
| huijzer wrote:
| I always wonder, if the effect is so clear as they present in the
| title, why do they need such a complex model to show it? I call a
| stepwise regression complex because it requires thinking about
| what effect the steps have on the outcome in regards to
| overfitting
| Animats wrote:
| For the commentators who didn't read the article, this is about
| kids in the first year or two of life. "Screen time" is not an
| issue.
| erhk wrote:
| Another outsize impact of overreaching quarantine restrictions.
| Why do we let politicians rather than epidemologists make these
| decisions?
| lambdaba wrote:
| The politicians follow the epidemiologists and the modelers
| etc. On the contrary, we have a case of a lack of politicians
| courageous enough to say no and lead / convince the people that
| it is the right thing to do.
| showerrain wrote:
| And for the politicians that are courageous enough, we use
| this widespread hysteria to remove them from office.
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| Of the podcasts I've listened to with scientists and
| epidemiologists they all say that policy is not their domain.
| They say we are to provide advice within our domain and keep
| out of policy.
|
| Possibly there is sampling bias with the podcasts I'm listening
| to and the people going on them.
| krona wrote:
| > _Why do we let politicians rather than epidemiologists make
| these decisions?_
|
| I think you got it exactly backwards. Politicians have
| successfully scapegoated themselves via epidemiologists (who's
| first and last consideration is to minimize infections) and
| people who refuse vaccination (even though the vaccinated are
| still just as epidemiologically relevant.)
| sharikous wrote:
| Precisely because of things like this.
|
| Epidemiologists look only at the pandemic aspect. Politicians
| should look at the economy, the welfare, the general health,
| the strategic issues, and more. If you really think that an
| epidemiologist's response will account for things like mental
| health of toddlers you are mistaken.
|
| I know that politicians have a bad name today but they are
| still elected officials who have an incentive (elections) to do
| what's best for the country as a whole.
|
| Just to clarify- it was _epidemiologists_ who pushed,
| understandably from their point of view, for the same lockdowns
| you define overreaching. It was mostly politicians who were the
| most reluctant to apply them. And the pressure in this
| direction was mostly from populism (Trump, Bolsonaro...), and
| from the finance /treasure ministries which feared the economy
| crisis.
| cnendbxhx wrote:
| Politician incentives to win elections are not the same as
| whats best for the country.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I know that politicians have a bad name today but they are
| still elected officials who have an incentive (elections) to
| do what 's best for the country as a whole._
|
| Those aren't the same. The vast majority of politicians will
| almost always favor short-term "free candy!" decisions that
| they know will be popular with their base come election time,
| rather than make difficult decisions that would actually
| improve the quality of life for their constituents over even
| the slightly-longer term.
| hkt wrote:
| In the UK we closed schools, universities and workplaces during
| lockdowns while keeping heathrow airport open - the busiest in
| the country. Business travel was allowed, but nurseries were
| closed.
|
| Back in September 2020, there was a big campaign in the UK press
| to get everyone back to work. Celebrities posed next to quotes
| saying you'd lose your job if you didn't go back to the office.
| The works. Many people went.
|
| We chose to re-open universities, too, even though the movement
| of students back and forth between home and dorms was likely to
| be a constant flood of superspreader events.
|
| We could have chosen to keep nurseries and primary schools open
| during much of the pandemic, and avoided crushing women under
| domestic work (which is now well documented) while harming the
| development of children by pulling them out of stimulating
| environments designed to help nurture them.
|
| We always had a budget for transmission that varied by age group,
| and we decided to blow that budget on students and workers at the
| expense of children.
|
| As a society, our choices and priorities are absolutely ghastly.
| Lockdowns were and still are right, but not for children.
| peterbonney wrote:
| I think I say this every time I see a headline like this on HN,
| but I'll say it again: The past decade of social science research
| publication has proven that provocative-sounding results should
| be considered fraudulent until the underlying data has been
| published, and then (assuming the data passes muster) should be
| regarded with skepticism until independently replicated with a
| fresh data set.
| q1w2 wrote:
| One of the most eye-opening studies I saw was that social
| science papers with the most citations, had the _highest_
| likelihood of not being reproducible. Meaning that Social
| Sciences are actually pushing out misinformation more than not.
| hannob wrote:
| This isn't an issue of social science. This is an issue that
| has been found in a diverse number of fields, basically
| everywhere where someone has looked: https://www.frontiersin.
| org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.0003...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That doesn't technically mean misinformation although but it
| does imply major room for improvement in methodology. If I
| roll a d20 and get a 7 and you roll it and get 13 that
| doesn't make the prior study inaccurate. The sizes are too
| low or not properly defined.
|
| But the combination of publish-or-perish and grant seeking
| pushing sensationalism isn't good for honesty let alone
| accuracy or precision.
| hulahoof wrote:
| Is this somehow a flow on effect of more commonly cited
| papers having more reproduction attempts?
| q1w2 wrote:
| The theory is that there is a pressure in certain academic
| fields to reinforce existing popular narratives with new
| publications, motivating researchers to confirm them, and
| thus for other researchers to cite them. ...but since such
| efforts attract low-quality researchers and are based on an
| implicit initial bias, due to its self-referential nature,
| that the results are not reproducible by others in the
| future since teams that try to reproduce results are
| usually more neutral on the topics.
| midjji wrote:
| No, a moderately successful paper has 1-10 k citations, and
| usually 0-1 reproductions. Extremely successful papers have
| 10-40 k citations and 1-3 reproductions. They largely dont
| matter at all.
|
| Its mostly because extraordinary claims receive more
| attention, and thus is found by the group for whom the
| result supported their prior beliefs. They will use it
| whenever they need to support such. This is also why such
| studies tend to keep getting cited as evidence long after a
| long line of failures to replicate have been published. As
| the result is non-replicable, there also wont be a newer,
| improved version of the publication, meaning all cites go
| to the original.
| syshum wrote:
| Calling Social "science", science is part of the problem.
| teloli wrote:
| It's hard to find a discipline with "science" in its name
| that is actually a science.
| lurquer wrote:
| cco wrote:
| Perhaps a new corollary to the axiom that no country with
| "democratic" in its name is a democracy?
| cabalamat wrote:
| In general, the more that someone is trying to push the
| point of view that something is true, the more likely it
| is to be false.
| howdydoo wrote:
| And no country with "United" in its name is actually
| united.
| cabalamat wrote:
| For example, all 3 of the non-English parts of the UK
| have separatist movements that are big enough they have
| MPs elected.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Well the fact they need to advocate for separation is
| proof of unity by default at least. It is united as
| government organizations, not united as a hivemind.
|
| Unity failing under the previous is say, Birmingham
| besieging London. The latter never happened.
| brainzap wrote:
| they have to sell
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Sad but true, and extends to economics, psychology, lots of
| neurological and medical research as well.
|
| Everyone needs pre-registration, and everyone needs open data.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Just like epidemiology, right?
| peterbonney wrote:
| Does epidemiology have a well-publicized replication crisis
| with numerous examples of outright fraud from high-profile
| researchers? If so then yes. If not then why don't you just
| say what you're trying to say rather than imply it obliquely
| in the form of a question?
| rackjack wrote:
| They need to imply it obliquely because their arguments
| tend to fall apart under scrutiny.
| colordrops wrote:
| At this point in the pandemic we've should have come up with
| models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor
| that into policy decisions. That somehow still hasn't happened.
| People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but parents
| with kids in school know this is not true.
| [deleted]
| dnautics wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, "Kids born during pandemic" would
| _not_ be affected by school closures. If anything, having more
| parents stay at home with kids, I 'd expect to result in
| _better_ outcomes,though maybe I 'm giving parents too much
| credit.
|
| Honestly, I'd suspect that parents are around kids more and
| noticing and reporting more.
| bennysomething wrote:
| My child was born June 2019. I really worried about her
| development due to lock down: exhausted parents, no friends
| or extended family to interact with. Once nursery reopened
| her language abilities seemed to accelerate quickly. Kids
| really seem to thrive on a mix of experiences. Locked in
| house with mum and dad is not good.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > we've should have come up with models that factor in the
| externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy
| decisions.
|
| Here's what happened.
|
| Fauci said almost immediately after putting himself on TV that
| his only focus was on the direct medical effects of corona, not
| on wider public policy related to education or the economy.
| Epidemiologists went nuts when he said that (to your point),
| but that's mostly been censored. (60,000+ doctors have signed
| the Stanford petition against Fauci.)
|
| Trump did not fire Fauci because he didn't want to create a
| martyr, but that was a huge mistake. (Trump had a report from
| the DOE LLNL in May 2020 that indicated Fauci/Daszak were lying
| about the possibility of the lab origin.)
|
| Fauci funded corona research at WIV, and other research 26
| other Chinese labs.
|
| In addition, he has refused to cooperate with Senate oversight
| committees.
|
| Fauci is at the heart of the largest global scandal in history.
| He should be fired so that it can properly be investigated, a
| textbook written about his psychopathy, then he should be
| executed.
|
| Actual solutions used in Florida:
|
| "Ron DeSantis: Floridians know there will be no lockdowns"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XF5F2XrHHw
| pgwhalen wrote:
| I agree that externalities are important to consider, but what
| would such a model look like? It seems that studies like this
| are a necessary precursor if we are to truly estimate these
| external costs (so kudos to those involved).
| mindslight wrote:
| At this point in the pandemic we should have long since moved
| on to everybody wearing functional respiratory PPE instead of
| ersatz feel-good "masks" made of cloth. This wouldn't have
| required any paradigm shifts, just a revisiting of supply
| availability. Yet here we are. The policy contours were set
| back in June of 2020, and now we're just trudging it out.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but
| parents with kids in school know this is not true.
|
| This illustrates pretty well the absolute massive difference in
| how people experience the pandemic. People with kids in school
| and people certain types of jobs is hit extremely hard. Some
| absolutely struggle with home schooling, being out of a job,
| feeling isolated and a myriad of other issues. For others, like
| myself, other than having to work from home some of the time,
| and getting regularly tested, the whole thing has made some
| aspects of life much much easier. The only downside, for both
| me and my wife, is that there's more work to be done than ever.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > [We] should have come up with models that factor in the
| externalities of lockdown and factor that into policy
| decisions. That somehow still hasn't happened.
|
| It's no coincidence or result of incompetence that policy
| continues to disregard physical and mental health.
|
| Also, we don't need to come up with models for such issues. The
| data has been there since time immemorial. Anyone who has taken
| a cursory look at the available research would know that
| messing with human socialization in even small ways has
| significant effects both for children and adults, and for
| children it can become permanent as they are reaching (or
| failing to reach) developmental milestones.
|
| EDIT: Hurray, I've been flagged anyway long after I'd watered
| down my first message (which wasn't against guidelines anyway).
| User23 wrote:
| I prefer not to speculate about the motivations of policy
| makers, because I can't read minds. However, it's clear,
| judging by the rate of avoidable ills like opiate overdoses
| and type 2 diabetes, to name just a couple, that our
| government policy can't be called broadly successful for many
| of today's major public health issues.
|
| That's not to say it's a total failure. The sanitation
| improvements of the mid 20th century had a huge positive
| effect on public health. Indoor plumbing wasn't even
| available in wide swaths of the USA back then.
| enkid wrote:
| So you're just going to make vague allusions to some great
| evil being done while providing no data? Have you thought
| about why you get flagged when you discuss this topic?
| ravenstine wrote:
| Is it so much to ask for others to connect the dots? What
| else am I do to when providing authoritative or academic
| information puts my account at risk?
|
| And yes, there are many commingling factors for why I get
| flagged, none of which I consider valid. I can provide
| links to information straight from the horse's mouth, have
| done so in the past, and it never matters. The vast
| majority of people have a knee-jerk aversion to anything
| that suggests that they're staring at a mirage, or that
| they're victims of psychological warfare.
|
| > So you're just going to make vague allusions to some
| great evil
|
| It depends on what you consider evil. In this context, I've
| yet to use such a term. Already, it sounds like you're
| imagining I suggested some grand conspiracy.
| jstanley wrote:
| > Is it so much to ask for others to connect the dots?
|
| > ...
|
| > It depends on what you consider evil. In this context,
| I've yet to use such a term. Already, it sounds like
| you're imagining I suggested some grand conspiracy.
|
| Perhaps if you connected your own dots rather than asking
| others to do it for you, they might not make connections
| that you didn't intend.
| [deleted]
| dude187 wrote:
| That needed to be done from day one. The economic shutdown
| combined with calling some people "unessential" has put us on a
| horrible path from day one. Anybody involved in any of that
| should never have any power ever again
| [deleted]
| bryan0 wrote:
| > At this point in the pandemic we've should have come up with
| models that factor in the externalities of lockdown and factor
| that into policy decisions. That somehow still hasn't happened.
|
| What makes you think it hasn't? I'm sure all lockdown decision
| makers are looking at these models along with models of
| hospital capacity.
|
| > People say "things are pretty much back to normal" but
| parents with kids in school know this is not true.
|
| My kids school life has basically gone back to normal and has
| been all year. It's my WFH situation that is never "going back
| to normal" but I think that's a positive.
| evilduck wrote:
| My kids wear masks to school too. My oldest is probably not
| as heavily impacted by this but I feel like my younger child
| has been (started K in 2019). He doesn't really know what his
| friends look like, he doesn't get to see facial expressions
| of his teachers or peers as part of their emotions, he
| doesn't get to see the teacher enunciate words with their
| mouth, he's spent a lot of time learning virtually at a young
| age, he gets to hide his own reactions behind a mask. He's
| soft spoken and his participation in class is probably
| suppressed a little further and dampening him being
| challenged or as confident. Compared to my older child,
| there's less enriching extracurricular activities available
| for the last two years as well, clubs and PTA events and
| sports have all been impacted.
|
| I have no way of quantifying any of this but there's just
| tons of little things that have the potential to be negative
| impacts to his long term success. Even if my kids cope, I
| worry about their peers and the worrying trends in academic
| test data compared to previous cohorts.
| bryan0 wrote:
| These are good points. I especially relate with the lack of
| extra curricular activities. I would just say that I think
| these effects are negligible compared to keeping kids at
| home with virtual learning.
| colordrops wrote:
| My kids school, in LA, still has no in-person events, no
| parents on campus, kids must stay 3 feet from each other,
| masks indoors and outdoors, weekly covid testing, regular
| class room shut downs for exposure after which there is zoom
| schooling and daily testing, no wind instruments, no field
| trips, no food sharing, all parent teacher meetings over
| zoom, etc etc etc. It's as bad a lockdown as at the peak.
| dude187 wrote:
| Nobody has looked at any of the externalities. They strip
| freedom with impunity based on a guess that it will do
| anything, with that guess having been thoroughly disproven by
| now
| willhinsa wrote:
| > Basically gone back to normal
|
| Do they have to wear masks? Do they have to socially
| distance?
| bryan0 wrote:
| They wear masks. They do not social distance.
| coldcode wrote:
| Children born during the pandemic are not yet in school. This
| research makes little sense, measuring cognitive differences of
| 2 year olds is highly unlikely to be meaningful.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "measuring cognitive differences of 2 year olds is highly
| unlikely to be meaningful."
|
| Do you have expert knowledge, or at least experience with
| lots of different 2 year olds, to make such a statement?
|
| Because I got some experience and I can tell you, there are
| great differences to be meassured for sure.
|
| Whether they meassured correctly, I do not know, but I can
| imagine that the chaos of the pandemic was not always helpful
| for child developement. Just alone the social contacts are
| vital for developing - and they were greatly reduced (often
| replaced with screen time) compared to normal 2 year olds.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Oh word? Someone should have told the authors while they were
| getting their MDs and PhDs. Well glad that you were able to
| solve it, coldcode.
| xxpor wrote:
| Half the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal we're
| working towards. Covid isn't going to go away (at least not for
| a while), which I think everyone at least implicitly accepts at
| this point. The people who are going to get vaccinated largely
| have (especially in a few months with the OSHA rule + booster
| rollout). So what are we even doing?
| heartbeats wrote:
| The goal is simple: for nobody to ever die of COVID-19, or
| any other cause, ever again.
|
| Any less than this, and you'll lock down again.
| bryan0 wrote:
| > Half the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal
| we're working towards.
|
| Yeah I don't think the goals have been clear, even if they
| have been changing over time. I think the clearest goal now
| should be a 90% vaccination rate to turn Covid into the
| common cold, and then going back to life as normal, but as
| long as huge swathes of the population refuse to get
| vaccinated this goal is unattainable.
|
| Edit: I believe Biden actually set a 70% vax goal for July
| 2021, and we missed it. No way we can hit 90%. I think
| possibly for anti-vaxers their goal is simply to not be told
| what to do and if they end up in an overwhelmed hospital so
| be it.
| astrange wrote:
| Some antivaxxers are just afraid of needles, so if we had a
| nasal spray vaccine they'd take it.
| bryan0 wrote:
| I've wondered for what % of people this is their main
| reason for not getting vaccinated....
| afarrell wrote:
| I imagine it is hard to measure that, since
|
| 1. It is a "wimpy" thing to admit to. People are
| reluctant to think things about themselves which, if
| admitted aloud, could earn social ridicule.
|
| 2. One fear can prompt another and lead to an anxiety
| spiral which is too overwhelming for someone to even put
| into words.
|
| Conjecture: The best way to measure it would be to
| introduce a nasal spray and see what sort of uptick it
| earns.
| dempseye wrote:
| I live in a country with a vaccination rate over 90% and we
| still have partial lockdowns.
|
| So I suggest you reassess whether meeting that goal in your
| location would result in things going back to normal for
| you.
| bryan0 wrote:
| Good to know. Which country? Why are they implementing
| lockdowns?
|
| The other problem is that just hitting the % isn't good
| enough. You need to keep up to date if boosters are
| required. So definitely not easy.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| Take your pick they're all doing it for the most part.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Maybe portugal and the likely reason in any answer will
| be hospitalisation rates.
| bryan0 wrote:
| Looks like Portugal really turned their vaccination
| program around to be a real success story. As far as I
| can tell they are not reintroducing lockdowns?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1063830104/portugal-covid-
| vac...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Lockdown "light"
|
| https://m.dw.com/en/covid-19-special-vaccination-
| champion-po...
| nitrogen wrote:
| _their goal is simply to not be told what to do_
|
| The urge to resist force is a vital element of US culture
| as a check on runaway governments. You see it in many
| movements, on both sides for or against. Women don't want
| to be forced to carry a baby. LGBT community doesn't want
| to be forced to hide. Christians don't want to be forced to
| stop praying in school. Non-Christians don't want to be
| forced to listen to prayers in school.
|
| Everyone should be persuaded to get vaccinated for things
| like flu and COVID. Very few people should be _forced_ to
| do so just to keep their jobs.
| dools wrote:
| The comparison of abortion with vaccination is a
| horrendous piece of libertarian propaganda.
|
| No one is strapping people down and injecting them with a
| vaccine, it's not a forced medical procedure. However the
| involvement in certain activities by the unvaccinated is
| limited and this is similar to many other public health
| orders such as not being able to smoke inside a
| restaurant.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Correct, nobody is strapping people down and injecting
| them with a vaccine. Instead, they are merely withholding
| your ability to purchase food and avoid repossession of
| your shelter if they aren't vaccinated.
| dools wrote:
| There are plenty of work opportunities that don't require
| vaccination, just as there is work available where you
| can smoke while on the job. If you choose to smoke you
| will find it much more difficult to work as a flight
| attendant than a truck driver for example.
| mindslight wrote:
| The vast majority of people refusing to get vaccinated
| are doing so because a centralized top-down political
| machine told them to be against vaccination. This is
| about as un-libertarian as one can get.
|
| As a libertarian that is actually concerned with freedom,
| the main thing the Trumpertantrum has accomplished is
| discrediting the concept. Back when it was a small subset
| of antivax nutters, causing at most an occasional
| localized outbreak, I had sympathy for people's right to
| make their own bad decisions. Now the political machine
| took up the banner and created a force majeure situation,
| so I'm just done.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Excessive vehemence fuels that machine, though. It's just
| too easy to take an authoritarian stance when we already
| agree with the stance and would stand to benefit, but
| that is counterproductive in the long run and just
| amplifies polarization.
| asveikau wrote:
| Even your "good libertarian's" version of the small
| localized outbreak affects people that didn't make that
| choice.
|
| My personal view (please don't be offended, libertarians
| -- it's my right to believe this!) is that individuality
| itself is a bit of a fiction, and this makes
| libertarianism essentially based on falsehood and break
| down. We're interconnected.
|
| The best argument for individuality in politics and
| government, in my view, is that it gives "the average
| person" a fair shot, giving us good outcomes at the
| societal level even if many individuals do not get what
| they want.
| dude187 wrote:
| The long held WHO goal of international vaccine passports
| is the reason I won't get the shot
| najqh wrote:
| >I think the clearest goal now should be a 90% vaccination
| rate to turn Covid into the common cold, and then going
| back to life as normal, but as long as huge swathes of the
| population refuse to get vaccinated this goal is
| unattainable.
|
| "You can't comply your way out of tyranny"
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| > the problem is no one has actually expressed a goal we're
| working towards
|
| I hadn't thought about this explicitly but I'd also say this
| is most of the problem. Working in academia, some facet of
| our policies changes on a daily basis in knee-jerk reactions.
| Worse yet, my area of research is infectious disease and I
| imagine this must be how climate scientists feel when policy
| decisions just get drawn out with no goal.
| conception wrote:
| In the US at least, herd immunity went away as a goal really
| in like May 2020. It's always been to flatten the curve so
| hospitals can deal with the sick until everyone can get
| vaccinated. At this point, it's just to flatten the curve so
| our health care system doesn't completely implode while
| everyone is slowly (or not so slowly) coming in contact with
| the virus.
|
| There is also international travel as a point - the vaccine
| isn't available at will everywhere, so there's some being a
| good neighbor in slowly the general spread of the vaccine as
| well.
| happynacho wrote:
| The "pandemic" is no longer about health, is about absolute
| government control.
| 542458 wrote:
| As far as I can tell there are a two scenarios where life can
| return to something resembling normal:
|
| 1 - The obvious one, everybody (or close enough to everybody)
| gets partial immunity either through vaccination or through
| actually catching it. Variants are making this a moving
| target, unfortunately.
|
| 2 - Somebody comes up with and mass manufactures a good-
| enough therapeutic that can keep sick people out of the
| hospitals. To this end I'm very hopeful for the new Pfizer
| drug.
| wrycoder wrote:
| 1. Omicron is driving out the earlier variants.
|
| 2. I would _really_ like to see a proper, large RCT of
| ivermectin, HCQ+zinc, and the new Pfizer therapeutic. The
| latter costs $700 per course, apparently, and many
| countries won't be able to afford it. And, exclude
| hospitalized patients, we're trying to find out how to keep
| people _out_ of the hospital!
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| People who support lockdowns aren't interested in facts; their
| viewpoints are shaped by marketing.
|
| It's been blindingly obvious from the moment we knew that
| coronavirus had a 1% IFR pre-vaccine that all of the restrictions
| have been net negative.
|
| We're now over 2% of our lives into this _by any definition_,
| which makes it utterly incontrovertible.
|
| That's why we have constant "reminders" everywhere; it's an
| attempt to bypass logic by simply bombarding people with
| nonsense.
| twofornone wrote:
| Not to mention that the IFR is dramatically skewed by age and
| obesity. Yes, early indications were that COVID was a serious,
| deadly pandemic, but we've had more than enough time and data
| at this point to recognize that this is not the plague that it
| is being treated as.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Those of us who are immune compromised or obese are people
| too. I don't expect the whole world to stop for me, though
| would appreciate if folks take some precautions until
| hospitals can manage the flood. (In the US over 40% of adults
| are obese.)
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| If the vaccine-hesitant are to be shunned and have specific
| restrictions levied against them for the sake of not
| overflowing hospitals, then so should the obese and old,
| IMO.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Of course
| the topic is flammable to begin with, but what you did here
| stands out noticeably as more flamey than the rest of the
| thread.
|
| Edit: you posted a whole bunch of flamewar comments to this
| thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please don't do it again,
| regardless of what your views are or how right they are or how
| right you feel they are.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29615430.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > People who support lockdowns aren't interested in facts;
| their viewpoints are shaped by marketing.
|
| Sweeping generalizations aren't really adding to the discussion
| here. Please assume the best of others. We're all trying to
| find the best way forward with incomplete information. And
| tying ideas too closely to ones identity, or that of others,
| won't help us adapt as more evidence come to light.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| Strongly disagree.
|
| People who call for authoritarian measures such as using
| force in order to prevent people from leaving their homes,
| from associating with friends and family, and from engaging
| in business, should not have the best assumed of them.
|
| They have malicious intentions a priori because they treat
| controlling others with the same level of discipline as they
| would choosing which flavour of jam to put on their toast in
| the morning.
|
| They are enemies of freedom and democracy; I'd argue they are
| truly terrorists, in that they seek to use fear and terror to
| control others' behaviours.
|
| People who _explain and convince_ are interested in what you
| call discussion. People who use force against you unless you
| do exactly what they tell you are not engaging in discussion,
| they're engaging in an attempt at control.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > They have malicious intentions a priori because they
| treat controlling others with the same level of discipline
| as they would choosing which flavour of jam to put on their
| toast in the morning.
|
| Not everyone advocating lockdowns is necessarily so
| flippant about it. Some consider the costs carefully.
| Please keep in mind that hospitals were being overwhelmed
| long before vaccines were available.
|
| (FWIW I'm not defending absolute lockdowns since going
| outside with moderate distancing appears to have been safe
| at every stage of this phenomenon.)
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| If you want to lockdown, you can lockdown, and now you
| are safe. You don't need others to do so, the virus does
| not travel through windows and walls.
|
| As such the stance is definitionally illogical which
| makes it flippant - it falls apart under even mild
| scrutiny.
|
| I've seen about a billion variations on it now, it just
| gets boring to bat them off. e.g. "if the healthcare
| system is overwhelmed, you'll die in a minor car crash,
| so don't go outside, then you won't drive your car or
| stand near cars, then you can't die in a minor car crash
| anyway, err... but lockdown though!".
|
| It's tautologically broken. The basic premise is of "not
| doing X, in order to not do X".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| People still need emergency rooms. If those are
| overwhelmed then anyone needing emergency care will
| suffer.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| I've addressed this in my comment already.
|
| If we don't lock down and you break your leg, you may not
| get medical attention.
|
| So let's lock down so that it's impossible to break your
| leg.
|
| I'm totally happy to accept that contracting coronavirus
| could be triaged lower than acute chronic conditions,
| heart attacks, etc, that's an interesting debate to have
| because healthcare is scarce and therefore an ordering
| _must_ be chosen.
|
| What makes no sense is just flinging our hands up and
| saying "well, stop the world for everyone instead".
| dexen wrote:
| _> Sweeping generalizations aren't really adding to the
| discussion here_
|
| That sentiment fits individualist views and policies, where
| it behooves us to hear out individuals and consider them on
| their individual merits.
|
| However the view and policy discussed (limitations on
| individuals for common good) is explicitly a collectivist
| view and policy. Applying a sweeping generalization to a
| collectivist view and policy is fit and proper _by the very
| nature of collectivism_.
|
| Edit: corrected a typo from "individuals" to "individualist".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It is possible that people who support(ed) lockdowns are
| not motivated solely by marketing. The original quote calls
| out people, not views.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| It is not possible because it is not possible to arrive
| at the stance via logic.
|
| If not for the marketing campaign; certainly if not for
| the "original sin" of Italy's lockdown; we wouldn't even
| be speaking about this.
|
| If coronavirus were highly transmissible ebola it would
| make sense. It's just not, most of us know tens or
| hundreds of people who've had it at this point (the UK
| has a _confirmed_ case rate of over 17%).
| astrange wrote:
| The original "lockdowns" were literally good for some
| businesses. Conventions and restaurants would have failed
| (they can't survive on 10% attendance) but can't get out
| of their vendor contracts without the government
| canceling for them.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| Attendance dropped due to lockdowns and the fear
| campaign.
|
| I was there, remember? The pubs were rammed, Boris
| started saying "don't do X", numbers decreased a lot, he
| said "we make this legal now", the world stopped.
|
| I'm bored of debating this now so whatever, all I get
| online is a stream of trolls. Good luck.
| astrange wrote:
| No, attendance dropped in 2020 because nobody wants to
| get sick. This would be true if there was a flu pandemic
| as well.
|
| (And because of travel bans. But the anti-lockdown people
| mostly support those because that's the ironic position.)
| [deleted]
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| This comment does not represent the reality I live in.
| Nice try.
| astrange wrote:
| I'm sorry you live in the UK. That must be very difficult
| for you.
|
| In other places we weren't nearly so concerned about
| shutting down pubs; actually the bad case that often
| happened in the US was leaving bars open (for tax
| revenue) but closing schools (because parents and
| teachers are more neurotic than bar goers).
|
| Still I haven't met a whole lot of people complaining
| they weren't allowed to work. Our stimulus worked quite
| well there.
|
| I don't think lockdowns are necessary or reasonable in
| 2022 but at least, as someone temporarily in the UK, I'll
| be able to get out of my local family trying to make me
| see some ridiculously quaint British thing called a
| "panto".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It's illogical to consider lockdowns when hospitals are
| overwhelmed by a highly contagious respiratory disease?
| [deleted]
| geofft wrote:
| That math doesn't work out, because the infection fatality
| ratio measures _fatality_ - non-existence - not impaired
| existence.
|
| Long covid is a thing, and affects a staggeringly large
| percentage of people who get covid and do not die,
| significantly affecting the rest of their lives. One recent
| study claims an infection impaired-quality-of-life ratio of
| over 50% (https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-
| people-get-...).
|
| And in the other direction, we have lived over 2% of our lives
| in the pandemic _living our lives_ , certainly not as well as
| any of us would have hoped, but living them nonetheless.
|
| So either the math needs to take into account the reduced
| quality of life from those affected by covid (not to mention
| those affected by losing family members, caretakers, etc.,
| those affected by knock-on effects like delayed surgeries, and
| so forth), or it needs to say, well, we haven't died from the
| so-called "lockdowns," so if any lives at all were saved, that
| outweighs the 0% of time we spent dead during them.
|
| It is certainly still possible that the interventions were
| still net negative, but it's not as simple as 1% of the
| population dying from covid < 2% of people's lives spent in
| "lockdowns."
| carom wrote:
| >we haven't died from the so-called "lockdowns,"
|
| To be fair, no one here has died from COVID either.
| throwaway_2009 wrote:
| > One recent study claims an infection impaired-quality-of-
| life ratio of over 50%
| (https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/how-many-people-
| get-...).
|
| Yeah, okay. I know anecdotes are not data, we're supposed to
| trust the Internet over our own eyes and all of that, but
| come on, do you think I'm dense?
|
| I know over a hundred people who've had coronavirus at this
| point, this is clearly total nonsense.
| bhk wrote:
| In that study, 79% of the subjects had been hospitalized.
| It's clearly not a representative sample of the population.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Can be explained because the economy is weaker.
| cossatot wrote:
| The effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic were large and
| persisted for decades, as well. Marginal Revolution has a good
| summary[1]. Fetal exposure seems to have been a major factor[2],
| money quote here: _Fetal health is found to affect nearly every
| socioeconomic outcome recorded in the 1960, 1970, and 1980
| Censuses. Men and women show large and discontinuous reductions
| in educational attainment if they had been in utero during the
| pandemic. The children of infected mothers were up to 15 percent
| less likely to graduate from high school. Wages of men were 5-9
| percent lower because of infection. Socioeconomic status...was
| substantially reduced, and the likelihood of being poor rose as
| much as 15 percent compared with other cohorts. Public
| entitlement spending was also increased._
|
| My own daughter was born in late Jan 2020 so I think we dodged
| the fetal exposure issue but perhaps socialization impacts may be
| substantial (although at her age, her peers do not wear masks and
| some daycare providers have worn clear spit shields rather than
| masks; nonetheless I think she has socialized less than she would
| have a few years previously, but more than kids who don't go to
| daycare).
|
| [1]:
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/th...
|
| [2]: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-
| bin/resolve?id=doi:10....
| rightbyte wrote:
| > The children of infected mothers were up to 15 percent less
| likely to graduate from high school. Wages of men were 5-9
| percent lower because of infection.
|
| It is probably hard to control for "being poor", since it
| correlates with both lesser pay and education and I guess
| getting sick.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| But infants aren't really susceptible to covid (not sure if
| they get it less frequently or not, but they very rarely
| develop strong symptoms). This is in contrast to flu which
| strongly affects children, so I'm not sure that exposure in
| utero would have as strong an effect as in 1918. But maybe sick
| mothers are have an impact on the fetus.
| Jarwain wrote:
| I think sick mothers play a part. I wonder if another part
| might just be resource allocation to immune response?
|
| Resources spent fighting disease aren't spent on development?
| Idk though this is pure uninformed speculation
| zzzeek wrote:
| you know what really impacts early cognitive performance? having
| one's parents die from covid. So while social distancing,
| closings, and masks completely suck, they have been necessary in
| order to attempt to maintain public health, and without them,
| there would have been vastly more deaths.
| dude187 wrote:
| None of that works. Covid is here to stay. You're just saying
| that these kids should hide their face and stay away from their
| friends for their whole life
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That may be true for grandparents.
|
| We should do something about heart diseases or car accidents
| which are far more worrisome for parents.
| watwut wrote:
| Parents of infants have high rates of heart diseases? I found
| following estimate about covid:
|
| > approximately 1 out of 500 children in the United States
| has experienced COVID-19-associated orphanhood or death of a
| grandparent caregiver
|
| Those are all caregivers , not just any grandparent.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I wonder how this relates to children born in war zones. One of
| my parents was born smack in the middle of world war II, the
| other went through it as a young teenager. Nobody seemed to care
| one bit about their cognitive performance, reduced or otherwise,
| as long as they managed to survive first.
| [deleted]
| XorNot wrote:
| How the heck could they possibly have established this with a
| cadre of at most 2 year olds?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| ... Because parents already suffering with anxiety from living
| through these years, need additional anxiety about the
| 'performance' of their children in the years coming.
|
| Enjoy life and be gentle with each other, that's the performance
| that matters.
| j0ba wrote:
| Would you prefer society just ignores this inconvenient fact?
|
| The risk of developmental issues was obvious to many people at
| the beginning of the lockdowns. Now we have some data. It will
| help us make better decisions in the future.
|
| Every choice has consequences.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The inconvenient fact incontrovertibly established by a non-
| peer reviewed paper that most of HN probably just read the
| abstract of anyways?
|
| I "love" how you and the comment below can take a "be gentle
| with each other" comment and turn it into a springboard for
| your anti-lockdown rhetoric.
|
| Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I have a 5 and a 3 years old and missed
| nursery has been terrible for their development.
|
| You don't even need a study for this, it's just common
| sense for people who have interacted with a toddler in
| their life before and after nursery (after 2-3 years old, I
| wouldn't recommend sending them before - they tend to not
| be ready for social life and not having one dedicated adult
| to them)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > You don't even need a study for this, it's just common
| sense
|
| Lots of common sense things turn out to be false, and the
| plural of anecdote is not data. We absolutely need
| studies.
| jpdus wrote:
| I don't have time to look into methodology in great detail, but
| their model seems to be flawed?
|
| CDQ is designed to correlate with age[1] and it's expected that
| the most recently born children have lower scores. Just treating
| age as a model covariate seems wrong? Shouldn't they do some kind
| of propensity score matching (match equally old childs with
| comparable maternal education, weight, etc.)? instead?
|
| I also really doubt that a verbal development assessment already
| makes sense for children born after March 2020 (or you would have
| to limit the sample to children born in March/April 2020 and
| assessed just now)?
|
| Would be nice if someone who is more experienced with this data +
| methodology can comment on that...
|
| [1] https://core.ac.uk/reader/16394968?utm_source=linkout
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if this is a pay-for-study type result.
| Veritasium did an expose that 90% of published papers are just
| plain wrong.
| excalibur wrote:
| > Since the first reports of novel coronavirus in the 2020,
| public health organizations have advocated preventative policies
| to limit virus, including stay-at-home orders that closed
| businesses, daycares, schools, playgrounds, and limited child
| learning and typical activities.
|
| Did nobody proofread this before it was published?
| voidfunc wrote:
| Oh good we are breeding a generation of even stupider people
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| How the toddlers of today growing up with fully masked teachers
| during their institutionalized education will manage to develop
| normal social skills without being able to see people's faces is
| beyond me.
| notpachet wrote:
| Hopefully by the time it becomes a problem, we can all just
| hide behind our avatars inside the Metaverse. /s
| zbendefy wrote:
| Where is this sudden surge of talking about the metaverse
| coming from?
| luckman212 wrote:
| Yeah that's cool, taking one step further: the Metaverse
| might finally give us ugly people a chance for a fair and
| happy life.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Ha this is like the Daily Mail comments section. Did you think
| at all before writing this?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Actually, toddlers will all have great super social skills,
| because they will not believe that "smiling = you're happy",
| which is totally wrong. They'll need to figure out emotions
| using tone of voice and the look of the person's eyes and maybe
| upper cheeks.
|
| So I disagree with your point entirely. And I've provided even
| more reasoning than you did about why today's children will be
| even better at social conduct than their predecessors.
| xrobledo84 wrote:
| They're not wearing masks during lunch
| dessant wrote:
| They will manage just fine, because they are exposed to enough
| maskless people at home and in other social settings. And even
| in schools, kids often don't follow mask mandates, especially
| when the teacher steps out, or sets an example by wearing a
| chin diaper during class.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > They will manage just fine because they are exposed to
| enough maskless people at home and in other social settings
|
| The wealthy kids have that opportunity. Kids with natural
| social skills may be fine too.
|
| However, kids with two parents that are working 4 jobs won't
| reach their full potential. Many kids already have issues
| from this; and it's awful that their voices and their parents
| voices - and their psychologists voices - aren't being heard.
|
| Myself, I find it abhorrent that people are casually brushing
| aside a clear major developmental impact on an entire
| generation of growing children. The cost benefit ratio seems
| awfully bad.
| Jarwain wrote:
| This might sound a little callous, but I wonder if it's a
| long term net positive.
|
| In the short term, it's a detriment; they will have to
| struggle more and will encounter more difficulties in
| socialization. But that's not necessarily a Unique problem,
| there have always been kids with these kinds of problems,
| if not at this rate. And on this short term we're
| decreasing mortality from covid and hopefully keeping
| hospital resources available to minimize mortality from
| other causes.
|
| Over the long term, decreased mortality is generally a net
| societal gain. An increase of people with issues
| socializing will result in an increase in the market for
| solutions, tools, community, and support that help with
| this kind of problem. These solutions would help both the
| pandemic babies And those who would normally struggle, and
| would be available to future generations too!
| heartbeats wrote:
| I think the problem you're missing is that these are two
| different groups. Mortality is decreased, sure, and
| people get social problems, sure, but the people getting
| the increased social problems are not the ones getting
| the lowered mortality.
| Jarwain wrote:
| Well yeah, it's a trade off. Maybe mentioning the
| mortality thing distracted from my point;
|
| The Point is that in the short term there's an increase
| in the number of people who have trouble socializing, but
| in the long term society develops better support systems
| and tools to help people who have trouble socializing,
| because there's an increased need. These tools help both
| people who developed problems as a result of the
| pandemic, And people who would Normally have problems
| socializing not just now but in the future as well.
| dessant wrote:
| Yes, times are tough for everyone, including children. I
| find it even more abhorrent to single out masks because
| "you can't see people's faces", while ignoring what their
| purpose is and what can they prevent. We've seen enough
| idiots decimate their family and friends while repeating
| this exact same argument.
| philovivero wrote:
| This sort of over-the-top rhetoric gives anti-maskers
| their ammo.
|
| I am unaware of a single family, anywhere on the planet,
| that was "decimated" by Covid. I hope you really mean
| "devastated," because then at least you'd be making some
| semblance of sense.
|
| Also, to ignore that there are studies and experts that
| back their opinion is a little rich. Sure, you can say
| you think your studies and your experts are better, but
| to assume those who disagree with you are "idiots" is,
| again, pretty over-the-top, and exactly the sort of thing
| someone can point to and say: "Look, these pro-maskers
| are projecting."
|
| Why not try to be a little more understanding and share
| some of this knowledge with people? Do you really need to
| stoop so low?
| rightbyte wrote:
| "Decimate" is kill one in ten, which is probably a not
| uncommon number for those who had atleast one fatality in
| the family.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Nobody uses that word that way in common conversation.
| [deleted]
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Masks that are worse than a well-fitted N95 help with
| limiting spread when you go into a shop for 15 minutes.
| When you spend 8 hours in a crowded building with no
| ventilation, they do exactly nothing -- you will get full
| exposure regardless. Masks in schools are health theater.
| dude187 wrote:
| Hiding your face does not eliminate covid. Stop hiding
| your face because you're scared
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting flamewar comments to Hacker
| News? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately.
|
| Also, it looks like your account has swerved into using
| HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed
| here, regardless of ideology, because it destroys what
| this site is supposed to be for. I had to go all the way
| back to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190538 to
| see a comment that wasn't like this.
|
| That's not ok. I don't want to ban you, so if you would
| please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the intended use of the site, we'd appreciate
| it.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| What do they prevent?
| dude187 wrote:
| Normal human interaction
| [deleted]
| Mezzie wrote:
| I was blind until I was 4 and while I have some neurological
| visual issues, my social skills are fine even though I couldn't
| see facial expressions at that age. Not saying it didn't have
| an impact, but it's probably not that serious.
| diveanon wrote:
| What makes you think the future is going to be any different?
|
| The world didn't go back to normal after 9/11, it's not going
| to happen now either.
|
| If it's not COVID it'll just be the next pandemic.
| option wrote:
| Our (Bay Area, CA) school district psychologist told us - "Most
| of our 4 and 5 years old are behind 1 to 2 year on their
| language and social development".
|
| How this is not national news 24/7? It is a disaster. So much
| about protecting the children...
| Zababa wrote:
| > So much about protecting the children...
|
| At least for covid, this has never been about protecting the
| children, mostly about protecting old people. I remember a
| classmate calling it "sacrificing the mental health of the
| youth for the physical health of the old".
| smt88 wrote:
| Lots of people who aren't old or otherwise sick were killed
| by Covid.
|
| Regardless, having overflowing hospitals is bad for
| children and every other age group.
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't think that "lots" is true, at least in
| proportion. You can see that there are very big
| differences of death by covid depending on the age of the
| patients:
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-
| data/investi.... Maybe we don't have the same definition
| of "children" and "old". My point is that people under 30
| years paid a great price to protect mostly the health of
| people over 60 years old.
|
| I'll add a point that might sound very bad, but I think
| it has to be taken into account. In the country where I
| live, France, people between ~20 and ~60 years old pay
| for the healthcare and retirement of mostly everyone
| else. That means that if someone was 22 at the start of
| covid, and in their last 2 years of studies, they had a
| hard time to protect people 60+ years old. Then, for the
| next 20 years, they're going to pay the healthcare and
| the retirement of those people. Considering that the
| fertility is getting lower and lower in France, I think
| this is a very dangerous strategy for the long-term
| stability of public expanses.
|
| We are in a democracy, and we didn't get any choice in
| how covid was handled. In France the mean age is 42 years
| old, the median age is 41 years old [1]. The mean age in
| the Assemblee Nationale is 51 years old [2]. It's also
| the mean age of the current governement [3]. The mean age
| of mayors is 58 years old [4]. All of that makes me think
| that there might be a bias to protect older people, and
| that some of the decision taken came from that.
|
| [1]: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2381476
|
| [2]: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/vos-deputes
|
| [3]:
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gouvernement_Jean_Castex
|
| [4]: https://www.amf.asso.fr/documents-la-carte-
| didentite-maires-...
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The average doctor in France is over 50 years old too.
| And all those ages use the same hospital beds.
| mandmandam wrote:
| I imagine children's physical health is actually being
| severely affected as well, especially for children in lower
| income families.
|
| I would expect less physical movement overall (bad), more
| respiratory issues from over-wearing masks, anxiety
| manifesting as physical issues, and a host of other second
| order effects.
|
| And let's not forget that poorer kids worldwide are facing
| less access to dentists and other preventative medicine
| overall. That people are letting this stuff slide while
| 'health' companies post record profits is maddening.
| option wrote:
| I often run (maskless of course) on the street where I
| can see public's school stadium. Kids there wear masks
| _outside_ while running around stadium during PE class.
| What kind of insanity is this??! This is in Santa Clara
| county, CA.
| astrange wrote:
| Masks outside are good actually. It's cold outside and
| they're warm. You can't wear a scarf while running.
| option wrote:
| good try. But Santa Clara county isn't exactly a cold
| place, and they do it when it is +30C. I know parents
| whose kid actually fainted during PE outside.
| astrange wrote:
| I mean it's surprisingly cold right now. Isn't calling
| anything under 55F freezing part of the California
| lifestyle?
|
| But yes in summer the only real upside is getting to
| dress like a bank robber.
| watwut wrote:
| Toddlers are not even required to go to institutions. Huge
| amounts of them are at home.
|
| And those in institutions still spend tons amount of time at
| home.
| User23 wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is due to the greatly increased alcohol
| consumption during the pandemic.
| fouc wrote:
| > NOTE: This preprint [..] has not been certified by peer review
|
| Says it all. Take it with a huge grain of salt.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Posting non-peer reviewed scientific papers is an anti-pattern.
| throwaway2331 wrote:
| Statistically significant != practically significant.
|
| It's almost impossible to deduce, due to this paper's horrid
| formatting.
| weeksie wrote:
| They claim the pandemic has dropped kids IQ scores by a full
| standard deviation? N=40? Hmmm.
|
| Nothing about that paper inspires confidence.
| gwern wrote:
| > Leveraging a large on-going longitudinal study of child
| neurodevelopment, we examined general childhood cognitive
| scores in 2020 and 2021 vs. the preceding decade, 2011-2019. We
| find that children born during the pandemic have significantly
| reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance
| compared to children born pre-pandemic. Moreover, we find that
| males and children in lower socioeconomic families have been
| most affected.
|
| Blatant, blatant, family-level confounding is driving this.
| Having kids dropped like a stone in covid, because who would be
| so irresponsible as to have a child during a _pandemic_? During
| lockdown? And with global warming the way it is? (The opening
| of _Idiocracy_ is justly famous.) So, who then is having
| kids...?
|
| It's like maternal smoking. If you look at kids with mothers
| who smoke vs the kids with mothers who don't smoke, the latter
| are healthier and more functional; however, if you look at
| siblings whose mother smoked during one sibling's pregnancy but
| not the other's, they are often identical. That's because what
| you are measuring is the effect of 'having a mother who will
| smoke', not the effect of 'smoking'.
| heartbeats wrote:
| That's true in the United States, but not in other countries:
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/118/36/e2105709118
|
| There were statistically insignificant _increases_ in
| Slovenia, Norway, Denmark, South Korea, Finland, Sweden,
| Germany, Netherlands, and Switzerland.
|
| Going by this, I also think that you may have the correlation
| wrong. If the study is correct (more generous welfare systems
| => less decrease in birth rates), that seems like it would
| mean that people who can afford it will keep having kids.
|
| Granted, so will people who aren't in the planning business.
| But it's hardly cut-and-dry like that.
|
| (extra confounder: Northern Europe had less harsh lockdowns,
| maybe that plays a role?)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There were statistically insignificant increases
|
| "Statistically insignificant" means that you have data from
| a sample from which, at the desired level of confidence,
| you cannot be sure of any effect, or that there was not the
| reverse effect, in the universe from which the sample is
| drawn.
| mcguire wrote:
| From the paper:
|
| " _In this work, therefore, we specifically sought to explore
| individual and population-level trends in infant and early child
| neurodevelopment. Analyses of cognitive development, assessed
| using Mullen Scales of Early Learning [40], a population normed
| and clinically administered tool that assesses function across
| the five primary domains of fine and gross motor control, visual
| reception, and expressive and respective language via direct
| observation and performance, provides some of the first direct
| evidence of the developmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic._ "
|
| From https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/mullen-
| scale...
|
| " _The Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) is a standardized
| assessment that is commonly used in clinical psychology as a
| developmental measure of cognitive development (Mullen, 1989,
| 1995). The MSEL is organized into 5 subscales: (a) gross motor,
| (b) fine motor, (c) visual reception (or non-verbal problem
| solving), (d) receptive language, and (e) expressive language. An
| early learning composite score can be derived from fine motor,
| visual reception, receptive language, and expressive language
| scales. For young children this early learning composite score is
| considered equivalent to a more traditional "IQ" score or a
| developmental standard score._ "
|
| See Figure 2 of the paper, on page 31.
|
| Apparently, "[t]he outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the
| associated economic shut-down, school disruptions, and social
| distancing, stay-at-home, and mask policies" has reduced the
| intelligence of newborns and young children by ~1.5 standard
| deviations.
| fabbari wrote:
| Would love to see the raw data, but from their own plots you can
| see that 2017, 2018 and 2019 show a trend that would make the
| 2020 and 2021 data consistent with the trend.
|
| As they show data comparing 2020 and 2021 to the previous years,
| they could have shown a matrix to compare year over year across
| the data.
|
| I will wait for someone to look at the raw data and peer review
| the paper before jumping to conclusions.
|
| I'm not discounting that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact
| on child development, I would be surprised if it didn't, but I
| expected a bit more rigorous data analysis from this paper.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Looking at the paper, the statistical story is a bit
| complicated.
|
| In figure 2, the authors argue that there is a trend. But the
| graph seems to show the direct measurements of dependent
| variables with confidence intervals, and they are all non-
| significant. This means that there is no reason to talk about a
| trend, especially if the difference between significant and
| non-significant is not significant :)
|
| [edit]: Would really have loved if they showed marginal effects
| here, removing the influence of control variables.
|
| But the models themselves do something else: Table 3 suggests
| that covid was used as a binary variable to test for. So they
| are comparing pre-covid to covid-time and see a significant
| result there.
|
| Methodologically, it doesn't seem like a bad design, but the
| sample size is really a bit small to have sufficient power.
|
| Apart from that, the effect size of covid (31) seems really
| high, but developmental psychology is not my field so I can't
| say anything about that.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| > In figure 2, the authors argue that there is a trend. But
| the graph seems to show the direct measurements of dependent
| variables with confidence intervals, and they are all non-
| significant.
|
| From the Figure 2 caption, I'm pretty sure it's showing
| standard deviations (of the sample) not 95% confidence
| intervals (of the mean). Two samples may have overlapping +-
| 1 s.d. intervals despite having significant different means.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wonder what could be driving that trend.
| riku_iki wrote:
| ipad games from the very early age
| dnautics wrote:
| Would that affect lower socioeconomic status more? Could go
| either way. I would guess it's an
| observer/awareness/diagnosis effect. (Lower SE getting
| progressively more access to child cognitive monitoring;
| consistent with more attention during covid)
| vldchk wrote:
| I would bet on the growth of notepads and smartphone usage by
| children 0-2 age. There are evidences that electronics and
| smart screens are destructive for the cognitive development
| of infants, while they are super easy to adopt by lazy
| parents.
|
| Click on some YTube show and baby won't bother you for the
| next hour or two.
| hubb wrote:
| no chance this guy has kids. ppl said this same thing about
| television. if you read newspaper clippings from the early
| 20th century you can find letters to the editor about
| parents concerned their kids read too many books
| Ma8ee wrote:
| And I think it is a valid concern even today. It's not
| that there's anything inherently bad or dangerous with
| books, videos or computer games. But too much of anything
| steal time that is needed for other parts of a well
| rounded upbringing. If you spend too much time in front
| of a screen or books, you won't spend enough time being
| outdoors and being physically active, or being with
| friends practicing social skills and conflict resolution.
| And the opposite is of course also true: if you spend all
| days doing sports or just hanging out with friends, there
| won't be enough time for reading or other types of
| experiences.
| rock_hard wrote:
| Some people have excessive behaviors...got nothing to do
| with TV, Games, Sugar, etc
|
| They just need help to learn to manage those excessive
| behaviors
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Some behaviours are more immediately rewarding than
| other. It's rare to find anyone eating too much broccoli
| or having problems stop rehearsing German irregular
| verbs.
| rock_hard wrote:
| Absolutely, even more important to learn how to manage
| those early in life and adopt healthy behaviors
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Lazy parents? Don't be hasty.
|
| A coworker of mine had every intention of not having any
| screentime for their toddler. But lockdown meant two
| parents working from home + no daycare. The solutions were
| either one of them quits their job or they buy an iPad.
| Economy necessity dictated the latter.
|
| With my toddler, we retained zero screentime simply because
| my wife is freelance and can get away with ~10 hours of
| actual work per week.
| watwut wrote:
| I had same intention. Even practically largely managed.
| And then, when I shown toddler first fairy tale, toddler
| started to have way more varied and imaginative games.
|
| Turns out, it does not destroys them at all. It can
| actually add quite a lot.
|
| The harm can happen if you overdo it a lot. But some
| watching or playing is not destroying them at all.
| saurik wrote:
| > But lockdown...
|
| The entire point of this sub-thread was to analyze the
| trend pre-lockdown. (FWIW, I'm then not wanting to
| comment on whether this is lazy behavior or not, but just
| that this defense is out of place.)
| dang wrote:
| > _lazy parents_
|
| That is both name-calling and flamebait, and therefore
| breaks the HN guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Can you
| please make your substantive points without doing that?
| Note this guideline also:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
|
| Parenting is one of the most emotionally activating topics
| that exists, and therefore one of the most divisive.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| "There are evidences" - really? There are certainly people
| who are of the opinion, but evidence?
| cdubzzz wrote:
| > There are evidences that electronics and smart screens
| are destructive for the cognitive development of infants,
| while they are super easy to adopt by lazy parents.
|
| I know this is a poor form but fuck you. We work our asses
| off to give our kids what is generally accepted as a "good"
| upbringing and it's hard. Hard during any normal period of
| time and even harder when dealing the pressures of the
| pandemic's affect on work, day care, extracurricular
| activities, etc.
|
| Happy to read whatever evidence you have on this topic. I'm
| keenly interested and sure as shit not "lazy" for allowing
| our children time to play age appropriate games on a
| tablet.
| llampx wrote:
| Leave out the ad homs please, this is not reddit.
| dang wrote:
| > _I know this is a poor form but fuck you._
|
| Please don't do that here, regardless of how strong and
| legitimate your feelings are. It only makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cdubzzz wrote:
| Yes yes. Sorry for the vitriol. As you say, emotionally
| activating (:
| whalesalad wrote:
| The collapse of rational thinking abilities.
| gizmo385 wrote:
| As evidenced by?
| conception wrote:
| The large scale antivax movement for one.
| astrange wrote:
| Antivaxxers tend to use scientific/rational language
| though, as opposed to new age vibes or what they heard
| from their priests. They're using a modernist mindset,
| they just happen to be wrong.
| croes wrote:
| I doubt that, most of them just copy & paste parts from
| studies or headlines shared in social networks
|
| One of my latest memories is the introduction of a test
| that can be used to test for Corona and flu at the same
| time. The relevant article headline spoke of a test to
| distinguish flu from Corona. This then turned into the
| antivaxxers saying that previous PCR tests could not
| distinguish corona from flu.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _using a modernist mindset_
|
| Would be curious to see data on this. I most frequently
| see an emotional appeal against authority, vague
| anxieties and fears and/or slippery slope arguments.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Use of rational language does not mean that the
| conclusion is reasonable, nor free of fallacy. For
| example, people saying the covid shot interferes with
| long term immunity is rational and modern, just not based
| in fact (or misapplying fact).
| astrange wrote:
| There are mechanisms that could cause that ("original
| antigenic sin") and it does happen with dengue fever. Of
| course, it's not true here, but it was reasonable to
| think it might be in 2020.
|
| And covid vaccines being spike-only may be less effective
| against variants than whole-virus vaccines or actual
| infections. But flu shots manage to be ineffective a year
| later with whole viruses in them, so maybe that wouldn't
| help.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "They're using a modernist mindset, they just happen to
| be wrong."
|
| They are certainly not using a scientific mindset - they
| are just using language that sounds scientific, so it
| sounds smart and solid. But is not, when you look closer
| and try to find their data and sources. But common people
| does not do that - and fall for it. It is basically
| fraud, in most instances.
| clavicat wrote:
| Antivax is literally as old as vaccines are. There's an
| enormous Victorian corpus of antivax literature, complete
| with crazy claims that vaccines were causing leprosy. In
| this respect, nothing has changed.
|
| Nor does it evince the collapse of rational thinking. If
| people just suspended their critical judgement and did
| whatever they were told unquestioningly, there would also
| be no antivax movement, but their compliance would not
| speak to their capacity for rationality, only their
| bovinity.
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Funny enough I expect Venn diagram of antivaxers and
| people who don't let their kid use screens to have a
| significant overlap. Sometimes raw distrust is justified.
| smt88 wrote:
| This probably used to be true, but (in the US) the
| demographics and politics of anti-vaxxers changed
| significantly after 2020.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Whatever their answer ends up being will probably kill a
| few braincells.
| kurthr wrote:
| The rise and fall of rationality based words in English
| language (rose until 1980s and has plummeted since):
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/118/51/e2107848118
| IsThisYou wrote:
| Thanks for the link, that's really interesting.
| 323 wrote:
| Parents busy with their phones for example.
| sirspacey wrote:
| Edit: was intended as response to a reply to this.
|
| Appreciate the caution.
|
| We took a different approach.
|
| Unlimited screen time.
|
| Our daughter's rate of learning is incredible.
|
| She willingly explores IRL play. No battles when we ask her to
| put down her iPad.
|
| Roblox and Minecraft are our shared playtime.
|
| I was homeschooled with no TV. My experience of her development
| is similar to what I experienced with my siblings.
|
| A healthy dose of skepticism is warranted when new tech is the
| explanation for diminishing returns in our existing systems.
| Children are in aggressively structured, impoverished
| educational systems nationwide - bankrupt in both their
| pedagogy and their budgets. Teachers & administrators have
| raised the warning that as many as 80% of children have not
| engaged at all with their schooling in the past two years.
|
| Maybe iPads aren't the problem.
|
| Maybe they are one reason cognitive decline in children isn't
| dramatically worse.
| donw wrote:
| Most parents treat tablets like fancy TV sets.
|
| The resulting harm can not be understated.
|
| Minecraft and Roblox are active, creative pursuits, and
| demand disciplined, logical thinking to achieve goals.
| Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets for the digital age.
|
| TV demands precisely the opposite. Kids are psychologically
| rewarded for passive non-thinking. They feel the win when
| their screen hero beats the villain, even though all they did
| was just... sit there and _consume_.
|
| The modern equivalents -- TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, basically
| any streaming video service -- crank that badness up to about
| 162, because at least the television programming of yore was
| finite. You could only watch cartoons and be bombarded with
| ads for maybe two hours at a time before something more
| boring and adult came on.
|
| Moreover, parents also knew what their kids were watching,
| because the TV was in the living room. Nowadays, with
| personal digital devices, none of that holds.
|
| My family treats smartphones the same way we treat guns: both
| are powerful and dangerous tools.
|
| I could make a pretty strong case that an iPhone is more
| dangerous to a toddler than an AR-15.
|
| At the same time, you can't hide your kids from the world and
| expect them to be able to deal with it. Parents must take
| responsibility and educate relentlessly. You might start with
| "don't touch, find an adult", but you're going to finish by
| teaching your kids to master their tools.
| tehjoker wrote:
| A relative of mine works in NYC schools and routinely notes
| that whenever he subs in a poorer district the teaching
| strategy basically revolves around making students sit and
| behave so they'll learn how to be obedient unskilled labor
| when they grow up. They told a six or seven year old girl
| that she wasn't allowed to cry when she missed her parents
| and toys.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > They told a six or seven year old girl that she wasn't
| allowed to cry when she missed her parents and toys.
|
| Oof. A teachable moment for the instructors hopefully
| becomes one for the student. Good teachers are amazing; bad
| ones are horrible at both teaching and learning from their
| students.
| throwoutway wrote:
| That's one impressive extrapolation from an anecdote. I won't
| point at the significant amount of research that disagrees
| (since that would be ironic considering the parent of this
| thread) but instead I'll point to the anecdotes of children I
| know whose iPads and screen time are the source of
| significant problems. Sounds like your daughter is great and
| that you are an involved parent
| pyuser583 wrote:
| My daughter began an extremely unhealthy relationship with
| screens during COVID.
|
| She watches YouTube for hours on end, usually 15 second meme
| videos that alternate between vacant and toxic.
|
| She's obsessed with memes to the point where it's impossible
| for her to hold a conversation with someone who doesn't have
| a similar browsing history.
|
| She's lost a shared common vocabulary with even her closed
| friends.
|
| Maybe iPads are the problems.
| lilyball wrote:
| It sounds like she's seeking stimulation that she doesn't
| get otherwise. The iPad isn't the cause here, it's just the
| tool of the moment.
| goldfeld wrote:
| I'm also steeped on wine all day through since it
| provides stimulation _burp_ I don 't get otherwise, it's
| just the heat of the moment! Cheers!
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Most people have access to alcohol and do not drink all
| day. Among those that _do_ drink all day, it 's common to
| use alcohol to self-medicate for various mental issues
| like depression and anxiety. Removing the alcohol will
| not fix the underlying problem and may simply result in a
| different choice of self-medication.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| I'd argue that the more you're stimulated, the greater
| your need for stimulation becomes.
| lilyball wrote:
| Why?
| erikerikson wrote:
| It's almost as if the way you use the tools is what
| matters.
|
| I hope that works itself out for her.
| ben_w wrote:
| That is fascinating and surprising; I previously considered
| a _Darmok_ -like language to be implausible, but it sounds
| like that's exactly what you're experiencing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok
|
| (Edit: my inner cynic just popped up the question "are you
| sure she's not just being a stereotypical teenager?" even
| though you didn't mention her age).
| Izkata wrote:
| I'd argue we've had hints of it for centuries in the form
| of idioms, such as "kicked the bucket".
| ben_w wrote:
| The important part of the Darmok episode is that the
| language is _just_ catchphrases from longer stories, not
| that it contains some examples of that.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Maybe they are one reason cognitive decline in children
| isn't dramatically worse.
|
| What's your household income?
| isoskeles wrote:
| Enough to buy their kids tablets like it's nothing.
| loceng wrote:
| The most notable difference between TV and computers of
| various sizes is it's interactive vs. passive, so the
| "reducing screen time" needs more nuance to the discussion -
| likewise Roblox etc together as a family sounds lovely vs.
| isolated dopamine hits from Instagram potentially allowing
| your peers/strangers dictate how you should feel about
| yourself (wrongly in either direction).
| Cerium wrote:
| This reminds me of all the screen time I had as a kid with
| my parents, taking turns on single player games (a life or
| a race). A lot of time spent thinking about how the next
| turn would go, who would be better at this level (my mom
| was great at some Zelda temples and I was better at
| others). Way more thinking happened than any other TV
| activity.
| danbolt wrote:
| My father mentioned he noticed that when I played video
| games with my peers as a child, it was very much a social
| activity. I think it somewhat changed his paradigm on the
| medium after the 1990s having a bit of a moral panic on
| the topic.
| baxtr wrote:
| I have a friend who was always the best in his class at Uni
| and has become a lead doctor in a major hospital. He once
| told me that he used to watch roughly 2-3 hrs of television
| on any day when he was a kid because his parents needed to
| work all the time. He turned out just fine.
|
| I remember back in the day television was the bad guy in
| town. I wonder if iPads aren't much better since they foster
| interaction and not just dull watching.
| fragmede wrote:
| Please define what you mean by "just fine". "Just fine" is
| what parents who abused their kids say. Those kids later go
| to therapy to understand their treatment was abusive and to
| deal with it, and they _don 't_ turn out just fine, they
| turn out traumatized. I really have no idea what the
| situation is, but "they turned out just fine" is to abused
| kids the same as saying the phrase "calm down" in a
| heightened situation doesn't do shit to calm the situation
| down.
| croes wrote:
| Just fine this is the assessment of the previous poster,
| not that of his friend's parents.
|
| You can't devalue that just because abusive parents use
| similar words. And I doubt that abusive parents have a
| unique wording so you can't infer abuse from certain
| phrases.
| pram wrote:
| That's how I was raised, and I turned out TV.
| Grustaf wrote:
| He might be fine now, but he missed 2-3 hours of childhood
| per day.
|
| If I had to give up either my well paid job today, or my
| happy childhood playing outside, I would definitely be poor
| now.
| yesenadam wrote:
| > he used to watch roughly 2-3 hrs of television on any day
|
| Surprising comment, that this is seen is unusual! I grew up
| in the 70s-80s (in Australia). 2-3 hours would've been
| pretty much universal, I think, and more likely to be >3
| than <2. And half or more of it really, really bad. I've
| never admitted to anyone some of those deeply crappy US
| series from the 80s I watched, and am not starting now!
| Yeah, I turned out fine.. but all those hours watching
| crap. The movies/series had ads in them too, a lot of them.
|
| I've been trying to make up for that, by watching just
| good/great stuff from around the world, no ads, during the
| last 10 years: see http://www.adamponting.com/movies/
| WA wrote:
| Or maybe you suffer from survivorship bias. I mean,
| anecdotes are nice and all, but totally useless in
| determining whether unlimited screen time has negative
| effects or not.
|
| And my educated guess is: it depends.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > bankrupt in both their pedagogy and their budgets
|
| The budget woes are a myth. The US spends more on education
| than most other countries in exchange for middle of the pack
| results comparable to less developed countries with far lower
| budgets.
|
| The main budgetary problem is bureaucratic. The schools get
| more than enough money, but the teachers aren't the ones who
| decide how to spend it, so a teacher who wants more school
| supplies than are allocated has to pay out of pocket and then
| we get these anecdotes.
|
| The solution is a combination of two things. First, stop
| trying to regulate education from the top. Let the individual
| teachers do it. Provide resources, don't enforce conformity.
| Second, let the parents choose the teachers, or more
| realistically, the school. Then you get competition between
| schools to provide the best education instead of the existing
| system of like it or lump it. Also, give the same money to
| the parents who are homeschooling. Homeschool is school and
| the families doing it shouldn't be financially penalized for
| choosing something that by most accounts gives better
| results.
| mnd999 wrote:
| So basically a deregulated, market based approach. This
| will work great in wealthy areas with good schools with
| educated and supportive parents.
| twoodfin wrote:
| The idea that poor parents don't care about their kids'
| success enough to want to choose what they perceive to be
| better schools is belied by the lengthy waiting lists for
| slots in charter or magnet schools and voucher programs.
|
| What we have _now_ is a market-based approach, where the
| price of admission to a top flight public school system
| is a $1M mortgage.
| kbenson wrote:
| Being poor doesn't necessarily mean you care less, but it
| can mean you have less time, resources and mobility to
| out towards finding a better school and having your child
| go to a better school, especially if it's not as close.
|
| What we have now is a system where we for the most part
| try to remove market influences so wealth doesn't
| advantage/disadvantage children, but with the constant
| thorn of wealthier parents constantly fighting to have
| their resources applied to their own children, sometimes
| without considering what that means overall.
|
| If we could actually separate wealth from public
| education, maybe we'd actually see some change.
|
| One interesting way might be to allow free bussing up to
| 10 (or more?) miles for any child, and allow parents to
| choose whatever school they want. Those wealthier schools
| in nicer areas will have to start splitting those funds
| between more and more students. Of course this would
| never be allowed for long.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The root cause is that you have more or less four choices
|
| * private, which is expensive (and in some cases not a
| guarantee of quality)
|
| * rich public, which requires probably living in the
| extremely local school district
|
| * magnet/charter, which usually have whole apparatuses
| dedicated to securing donor funding similar to how
| colleges ask former alumni and the wealthy to top up
| their budgets
|
| * poor public
|
| At least some of the problems might be solvable by
| consolidating America's extremely local school districts,
| but that's kind of hard because a lot of the separate
| school districts were intentionally set up that way to
| ensure that socioeconomic classes did not have to share
| schools in a post-segregation world. Even if you did
| manage to do it, a lot of people would probably pull out
| and choose private instead.
|
| But it is absolutely insane that in some states
| "boundary-hopping" school districts can send parents who
| want the best for their child to jail.
| http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-
| tonight/ame...
| mnd999 wrote:
| So we are in agreement that what you suggest doesn't
| work.
| kbenson wrote:
| Did they suggest something?
| syshum wrote:
| >>supportive parents.
|
| supportive parents are the key to success, rich, poor,
| black, white, asian, Hispanic, gay, strait, etc.
|
| children with rich parents may have more doors opened,
| and access to things, but proclaim wealth is the only
| factor or even the biggest factor is false.
|
| unsupported rich parents turn out children that fail all
| the time, and supportive poor parents turn out children
| that go on to success.
|
| A support system at home is the biggest determinate for
| success or failure in life.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > The budget woes are a myth. The US spends more on
| education than most other countries in exchange for middle
| of the pack results comparable to less developed countries
| with far lower budgets.
|
| Educational spending covers a different set of domains in
| the US than it does in other countries. There's a lot of
| backfill in the social services area, for example.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That doesn't mean schools are under-funded. If it's true
| it implies schools are over-funded and some of their
| budgets should be transferred to social services.
| gopher_space wrote:
| What it means is that you can't compare funding between
| the US and other countries.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Then what's your benchmark for "underfunded"? How are we
| to determine whether we're getting value for our
| investment, or whether it's something other than funding
| that's handicapping the outcomes?
| erikerikson wrote:
| Yes, well, and that would require a willingness to
| maximize the population.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >The budget woes are a myth. The US spends more on
| education than most other countries
|
| Correct. New York City spends more per student than
| anywhere else in the US
| (<https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-
| york-c...>). Baltimore, an incredibly poor and run-down
| city, spends the third most. #4-6 and #8 are all wealthy
| suburbs of Washington DC, but their schools are all far
| better than those of Baltimore or NYC on average, despite
| Baltimore spending slightly more per student and NYC
| spending 60-70% more.
|
| >in exchange for middle of the pack results comparable to
| less developed countries with far lower budgets.
|
| Americans do well on PISA compared to their ethnic
| relatives. (<https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-new-2018-pisa-
| school-test-sco...>) Asian Americans do better than Asians;
| whites do better than Europeans; Latinos do better than
| Latin Americans; and blacks do better than Africans.
|
| Hispanics and especially blacks' scores drag the US average
| down. Both white and Asian Americans score higher than
| Canada (and white+Asian is essentially Canada's racial
| makeup), and higher than New Zealand, Australia, the
| Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, and the UK;
| Estonia is below US Asians but above white Americans.
| Norway is by far the wealthiest Nordic state but its
| average is only two points higher than the US national
| average, despite not having a demographic that is 13% of
| the population and scores 85 points below the white
| American average.
| Animats wrote:
| _First, stop trying to regulate education from the top._
|
| The US doesn't regulate education from the top. Japan and
| France do. US education is very locally controlled.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The U.S. asks the schools (and prisons) to deal with all
| societal ills. Many country filter their non-university
| bound population prior, and this saves a lot of wasted
| cost.
| satysin wrote:
| Since going [near] unlimited screen time we have seen a huge
| change in how our son (8yo) engages with the iPad and
| computer which has resulted in a much happier and healthier
| use of technology.
|
| As soon as the iPad/computer was no longer "special" due to
| time limitations it sort of lost its "power" over him. He was
| much more open to using it for things other than games and
| funny videos.
|
| I felt a bit dumb when I realised it was me putting these
| limits on his use of the iPad and computer that amplified how
| much "power" they had over his desire to use them.
|
| Obviously there are still _some_ limits but we follow them
| for ourselves as well (such as no screen time before bed,
| taking breaks every hour) so they haven 't been an issue.
|
| I certainly don't think the devices are the problem but more
| how we give these devices so much power over kids by holding
| this magical machine in front of them that can do so damn
| much then restrict access to them so all they ever want to do
| is very basic things like game.
| Izkata wrote:
| > As soon as the iPad/computer was no longer "special" due
| to time limitations it sort of lost its "power" over him.
|
| Back in 9th grade when I was 14 or 15, we had a substitute
| teacher who was just out of college and our regular teacher
| hadn't prepared any sort of lesson plan for her, so instead
| of doing what we were supposed to we somehow got into a
| long conversation about adulthood.
|
| The part that's always stuck with me is when one of the
| other students asked something like, "now that it's legal
| you must get drunk all the time, right?", and she described
| the same thing you did here about screens: All the allure
| was from it being forbidden, and once she was legally
| allowed to drink she just didn't care anymore.
| Jarwain wrote:
| What kind of things does your daughter play?
|
| Personally I wonder whether there's a big difference between
| playing YouTube stimulation videos vs logic
| puzzle/math/mystery games vs the latest dopamine-addiction-
| of-day game
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I think so. We don't have tablets, but we let our daughter
| play plenty of videogames. There is no hard limit, the
| limit is when we notice herself "coasting" instead of
| playing, but in those cases it means she's bored,so she
| happily explores alternatives. Playing an engaging
| videogame has the result of her deeply describing what she
| is doing (yes it's very annoying to the parent that has to
| acknowledge every detail, but it's a price I'm very happy
| to pay), as well as stimulating her duplo-building skills
| ("I've built a level for Yoshi!")
| rock_hard wrote:
| We also have a unlimited screen time policy with our kids
|
| It's been nothing but great!
|
| They turned into information sponges with a huge amount of
| knowledge about the world, way ahead of their peers.
|
| Our son watches a lot of extrem sports YouTube content which
| always inspires him to push harder to get better at those
| sports himself.
|
| He is the only one in his class who will tackle the large
| half pipes at the local dirt park for example. It's the
| result of watching the pro's do it on YouTube and then
| practicing relentlessly!
|
| Society has this thing where everything new is stamped as
| bad...book, bad! Bicycles, bad! Radio, bad!, TV, bad!
| Computer games, bad! Drugs, bad! Sugar, bad! People are just
| a bunch of scaredy cats
|
| We ought to provide kids some more nuance about the things in
| the world
|
| Is there bad things to watch or do on your screens, like
| scary stuff or things that are incredibly dull...absolutely.
| But the only way to learn what that is, is to let them
| experience it and learn.
| Grustaf wrote:
| "Bicycles bad"? I don't think anyone has said that since
| Victorian times. Probably not then either.
|
| If your son hadn't been into BMX/MTB/Cross (are you sure
| you mean halfpipe?) before the unlimited screen time
| policy, don't you think he might have ended up obsessed
| with computer games or youtube instead?
| rock_hard wrote:
| We have never had a screen time policy. I was always
| unlimited. He also watches a bunch of dumb crab on
| YouTube...but hey, I enjoy my stupid TikTok memes
| too...so why wouldn't I let him.
|
| I make fun of him when I think he does something
| stupid...but it's in good spirit. My job as a parent is
| not to manipulate him into the life I think he should
| live...my job is to enable him to live his!
|
| And Yes, our 5y old takes a full size dirt park half
| pipe...has done so ever since he has been 3y or so. I
| wouldn't do that myself...but he does
|
| He also is into skateboards, snowboards, plays
| basketball, soccer and what not. He got me into
| skateboarding at 40...don't worry though, I wear a helmet
| :)
|
| In this moment I am watching him race an RC car with
| 30-40mph across a meadow
|
| Earlier today he was had. oculus headset strapped on and
| was playing job simulator
| Grustaf wrote:
| How do you ride a dirt bike in a half pipe? I think
| you're mixing up terminology here. And he must be very
| big for his age if he can ride a full-size dirt bike.
|
| > My job as a parent is not to manipulate him into the
| life I think he should live
|
| That happens to be exactly what your job is. Children
| don't know what's best for them, that's why they have
| parents.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| You're misreading the words. It said "full size _dirt
| park_ half pipe "
| Grustaf wrote:
| So what does he take to the "dirt park half pipe", and
| what is that? I've never seen a half pipe in a dirt park,
| do you ride it like a snowboard half pipe or a skate
| ramp?
| newsclues wrote:
| What has the key to having them focus on "good" online
| content? Lots of discussion?
|
| How have the kids not been consumed by unlimited screen
| time? How do you keep them interested in real activities as
| well?
| rock_hard wrote:
| I grew up having unlimited access to candy
|
| Unlimited meaning whatever I could find in the house
|
| My wife on the other side grew up not having unlimited
| access to candy
|
| Guess who of the two of us as adult now can control their
| candy consumption and who if there is candy in the house
| will eat every last bit of it with 2/3 days?
|
| Forced limiting of anything won't teach a person how to
| deal with it...quite the opposite
| WA wrote:
| Cool, but what if your son stops watching interesting YT
| videos and starts playing Fortnite 10 hours a day?
|
| And: How old is your son and at what age did you start the
| unlimited screen time policy?
|
| Because as you say, there is more nuance to screen time. It
| depends on the kid's personality, the age, the environment,
| friends, access to outdoor activities etc.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Cool, but what if your son stops watching interesting
| YT videos and starts playing Fortnite 10 hours a day?
|
| Then something else is wrong. That's not a normal
| behavior that healthy people do, it's a symptom of some
| other problem in their life.
|
| Thanks to the pandemic, my son has learned that screens
| can be boring, and it's not all that exciting anymore
| after too much time. He's learned to put it down and find
| something else to do. We don't have to enforce screen
| time anymore, he mostly does it himself.
| garbagetime wrote:
| I tend to agree- at the very least an important
| hypothesis to consider
| throwoutway wrote:
| > That's not a normal behavior that healthy people do,
| it's a symptom of some other problem in their life.
|
| Not necessarily. Not when social media and gaming
| companies hire psychologist PhDs to explicitly entrap
| children through addictive traits
| rkk3 wrote:
| > Then something else is wrong. That's not a normal
| behavior that healthy people do, it's a symptom of some
| other problem in their life.
|
| Not really... games are designed to be incredibly
| addictive, can be social activities and have much lower
| physical consequences/withdrawals from misuse. Don't find
| Rat-Park as a convincing explanation for why high schools
| boys might prefer Fortnite to Zoom Class.
| rock_hard wrote:
| And kids will have to learn to deal with that!
|
| It's your job as a parent to provide exposure and teach
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| This post is so typical of all scientific posts to HN.
|
| Person posts negatively to the research and they never look at
| p valued or sample sizes. Also, they disregard any other
| possible research .
|
| Then a few to a hundred posts refuting the parent with
| anecdotal evidence of both positive and negative outcomes
| especially when science doesn't work in anecdotal evidence
| which is the point of science and it basically shows that they
| didn't read the story either.
|
| The big problem is that science isn't one sided. That papers
| are cherry picked from preprints or even Confrence and journals
| where one out of ten papers in a Confrence or a journal
| publication refute the article regardless.
| ipaddr wrote:
| And someone always posts a message like yours without
| actually reading the parent post.
|
| In the parent they suggest a greater trend spanning 2017
| onward which isn't being mentioned. Large or small p value
| isn't the issue here
| [deleted]
| isoskeles wrote:
| And someone always posts a reply like yours without etc.
| etc.
| [deleted]
| chrischattin wrote:
| The second and third order effects from society's misguided Covid
| response will, over time, prove much much worse than the effects
| of the actual virus.
| watwut wrote:
| I like how HN switched from "kids are better off with stay at
| home parent" to "infants need to be in childcare".
|
| Cause these are year and half or so old at max.
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