Learn How to Learn Better with the Pomodoro Technique
This 25-minute learning technique is one of the simplest in the world. It's also one of the most effective, says professor of engineering Barbara Oakley.
Barbara Oakley
Barbara Oakley, PhD, is a professor of engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Her research involves bioengineering with an emphasis on neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Alongside legendary neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski, Dr. Oakley teaches two massive open online courses (MOOCs), 'Learning How to Learn,' the world's most popular course, and 'Mindshift,' the companion course to her most recent book of the same title.
Barbara Oakley: The Pomodoro technique is probably one of the most powerful techniques in all of learning. So I teach a course of learning how to learn that’s actually the world’s largest massive open online course. We have something like two million people. And the Pomodoro technique is the most popular technique; I hear from literally thousands of people. And I have to give credit to the creator, who was Francesco Cirillo. He developed this technique in the early 1980s. And it’s so simple that really anybody can do it.
So all you have to do is turn off all distractions. So no little ringy-dingys on your cell phone or anything like that; on your computer you want to turn off any kind of messages that might arise. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and then just focus as intently as you can for those 25 minutes.
Now if you’re like me, you’ll start focusing away and you’re working away, and then you look up at the timer and two minutes have passed. Then my brain goes, “I’ve only done two minutes? I can’t do another 23 minutes on this Pomodoro!” And I let the thought just go right on by, and I return my focus to whatever I’m working on. And when that 25 minutes is up I relax a little bit. I turn my attention to something else.
Now I will admit that if I really get into the flow of what I’m doing that I will continue sometimes. You might wonder why that 25 minutes is the magic number, and the reality is we don’t really know. There’s not a lot of research on the Pomodoro technique which is surprising because it’s so incredibly popular and people find it very useful.
But there’s an interesting tidbit related to the Pomodoro technique, and that is that: when you even just think about something that you don’t like very much it activates a portion of the brain that experiences pain. And so the brain naturally enough shifts its attention to something else, anything else, like Facebook or Twitter or something like that. And what you’ve just done is you’ve procrastinated.
And what the Pomodoro technique does, when you do it you’re setting that timer. You don’t want to sit there and think, “I am going to finish this homework set” or “I’m going to work on this problem and get it all finished.” You just want to think, “I’ve got 25 minutes where I just have to work on something.” Don’t even think about what that something is. What that does is it slips in under your brain’s radar. It doesn’t activate so much that pain in your brain; and then that pain in the brain, research has shown it lasts for 20 minutes.
So if you work for 25 minutes you will suddenly find yourself getting into the flow because you’ve gone past that painful period. So the Pomodoro technique is effective in many different some very subtle ways and so I highly recommend it.
Learning is not always easy, and there may be a biological reason for that. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley teaches the world's largest online open class, commonly referred to as MOOCs. So you might be wondering what subject attracts more people than any other free online course? Learning to learn better is what Oakley teaches. One of the most effective techniques she knows of was created by an Italian named Francesco Cirillo, and you may have heard of it. It's called the Pomodoro Technique. What makes the technique so effective is that it trains your brain to concentrate for 25 minutes. What's so magical about 25 minutes? Research shows that your brain suffers for 20 minutes when you first try to concentrate, so outlasting that pain will help you get into a flow state of focus. You'll just need to summon the willpower to put your phone away. Barbara Oakley's most recent book is Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential, and you can find the Mindshift course here.
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We have a new word for that feeling when travel makes everything new
A tourist generally has an eye for the things that have become almost invisible to the resident.
23 February, 2021
TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images
Culture & Religion
On a double-decker bus from Dublin airport to Drumcondra early one June morning, a young lad stretched out on the back seat and started to rap.
<p> What he lacked in talent he made up for in gusto. I was with a dozen of my students who were travelling from DePaul University in Chicago on a study abroad trip and this was their very first impression of Ireland. I cringed and tried to ignore the atonal reveller. Their response, it turned out, was at odds with mine. 'That's American rap!' one of them chortled. 'Why is he rapping Kendrick?' The oddity of the situation entertained them, and they discussed it with a fervour typically reserved for matters of greater significance.</p><p>One thing I've noticed over the years of bringing my students to Ireland – my homeland – is that they pay rapt attention to the little things. This heightened and delighted attention to the ordinary, which manifests in someone new to a place, does not seem to have a name. So I have given it one: <em>allokataplixis</em> (from the Greek <em>allo</em> meaning 'other', and <em>katapliktiko</em> meaning 'wonder'). In Modern Greek <em>katapliktiko</em> and the related word <em>katataplixie</em> can be used to register astonishment. Admittedly, in Ancient Greek the family of words surrounding <em>kataplêxis</em> sometimes signified 'terror' and 'panic'. It is, however, the note of pure 'amazement' and 'fascination' present in this word that I want to celebrate in my neologism.</p><p><em>Allokataplixis</em>, as I use the term, is the gift, usually unacknowledged, that the traveller offers to the places they visit.</p>
<p>For the past five years, I have travelled around Ireland each summer with a bunch of allokataplixic American kids. Almost everything draws them in. In the city, they never choose to stay downstairs on the bus – there's just too much to see from the upper deck. Marvellous to them also is the slight smell of salt in the air when you arrive in Dublin, the raucousness of seagulls crying overhead, the low-rise and higgledy-piggledy appearance of the city's architecture, the garrulousness of the people, the little fossils embedded in the bridge that spans the pond in St Stephen's Green, the 99 Flake ice-cream cones, the inclination of Irish people to traditional music, the almost unfathomable reverence in the west for uilleann pipers, the omnipresence of sheep on hilly tracts of land, the unhealthy deliciousness of Tayto crisps, the intense greenness of the vegetation, the yellowness of the butter, the perennial greyness of the sky, the presence of poets – actual poets – in the streets, Martello towers, walled gardens, the frankness about matters of mortality, the way the elderly habitually cross themselves as their bus lurches past the churches, the vat-loads of tea consumed, the vat-loads of stout consumed, the strangeness of Ireland's youthful drinkers hailing Budweiser as a premier beer, the national addiction to sweets, the quantity of dog shit left to gently steam in the thoroughfares, the medical acumen of pharmacists in 'Chemist' shops, the casual insults that friends sling at one another, the extravagant length of the midsummer's day, the gorgeousness of the sun setting on the Atlantic viewed from the beaches of the west, the melancholy slopes in County Kerry that were abandoned during the famine. And so on.</p><p>There is, of course, so much to learn when any of us visit a place for the first time and it would be easy to assume that information passes in one direction only, from the host nation to its guests. Yet over the years that I've been bringing students to Ireland I've observed that their thirst for fresh experience is contagious. It oftentimes brings out the best in people. A tourist generally has an eye for the things that, through repetitive familiarity, have become almost invisible to the resident. What is revealed need not always be congenial of course – visitors can make the resident aware of the shortcomings of their home: litter in the streets, poor service, even troubling cultural attitudes such as xenophobia. A tourist can stir within us a recognition of both the delicious strangeness of mundane things and our own unseemly peccadilloes.</p><p>This annual migration to Ireland that I take with Hugh Bartling, a climate policy wonk, and our students, is focused primarily on the ecology of our national parks. Unlike the United States, where such parks are often regarded as wilderness areas, in Ireland there is an acknowledgement that even remote landscapes are as much a product of cultural forces as they are of nature. To instil an understanding of the history and resilience of these traditional, cultural landscapes, we prepare our students before they leave by reading a great quantity of Tim Robinson's work. Over a period of four decades – from the 1970s until his recent departure from Ireland – Robinson walked, mapped and wrote about the west of Ireland with verve and enormous grace. Those who have read his brace of books on the Aran Islands – <em>Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage</em> (1986) and <em>Stones of Aran: Labyrinth</em> (1995 ) – or his trilogy on Connemara – <em>Connemara: Listening to the Wind</em> (2006), <em>Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness</em> (2008) and <em>Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom</em> (2011 ) – will know the story of his coming to Ireland fairly well. Jaded from the European art scene, Robinson and his partner visited Inis Mór in the 1970s and elected to stay. A local postmistress mentioned that a map of the island would be useful. What began as an index of place names mushroomed over the years into one of the great European literary projects of the last several decades: the work includes maps, books, a Gazetteer, essays and lectures. A central metaphor in Robinson's body of work is the notion of the fractal – a geometrical pattern that shows the property of self-similarity at various observational scales. Snowflakes and coastlines are examples in nature. Robinson writes that the fractal promises to be a rich 'source of metaphor and imagery' in literature and life. He continues: 'Like all discoveries it surprises us yet again with the unfathomable depth and richness of the natural world; specifically it shows that there is more space, there are more places within a forest … or on a Connemara seashore, than the geometry of common sense allows.'</p>
<p>Robinson, the one-time tourist, became one of the great natural and social historians of that part of the world. Though the work is rightly celebrated, what is not always noted is how Robinson, as an attentive outsider, awakens even his Irish readers to a recognition of the fantastical in the mundane landscapes of the west. Robinson is, in other words, a great writer of allokataplixis.</p><p>One does not need, however, to be an outsider or a tourist to be allokataplixic. Is it not the task of most writers to awaken us from the dull, the flat and the average sentiments that can dominate our lives? Many of the Irish writers that my students read before travelling have a knack for noticing the marvellous in the everyday, and of making the quotidian seem wholly other and amazing. Robert Lloyd Praeger, the great naturalist of the last century, is one such writer – as he travelled the rural counties, some of his greatest botanical discoveries were made right outside the guesthouse door. J M Synge, especially in his often-neglected writing on travels in Wicklow, Connemara and Kerry, is another such writer. And James Joyce, that profound naturalist of life's epiphanic moments, specialised in observing how the ecstatic intrudes – sometimes painfully – into the everyday. My students read the story 'The Dead' as an ecological text, for it provides an abiding account of a rupture between Ireland's supposedly refined east coast and its feral west. At the conclusion, Gabriel Conroy, cuckolded by the ghost of Michael Furey, his wife's dead boyfriend, takes a melancholic psychological journey across a snowy Ireland to that boy's grave. Joyce wrote in one of his most celebrated passages that the snow 'was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.'</p><p>I'll mention just one more recent writer, if only to illustrate that a new generation of allokataplixic writers is emerging: Karl Whitney, author of <em>Hidden City: Adventures and Explorations in Dublin</em> (2014). In <em>Hidden City</em>, Whitney becomes a visitor to the city of his birth, a tourist of the commonplace. In one brilliant chapter, he inches along beneath the streets of Dublin, following the courses of rivers that have long been paved over. In another, he follows the excrement of the denizens of the city out to the sewage treatment plants and, once treated and refined, follows the liquid discharge out into Dublin Bay. Not since Leopold Bloom defecates so leisurely in an early chapter of <em>Ulysses</em> has urban excrement been so vividly described.</p>
<p>Last year as we crossed the Midlands, we walked out on the boardwalk at Clara Bog in County Offaly, where by chance we met with a local out on his morning constitutional. Tommy was a former worker for Bord na Móna, the Irish semi-state body that oversees the economic development of peat for use as fuel. He is now an enthusiastic conservationist. That my students took such a delight in the bog seemed to ignite something in him. Noticing that one of the students carried a tin whistle, he volunteered to play a couple of reels and so we listened to the blast of a few tunes out on the bog on an ordinary Saturday morning. He said he'd never done anything like it. Allokataplixis is contagious.</p><p>I don't suppose one needs to live a life of perpetual astonishment. After all it's adaptive to forget. Our daily grind is perhaps easier to endure in a state of mild amnesia. Muscle memory sets in, routine takes over, and one day seems the same as any other. But days go by, the years hum along, and one can careen towards senility without being unduly startled by anything at all. Surely, there are times when we must be released from our moorings and free ourselves up to notice the peculiarities of everyday life. Our greatest writers have, as often as not, lived in a state of astonishment – this is not an easy burden. But in a quieter register and perhaps in an equally instructive way, even the everyday tourist can alert us to the remarkable in our home terrain. When we are ourselves tourists, we notice things. But even in noticing how tourists are alive to their surroundings, might we not learn something from them? Observe the tourists on Dublin's Grafton Street listening to the buskers, or watch them marvel at the lights on Broadway in New York. Witness them sip their ouzo at the Acropolis or behold them picking their way across the newly minted basalt lava-flow in the Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. They've brought their allokataplixis with them.</p><p><em>Thanks to my wife Vassia Pavlogianis for discussions on the Modern Greek words for wonder, and to Dr Sean Kirkland of DePaul University in Chicago for a tutorial on the Ancient Greek etymology.</em><img src="https://metrics.aeon.co/count/170d73af-c3dd-4d6e-be95-20c44cbb3652.gif" alt="Aeon counter – do not remove"></p><p>Liam Heneghan</p><p>This article was originally published at <a href="https://aeon.co/?utm_campaign=republished-article" target="_blank">Aeon</a> in 2017and has been republished under Creative Commons. Read the <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/we-have-a-new-word-for-that-feeling-when-travel-makes-everything-new" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
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Drinking coffee while pregnant alters the fetal brain
A large new study puts caffeine-drinking moms on alert.
23 February, 2021
Credit: Suhyeon Choi/Unsplash
Mind & Brain
- Neuroregulating caffeine easily crosses the placental barrier.
- A study finds that the brains of children born to mothers who consumed coffee during pregnancy are different.
- The observed differences may be associated with behavioral issues.
<p>As one human body gives birth to another, so many things have to, and usually do, go right. It's known that substances a mother ingests can influence the success of fetal development. Modern mothers are careful regarding the consumption of alcohol, associated with a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/alcohol-use.html" target="_blank">wide array of problems</a> during fetal development and later in life.</p><p>Researchers have also investigated the impact of coffee consumption during pregnancy. It's known that caffeine easily traverses the placenta and that a fetus lacks the enzymes necessary to break down this known neuroregulatory compound. Studies have found that the coffee's caffeine can result in <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081103102125.htm" target="_blank">lower birth weights</a> when too much of the beverage is consumed.</p><p>Now a <a href="https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/del-monte-neuroscience/news/announcements.aspx?start=01-01-2021&end=12-31-2021#newsItem5099" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">substantive study</a> from researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester states definitively that coffee during pregnancy can change important fetal brain pathways that may lead to behavioral issues later in life.</p><p>What's too much coffee? First author <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zachary-Christensen-2" target="_blank">Zachary Christensen</a> says, "Current clinical guidelines already suggest limiting caffeine intake during pregnancy—no more than two normal cups of coffee a day. In the long term, we hope to develop better guidance for mothers, but in the meantime, they should ask their doctor as concerns arise."</p><p>This guidance may change as a result of this study, notes principal investigator <a href="https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/people/29722174-john-j-foxe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">John Foxe</a>, who says, "I suppose the outcome of this study will be a recommendation that any caffeine during pregnancy is probably not such a good idea."</p><p>The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0028390821000332?via%3Dihub" target="_blank">Neuropharmacology</a>.</p>
A large study of nine- and ten-year-old brains
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3NzIyOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MDk5MjQ0N30.UCu1Ygfi_rmO-xLpW-KOgCX-MJ3bfqjzfIVg4Kmcr9w/img.jpg?width=980" id="d2e15" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c96aa86f8dbe08aa8536502ac1769497" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1440" data-height="960" />Credit: myboys.me/Adobe Stock
<p>For the study, its authors analyzed brain scans of 9,000 nine and ten-year-olds. Based on their mothers' recollections of their coffee consumption during pregnancy, the researchers found that children of coffee drinkers had clear changes in the manner in which white brain matter tracks were organized. These are the pathways that interconnect brain regions.</p><p>According to Foxe, "These are sort of small effects, and it's not causing horrendous psychiatric conditions, but it is causing minimal but noticeable behavioral issues that should make us consider long-term effects of caffeine intake during pregnancy."</p><p>Christensen says that what makes this finding noteworthy is that "we have a biological pathway that looks different when you consume caffeine through pregnancy."</p><p>Of children with such pathway differences, Christensen says, "Previous studies have shown that children perform differently on IQ tests, or they have different psychopathology, but that could also be related to demographics, so it's hard to parse that out until you have something like a biomarker. This gives us a place to start future research to try to learn exactly when the change is occurring in the brain."</p><p>The study doesn't claim to have determined exactly <em>when</em> during development these changes occur, or if caffeine has more of an effect during one trimester or another.</p><p>Foxe cautions, "It is important to point out this is a retrospective study. We are relying on mothers to remember how much caffeine they took in while they were pregnant."</p><p>So as if being pregnant wasn't difficult enough, it sounds like the most conservative and safe course of action for expectant mothers is to forgo those revitalizing cups of Joe and switch to decaf or some other uncaffeinated form of liquid comfort. We apologize on behalf of science.</p>
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Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
03 May, 2020
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Surprising Science
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
<p>Alien hunting is a hopeful activity and one reason behind our space programs that the public generally supports. Looking for other life is a strong incentive to be venturing out into space, despite having found none so far. A top British space scientist,<strong> Professor Monica Grady,</strong> gave all cosmic explorers a big dose of such hope in a recent speech. She is certain there's some form of life on Jupiter's moon, <strong>Europa</strong>.</p><p>This life would not look human, but more like an "octopus," and is likely residing in the cold waters under the moon's sheets of ice. </p><p>Grady, a Professor of Planetary and Space Science and Chancellor at Liverpool Hope University, thinks there's a great likelihood of undiscovered life somewhere in our galaxy.</p><p>She also supposes that the deeper caves and cavernous spaces of Mars could be harboring some subterranean creatures, likely bacteria, there to escape the solar radiation. They could be getting water from the ice buried deep down. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it's <strong>almost a racing certainty </strong>that there's life beneath the ice on Europa," <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-02-certainty-life-europa-mars-uk.html" target="_blank">she said</a> in a February address.</p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">She thinks these life forms on Europa, </span><span style="background-color: initial;">390 million miles from Earth, could be higher in sophistication than the Martian bacteria, possibly having "the intelligence of an octopus."</span><br></p><p>Where would the creatures live on this moon of Jupiter? Somewhere below the very thick layer of ice, which goes 15 miles deep in some places. It's possible there is liquid water beneath all that ice, keeping whatever lives inside protected against radiation and the impact of asteroids and similar smashing bodies.</p><p><span></span><span style="background-color: initial;">The likelihood of life on Europa is bolstered by </span><span style="background-color: initial;">the possible <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.P23D1743G/abstract" target="_blank">hydrothermal vents</a> on its ocean floor. Such vents are cradles of life on Earth.</span></p><p>Grady thinks that our solar system doesn't have to be particularly special and that statistically speaking, as we explore other stars and galaxies, we should be able to find conditions for life. "I think it's highly likely there will be life elsewhere—and I think it's highly likely they'll be made of the same elements," <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-02-certainty-life-europa-mars-uk.html" target="_blank">stated</a> the professor.</p>
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div><p>Grady did not want to guess whether we would contact extraterrestrials any time soon, citing the fact that distances between us and likely aliens might be gigantic. </p><p>On the other hand, she added, if you look at a grain of sand, you "can see that most of it is made up of silicates, but it's also got little patches of carbon in it—and that carbon is extra-terrestrial, because it also contains nitrogen and hydrogen, which is not a terrestrial signature."</p><p>This tiny sample, says Grady, shows it was hit by meteorites, asteroids, and interstellar dust, pointing out "It's giving us an idea of how complex the record of extra-terrestrial material really is."</p>
<p>As for Europa, it has certainly figured in conversations about alien life previously. As <a href="https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/why-europa/" target="_blank">NASA explains</a>, scientists call Europa an "ocean world" due to decades of observations that predict an ocean under its sheets of ice. </p><p><span style="background-color: initial;">In 2019, water vapor was confirmed there by NASA for the first time. While it might just have the right conditions for life, </span><span style="background-color: initial;">does this moon have little octopus E.T.s swimming about? Future studies will tell. </span></p>
Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
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Could playing video games be linked to lower depression rates in kids?
Can playing video games really curb the risk of depression? Experts weigh in.
23 February, 2021
Credit: TheVisualsYouNeed on Adobe Stock
Technology & Innovation
- A new study published by a UCL researcher has demonstrated how different types of screen time can positively (or negatively) influence young people's mental health.
- Young boys who played video games daily had lower depression scores at age 14 compared to those who played less than once per month or never.
- The study also noted that more frequent video game use was consistently associated with fewer depressive symptoms in boys with lower physical activity, but not in those with high physical activity levels.
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/prospective-relationships-of-adolescents-screenbased-sedentary-behaviour-with-depressive-symptoms-the-millennium-cohort-study/1DE7A90DFF566E36742B141724673B47" target="_blank">A new study</a> published by a UCL researcher has demonstrated how different types of screen time can positively (or negatively) influence young people's mental health. The study suggests that boys who play video games frequently in early adolescence (around age 11) are less likely to develop depressive symptoms throughout the following years. Additional findings in this study suggest that girls who spend more time on social media appear to develop more depressive symptoms.</p><ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
How do video games and social media impact young kids?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY3NDY2Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjM5OTQwMn0.FUGlBVN0uGa9jYXpbSjHssFpcdJGcpM-hsA8vJb1mJc/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C488%2C0%2C111&height=700" id="d4200" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6a1be92721c981f409d8c9efb574fe45" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="two kids sitting on the couch playing video games together" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />The study gained interesting insight into the link between depression rates at age 14 and video game usage a few years earlier.
Credit: Pixel-Shot on Adobe Stock
<p>The study's lead author, Ph.D. student Aaron Kandola, explains to <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/ucl-bwp021721.php" target="_blank">Eurekalert</a>: "Screens allow us to engage in a wide range of activities. Guidelines and recommendations about screen time should be based on our understanding of how these different activities might influence mental health and whether that influence is meaningful."</p><p><strong>How this study was conducted: </strong></p><ul><li>These findings come as part of the Millennium Cohort Study, where over 11,000 (n = 11,341) adolescents were surveyed. </li><li>Depressive symptoms were measured with a Moods and Feelings Questionnaire (age 14). </li><li>"Exposures" were listed as the frequency of video games, social media, and internet usage (age 11). </li><li>Physical activity was also accounted for on a self-reporting basis. </li></ul><p><strong>When comparing young boys (age 11) who played video games to those who don't, the study showed interesting results: </strong></p><ul><li>Boys who played video games <strong>daily</strong> had 24.3 percent lower depression scores at age 14 (compared to those who played less than once per month or never). </li><li>Boys who played video games <strong>at least once per week</strong> had 25.1 percent lower depression scores at age 14 (compared to those who played less than once per month or never). </li><li>BOoys who played video games <strong>at least once per month</strong> had 31.2 percent lower depression scored at age 14 (compared to those who played less than once per month or never). </li></ul><p><strong>When comparing how depression impacted young girls based on their social media usage, the researchers found that:</strong></p><ul><li>Compared with less than once per month/never social media usage, using social media most days at age 11 was associated with a 13% higher depression score at age 14. </li></ul>Can playing video games actually be beneficial?
<p>There has been a lot of speculation in the past two decades about screen-time, social media, and video games. Whether it's <a href="https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson" target="_blank">linking video games to violence</a> and obesity or <a href="https://childmind.org/article/is-social-media-use-causing-depression/#:~:text=In%20several%20recent%20studies%2C%20teenage,who%20spent%20the%20least%20time." target="_blank">linking social media to depression and anxiety</a> — this seems to be a controversial question. According to the research, the answer to this question is yes, video games can be beneficial in moderation when paired with physical activity and real-life application.</p><p><strong>Adding in some physical activity could be the difference between beneficial and harmful.</strong></p><p>The above-mentioned study also noted that more frequent video game use was consistently associated with fewer depressive symptoms in boys with lower physical activity, but not in those with high physical activity levels. </p><p><strong>Previous studies have concluded there are some mental health benefits to playing video games. </strong></p><p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/16/health/video-games-mental-health-study-wellness-scli-intl/index.html#:~:text=It%20found%20that%20time%20spent,reporting%20that%20they%20felt%20happier.&text=%22In%20fact%2C%20play%20can%20be,withhold%20those%20benefits%20from%20players.%22" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A 2020 study</a> by the University of Oxford analyzed the impacts of playing two extremely popular games at the time: Nintendo's "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" and Electronic Arts' "Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville." The study used data and survey responses from over 3000 players in total — the games' developers shared anonymous data about people's playing habits, and the researchers surveyed those gamers separately about their well-being. </p><p><strong>Results of this study found that time spent playing these games was associated with players reporting that they felt happier. </strong></p><p>Additionally, previous studies (such as <a href="https://it.arizona.edu/blog/can-playing-video-games-make-you-smarter" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this University of Arizona study</a>) have linked video game usage with new learning opportunities: <em>"</em></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">Games like Minecraft are being used in more and more classrooms around the country. MinecraftEdu (recently purchased by Microsoft), allows teachers to structure a sandbox-style play environment around any curriculum. Students can work together to learn the scientific method, build farms, or take advantage of turtle robots to learn basic programming. Not only do these activities improve team-building skills, but they give students the chance to develop and practice technological literacy."</p><p><strong>"Everything in moderation" is an important factor in determining whether video game use is beneficial or harmful. </strong></p><p>While there can be some positive impacts from playing video games, research (such as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6676913/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this study conducted in 2013</a>) has also shown that people who spend a predominant part of their day gaming are at risk of showing lower educational and career attainment in addition to problems with peers and lower social skills. </p>
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