Interestingly there is no mention of semantics or what does actually "TV watching" mean.
I have friends who self admittedly don't "watch TV" but they watch every single hyped up Netflix series available.
Are they watching TV? By this study they probably not. Are they watching TV? I'd say most likely yes, they also use the device called TV to watch Netflix
Aye, though supposedly without the ads. But with filler episodes. You wanted to waste less time, instead you get tricked. Then there's the cancelled after S1 thing which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>Participants were asked how frequently, on a scale ranging from “never/seldom” to “very often,” they watched television during their leisure time and how much of their workday they spent sitting.
One big concern for me in this article is, the MRI scans were not taken during the start of the study. But, I couldnt eliminate this because the pattern (of reduced white matter in brain) seem to hold true across the pool of 1700 people.
Most curious part of in this article is the active vs passive sitting distinction. Occupational sitting (or performing intellectual activity while sitting) correlated with better brain scans and white matter.
This makes sense, if I view it as consumption vs processing thing.
TV is pure consumption, Intellectual work requires output and creation.
If this thesis holds, the rise of AI tools is a bit concerning for knowledge workers. We are shifting from active creation (writing code, writing articles, designing, etc) to passive consumption and curation (reviewing AI generated content).
Will be interested to learn more on how this study unfolds further.
Observational study with an MRI at the end and user-reported activity histories. The results indicate a correlation, not necessarily causation. The study authors don't pretend to imply causation and are straight with these facts.
You can't randomize humans to either do a lot of TV watching for years or stay away from TV for years. So you can you safely assume any study making these correlations is not randomized. It does not mean it should be discarded.
There are a lot of other studies looking at how cortical volume can be preserved through aging with other interventions, however. There are a lot of before/after studies showing aerobic exercise can reduce the brain volume loss associated with aging - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41491407/
So despite this being a correlation study, the result is not surprising. Sedentary activity is correlated with slightly faster degradation of multiple brain measures.
What is interesting in this study is that sedentary work that was intellectually challenging appeared to be somewhat protective. This is also consistent with past studies with before/after measurements around interventions like really intensive skill learning or even meditation.
>The results indicate a correlation, not necessarily causation
Just to drive that home, "Study participants also did not undergo a baseline MRI", which of course could mean that they already had some of these brain changes, which may have driven more TV watching.
>Sedentary activity is correlated with slightly faster degradation of multiple brain measures.
It seems to matter what you do while you're being sedentary, at least according to this study. From the article: "Strikingly, the sedentary element of TV watching didn’t appear to be the main driver for these changes."
When I find articles like these, I remember I haven't watched TV for almost 12 years, except when at someone else's home.
By this, I mean I never turned on the TV to see what's on the television.
I used the TV as a monitor to play games or watch movies from streaming services at times.
Given that I moved to the UK after I stopped watching TV, I barely know which channels even exist on the TV.
I do watch a lot of stuff on YouTube. But it's things I chose to watch because I find them interesting, and I don't find most of the stuff on TV interesting enough.
And the interesting parts, usually, you can find them on streaming services and only watch those whenever you want to watch them. Even scrolling brain rot on Instagram seems less of a waste of time. At least the algorithm knows the type of brain rot I like.
Geez, growing up in the 60's and 70's I watched a lot of TV: Little Rascals, Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny--the good stuff. I guess without that time spent watching my brain now would be the size of a large watermelon.
I watch (or listen to) a lot of youtube on my iPad (and sometimes on my TV, but not too often). I wonder if youtube watching is also correlated with the mentioned brain changes.
There's more variety of content on youtube, whereas I think TV sometimes caters to lowest common denominator (although that's less the case in the era of streaming: TV is much higher quality than it was when this study started in 1987).
On youtube, you could watch lots of silly dancing videos, car crashes, etc., possibly rotting your brain. Or you could watch history lectures, book reviews, documentaries, etc.
The type of content, the length of content, the method of ingesting the content, the different motivations/precursors to TV watching vs online watching (since the study doesn't determine causation only correlation) lots of things.
Science doesn't work by looking at things and saying what's "obvious" or "common sense", because what's supposedly obvious or common sense is often actually false.
YouTube algorithms have a tendency to try and lead you down rabbit holes and watch AI generated content. I notice YouTube constantly trying to bias me in one direction or another. A lot of the political content on there is nowhere near as intelligent as it pretends to be.
If it notices you are interested in something, it will show you a glut of content on that particularly subject. Some of the videos are just churning out similar content. If you click on a Monty Python video, Python takes over your suggestions. Nothing against Python, I just want to watch a variety of things.
What does that even mean? If people with cognitive deficits have a powerful idiosyncratic preference for pineapple juice, that's not a bad look for pineapple juice.
In a way, that's true. Drinking a lot of juice, or soft drinks, is not ideal, and when I see an overweight person drinking straight from a large juice bottle, that reaffirms my belief. It would be socially unacceptable to judge this behavior as being caused by cognitive deficits, but you could argue that such people are acting against their own interests (which is a very human thing to do, we're not machines).
The case of watching a lot of TV is a bit different though because it's about attention. Time is limited and it makes a difference whether I do something intellectually stimulating or not. If I spend 8 hours per day creating things, writing software, learning languages, etc., that is going to develop my brain in a different way than 8 hours of watching TV does.
Now to the point about the bad look: even if the study could not prove a causal relationship, why would you even risk it? There is little to gain from watching lots of TV and you'll end up healthier and happier by prioritizing other things.
Pineapple juice is exploitable as well! Sweetened beneverages are highly caloric and hyperpalatable and preferentially consumed by lower-SES customers. This is an actual criticism people have of our food supply! The point isn't that they're not exploitable, it's that you have to show that they are, otherwise we're not talking about a study anymore, and instead simply telling each other just-so stories.
Poor study design for such sweeping claims. Correlation is not causation. Plethora of reasons people who were later measured with small brain sizes may have been heavy TV watchers earlier in life.
Perhaps people who already have small brains watch more TV. Or perhaps exercise is important to brain size, and people who can’t exercise watch more TV. Or maybe not watching TV, and doing other things with your time, grows your brain size.
I'd like to see the study go farther with a specific consumed content breakdown. For example somone who watches Jimmy Kimmel vs someone who watches Dateline nightly. How much impact does the content affect the brain rot?
I could have told you that years ago. LOL. The problem is that as a medium it is so passive. Radio forces you to visualise to some extent or maybe do other things. Computer games and some of the internet (even social media!) require some interaction.
Reading and stage plays require heavier use of the brain too. In the case of reading, you both interpret the words and in many cases visualise things based on them.
“[Television] is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." —Karl Marx not talking about television.
Given the difficulties of random blinding, and the long-term (decades-long) duration of the research, studying that aspect (with the same post hoc brain morphology analysis) might help assess causality.
There was some exclusion of other factors in the study per TFA.
Additional areas: South Africa and Tanzania saw television introduced relatively recently, 1975 and 1994 respectively. Those would be larger populations, though confounded by other factors (poverty, racism, higher early-adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS).
I'd thought of some other remote island locations as well, though most have quite small populations. That would make large-scale studies challenging.
Slightly orthogonal: Simon Winchester's book Outposts details many of these, including aspects of their cultures, though I don't recall if he dwelt long on the specifics of television or its lack.
I don't think these are a good comparison. The nature documentaries are primarily visual (and since it's Attenborough involve a lot of Foley work). His docs are extremely well made, but you could still use them as wallpaper as I have seen some do.
Maybe the same could be said about the Marvel films. You don't have to concentrate much, but you are guessing some of what is going on.
Some programmes do require some more imagination or interaction. A murder mystery, if it's any good will get you wondering whodunnit. If you are watching a better quality gameshow, you may be at least attempting to answer the questions. Or both may be wall paper.
>Strikingly, the sedentary element of TV watching didn’t appear to be the main driver for these changes.
>Those who reported high amounts of sitting at work actually had larger frontal and occipital lobes, as well as reduced white matter hyperintensity volumes, indicating better brain health than among those who sit to watch TV. This could be due to the intellectually stimulating nature of many sit-down jobs, say the study authors.
A fair point. I would argue that middle brow content is more dangerous. A lot of documentaries, news and political content will promote ideas which sound sophisticated or reasonable, but are no such thing.
I guess that means we are lucky that TVs weigh so much less now.
How even more lucky we are that social media and short form videos are floating in the cloud - lest they be crushing our poor little brain structures.
Interestingly there is no mention of semantics or what does actually "TV watching" mean.
I have friends who self admittedly don't "watch TV" but they watch every single hyped up Netflix series available.
Are they watching TV? By this study they probably not. Are they watching TV? I'd say most likely yes, they also use the device called TV to watch Netflix
Netflix is TV for the modern era, I don’t know who they think they’re kidding. It’s like the slogan, “it’s not TV. It’s HBO.”
I haven’t had home television service for nearly 20 years, but I watch my TV constantly. It’s the same thing with a different delivery mechanism.
Aye, though supposedly without the ads. But with filler episodes. You wanted to waste less time, instead you get tricked. Then there's the cancelled after S1 thing which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>Interestingly there is no mention of semantics or what does actually "TV watching" mean.
Also, is one watching "The Real Housewives of <place name>" on Bravo or an author interview on CSPAN.
Maybe no, as they don't watch ads that are so pervasive in classic TV? Just kidding.
>Participants were asked how frequently, on a scale ranging from “never/seldom” to “very often,” they watched television during their leisure time and how much of their workday they spent sitting.
I’d even say that YouTube autoplay is “watching TV”
One big concern for me in this article is, the MRI scans were not taken during the start of the study. But, I couldnt eliminate this because the pattern (of reduced white matter in brain) seem to hold true across the pool of 1700 people.
Most curious part of in this article is the active vs passive sitting distinction. Occupational sitting (or performing intellectual activity while sitting) correlated with better brain scans and white matter.
This makes sense, if I view it as consumption vs processing thing.
TV is pure consumption, Intellectual work requires output and creation.
If this thesis holds, the rise of AI tools is a bit concerning for knowledge workers. We are shifting from active creation (writing code, writing articles, designing, etc) to passive consumption and curation (reviewing AI generated content).
Will be interested to learn more on how this study unfolds further.
Direct study link: https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz...
Observational study with an MRI at the end and user-reported activity histories. The results indicate a correlation, not necessarily causation. The study authors don't pretend to imply causation and are straight with these facts.
You can't randomize humans to either do a lot of TV watching for years or stay away from TV for years. So you can you safely assume any study making these correlations is not randomized. It does not mean it should be discarded.
There are a lot of other studies looking at how cortical volume can be preserved through aging with other interventions, however. There are a lot of before/after studies showing aerobic exercise can reduce the brain volume loss associated with aging - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41491407/
So despite this being a correlation study, the result is not surprising. Sedentary activity is correlated with slightly faster degradation of multiple brain measures.
What is interesting in this study is that sedentary work that was intellectually challenging appeared to be somewhat protective. This is also consistent with past studies with before/after measurements around interventions like really intensive skill learning or even meditation.
>The results indicate a correlation, not necessarily causation
Just to drive that home, "Study participants also did not undergo a baseline MRI", which of course could mean that they already had some of these brain changes, which may have driven more TV watching.
>Sedentary activity is correlated with slightly faster degradation of multiple brain measures.
It seems to matter what you do while you're being sedentary, at least according to this study. From the article: "Strikingly, the sedentary element of TV watching didn’t appear to be the main driver for these changes."
Seems that the direction of causation is still an open question. Is TV watching causing smaller brains, or is it the other way around?
Intuitively both seem plausible. More research needed!
When I find articles like these, I remember I haven't watched TV for almost 12 years, except when at someone else's home.
By this, I mean I never turned on the TV to see what's on the television. I used the TV as a monitor to play games or watch movies from streaming services at times.
Given that I moved to the UK after I stopped watching TV, I barely know which channels even exist on the TV.
I do watch a lot of stuff on YouTube. But it's things I chose to watch because I find them interesting, and I don't find most of the stuff on TV interesting enough.
And the interesting parts, usually, you can find them on streaming services and only watch those whenever you want to watch them. Even scrolling brain rot on Instagram seems less of a waste of time. At least the algorithm knows the type of brain rot I like.
I wonder how many people still watch TV today.
I assume passive watching, like you're doing, is the problem.
Woosh
I guess it’s just brain rot and it could apply to any kins of compulsive consumption of junk(I.e social media, Netflix, TV etc)
Geez, growing up in the 60's and 70's I watched a lot of TV: Little Rascals, Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny--the good stuff. I guess without that time spent watching my brain now would be the size of a large watermelon.
I watch (or listen to) a lot of youtube on my iPad (and sometimes on my TV, but not too often). I wonder if youtube watching is also correlated with the mentioned brain changes.
Obviously? Why do you think it would be any different?
Not sure myself.
There's more variety of content on youtube, whereas I think TV sometimes caters to lowest common denominator (although that's less the case in the era of streaming: TV is much higher quality than it was when this study started in 1987).
On youtube, you could watch lots of silly dancing videos, car crashes, etc., possibly rotting your brain. Or you could watch history lectures, book reviews, documentaries, etc.
The type of content, the length of content, the method of ingesting the content, the different motivations/precursors to TV watching vs online watching (since the study doesn't determine causation only correlation) lots of things.
Science doesn't work by looking at things and saying what's "obvious" or "common sense", because what's supposedly obvious or common sense is often actually false.
YouTube algorithms have a tendency to try and lead you down rabbit holes and watch AI generated content. I notice YouTube constantly trying to bias me in one direction or another. A lot of the political content on there is nowhere near as intelligent as it pretends to be.
If it notices you are interested in something, it will show you a glut of content on that particularly subject. Some of the videos are just churning out similar content. If you click on a Monty Python video, Python takes over your suggestions. Nothing against Python, I just want to watch a variety of things.
Sitting while passively watching something that captivate your brain leaving no room for thoughts seems like the perfect combo for brain rot
Would they have published this study if the correlation was inverted, or would that have been rejected as spurrious bc it goes against our priors?
Lack of exercise results in smaller muscles, too.
Maybe smaller brain structures watch more tv?
They make the TV heavier, I think.
Heavy study reading associated with heavy TV watching a landmark study finds
Correlation or causation? The article doesn't specify whether the subjects' brain sizes were measured prior to the study.
I understand the difference, but in this case it’s not a good look for TV viewing regardless
What does that even mean? If people with cognitive deficits have a powerful idiosyncratic preference for pineapple juice, that's not a bad look for pineapple juice.
In a way, that's true. Drinking a lot of juice, or soft drinks, is not ideal, and when I see an overweight person drinking straight from a large juice bottle, that reaffirms my belief. It would be socially unacceptable to judge this behavior as being caused by cognitive deficits, but you could argue that such people are acting against their own interests (which is a very human thing to do, we're not machines).
The case of watching a lot of TV is a bit different though because it's about attention. Time is limited and it makes a difference whether I do something intellectually stimulating or not. If I spend 8 hours per day creating things, writing software, learning languages, etc., that is going to develop my brain in a different way than 8 hours of watching TV does.
Now to the point about the bad look: even if the study could not prove a causal relationship, why would you even risk it? There is little to gain from watching lots of TV and you'll end up healthier and happier by prioritizing other things.
Last I checked, pineapple juice isn't a highly-utilised behavioural manipulation channel.
The other mechanism is.
Even were the relationship not causal, it is at the very least likely exploitable.
Pineapple juice is exploitable as well! Sweetened beneverages are highly caloric and hyperpalatable and preferentially consumed by lower-SES customers. This is an actual criticism people have of our food supply! The point isn't that they're not exploitable, it's that you have to show that they are, otherwise we're not talking about a study anymore, and instead simply telling each other just-so stories.
Hyperpalatability and propaganda are at best distantly related.
Though a fair effort.
The linked paper suggests brain sizes were only measured once at visit 5.
Use it or lose it
Poor study design for such sweeping claims. Correlation is not causation. Plethora of reasons people who were later measured with small brain sizes may have been heavy TV watchers earlier in life.
Perhaps people who already have small brains watch more TV. Or perhaps exercise is important to brain size, and people who can’t exercise watch more TV. Or maybe not watching TV, and doing other things with your time, grows your brain size.
Bad TV, very bad. Good thing I watch my moving pictures on social media instead!
I'd like to see the study go farther with a specific consumed content breakdown. For example somone who watches Jimmy Kimmel vs someone who watches Dateline nightly. How much impact does the content affect the brain rot?
I could have told you that years ago. LOL. The problem is that as a medium it is so passive. Radio forces you to visualise to some extent or maybe do other things. Computer games and some of the internet (even social media!) require some interaction.
Reading and stage plays require heavier use of the brain too. In the case of reading, you both interpret the words and in many cases visualise things based on them.
“[Television] is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." —Karl Marx not talking about television.
Now I'm curious if it matters what you watch.
I think our brain's power lose its functionality,"thinking", when we forced to something.
Given the difficulties of random blinding, and the long-term (decades-long) duration of the research, studying that aspect (with the same post hoc brain morphology analysis) might help assess causality.
There was some exclusion of other factors in the study per TFA.
The island of Saint Helena only started getting TV relatively recently, so some studies have been done on children there to compare effects.
Since 1995, per Wikipedia, citing Wireless South Atlantic press release and St. Helena Broadcasting Corporation Ltd. sources:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Saint_Helena...>
Total population (2021): 4,439. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena>
Additional areas: South Africa and Tanzania saw television introduced relatively recently, 1975 and 1994 respectively. Those would be larger populations, though confounded by other factors (poverty, racism, higher early-adult mortality due to HIV/AIDS).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_usage_of_televisi...>
That could be interesting.
A lot of these places have gradual introduction as well. There were parts of the UK without a proper TV signal well into the 1980s.
Mid 1990s is earlier than I thought. Places like Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island may be even later.
I'd thought of some other remote island locations as well, though most have quite small populations. That would make large-scale studies challenging.
Slightly orthogonal: Simon Winchester's book Outposts details many of these, including aspects of their cultures, though I don't recall if he dwelt long on the specifics of television or its lack.
<https://bioeconometrician.github.io/outposts/> (Review)
Several of those islands have significant military and/or communications roles for the UK, and as such may have better-than-expected comms links.
Yeah... like, does watching an Attenborough documentary or two offset many hours of marvel movies? Asking for a friend.
I doubt it. It’s about consumption vs creation. Active vs passive.
I don't think these are a good comparison. The nature documentaries are primarily visual (and since it's Attenborough involve a lot of Foley work). His docs are extremely well made, but you could still use them as wallpaper as I have seen some do.
Maybe the same could be said about the Marvel films. You don't have to concentrate much, but you are guessing some of what is going on.
Some programmes do require some more imagination or interaction. A murder mystery, if it's any good will get you wondering whodunnit. If you are watching a better quality gameshow, you may be at least attempting to answer the questions. Or both may be wall paper.
probably not as much as doing anything non sedentary
>Strikingly, the sedentary element of TV watching didn’t appear to be the main driver for these changes.
>Those who reported high amounts of sitting at work actually had larger frontal and occipital lobes, as well as reduced white matter hyperintensity volumes, indicating better brain health than among those who sit to watch TV. This could be due to the intellectually stimulating nature of many sit-down jobs, say the study authors.
I stand corrected and will now go RTFM
edit: thats great... addressed in the first paragraph.
Next up: Heavy AI usage.
people like to put their television down, but we are still good friends
It’s called “the idiot box” for a reason.
It's not called an "idiot box" for nothing =)
it isn't the obvious idiocy that you've got to worry about, it's the not-obvious idiocy
Why not both?
because the not-obvious is harder to see.
A fair point. I would argue that middle brow content is more dangerous. A lot of documentaries, news and political content will promote ideas which sound sophisticated or reasonable, but are no such thing.