Does overuse of the internet cause psychological harm?

[Boustrophedon]

OK I'm sorry, I couldn't help it, I got into an argument in the comments On Youtube. This guy was seriously suggesting that the internet causes autism. It doesn't. But he then suggests that:

I am suggesting that technology use seriously impacts all human beings mental health which can lead to misdiagnosis. Basically autism does not exist on the level of occurrence society would seem to like us to believe. What does exist is seriously crippled psyches of generations of online lives not lived.

Says the guy arguing the toss in the comments on Youtube.

So to the question: What is the current state of play on how much damage t'internet and online gaming is thought to cause in developing minds, if any?

[Stephanie]

Dr Pete Etchell's has some thoughts on screen time

https://cosmicshambles.com/words/blogs/ ... me-so-much

[jdc]

If Youtube Guy's theory is that the current reported prevalence is down to internet use, I suppose it might be worth mentioning broadening of diagnostic criteria, diagnostic substitution etc?

There's this from 2006: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16585296 which points out that "The growing administrative prevalence of autism from 1994 to 2003 was associated with corresponding declines in the usage of other diagnostic categories." There's also this from 2007: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-informa ... ity-survey "Using the recommended threshold of a score of 10 or more on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 1.0 per cent of the adult population had ASD. Published childhood population studies show the prevalence rate among children is also approximately 1.0 per cent."

This isn't exactly a "gotcha" but it does suggest that maybe there hasn't been an epidemic of autism, in which case there'd be nothing to be explained away with this psyche-crippling tech theory.

[Stephanie]

This piece might be of interest https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00032-5

It's about a project that collects screenshots throughout the day, so that researchers can better understand what people are doing on their devices, since the information from questionnaires can be interpreted in a number of ways.

Although I can only think that the researchers are going to see an awful lot of p.rn...

[JQH]

Although I can only think that the researchers are going to see an awful lot of p.rn...

I think you've rumbled their cunning plan to spend their working day being paid to look at p.rn.