Screen Time
Time spent onscreen and its measurable effects.
Does Media Multitasking Actually Wreck Your Attention?
A famous finding, two direct replications, three meta-analyses, and a small surviving effect that nobody can show is causal.
Is Writing Notes by Hand Better Than Typing?
Two famous findings, two published challenges, and a detail about the typing condition in the newer study that is hard to get past once you know…
Does Screen Time Actually Make You Miserable?
The original said adult evidence was thin. It is not thin any more, and what filled the gap sits awkwardly against the number everyone quotes.
Is a “dopamine detox” real, or a misunderstanding of dopamine?
A behavioural technique with a catchy name became a neuroscience claim with no basis. The technique is fine. The neuroscience is not.
Does Switching to a Dumbphone Actually Help?
The strongest evidence for cutting mobile internet is also the strongest evidence for how hard it is. Both halves matter for anyone considering a flip phone.
Does Answering Work Messages After Hours Actually Burn You Out?
A construct with a decade of research behind it, effect sizes one review calls meagre, and a mechanism that did not hold up in the authors’…
Is “Brain Rot” Real? What Short Videos Do to Attention
The word is a joke about itself. The correlations behind it are real, surprisingly large, almost all observational, and mostly from one continent.
Does Music Help You Concentrate?
The picture got more complicated in revision. Instrumental music is not simply harmless, and one meta-analysis of 47 studies points the other way entirely.
Do Digital Detoxes Actually Work?
Most detox research found nothing much, across randomised and non-randomised designs alike. One controlled trial found effects large enough to be worth interrogating.
Do You Understand Less When You Read on a Screen?
The paper advantage is real, small, and almost entirely dependent on two conditions. Both of them describe a normal working day.
Does Having Your Phone on the Desk Hurt Your Focus?
One 2017 study launched a thousand desk-drawer policies. The replication record since then is worth knowing before you build a habit on it.
Does Dark Mode Reduce Eye Strain?
Dark mode is the default aesthetic of technical work, but the research on display polarity mostly points the other way. Here is what the studies measured,…
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Tags cut across the four pillars, so a subject can be followed wherever it turns up.
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How these articles get written
Every claim is traceable to a named source, and where the evidence is thin that gets said rather than smoothed over. Read the research standards to see what a claim has to clear, or read about TorpidLife.