WIL Weekly #51
iPad kids, sunscreen doesn't prevent skin cancer, protein & longevity and more...
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1. The rage of iPad kids - Screens are creating angry children
August 2024 study: Early-Childhood Tablet Use and Outbursts of Anger
A couple weeks back I stopped inside a cafe to do some work. There was a father with his three-year-old (I think) kid across from me on the table right next to me. I didn’t pay much attention until the kid let out a shriek of protest at something. The dad was sipping his coffee and holding up his iPhone while his son watched some cartoon or something on it (he had the sound off). The kid was completely transfixed on the screen and wasn’t blinking very much. The father was relaxed and enjoying his coffee while glancing at his son and what was going on in the cafe. His superior adult brain wasn’t very entertained by the cartoon. At some point he got a text, so he paused the program and lifted up the phone to write a reply. Immediately the kid looked distraught and started crying. The father wrapped up his text message quickly and put the phone back. The kid stopped crying immediately. Later, the phone fell forward onto the table, interrupting the kids viewing time for about a second before the Dad picked it back up. The kid let out a brief but loud whine of distress. More whining would ensue whenever anything blocked the view of the screen.
A study from just last month investigated how child tablet use affected expressions of anger and frustration at ages 3.5 to 5.5 years. The study looked at 315 children and their parents. They concluded:
In this study, child tablet use at age 3.5 years was associated with more expressions of anger and frustration by the age of 4.5 years. Child proneness to anger/frustration at age 4.5 years was then associated with more use of tablets by age 5.5 years. These results suggest that early-childhood tablet use may contribute to a cycle that is deleterious for emotional regulation.
2. People who eat more protein live longer
August 2023 study: Dietary protein intake and all-cause mortality: results from The Kawasaki Aging and Wellbeing Project
The results of a study looking at 833 Japanese people older than 85 and their protein intake was published last year. They found that even after subtracting the expected health benefits of having more muscle mass, those who ate the most protein had the lowest risk of death (all-cause mortality). The researchers conclude that protein likely improves the lifespan of people, independent of the benefits that come from increased muscle mass.
3. Sunscreen doesn’t prevent skin cancer?
April 2018 study: Use of sunscreen and risk of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis
An April 2018 suggests that already by the early 1990s, available data was suggesting that sunscreen doesn’t actually protect against skin cancer.
The use of sunscreen is a key component of public health campaigns for skin cancer prevention, but epidemiological studies have raised doubts on its effectiveness in the general population.
A meta-analysis on 29 studies involving 313,717 participants “did not show a significant association between skin cancer and sunscreen use.” This includes melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. The evidence available before 1980 suggested that there was a link between sunscreen use and skin cancer. However, as more evidence became available, the link between skin cancer and sunscreen use was no longer statistically significant by the early 1990s. They conclude that their data “does not confirm the expected protective benefits of sunscreen against skin cancer in the general population.”
4. Blue light causes skin cancer (in rodents)?
August 2023 study: Induction of Skin Cancer by Long-Term Blue Light Irradiation
Somehow, after millennia of worshipping the sun, we arrived at the ‘common sense’ that it causes skin cancer. However, maybe we should turn our attention to the 2000 nits of blue light we’re blasting in our face at all hours of the day.
Hairless mice were irradiated with blue light (LED; peak emission 479 nm) every day for one year, and a control was irradiated with white light (LED), green light (LED; peak emission 538 nm), and red light (LED; peak emission 629 nm) for one year, respectively.
In a study where hairless mice were exposed to blue light, white light, green light or red light every day for one year, “skin cancer was induced only in the mice exposed to blue light.”
These findings suggest that long-term continuous irradiation with blue light induces neutrophil NETosis and an increase in type 1 macrophages, resulting in skin cancer.
Further, “the dermal expression of collagen decreased in blue-light-irradiated mice compared to that in the control mice.”
5. Depression across the political spectrum
While young liberals once had only slightly higher depression scores, by 2021-22 liberal young women were almost three times more likely to be depressed than conservative young women, and liberal young men almost twice as likely to be depressed as conservative young men. Plus, depression increased the most among liberal young women, where it went from 15% in the late 2000s to 46% in 2021-22 — more than tripling in a little more than a decade.
Interesting article by Jean Twenge
Sitting here learning about how blue light causes cancer while reading from a screwing to light but I can see my face.
There is no winning this fight.
I think the amount of blue light a cell phone can emit is paltry compared to the amount one is exposed to on a sunny day with blue skies. Perhaps the highest incidence of skin cancer can be linked to the regions with the most blue sky days? Arizona skies, for one, are brilliantly blue, and for greater than 95% of the year. Compared this to Washington, Chicago, or New York, where skies are far more often a dull grey than blue, or just plain cloudy, for most of the year. Is it a coincidence that skin cancer rates in arizona are the highest?