Television and computer use and dementia risk in older adults

It's interesting that first they use words like "association", but then somehow switch to "more harmful" and "more detrimental".

As far a I can understand the study design, it can establish a correlation but bot a causal relationship.

So, instead of implying that using computer up to "2.4 h/day" decreases risk of dementia, but higher screen time increases it, we could as well conclude that dementia patients are either unable to use a PC (< 2.4 h/day) or unable to stop using a PC (> 2.4 h/day).

I'm not confident at all at my ability to interpret this study, since it is definitely not my area of expertise, so, please, correct me if I'm wrong.

Update #1, after reading the article more carefully:

> "First, as an observational cohort study, causal relationships cannot be inferred; observed associations may reflect residual or unmeasured confounding and reverse causation."

that's what I said

> Second, a single baseline self-report likely introduced measurement error, missed secular shifts in digital-media use, and lacked content/context; session fragmentation, breaks, concurrent media, timing (e.g., evening vs daytime), and device type were unavailable.

How much do we really trust a dementia patient's self-report on device usage? I wouldn't even trust a healthy person's self-report. I think that anyone who ever tried to track screen time on computer or on the phone can understand how unreliable are your intuitive guesstimates compared to actual measurements.

Surely what you're doing on the computer makes a huge difference.

Fascinating,