I'm confused by this... It seems to me like the relevant part is "playing computer games is good" not "the type of sitting you do matters". Playing computer games while standing might be even better
> "...Passive activities such as watching television have been linked to worse memory and cognitive skills, while ‘active sitting’ like playing cards or reading correlate with better brain health, researchers have found."
...Do these researchers even read this to themselves aloud before hitting publish? It's confounding that they would find "sitting" to be the active ingredient pushing the outcome differential. Obviously, if you remove the bodily posture from the action that the user is engaging in, you would observe the same outcome the researchers did—meaning sitting was not operative here (..duh).
Breaking news at 11: the brain works best when it’s actually used.
I feel like I've seen enough of these "X is good/bad for Y" articles on these popsci explainer sites surrounded by the same ads for an entire lifetime. Not that I don't think this is actual research, it's just the canonical link we end up with here on HN is probably... not the ideal one.
I wanted to grab the journal link, but going back to the article now, I'm trapped in a "keep reading" loop that blocks the article, so I can be told "Mouse Study Suggests Nose-Picking Has a Surprising Link With Alzheimer's". If I could use an adblocker on the work PC I would.
"Passively watching TV" feels like a common target for brain health/strength/etc discussions. I'm curious if there's been any studies into the differences that engagement with television programs can have on the brain. There's been a whole breadth of television programming over the decades. I think it would be wrong to treat it all as equal in regards to how it impacts your brain.
When I talk to people about videos we both watched, I'm struck by how much more they remember. Meanwhile I can lecture about any book I've read while other people can barely scrap together a sentence. Different mediums engage different brains.
Maybe in the future people will focus on solving problems some AGI can solve better to keep themselves in shape, like how exercise is a modern invention
That this is the state of "science" is very disappointing, and whenever I see the domain sciencealert, am pretty much trained that it is going to be nonsense.
Sadly, other science publications seem to be following a not dissimilar trend.
I have an “ADHD” Pipersong desk chair so I can go through a random-walk sitting position open-ended training circuit while I work. Without even thinking about it.
As soon as my kid was able to play video games, we basically banned him from watching tv.
His only tv was phonics and numbers, which helped significantly because when he started playing minecraft on creative, he had to sound out the items he wanted to search for.
I didn't have any science, it was intuition.
I suppose next step is to figure out which video games are best. We basically don't let them play Idle games, but I'm starting to think platformers might need to be banned too.
When I read this title I imagined active sitting to mean something like sitting in a rocking chair. To call sitting active because someone is using their brain seems even more stretched. We already know that you need to exercise your body and brain. Do we really need a term for different kinds of sitting to make us feel better about at least using our brain while our body decays?
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 43.6 ms ] threadhttps://news.uq.edu.au/2026-01-not-all-sitting-same-when-it-...
> "...Passive activities such as watching television have been linked to worse memory and cognitive skills, while ‘active sitting’ like playing cards or reading correlate with better brain health, researchers have found."
...Do these researchers even read this to themselves aloud before hitting publish? It's confounding that they would find "sitting" to be the active ingredient pushing the outcome differential. Obviously, if you remove the bodily posture from the action that the user is engaging in, you would observe the same outcome the researchers did—meaning sitting was not operative here (..duh).
Breaking news at 11: the brain works best when it’s actually used.
Next: Playing chess on one leg is better for brain health than sitting.
I feel like I've seen enough of these "X is good/bad for Y" articles on these popsci explainer sites surrounded by the same ads for an entire lifetime. Not that I don't think this is actual research, it's just the canonical link we end up with here on HN is probably... not the ideal one.
I wanted to grab the journal link, but going back to the article now, I'm trapped in a "keep reading" loop that blocks the article, so I can be told "Mouse Study Suggests Nose-Picking Has a Surprising Link With Alzheimer's". If I could use an adblocker on the work PC I would.
Sadly, other science publications seem to be following a not dissimilar trend.
Based on this report.
His only tv was phonics and numbers, which helped significantly because when he started playing minecraft on creative, he had to sound out the items he wanted to search for.
I didn't have any science, it was intuition.
I suppose next step is to figure out which video games are best. We basically don't let them play Idle games, but I'm starting to think platformers might need to be banned too.