The more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it is true. But please, don't believe everything you hear about teens today. Science and how well they are doing, despite the suffering of adults around them, tells a different story.

URGENT for California-based Scientists -- to pass the California Science Bond, which will help fund science in CA for years to come, we need to pressure Speaker Rivas to put the Bond up for a full vote in the State Assembly. Write a letter here! Takes 2 min :) actionnetwork.org/letters/stan...

“Instead of fixing the online world...we are punishing victims by taking away the places that they go to connect with friends, consume youth culture, and sadly, often escape people who are harming them offline.” NEW @candiceodgers.bsky.social Ted Talk: go.ted.com/candiceodgers #ConnectedLearning

I literally don’t watch American coverage bc of lalas 😂 please say this is permanent lol

'Enshittification' comes for all online products now, I guess... www.404media.co/lobotomized-...

Was interesting to read up on the Yondr study, which found very negligible impact of using phone pouches in schools and hear from its author: Author interview: holdenthorp.substack.com/p/my-discuss... Piece on the Yondr pouches: holdenthorp.substack.com/p/social-med...

Interesting report on 'dark patterns' in chatbot design: cdt.org/insights/dar...

Ian is trustworthy, and there are going to be people among the Minneapolis 15 who don't qualify for the Federal Public Defender and can't find a pro bono defense. Part of what the Feds are counting on is crushing defendants under massive legal costs to force them to flip and/or plead. Fight back.

this 💯 And also sharing out the work of others. The work you are excited to engage with, the work that has moved you or shaped your thinking.

Not only are these bans ineffective and likely harmful to marginalized teens (and for some of their proponents, that's the point), they seem to allow politicians to wash their hands of regulating these companies in a substantive way. They couldn't even be bothered to listen to actual researchers 🫠.

A lot of the “kids online safety” proponents actually are anti-LGBTQ extremists and fundamentalists who want kids to have less freedom and don’t care if that actually makes them tremendously less safe too

Found this timeline graphic to be really interesting -- and overall is a very useful summary of how Europe is trying to reduce dependence on American tech -- including social media platforms www.wired.com/story/all-th...

Interesting opinion piece from @williambrady.bsky.social and @elijfinkel.bsky.social about the role of engagement-based incentives in design of AI chatbots (based on what we learned about these incentives in social media platforms) www.chicagotribune.com/2026/06/07/o...

NEW: Hackers say that they used Meta’s AI support chatbot to break into a host of high-profile Instagram profiles by asking the support bot to change the email address associated with the target account.

✨New paper out @nature.com ✨ For 8 weeks around the 2024 US election, we randomly assigned 2,000 people to use social media algos we built ourselves. Do engagement-based algorithms amplify intergroup, moral & emotional (IME) content—and does that distort how we see political norms? 🧵🔗 👇

🥴 One of the issues with the present community notes structure on social media platforms (in addition to the fact that they aren't often fast enough to head off misinfo spread) is that they can be vulnerable to brigading tactics...and now, AI-based bot 'fact checkers'...

BREAKING: Boston City Council just unanimously passed a resolution condemning dangerous age verification and censorship laws, including the proposals put forward by @massgovernor.bsky.social and the MA House. Backlash to age gating social media is growing! www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-05...

NEW: In 2023, @404media.co reported on a marking firm claiming to sell "Active Listening" tech that would eavesdrop on people's phones and other devices for targeting ads. The FTC announced a settlement today that adds a new twist. @regret.bsky.social reports: www.wired.com/story/creepy...

Policymakers are legislating blanket bans on social media based on evidence that would be rejected in any other field of public health. Before imposing these draconian measures, they must listen to the experts sounding the alarm on oversimplified conclusions. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

"Instead of trying to completely shield young people from social media, education-based approaches empower young people and have the benefit of providing skills that stay with a young person long after they leave the classroom."

this is a harrowing read. schools and police still have zero clue how to deal with AI nudify apps being used by kids on their classmates. Apple and Google still not doing a great job deleting these apps. Instagram & TikTok are still promoting them via paid ads: www.404media.co/radnor-high-...

Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

This is a really great, research-based summary of the attention span “shrinking” effect related to technology and discusses how and why this effect often gets overstated, plus some reasons for optimism about reversing its undesirable impacts www.nature.com/articles/d41...

One of the most clarifying passages I've ever read on what "polarization" actually means in the U.S."

I have been proud to work with the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2003 in their efforts to counter anti-trans narratives in academia and media. Check out their latest piece on the “ex-transgender” movement. www.splcenter.org/resources/ha...

Yikes. What are the odds we hit a point where universities and/or academic journals try to pull something like this?

One thing chatting with journalist unions have taught me is that management doesn't care about the quality of the news product. Nor do they actual care about respecting actual journalists, it seems.

New preprint alert 🚨 ! Check out the full thread below 👇

New preprint out -- the first from my postdoc work @caltech.edu -- excited to share this interdisciplinary collaboration that combines Reddit, Online Chat, and fMRI data! Thanks also to the rest of our team @ketikagarg.bsky.social, Bo Zhang (no Bluesky), and @pandascholar.bsky.social!

We have a new preprint that underscores some key claims here: even if one *can* design an agent that gets through a survey fine, it doesn't follow that such agents are undetectable or common. We find that they are far from common! Preprint link in thread👇

Really interesting--p. 7 stood out to me. "Across all three platforms, most teen users say it neither hurts nor helps their mental health...We asked parents how social media overall impacts their teen: About a quarter say they hurt their teen’s mental health, compared with 8% who say they help."

Meta employees will be clicking the “speak to a real person” button repeatedly for 5-10 mins so they can get feedback from their manager instead of the Zuck AI agent 😂😭 www.fastcompany.com/91526258/met...

"Of the known factors driving teenagers’ problems, parental abuses/adversities were associated with two-thirds of teens’ poor mental health, 84% of teens’ opiate abuse, and 89% of teens’ suicide attempts." -- CDC Report mikemales.substack.com/p/our-top-he...

Nice review of key evidence (and what's missing) related to teen social media bans from @orbenamy.bsky.social and the digital mental health group in Cambridge. If you're looking for a trustworthy report, this is a great high-level starting point! www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/d0b4c5...

"𝗪𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗮 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝘆𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗯𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗴𝗲-𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝘀 across the platforms in January and February 2026 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱." -Australian eSafety compliance www.esafety.gov.au/sites/defaul...

You'd do well to read this story - and particularly the tone and tenor of the right to replies in brackets throughout www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

"His loss is felt deeply not only by those who knew him here at the University, but also everyone who understands his potential to have contributed to breakthroughs in science that would have positively impacted people around the world." -Dean of Engineering Karen Thole

We've been worrying about UX patterns that train users into dangerous behaviors for a while, but they weren't exploited often. Alas, it looks like it was just because there was lower-hanging fruit. We've been improving auth stories, so now targeted phishing is moving to looking like innocent UX.

Yep, the way it's set up legally in the US, u can't regulate design in a restrictive manner without risking speech--disentangling the two isn't possible. Design isn't totally neutral/unproblematic either...but coming at the tech regulation process this way is dangerous, as Taylor & Mike point out.

Even an 'ideal Bayesian' human actor would agree that these chatbots are too sycophantic 🤪 arxiv.org/abs/2602.19141

A Morningstar article cited Professor @veenadubal.bsky.social’s research on “surveillance wages,” describing how employers may use personal data and algorithms to determine the minimum pay a worker is willing to accept. www.morningstar.com/news/marketw...

Mike Males' Substack posts have been very informative regarding the recent social media trials and verdicts. This is one of the only places to look at all the reporting on the courtroom testimony: mikemales.substack.com/p/two-radica...

This was an interesting read that reminded me of my feelings that some academic work done in the past few years about engagement-centered algorithms may need to be updated to engage with the sensitivity exhibited by TikTok's FYP system. irrationaltechnology.substack.com/p/what-the-w...

It’s shocking how the motivation behind almost every single bad tech bill is about hating LGBTQ people and specifically trans people

Here's the thing. I understand the jury's decision today. I understand the folks celebrating the verdict too. I have so much personal disdain for Google and Meta. They are actively undermining our democracy, and selling out our privacy and speech for the bestest billionaire award from Trump.

I don't know how 'new' this is, there was a lot of it with Syria. The new seems more the gen AI side of it.

Great work here as always! This is a really great unpacking of this phenomenon.

FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms