Saw Bluesky described as where elder millennials go to retire from the internet, and immediately felt the peace that passes all understanding wash over me. None of have to struggle any longer. We completed our time.

Together with Don Robinaugh & a large team of interdisciplinary researchers, we just published a preprint on this topic: the importance of collaborations across disciplines to move forward mental health science. I hope you'll find it interesting, took a few years! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Building off @cameronwilson.bsky.social's reporting for @crikey.com.au, I highlight how we appear to have a baptist & bootleggers situation in Australia, where it appears the gambling industry was a big force behind the "social media ban for teens" in an effort to kill a plan to ban gambling ads.

Wow -- I missed that even UNICEF expressed concern about the Australian social media ban. UNICEF!! They said, correctly, "for many children, particularly those who are isolated or marginalised, social media is a lifeline[.]" H/t @mmasnick.bsky.social on CTRL-ALT-SPEECH podcast.

1,000,000%

Hi, award winning gambling researcher here, just wanted to comment and state that this is flatly wrong. At best, the boundary between investments and gambling is murky on the edges, certainly not a bright line. Index funds vs slots? Clearly different. Sports Gambling vs day trading? Much murkier

Congratulations to @bethclarke.bsky.social on her PhD graduation!! It’s been amazing watching you become the incredible scholar that you are, thanks for letting me come along for the ride! You’re the best! 🎉🥂🌟

The "smartphones/social media" discourse suffers from some amazing historical amnesia. There was no 2008 financial crisis and no global pandemic starting in 2020, it's all SCREENS SCREENS SCREENS. Major world events? Just the backdrop against which SCREENS happened.

Keeping this at hand in case I need to point to it and tap

Great to see our content analysis of 27 Chinese youth depression scales finally out! Following @eikofried.bsky.social excellent work on depression scales, we included 27 scales and quantified the heterogeneity by analyzing data from 12,000 youth who completed 4 of them. Comments are welcome!

Who could’ve known?

Join us for a PhD in affective neuroscience at the Donders Institute (Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging) www.radboudumc.nl/en/vacancies...

NEW: A report from Oxford's @bonavero.bsky.social identifies, examines, and addresses the counter-arguments for ten key reasons for the UK to remain in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Find out more ⬇️ #HumanRightsDay

💥 Why did the word ENSHITTIFICATION catch on? #CoryDoctorow thinks people like a little cussing — & the word captures how tech platforms make the web frustrating & hostile. Want more? 🎧 Listen to the full episode of the Future Knowledge #podcast: futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/ens...

Two-thirds of quantitative articles in the latest volume of American Sociological Review provide at least their code and a link to the data, which is progress over past years but still very bad.

I'm suspicious of British journalism on child safety topics, but it's the Guardian so this is actually very good. I'm happy to see the emphasis on proactive prevention & education, a mention of restorative justice, and explicitly saying Ofcom alone can't fix this. www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

Looks like Australia's social media ban came into effect. Age verification appears based on 1) facial scan age estimation or 2) ID scan. This in turn appears to be done by third party companies, so opens doors to privacy issues / leaks. Also, what exactly was the evidence base for this ban again?

It's great this research is continuing at scale even though the tidal wave of pandemic-adjacent scientific activity has long since passed. If you know of anything like this still being pursued in the social or psychological sciences please share! I want to believe it was more than a fad...

We built the openESM database: ▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place ▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software ▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python Find out more: 🌐 openesmdata.org 📝 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

We announced/released this at @wired.com's Big Interview event yesterday with @katie-drummond.bsky.social and @stevenlevy.bsky.social interviewing myself and @komorama.bsky.social on stage. I love Steven's framing that "it's time to save Silicon Valley from itself." www.wired.com/story/big-in...

Projects like this & applying integrative analysis methods are very exciting. I bet there's more to do with all the data we collect & curation and good use of metadata is currently underappreciated

As someone who is actually on this paper, this critique (and many others) is absolutely spot-on. I can't speak for other authors, but this process has left me with far more questions than answers. The gap between what the data say and how it's being framed publicly is...notable to say the least.

New article by @cathleenogrady.bsky.social on the social media 'consensus' characterises the preprint as a failure of science communication — because many got the impression the consensus was much stronger than it is. www.science.org/content/arti...

When I look into the mirror it shows me an exact reflection of myself. It proves my point that I am the mirror.

Works the other way around too. “If I was Jonathan Haidt, how would I destroy the next generation?”

The man who inspired Australia's teen social media ban literally did this:

Excited to see these studies (finally) published in Scientific Reports! 🚨 S1: More social media users perceived themselves as addicted than met clinical addiction criteria. S2: Increasing perceived addiction hurt perceived control over use and increased self-blame for overuse. Thread below... 🧵

Metadata!!!

What a valuable read for parents and young people all around the world. The Digital Abstinence Movement will come knocking. Best to start thinking how to preserve your data and social ties before they're taken away.

More seriously, looks like young people in Australia know how to read bona fide scientific research and are keen to exercise their internationally recognised human rights... Instead of silly abstinence, let's use science to make the internet an empowering place!

Waited to get the court docs before reporting on the high court challenge to the social media ban. They reveal an injunction will be sought against esafety, the minister and the govt to stop enforcement. And one of the teens is turning 16 before the ban. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

This guy’s mad about fake research, and he should be. Research incompetence, research fraud, and the promotion of fraudulent or incompetent work . . . these are not victimless crimes. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/11/19/t...

Looking forward to speaking tomorrow at the Cambridge University Behavioural Insights Student Society about the psychology of social media - come along if you're in Cambridge! cubiss.wixsite.com/cubiss/event...

We released a pretty cool dataset/preprint today looking at video game play, cognition, time-use and a ton of self-reported psych measures at osf.io/preprints/ps... with @nballou.bsky.social @matti.vuorre.com @thomashakman.bsky.social @rpsychologist.com and @shuhbillskee.bsky.social RRs coming soon

Don't skip this. It's masterfully done, and many of the key points are GENERAL and apply to many other fields. "there can sometimes just be lots of smoke" I discuss the general case here: labrigger.com/blog/2025/11...

Content policies are usually private, one-off efforts. You build yours, I build mine, we don't share much about what works or why. This makes sense given products can (and should) set different policies based on their communities, but it leaves us reinventing the wheel. 🧵 1/5

The package formerly known as papercheck has changed its name to metacheck! We're checking more than just papers, with functions to assess OSF projects, github repos, and AsPredicted pre-registrations, with more being developed all the time. scienceverse.github.io/metacheck/

My first paper, out in PsychReview!! Along with @orbenamy.bsky.social, Nik & @jaeggiadrian.bsky.social, @realadamhunt.bsky.social & I revisit an old theoretical question using concepts from evo psychiatry and anthro: Why do mixed associations exist b/w social media & mental health? A 🧵

Exciting new addition to the AsPredicted and ResearchBox research infrastructure toolbox: AsCollected ascollected.org A platform to document results provenance - where did data come from, who collected it, and who cleaned and analyzed it. So important!

New release of PowerLMM.js! Browser-based power analysis for longitudinal models with dropout. Now includes: - Power analysis summary report - Reproducible & shareable configs (URL/JSON) - Calculations validated against R - Hypothesis region visualization powerlmmjs.rpsychologist.com

Absolutely fascinating discussion on the genesis of Twitter (incl. its open API and initial intent to decentralize), Bluesky and other decentralized protocols (with factoids even @mmasnick.bsky.social wasn't aware of) with an outlook to where we're headed. @ianbrown.tech

Super excited to see my work on the dangers of “careless speech”, subtle hallucinations & GenAI for science, academia & education or any areas where truth & detail matter w/ @bmittelstadt.bsky.social @cruss.bsky.social ft @elsevierconnect.bsky.social Mitch Leslie tinyurl.com/4ms2mkub

media effects research (2017-present)

Our (Mugford, Satchell, Kontosthenous, Copestake & Shell) new paper promoting mixed methods diaries for understanding how a prison treatment programme is experienced! Accepted at PCL and out soon, preprint below:

Happy August. Here is a little surprise for everybody: The english version of my book is finally available. You can get it on Amazon. You can also read and listen to it on my blog, where I will release the book as freely accessible serialized novel. 1/ www.protagonist-science.com/p/lab-leak-f...

🚨 New Preprint 🚨 Some people are at greater risk of experiencing negative mental health outcomes of social media use than others, but why? 🧵 We examined whether individual differences in cognitive processes shape risk and resilience to mental health effects on social media: osf.io/preprints/ps...

You can’t upload, comment or message people, but otherwise you can do a lot! I actually wrote about how you can still watch TikTok and YouTube Shorts almost a year ago! www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/26/t...

Preprints have been on a wild ride this half decade. Nice to read something intellectually coherent and practically minded.