As I turn 55, I reflect on aging. It’s inevitable, but why do we fear it so much? Are we doomed to wave our canes at the kids while sliding into the grave? Or are there ways to ease the passage? Have a read! And happy birthday to me. grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/on-aging

On Aging

The Grim Reaper comes for us all. But how do we best prepare for his arrival?

grimoiremanor.substack.com

Is using sunscreen associated with INCREASED skin cancer? Grimoire Manor answers this question once and for all with a look at a study making its rounds through social media Paid post for this one, so do consider subscribing & promoting the cause of good science. open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Is Sunscreen Use Associated with Increased Skin Cancers?

A study with bivariate correlations suggest associations may be major, but do they hold once confounders are controlled?

open.substack.com

A bit of a diversion for today as Grimoire Manor considers one of the most crucial questions of our time: Which was the best tank of WW2? Have a read and share your thoughts on this most pressing of issues! (and yes, the cover image is a WWI tank alas!) open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Which Was the Best Tank of WWII?

Forget politics, this is the question of the day...

open.substack.com

Everyone today seems to want kids to live like it was the 80s again. Except the 80s kinda sucked for many kids who actually lived it. I discuss today! grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/why-is-eve...

Why is Everybody Nostalgic About the 80s?

Aside from the music, the decade mostly sucked for kids.

grimoiremanor.substack.com

Today, Grimoire Manor plunges into one of the biggest debates of the Mommy Wars: How much benefit does the average baby get from breastfeeding versus bottle feeding? Is bottle feeding the doom of babies? Or are we needlessly shaming many mothers? open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Is Breastfeeding Better Than Bottle Feeding for Infant IQ, Infections and Maternal Bonding?

Discerning the line between true benefits and unnecessary guilt and shame

open.substack.com

There’s considerable panic about the impact of AI on education. One issue that seems legitimate is that AI is killing the college take-home essay. But maybe it deserved to die anyway? grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/the-routin...

The Routine Take-Home Writing Assignment is Dead

AI killed it, but maybe it deserved to die?

grimoiremanor.substack.com

Does telling kids not to run with scissors reduce injuries? Do child safety programs work to reduce harm to kids? Do kids listen to us at all? All the answers can be found at Grimoire Manor today! open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Running With Scissors

Do safety axioms actually make kids behave more responsibly? Also: how much child safety do we really want anyway?

open.substack.com

My new study finds that adverse childhood events, but not age of acquisition of #smartphones or #tablets is related to young adult #mentalhealth. Can read at: www.clinicalneuropsychiatry.org/download/adv...

Today I look at the #EdTech panic? Were schools right to include more technology in classrooms? Are some parents/activists right to demand technology be removed? Should we go back to clay tablets and the abacus? Find out in today’s essay! open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Has the Adoption of EdTech in Schools Caused a Learning Crisis?

This past year has seen increasing angst over the issue of EdTech, or the use of education technology in schools.

open.substack.com

Proponents of #socialmedia bans for teens suggest that teens themselves want them. A new study addresses this directly. Do young adults regret the time they spent on social media as teens. And does that regret influence their current #mental health? Have a read! open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Do Teens Regret Their Social Media Use?

Like so many other parts of this narrative, more broad claims are unraveling

open.substack.com

My written evidence to the UK Parliament regarding #socialmedia bans. I note the issue of moral panic, & the UK's unfortunate promotion of bad research designs. The UK is wasting people's time at the potential cost of significant #freespeech concerns. committees.parliament.uk/writtenevide...

Great essay by @CollegeFix fellow Daniel Nuccio on today's current #moralpanic regarding #socialmedia and youth #mentalhealth. www.msn.com/en-us/lifest...

Today I have a look at a new survey finding a majority of people, including a majority of parents, would exclude young children from fancy restaurants. This is an issue with surprisingly passionate arguments. Is it possible to find a compromise? grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/should-scr...

Should Screaming Babies Be Allowed in Fancy Restaurants?

One of the endless battles in the parenting wars.

grimoiremanor.substack.com

New study suggest young adults don't have many regrets about teen time spent on #sociamedia. And when they do have regrets, they don't correlate with life satisfaction. Trying to get a copy of the study... journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few; But Then Again, Time on Social Media May Not Be One of Them - Eoin Whelan, 2026

The issue of whether social media use does or does not influence adolescent well-being remains a pressing concern for policymakers, parents, and researchers. As...

journals.sagepub.com

In my essay today I look at Harvard, universities and the problem of grade inflation. Grade inflation is clearly a real problem, but will grade caps actually fix student learning or just hand red meat to online grouches? Have a read and find out! grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/will-grade...

Will Grade Caps Improve Student Learning?

If you came here for optimist, you must be a new reader...

grimoiremanor.substack.com

A bit of long-form investigation today. I look at the “Fear Industry”…politicians, news media, scholars and companies that profit from making us continually anxious about everything. Paid post today…subscribe to get some helpful hints on how not to be a rube. open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

All We Have to Fear (or Profit From) Is Fear Itself

A long-form report on how entire industries keep us anxious to squeeze profits from us.

open.substack.com

Serious doubts now behind the calculations in the FT's "fertility decline/smartphone" piece. x.com/joefrancis50...

joseph francis on X: "By extracting the data from the @FT's smartphones-and-fertility chart, I was able to replicate it and reverse engineer how @jburnmurdoch may have calculated it. Seatbelts on. 1/7 https://t.co/B296vG7D2x" / X

By extracting the data from the @FT's smartphones-and-fertility chart, I was able to replicate it and reverse engineer how @jburnmurdoch may have calculated it. Seatbelts on. 1/7 https://t.co/B296vG7D2x

x.com

In a brief post, Will Dobud points out how the Financial Times’ recent post on smartphones and declining fertility is based on dubious graphs and silly made up critical points like “smartphones take off”. Will’s article: willdobud.substack.com/p/nothing-se...

No, Conscientiousness Hasn't Collapsed Among Young People in Recent Years

How the Financial Times created a misleading meme and contributed to the firehose of nonsense on screen panic

grimoiremanor.substack.com

Today I look at the (probably deliberate) enshittification of coach air travel by major carriers. Are we all doomed to fly business class in the future or not at all? Have a read! grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/the-enshit...

The Enshittification of Coach Air Travel

Big carries appear to be deliberately trying to force most passengers out of the cheap seats.

grimoiremanor.substack.com

A new study last week found that cellphone bans in schools (at least of the locked pouch variety) don’t work. But did it have limitations? And will it end debates about the effectiveness of school cellphone bans? Read to find out! open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

A New Study Spells Bad News for Cellphone Bans

The study everyone's talking about (last week) but how conclusive is it?

open.substack.com

My latest examines the unexpected furor over teens not having enough sex/dating/babies? Can teens just not win when it comes to older adults complaining? grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/teens-are-...

Teens Are Having Less Sex and That's....Bad?

Teens just can't win when it comes to old people complaining.

grimoiremanor.substack.com

Youth (10-24) #suicide and drug overdose data (concentrated in their parents' generation). Correlation (r = .89). Further implication youth #mentalhealth was substantially trickle-down from their parents/family issues. There's no similar pattern for screens (graphs on that soon-ish).

This article looks at our recent study (with Jeff Brown) on Intro Psyche textbooks and how they misrepresent famous studies and contentious debates. Things are maybe a bit better than 10 years ago, but there are still issues: www.psypost.org/psychology-t...

Psychology textbooks still misrepresent famous experiments and controversial debates

College psychology textbooks still struggle to accurately present controversial topics and historical events, according to new research. While some improvements have occurred, textbooks frequently rep...

psypost.org

Should you starve your picky eating children into submission? I look at the Twitter controversy flared by Dr. Camilo Ortiz’s suggestion maybe parents should. Having been a picky eater myself I find that…the answer is probably complicated! Have a read: grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/should-you...

Should You Starve Your Kid Into Food Compliance?

A Twitter buddy steps on a landmine...or a goldmine...it's hard to tell which.

grimoiremanor.substack.com

I have it on good authority that following #artemissii there is a serious effort underway to get Earth's moon renamed from Luna to Trumpymede or maybe "Moon of America"

I appreciate Pew Research for doing good research here. Most teens like social media and don't see it as a problem for mental health. Undercuts all the "even kids want to see this banned" talk we hear www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...

Teens’ Experiences on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat | Pew Research Center

About this research This study is Pew Research Center’s latest effort to explore the landscape of teens and technology today. It focuses on social media and how the views and…

pewresearch.org

The UK’s proposed study of social media reduction in kids doubles down on a failed experimental protocol & is likely to produce misleading results. It’s easy to tear apart a study post-hoc so I’m putting my marker down before the study begins: This is a bad study. open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

The UK's Proposed "In Real Life" Study of Social Media Reduction is Scientifically Unsound.

Doubling down on a research strategy known to lack validity is worse than no study at all.

open.substack.com

Interesting post suggest claims that EdTech is harming learning are overblown. Also claims of "inflection points" for each state may not always match up with years that states began to really give kids Chromebooks, even the correlational claims may be unreliable. www.eschoolnews.com/digital-lear...

A viral case against screens in schools is winning converts. Does the evidence hold up?

In his book and Senate testimony, a neuroscientist offers a three-pronged case against screens and edtech in schools.

eschoolnews.com

Had fun yesterday at the Storyteller's Fair here in Orlando. Bestseller of the day was How Madness Shaped History. So BESTSELLER SPECIAL: Signed copy, $14 including postage anywhere in the US, shoot me a DM and we can make it happen. That's cheaper than it is on Amazon right now.

Another great essay on how #socialmedia panics were overblown. Seeing more of these lately. Maybe a corner is (slowly) turning: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | I’m part of Gen Z. Social media didn’t ruin my generation.

Laws restricting phone use won’t solve root causes of adolescent anxiety.

washingtonpost.com