Delighted to share the first published paper from my PhD project! We studied the relationships between online connection/internet use and mental health among adolescents in 12 countries in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa 🧵 Now out in @springernature.com SPPE 👉 rdcu.be/fxNgP

‘Social media bans are likely to make things worse’: psychologist Candice Odgers on kids, tech and mental health

‘Social media bans are likely to make things worse’: psychologist Candice Odgers on kids, tech and mental health

She has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years and fears the debate obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers

theguardian.com

Honoured to share our new paper in @nature.com today. Across 12 countries in eastern and southern Africa and Southeast Asia, 1 in 6 internet-using children had experienced technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse. A thread 🧵

Nature@nature.com · 2mo ago

Nature research paper: Technology mediation in child sexual exploitation and abuse in Africa and Asia go.nature.com/4fbTNyk

Always good to have your response to a consultation immediately ready to go. Suggests you've definitely engaged with the results of the consultation and that the entire thing wasn't a waste of time.

Andrew Sparrow@andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Starmer says crackdown affecting teenagers using social media to come 'very quickly' after consultation ends tonight - www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Hi, me again. This sample was restricted to *only teens who had nighttime background phone data* which means everyone whose phones went unused between 10 and 6 were excluded. Also no serious discussion of teen sleep problems ignores early school start times as the core problem.

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 3mo ago

A new study shows how school-night phone use could be disrupting adolescents’ vital sleep. "Nearly half of adolescents are using their phones between midnight and 4 a.m.,” the study's lead author said. “That’s a really critical window when kids should be asleep, especially on school nights.”

I have read this FT story by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and I believe it is "some bullshit." A lot of effort and data work, and an extremely exaggerated causal story, bolstered by Melissa Kearney saying it is "plausible" and Lyman Stone doing whatever he does. www.ft.com/content/fba3... /1

Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once

Homes and phones are part of the reason for the demographic shift changing our world

ft.com

famously, iPhones were the only thing to happen in the late 2000s

to coddle him, in other words

/2 Jonathan Haidt is a Thinker, a Speaker. It is his role to say what he thinks. The students are students. Their role is to receive wisdom, to accept. The universe should be ordered to protect Haidt’s right to speak without hurt feelings.

1. A new NHS England Review excluded 97% of all trans care studies to conclude that trans youth care doesn't work. It explicitly violates several guidelines around reviewing literature, and appears to be politics masquerading as (shoddy) science. Subscribe to support our journalism.

New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work

The new review has led to a ban for HRT through the NHS England system under the age of 18.

erininthemorning.com

📢 New @ucl.ac.uk research finds people who experience mental health difficulties in childhood at ages 5-16 are more likely to have irregular sleep patterns at ages 46-48, with more reported to sleep less than six hours every night. Read more on the CLS website 👉 buff.ly/4TdWrN0

Does childhood mental health impact sleep in midlife? | CLS

Mental health difficulties in childhood are linked to irregular sleep patterns in midlife, according to the 1970 British Cohort Study.

cls.ucl.ac.uk

Delighted to share that our paper "Associations between early-life mental health and abnormal sleep duration in midlife: findings from a prospective cohort study in Great Britain" is now published in @springernature.com European Journal of Epidemiology! rdcu.be/e5rAK 👇

Reminder: Haidt is not actually an "expert" in this field and actual experts have called out that he's just wrong about almost everything. www.techdirt.com/2025/09/10/e...

Experts Universally Pan Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” As Unscientific Garbage, But Politicians Keep Buying It Anyway

The verdict is in on Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” and it’s devastating. A new piece in TES Magazine systematically demolishes Haidt’s claims by doing som…

techdirt.com

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 7mo ago

Wes Streeting asks US expert Jonathan Haidt to address officials on social media ban for under-16s

Three days left to vote safely. Workload is out of control, your vote is how we change it. Post your ballot today. Vote YES.

In case you need to feel better about the progress of one of your manuscripts, I just received a first-round editorial decision... 418 days after submission. #academicchatter #phdlife

"Trans, bisexual, non-binary and queer staff... experience UCL as an unsupportive and difficult workplace"; "The Institute of Education was highlighted... as being a hostile place for LGBTQ+ staff and students" – damning indictments that unfortunately don't surprise me. www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resour...

🚨Job alert!🚨 We are looking for a 🧮 quant postdoc researcher to join the AMAZING Jay Das-Munshi @jdasmunshi.bsky.social George Ploubidis @georgeploubidis.bsky.social & myself at @kingscsmh.bsky.social in collab with @clscohorts.bsky.social All info: my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru... Closes 18 Nov!

We’re into week two of the ballot, time to get back to basics. Why vote? Because your voice is the only way to change what’s happening in our sector: 📉 Falling pay ⚠️ Rising insecurity 💬 Broken national agreements Every vote counts. Vote YES. Post your ballot. #WeAreTheUniversity

Voted yes/yes in the @ucu.org.uk strike ballot. Our sector is crumbling and now we're expected to take another pay cut - enough! #wearetheuniversity

It's been a great @sllshome.bsky.social #SLLS2025! On Tuesday I presented the initial results of our study on social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in adolescents in England. You can read the preprint here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨 Last chance to apply! We're looking for a new Director. Find out more about the role and apply on the CLS website, closing date TOMORROW: bit.ly/452oe4v

We have a ✨NEW PREPRINT✨! Using data from the @clscohorts.bsky.social Millennium Cohort Study and linked healthcare records, we tested the association between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in young people in England. This is still a work in progress - feedback welcome!

PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social · last yr.

Characterising the longitudinal relationship between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in adolescents in England: https://osf.io/87cze

If you're interested in learning #JuliaLang and are currently an #RStats user (or even if you're not!), then here's a little introduction to getting started! 📊 Blog post: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/introdu... #QuartoPub #Julia @tidierjl.bsky.social

Introduction to Julia for R users – Nicola Rennie

This blog post will give R users an overview of what Julia is and why they might want to use it, introduce some data processing Julia packages, and show how they can incorporate Julia into existing R ...

nrennie.rbind.io

"[The Online Safety Act] requires victims of sexual assault to submit government IDs to access support communities. People struggling with addiction must undergo facial recognition scans to find help quitting drinking or smoking."

Techdirt@techdirt.com · last yr.

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About Well, well, well. The “age assurance” part of the UK's Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking requirements kicking in a week and a half ago. And what…

Wrote about how the UK's online age verification requirements are already proving to be a disaster (as UK regulators were clearly warned it would be) and how unhelpful the UK's response to this mess has been, including their tech minister saying anyone who complains supports predators.

Techdirt@techdirt.com · last yr.

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About Well, well, well. The “age assurance” part of the UK's Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking requirements kicking in a week and a half ago. And what…

Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About Well, well, well. The “age assurance” part of the UK's Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking requirements kicking in a week and a half ago. And what…

Today I presented my work on data from the @unicefinnocenti.bsky.social Disrupting Harm survey at #IPC2025 in Brisbane! It was a great opportunity to engage with other researchers interested in investigating youth mental health in the population. Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

We have a ✨NEW PREPRINT✨! Using data from the @clscohorts.bsky.social Millennium Cohort Study and linked healthcare records, we tested the association between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in young people in England. This is still a work in progress - feedback welcome!

PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social · last yr.

Characterising the longitudinal relationship between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in adolescents in England: https://osf.io/87cze

Happy to share my new study, publ. in Social Science Research 🎉 Bottom line: Yes, adolescents use their phones a lot 🤳 But I find no support for the notion that this use displaces reading, homework, hobbies, physical act., sleep... Instead: Changing media preferences 📺 ->📱. doi.org/10.1016/j.ss...

Sebastian E. Wenz@sewenz.bsky.social · last yr.

From the abstract: "[...] no evidence that early adolescents spend less time on enrichment, physical activity, or sleep after acquiring their first mobile phone. Instead, acquiring their first mobile phone is associated with a significant reduction in time spent watching TV, movies, or videos."

Shame on the Guardian for publishing this as if Sullivan is an independent expert. Sullivan is a well-known gender-critical campaigner, & advisor to Sex Matters, a prominent GC campaign group which is reported to be deeply entangled with anti-LGBTQ+ movements: yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/home-af...

UK universities have failed to protect gender-critical academics, report finds

Report’s author raises ‘stark concerns about barriers to academic freedom’

theguardian.com