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"There has also been, he says, "a real push in opinion pieces and popular-press books that are sloppy scientifically but stated so confidently. The ideas in these books are not peer-reviewed." The published studies they cite tend to have small samples and no control groups, and to be based on associations rather than proving cause. "People will say: 'The iPhone was invented in 2007 and Instagram became popular in 2012 and, oh my God, look, tech use has gone up at the same time mental health has gone down!' It seems like common sense - that's why you have this kind of consensus. But it just isn't scientific." In 2023, Przybylski and his colleagues looked at data from almost 12,000 children in the US aged between nine and 12 and found no impact from screen time on functional connectivity ("how different parts of the brain kind of talk to each other", he explains), as measured with fMRI scans while the children completed tasks. They also found no negative impact on the children's self-reported wellbeing. "If you publish a study like we do, where we cross our Ts, we dot our Is, we state our hypotheses before we see the data, we share the data and the code, those types of studies don't show the negative effects that we expect to see.""

"IBM predicts that in five years, "What we say and write will be used as indicators of our mental health and physical wellbeing.""

"As with any habitual behavior, you might reasonably expect that abstaining would lead to an improved mood and an overall sense of wellbeing. A new study goes a long way toward suggesting the benefits of cutting Facebook out of our lives altogether."

"In China, children are allowed to play for only one hour per day, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. But many gamers around the world say that their playing helps their mental health. Mike Dailly, who created Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, said the benefits were varied. "I'm not sure it's something that's measurable with a single 'well-being' state," he said. "As is everything in life, it's a balance. "Spend 24 hours a day playing, that's not good - but spend 24 hours a day eating or working out, that is also not good.""

"A collaboration between Oxford University, The Education University of Hong Kong, Reading University and Durham University has found "no evidence to suggest abstaining from social media has a positive effect on an individual's well-being." The researchers noted that this contrasts popular beliefs about the benefits of digital detoxes. Moreover, this international study found that those who took a break from social media didn't replace online socializing with face-to-face, voice, or email interactions, as the researchers had expected. Taking a break from social media therefore led to reduced overall interaction and loneliness as social media was not replaced with forms of socializing."

"But do these options make Bluesky a more prosocial experience? Prosocial design is a "set of design patterns, features and processes which foster healthy interactions between individuals and which create the conditions for those interactions to thrive by ensuring individuals' safety, wellbeing and dignity," according to the Prosocial Design Network. Giving users control over their feeds is a step in this direction, but it's not a new concept. The Panotpykon Foundation's Safe by Default briefing advocates for human-centric recommender systems that prioritize conscious user choice and empowerment. They propose features like: Sliders for content preferences (e.g., informative vs. entertaining content), A "hard stop" button to suppress unwanted content, and Prompts for users to define their interests or preferences."

"Police in the east Malaysia state Sarawak said the girl, who has not been named, posted the poll on the photo sharing app with the message: "Really Important, Help Me Choose D/L". After most responders voted for "death", she killed herself."

"y memory and recall are alarmingly good - borderline photographic. But when I used Instagram, I found it would short-circuit my recall in an alarming way. I'd be describing something mid-sentence and I'd just stop speaking, unable to finish. So I rarely use it. But my attention span - and my posture, eyes and sleep - are still being degraded by other technology and my dependence on it. In my pandemic life, technology is a lifeline - 90% of my social and work life happens on one of four screens."

"Taken as a whole, it shows strong and clear evidence of causation, not just correlation. There are surely other contributing causes, but the Collaborative Review doc points strongly to this conclusion: Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls."

"TikTok has been fined £12.7m for illegally processing the data of 1.4 million children under 13 who were using its platform without parental consent, Britain's data watchdog said. The information commissioner said the China-owned video app had done "very little, if anything" to check who was using the platform and remove underage users, despite internal warnings the firm was flouting its own terms and conditions."

"ChatGPT can help with reframing thoughts and situations, similar to cognitive behavioural therapy - but "some clients can start to use it as a substitute for therapy", Masterson says. "I've had clients telling me they've already processed on their own, because of what they've read - it's incredibly dangerous." She has had to ask some clients to cease their self-experiments while in treatment with her. "It's about you and me in the room," she says. "You just cannot have that with text - let alone a conglomeration of lots of other people's texts." Self-directed chatbot therapy also risks being counterproductive, shrinking the area of inquiry. "It's quite affirmative; I challenge clients," says Masterson. ChatGPT could actually cement patterns as it draws, over and again, from the same database: "The more you try to refine it, the more refined the message becomes.""

"But what about social media posts that offer stories of hope and recovery? Could these types of posts actually prevent suicide? For this experimental study, researchers in Austria created 10 suicide-prevention social media posts from a fictitious influencer. The posts offered stories about recovery from suicidal crises, mental health tips, and life-affirming messages. A total of 354 adult participants were randomly assigned to view these posts, or to view 10 posts totally unrelated to mental health. As expected, participants who were exposed to the suicide-prevention posts reported decreased suicidal thoughts and greater intentions to seek help (e.g., from friends, family, or a professional). This was especially true for those who were already struggling with suicidal thoughts."