Craig Sewall @cjsewall9 Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Craig Sewall

@cjsewall9

1,866

Followers

732

Following

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3,077

Statuses

Current clinical data scientist. Former academic & therapist. My views do not reflect those of my employer.

Pittsburgh, PA

https://t.co/7cHANzesnZ

Joined June 2016

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

Our paper examining the prospective effects b/w digital tech use & psychological distress has been accepted at Clinical Psychological Science! Overall, we found little to no evidence that fluctuations in digital tech use impacts psych distress. 🧵 1/x

Does objectively-measured social media or smartphone use predict depression, anxiety, or social...

Despite a plethora of research, the link between digital technology use and psychological distress among young adults remains inconclusive. Findings in this area are typically undermined by methodo...

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

When you try to adjust a table in Microsoft Word @AcademicChatter

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Craig Sewall

5 years

Trying to get that manuscript published... @AcademicChatter

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

Working my way through my To Do List #AcademicChatter

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

A month ago I wrote a piece explaining how the majority of research in this area is unreliable bc the measures used are fatally flawed. I sent it to the @nytimes & other major outlets. All passed. But these types of #moralpanic pieces get published almost every week. Fear=clicks

@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

3 years

High school students around the world got lonelier between 2012 and 2019. @jean_twenge and I found this in PISA data, and looked at what global trends correlated. Only smartphone & social media adoption. With links to larger reviews:

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Craig Sewall

3 months

I believe that @JonHaidt ’s central claim that social media (SM) is the primary cause of an international youth mental health crisis, especially among girls, is based on a flawed understanding of the underlying data generating process (DGP). In this thread, I’ll show you how.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

When you’re asked how your week is going and you say “Fine!” @AcademicChatter

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

So I'm at 99 followers. To help me break the 3-digit follower count, Winnie has agreed to offer his adorable services. I told him I'd give him a treat for each follower gained. #AcademicChatter #dogsoftwitter

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

2 years

After about 4 months of job searching, 100+ applications, dozens of resume rewrites, lots of rejections and ghosting, I’m happy to announce that I started as a Clinical Data Scientist with @Evernorth this week 😊

@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

2 years

Hi all! I'm looking to transition from academia to industry & figured I'd make it Twitter official. I have a unique combination of data science & MH expertise. Looking for quant UX/research/data science roles in tech/health. Please free to reach out to chat! @AltAcChats

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

4 years

Launching into my post-PhD academic career amidst this pandemic like: #AcademicChatter

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

@AcademicChatter I love that this tweet resonates with so many people. Just think how much suffering @Office could alleviate if they fixed this issue.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

1 year

I think these are bad policies that will do more harm than good. And let me tell you why… 🧵

@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

1 year

5. Congress will have to raise the age of "internet adulthood" someday; 13 is way too low. In the meantime, every state should follow Utah: require parental consent for minors to open accounts. We parents of teens are all struggling. Help us out.

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Craig Sewall

2 years

🙂 Update:

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

4 years

Welp. That's a bummer

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

2 years

Hi all! I'm looking to transition from academia to industry & figured I'd make it Twitter official. I have a unique combination of data science & MH expertise. Looking for quant UX/research/data science roles in tech/health. Please free to reach out to chat! @AltAcChats

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Craig Sewall

4 years

When you see a mediation model with cross sectional data

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

@AcademicChatter @Office Anyways, I'm a PhD student researching the intersections of technology and the social dynamics of suicide (and an aspiring meme artist). I also tend to follow back (::wink wink:: nudge nudge::)

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

2 months

The timing of the rise in U.S. teen mental health problems coincides with huge changes in healthcare & health insurance. I lay out the case in full on my blog (link in bio!). But follow along below for a shortened, X-friendly version 🧵

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Craig Sewall

2 months

New study out of Norway shows how changing diagnostic standards can inflate prevalence of mental disorders among youth, providing more evidence that changes in awareness/screening/diagnosing is a viable alternative to the “it’s the phones” theory. 🧵 1/4

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JCPP Advances | ACAMH Child Development Journal | Wiley Online Library

In Figure 3, we present the comparative average school performance between individuals diagnosed with ADHD and Internalizing disorders versus those without such diagnoses. Notably, recent birth...

acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

2 months

Ignoring uncertainty allows for easier storytelling, but it's more misleading: One thing that's bothered me about @JonHaidt 's work in The Anxious Generation and his After Babel blog is how all of the plots only include point estimates. For example, here's a plot from this post

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Craig Sewall

5 years

All authors contributed equally...

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Craig Sewall

2 months

I'd like to congratulate Professor @D_Blanchflower on this paper--a truly masterful work in selective citation. He cites himself 10 times, @JonHaidt 's book, two Haidt blog posts, and five @jean_twenge articles. He also manages to ignore dozens of papers that came long before his

@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

2 months

Blanchflower has a paper out today at @nberpubs , diving deeper into data from Europe, and linking declines in well-being to heavy screen time. This is far more relevant to today's debate than studies looking at the effect of moving from no internet to internet.

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Craig Sewall

1 month

A thread of reasons why this is really dumb

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Surgeon General demands warning label on social media apps | CNN Business

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in an op-ed in the New York Times Monday said the threat social media poses to children is an emergency, and he urged Congress to put a label on the apps as with cigare...

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

After 2 weeks of unexplained fevers, a hospital admission, a bevy of tests, an eventual diagnosis of listeria, & an emergency c-section, my wife gave birth to these perfect little humans: Cormac (a.k.a. "Mac" on left) and Millie (right). Words can't describe how happy we are.

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Craig Sewall

3 years

I am honestly curious to hear what @JonHaidt and @jean_twenge think about the now well known measurement issues with self-reported tech use & whether it impacts their views about the validity/reliability of their conclusions that tech is causing harm to teens.

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Craig Sewall

2 months

In a new blog post (link in bio), I use the case of autism to (1) reinforce how changes in care, screening, & diagnostic standards can explain changes in observed prevalence, & (2) show how easy it is to stoke a tech panic. Follow along for a Twitter-friendly summary... 🧵1/4

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

In 2014, at the age of 27, my wife Katie was diagnosed w/ stage 3 breast cancer. We didn’t know if she would survive, much less have children. That makes this Christmas super special, as we celebrate it w/ our twins & 7 years in remission.

PA mother gives birth to twins after battle with stage 3 breast cancer

NEW YORK — The holidays are a time to celebrate and one new mom in Pennsylvania has more reasons than ever this year. Twins Mack and Millie are just four months old, but one day, their mom wi…

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Craig Sewall

3 years

The link b/w digital tech & well-being is inconclusive & based on unreliable data. But major news orgs continue to publish claims that digital tech is harmful to young people. I wrote this piece for @ConversationUS outlining why these oversimplified claims shouldn't be trusted

@ConversationUS

The Conversation U.S.

@ConversationUS

3 years

Flawed data led to findings of a connection between time spent on devices and mental health problems – new research

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Craig Sewall

1 year

Though the proliferation of social media (SM) is a popular scapegoat for the rising rates of mental distress in US teens, it obscures a far more disturbing trend that has contributed to their distress: school shootings. 🧵1/4

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@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

1 year

When @jean_twenge raised the alarm about teen mental health in 2017, many psychologists said she was over-interpreting small trends. But the new CDC report is yet more evidence that she was right. Here's her interpretation of the report:

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

Trying to get under that word limit like...

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Craig Sewall

3 years

Most studies in this area used self-reported SM use, which is notoriously flawed. So there's no way we can claim the evidence is "strong" b/c we can't even be sure we've been accurately measuring SM use. What do these effects look like if you use more accurate measures? 🧵 1/n

@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

3 years

1. In my latest in @TheAtlantic , I show that evidence is strong (though not perfect) that Instagram contributed to the large and sudden rise in teen girls' depression that began around 2013. Strong enough for regulators to act now. The case is 4 steps

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Craig Sewall

4 years

🎉Excited to share some prelim. results from my dissertation study. At each wave (4 waves 1 month apart), participants (recruited via @Prolific ) uploaded several screenshots from their “Screen Time” and "Health" iPhone apps & completed several @promisNIH wellbeing measures [1/n]

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Craig Sewall

2 months

👏 👏 👏

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@candice_odgers

Candice Odgers

@candice_odgers

2 months

My latest in @TheAtlantic "...the story behind teen social-media use is much different from what most adults think."

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

🚨New preprint alert🚨 In this exploratory study, @dougaparry & I used response surface analysis (RSA) to extend our understanding of how depression impacts the (in)accuracy of self-reported iPhone use. Comments/feedback are encouraged. Findings next...

The role of depression in the discrepancy between estimated and actual smartphone use: A cubic...

The association between depression and digital media use (DMU) has received substantial re-search and popular attention in recent years. While meta-analytic evidence indicates that there is a small,...

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

Due (in part) to recent pieces in high-impact periodicals like @nytimes and @guardian , and the super popular @SocialDilemma_ doc, many assume that ⬆️ time spent on digital tech during #COVID19 has harmed well-being. That's not what we found... 1/n

@PittSocialwork

Pitt Social Work

@PittSocialwork

3 years

PhD grad Craig Sewall, along with others, published in Journal of Affective Disorders: "Objectively measured digital technology use during the COVID-19 pandemic: Impact on depression, anxiety, & suicidal ideation among young adults." @cjsewall9

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Craig Sewall

3 years

This. What our paper *does not* say: -All self-reports are useless -Self-reports of media use are useless What our paper *does* say: -Self-reports of the frequency/duration of media use should not be used as proxies of actual frequency/duration of media use. 🧵 1/n

@MoritzBuchi

Moritz Büchi

3 years

Unfortunately, it appears that many people's takeaway from this study is something like "asking people questions is useless, I knew it, lol" (There is fair qualification and contextualization by the authors and others on Twitter, and it's in the paper...)

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Craig Sewall

2 months

Amazing that @jean_twenge can confidently claim that "other causes have not changed" when this chart exists:

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@jean_twenge

Jean Twenge (author of GENERATIONS, iGEN)

2 months

This. When academics say "depression is caused by so many things -- why are we worrying about social media?" they ignore that the other causes have not changed. In fact, many have declined in the last few decades (e.g., violent crime is down, as is child poverty). Yet teen

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Craig Sewall

5 years

Update: As of now, Winnie has gained me 129 new followers. A 125% increase from where I was at 6 hours ago. I told him I couldn't give him 129 treats all at once. He threatened a strike. After several grueling rounds of negotiations, we settled on the following compromise:

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Craig Sewall

3 months

Hey DAG/causal inference friends, why isn’t the X->Y effect (potentially) biased in this scenario? X is caused by U, which is unmeasured. So isn’t the X->Y effect actually determined at least in part to U?

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Craig Sewall

3 years

🎉 Dissertation successfully defended! 🥳 Thanks so much to everyone for the support and encouragement 🙏

@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

Well, we've known this day was coming for years now. The battle lines are drawn. This afternoon, I 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒏𝒅 my dissertation. Please help me select my character:

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Craig Sewall

1 month

Does anyone know if @JonHaidt has ever defined “social media?” What’s the definition he would suggest legislators use when regulating these “social media” platforms?

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Craig Sewall

4 years

In case you missed the news yesterday because this tweet went viral in your timeline, Biden/Harris won the election. #AcademicChatter

@PittSocialwork

Pitt Social Work

@PittSocialwork

4 years

PhD candidate Craig Sewall was published in the Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry: "A Bayesian multilevel analysis of the longitudinal associations between relationship quality and suicidal ideation and attempts among youth with bipolar disorder."

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Craig Sewall

1 year

For these policies to be effective we need to know (1) what SM is, (2) that it causes mental illness in teens, and (3) the mechanisms that explain this causal effect. At this stage we know none of these things. 2/n

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Craig Sewall

3 years

In fact, on avg, those who engaged w/ their iPhone more frequently reported *higher* well-being. The most potent predictors of well-being, by far, related to distress caused by the pandemic. 3/n

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Craig Sewall

8 months

It’s unfortunate that Haidt has become such a dominant voice on this important topic. He has the imprimatur of being an objective, fair scientist—engendering trust—but he consistently misrepresents and cherry picks research on this topic, which is on full display with this tweet:

@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

8 months

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences was released yesterday on “Social Media and Mental Health.” The report documents substantial harms to adolescents and young adults across many domains. And yet, despite this documentation, the report

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

1 year

A clear instance of how SM may be beneficial is among LGBTQ+ teens with intolerant parents/community. SM may be a literal lifeline for thousands of teens. Instituting these kinds of bad policies will almost certainly cause significant harm among this population. 10/n

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Craig Sewall

2 months

Are there any clinical researchers that are popular proponents of the “it’s the phones” theory? Haidt, Twenge, and Turkle are all social psychologists. I’m sensing a pattern.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

Here’s the piece I wrote, btw, if anyone is interested. Thankfully, @ConversationUS decided to publish it:

@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

The link b/w digital tech & well-being is inconclusive & based on unreliable data. But major news orgs continue to publish claims that digital tech is harmful to young people. I wrote this piece for @ConversationUS outlining why these oversimplified claims shouldn't be trusted

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

Manuscript accepted! 2020 is starting off great! At this rate I will have 183 manuscripts accepted this year!

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

New preprint is up! Comments & Q's always appreciated. Summary: We investigated the within-person prospective effects b/w objectively-measured smartphone/SM use and depression/anxiety/loneliness. We found that effects were very small and non-significant.

@PsyArXivBot

PsyArXiv-bot

3 years

Objectively-measured digital technology use does not predict within- or between-person increases in psychological distress among young adults

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Craig Sewall

1 month

There’s a vicious cycle where certain academics gain massive followings by leveraging their prestige as “scientists” to peddle oversimplified, narrative-driven misrepresentations of the scientific literature to a credulous audience. Their respectability and popularity buys them

@dr_andrealove

Andrea C. Love, Ph.D. 👩🏻‍🔬🔬💉

1 month

Super disappointed @jimmyfallon gave a platform to pseudoscience “guru” Huberman. In an era where people are plagued with anti-science rhetoric that is harming public health and legislation, entertainers with huge platforms should feel an obligation to elevate credible voices.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

2 years

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Craig Sewall

4 years

Can’t afford to publish in Nature? Come publish your work in our new, free open-access journal Nature: Total Landscaping

@Nature

nature

4 years

The journals will charge authors up to €9,500 to make research papers free to read, in a long-awaited alternative to subscription-only publishing.

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Craig Sewall

3 years

Well, we've known this day was coming for years now. The battle lines are drawn. This afternoon, I 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒏𝒅 my dissertation. Please help me select my character:

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Craig Sewall

3 months

As I laid out earlier this week here ( ) in a world where girls are more impacted by Bad Stuff (e.g., poverty) and Bad Stuff moderates the effect of SM on MH, it's easy to observe significant SM→MH effects that are statistical mirages. 🧵 1/x

@DKThomp

Derek Thompson

3 months

New paper from Norway: Banning smartphones in school - significantly decreased doctors visits for psychological symptoms and diseases among girls - reduced bullying among both genders - improved girls’ GPA and attendance rates - largest effect sizes were among the poorest kids

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Craig Sewall

2 months

@Kazanjy @AlecStapp Here’s a chart I created using WHO mortality data showing adolescent suicide rates by sex across 25 different countries (also available at the bottom of this post: ). Suicide rates remained flat or declined in many countries

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Craig Sewall

5 years

If I were at all artistic, I would open a tattoo shop called “StatsTats” that would specialize in #stats tattoos. What are some designs I should offer? I only have one idea so far: a lumberjack chopping down a tree shaped like a P (p-hacking) @AcademicChatter

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Craig Sewall

4 months

We have representative survey data from Pew () showing that teens are more likely to report positive experiences on SM than negative. But they haven’t written essays defending SM use, so it doesn’t count. Is that how it works @JonHaidt ?

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@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

4 months

Here's another great essay from a Gen Z writer on how his life improved after quitting social media. Can anyone find an essay from Gen Z defending social media and the phone-based childhood? I can't. This is not just "kids these days."

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Craig Sewall

1 year

Surprisingly, something that’s been lost in the debate about the harms of SM is a consensus definition on what social media actually is—i.e., what are the necessary components that constitute SM & how does this differ from other internet/digital platforms? 4/n

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Craig Sewall

3 years

📢Happy to announce that our (me & @aidangcw ) article "Personalizing Suicidology" is out at #Crisis_journal (Free access: ). Here's the crux of our argument: 🧵More to follow (1/n)

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Craig Sewall

3 months

This is a great piece by @CJFerguson1111 . Particularly notable is this plot showing international trends in youth suicide rates vary substantially across countries where SM and smartphone use are just as ubiquitous as they are in the U.S. But... 1/x

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@CJFerguson1111

Chris Ferguson

@CJFerguson1111

3 months

Today in @thehill I talk about research on #socialmedia and how so much of the current moral panic narrative does not match the data. Give it a read!

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Craig Sewall

4 months

🔥🔥🔥

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@skdh

Sabine Hossenfelder

4 months

How I fell out of love with academia (this video was an accidental publication/scheduling blunder😬😬 but well uh, happy Friday I guess)

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Craig Sewall

4 years

PSA: In case you’ve seen this tweet or this chart circulating on Twitter. No, social media is not more harmful to well-being than heroin. IT’S HEROIN! Think of your average teenager on social media. Now think of a teenager hooked on heroin. Whose well-being is worse?

@jean_twenge

Jean Twenge (author of GENERATIONS, iGEN)

4 years

Remember the paper finding that "screen time" was just as correlated with well-being as potatoes? Zero in on devices & social media, and links to well-being are stronger than for hard drugs, obesity, and sometimes even heroin use. Hold the french fries!

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Craig Sewall

2 months

Once I left academia I thought I’d be done with publishing papers. But when @dougaparry approached me about turning my Twitter thread into a paper I just couldn’t resist (Doug’s the best!)

@dougaparry

Doug Parry

2 months

Many claim social media use is the primary driver of a youth mental health crisis, but this oversimplifies mental health problems. Vague theories often ignore key confounds, which can lead to biased conclusions. New paper with @cjsewall9 : 🧵 1/6

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Craig Sewall

4 months

The “social media is like cigarettes” comparison is so tired. (1) There are various uses of SM that can have *positive* impacts on health. Cigarettes don’t. (2) Effect sizes for SM are tiny compared to cigarette smoking (see below)

@deaneckles

Dean Eckles

4 months

To explain away smoking & lung cancer link association, you need a confounder that: - is associated with a 20x increase in lung cancer - is 20x as prevalent among smokers What's the equivalent for social media & mental health?

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Craig Sewall

1 year

The policies recommended by @JonHaidt et al do not reflect the nuance/complexity of SM research. SM (assuming we’re taking about the same thing when we say SM) is not inherently harmful or beneficial. It depends on who/what/why/when/how you’re using it. 9/n

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Craig Sewall

3 months

Hilarious. Perfect. No notes

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Craig Sewall

4 years

When your manuscript status goes from “under review” to “awaiting editorial decision” @AcademicChatter

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Craig Sewall

3 years

I'm honestly confused. All of these panic-inducing slides are based off of a grand total of N=22 people? I must be missing something?

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@JesseLehrich

Jesse Lehrich

3 years

the full slides released by @WSJ are WILD. in this presentation, Facebook researchers explain exactly how & why Instagram drives teen girls into downward spirals of depression in ways that other platforms don't.

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Craig Sewall

1 year

Definitions are more than a matter of semantics. How can we say whether SM is harmful if we can’t even be sure that we’re talking about the same thing? How can we know which platforms to regulate if we don’t have a clear understanding of what SM is/isn’t? 5/n

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Craig Sewall

4 months

The rise in suicide rate among young girls deserves attention. However, because the suicide base rate among young girls has been (and still is) the lowest of all sex/age demographics, even a small absolute increase in the number of suicides will lead to a larger % increase

@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

4 months

This is what I've been trying to say: when you merge everyone and everything, you often find nothing. But when you zoom in on teen girls (especially in early puberty) you usually find a sudden change between 2010 and 2015.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

4 years

I love learning R because I can spend an hour trying to do something that would take me <60 seconds in Stata (my original stats language) and still feel great about my accomplishment somehow #rstats

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Craig Sewall

1 year

Most of the attention has been on debating whether SM is a cause of teen mental illness. Proponents of these policies believe it is but, as people like @CJFerguson1111 & @StuartJRitchie have pointed out, the science is far from settled 3/n

@StuartJRitchie

Stuart Ritchie 🇺🇦

@StuartJRitchie

1 year

Is there really "overwhelming" evidence that smartphones and social media are having a "catastrophic" effect on kids' mental health? I don't think so! Here's my long article where I read though the relevant studies and note some serious weaknesses:

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Craig Sewall

2 months

This is a great (and brief!) read: Do smartphones really cause mental illness among adolescents? Ten problems with Jonathan Haidt’s book

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Do smartphones really cause mental illness among adolescents? Ten problems with Jonathan Haidt’s...

“The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”, a new book by Jonathan Haidt, quickly found an audience. For www.parenting.digital, Michaela …

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 years

Hey Twitter fam, my wife and I are going to be having twins 👶🏼👶🏼 next month (!!) and I am looking for advice/suggestions from all my twin parents out there. General or specific advice on just about any aspect (book /blog recs, sleeping, feeding, survival, etc.) is welcome.

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Craig Sewall

3 months

The Kid(‘s Parents) Are Not Alright Two recent @JAMA_current studies show that over the past 2 decades nearly 1.2 million US youth lost a parent to drugs or firearms, and the rate of parental death due to these causes increased most significantly in the past decade.

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Craig Sewall

3 years

Yet *another* article in a major media outlet claiming that SM *causes* harm. Aside from cherry-picking studies from the past decade, the whole premise of the article is based on a straw man. There isn’t even a preponderance of evidence that SM hurts teen girls… 1/3

@JeffreyGoldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg

@JeffreyGoldberg

3 years

"If Americans do nothing until researchers can show beyond a reasonable doubt that Instagram and its owner, Facebook... are hurting teen girls, these platforms might never be held accountable and the harm could continue indefinitely." -- @JonHaidt :

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

5 years

Me (a naive PhD student): I should sit in on a faculty meeting just to get an idea of what they’re like. Faculty meeting:

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

3 months

However, adjusting for gender (and age) still leaves the SM→MH effect prone to residual confounding by what I’m calling “Bad Stuff,” which is a dramatically over-simplified catch-all term for things occurring at the individual (e.g. MH history), family (e.g. abuse/neglect),

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

1 month

The evidence is clear. We can’t wait for perfect information. Too many lives are at risk. That’s why I’m calling on the Surgeon General to put a warning label on all Waffle Houses. We have to do something now!

@TerribleMaps

Terrible Maps

1 month

Cardiac related deaths in the U.S. compared to Waffle House locations

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Craig Sewall

3 months

After 10 years on this site I finally found the secret to getting engagement. It’s not pictures of your pets. Or saying ridiculous things. It’s DAGs. Just post a picture of a DAG and you’ll get at least 10 comments and 20 likes

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Craig Sewall

3 years

Great work by @DrAndreaHoward & @Ahmb94 : ✅ Used logs of tech use rather than self-reports ✅ Longitudinal analyses "Our findings contribute to a growing scholarly consensus that time spent on smartphones tells us little about young people’s well-being." 1/4

@DrAndreaHoward

Dr. Andrea Howard

@DrAndreaHoward

3 years

Smartphone use: No links with stress or mood in a 12-week longitudinal study. New preprint from me at 1st year grad student Abby Bradley @Ahmb94 based on her undergrad thesis. Data and code are publicly available! A few highlights in this thread... 1/11

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Craig Sewall

1 year

A good dissertation is a done dissertation

@socialistdogmom

molly conger

@socialistdogmom

1 year

i've never actually sat down and read someone's entire dissertation before, but about 100 pages into one, i suddenly find myself a lot less impressed by a doctorate. i guess i thought they had to be... good?

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Craig Sewall

3 years

📢My article "Objectively measured digital technology use during the COVID-19 pandemic: Impact on depression, anxiety, & suicidal ideation among young adults" was just published in 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴📢 🆓access link:

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Craig Sewall

1 year

Weird to see y’all treating grad students like they’re wee little children who need vigilant protection as opposed to full grown adults capable of tying their own shoes. I hated when admin/faculty would infantilize me. It’s like, dude, I’ve got a mortgage & male-pattern balding

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Craig Sewall

5 years

Guess which bird is Reviewer 2 #AcademicChatter

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Craig Sewall

3 months

I’m not opposed to schools restricting smartphones, but I’m confused by the shape of effects observed in this plot. If smartphone bans have an effect on bullying & MH, wouldn’t we expect the effects to be larger immediately after the ban rather than gradually growing over time?

@jayvanbavel

Jay Van Bavel, PhD

3 months

Banning #smartphones in over 400 schools led to: -decreased psychological symptoms among girls by 29% -decreased bullying by boys and girls by 43% -increased GPA among girls by .08 SDs Effects were larger for girls from low SES families

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Craig Sewall

3 months

Obviously, it’s completely possible that I’ve made some error in reasoning or implementation, or both. So I welcome your feedback. You can check out the code I used to generate the simulations and plot here (). Feel free to experiment with your own

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

1 year

For example, say you want to institute an age limit on SM platforms. We all know the obvious platforms that you’d regulate (Facebook, etc), but what about Discord, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, WeChat, WhatsApp, Marco Polo, Tumblr, Substack, and thousands of others? 7/n

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

4 years

@lebatardshowfan @LeBatardShow @MichaelRyanRuiz Somebody’s in love

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Craig Sewall

1 year

We’ve skipped over this business of defining SM b/c it’s notoriously difficult. SM is constantly evolving—features vary across platforms and across time—resulting in 1000s of different definitions over the years. None of which have stood the test of time. 6/n

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Craig Sewall

2 years

If you're attending #ISRII11 , come to Conference Room C at 1:45pm today. I'll be presenting findings on how healthy vs. psych. distressed pts differ in their (objectively measured) digital tech use. From general metrics (eg "screen time") to specific apps. Here's a sneak peak:

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Craig Sewall

2 months

Haidt tweets to his massive audience implying a paper (that he apparently didn’t read) provides *causal* support that a phone-based childhood (the paper’s about internet addiction) rewires kids’ brains. Despite the many limitations of the paper, as @StevenQuartz points out 🙃🫠🫥

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@StevenQuartz

Steven Quartz PhD

2 months

@cjsewall9 @JonHaidt Total of 21 papers with 5 having an n > 20, many with an n = 12 in subjects purported to have IA (not general population) whose cross-sectional design can't assign any causality to childhood usage with little consistent functional connectivity changes = mostly underpowered noise

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Craig Sewall

3 months

Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

Nature - A survey of more than 2.4 million people finds that being online can have a positive effect on welfare.

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Craig Sewall

1 year

Oh wow, look out @jean_twenge & @JonHaidt . There are some serious contenders for vertical lines on a trend plot that are alternative explanations to your vertical lines (iPhones, Instagram, other tech panic). There’s even an explanation for observed differences by gender

@stephenjwild

Stephen Wild

1 year

Always understand the DGP, example 107,613,290: Also, social science is hard.

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@cjsewall9

Craig Sewall

1 year

Instead of instituting bad, all-or-nothing policies that lack scientific grounding. We need to be more specific and precise. Be clear about what SM actually is. Be precise about the aspects of SM that we think are most harmful to most teens. And intervene on those things. 11/end

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Craig Sewall

2 years

Anyone have experience fitting Bayesian multilevel models on large data sets (e.g., N>100k) using brms? I'd appreciate any suggestions/resources for how to speed up the computation. Thanks! @jeffreymgirard @SolomonKurz @bmwiernik

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Craig Sewall

3 months

Arkansas consistently ranks among the bottom states in child well-being. But, yeah, I’m sure that banning kids from smartphones is gonna fix all that.

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@JonHaidt

Jonathan Haidt

3 months

Thank you, @SarahHuckabee , for making Arkansas a leader in rolling back the phone-based childhood and restoring a more humane play-based childhood.

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Craig Sewall

3 months

Haidt’s understanding of the DGP appears to be something like this diagram (below). Gender is a common cause of both SM use and MH, so failing to account for it results in biased estimates of the SM→MH effect. Studies indicate that girls report more SM use and MH problems than

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Craig Sewall

3 months

This finding made me wonder, “How does the bias in the Female*SM→MH interaction effect vary across different parameter specifications?” So I did a multiverse analysis where I fixed the SM→MH and Female*SM→MH effects to zero, the Bad Stuff→MH effect to β = 0.5, and allowed the

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Craig Sewall

2 years

@Mr_Brooks1914 @ODhere @LeBatardShow @Stugotz790 @deadandcompany

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