There are some conflicting findings floating around the electroniverse. Japanese philosophizing psychologists suggests that addicts make phones look bad, and a Netherlands twin study says something similar. Likely only a coincidence that these studies were coming out at the same time Facebook was on trial in California for intentionally hurting kids.
In the end, the only conclusion we can make is that science is hard:
People who are easily distracted by smartphones are more physiologically reactive, less attuned to their bodies
Apr 2025, phys.org
People who have an attentional bias towards smartphone stimuli typically display a lower interoceptive awareness, meaning they were less attuned to internal bodily signals such as their heartbeat - a pattern mirroring behavioral addictions like gambling or substance use.
Note, Japanese institutions think differently about the intersection of humans and technology:
"This project began as an interdisciplinary exploration between philosophy and psychology, aiming to understand the relationship between technology and the human body."
via Hokkaido University: Yusuke Haruki et al, Attentional bias towards smartphone stimuli is associated with decreased interoceptive awareness and increased physiological reactivity, Communications Psychology (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00225-6.
Mostly unrelated image credit: Woman Eating a Sandwich, from the archives, pre-AI era
Twin study challenges oversimplified claims about social media and well-being
Oct 2025, phys.org
6,000 twins in the Netherlands:
- Small associations were found between social media use and well-being, with most being either negligible or statistically minor.
- Genetic influences explained up to 72% of the variation in how much time people spend on social media.
- People with higher well-being tended to use more platforms, but more passively (browsing rather than posting).
- Those with lower well-being were more likely to post frequently on fewer platforms.
via Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics: Selim Sametoğlu et al, The Association Between Frequency of Social Media Use, Wellbeing, and Depressive Symptoms: Disentangling Genetic and Environmental Factors, Behavior Genetics (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s10519-025-10224-2
Social media research tool can lower political temperature — it could also lead to more user control over algorithms
Nov 2025, phys.org
Key: This research was done "without the direct cooperation of the platform"
Web extension tool coupled with an artificial intelligence large language model that scans posts for antidemocratic and extreme negative partisan sentiments. The tool then re-orders posts on the user's X feed in a matter of seconds:
Antidemocratic attitudes:
- advocating for extreme measures against the opposing party
- statements that show rejection of any bipartisan cooperation
- skepticism of facts that favor the other party's views
- willingness to forgo democratic principles to help the favored party
Where has this been all these years? Consider, there is often an immediate, unavoidable emotional response to seeing ^this kind of content ... making people feel bad the moment they see it.
via Stanford's School of Engineering and Universities of Washington and Northeastern: Tiziano Piccardi et al, Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.adu5584. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu5584
Also: Jennifer Allen et al, Platform-independent experiments on social media, Science (2025). DOI: 10.1126/science.aec7388 , www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec7388
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