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peteetchells.bsky.social
Professor of Psychology and Science Communication | Award-winning science writer | Screen Time | Social Media | Smartphones | Video games | https://linktr.ee/unlockedbook
219 posts 4,591 followers 420 following
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Posts 19 Comments 31

"A ban makes a great headline and seems straightforward, but it isn’t" (Sonia Livingstone) This is a really excellent piece showing why so many people working in this space think that social bans are NOT a viable option www.theguardian.com/media/2025/f...

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

Pleased to contribute to this thoughtful @stokel.bsky.social deep dive into the calls for smartphone bans alongside @sonialivingstone.bsky.social @peteetchells.bsky.social - @mollyroseorg.bsky.social is clear that they would cause more harm than good. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/f...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

I'm a neuroscientist. Here's the surprising truth about TikTok 'brain rot' www.sciencefocus.com/comment/tikt... My latest for @sciencefocus.bsky.social Thanks to @peteetchells.bsky.social for the expert comments in the article

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Unashamedly sharing this because while Pete may be being overly generous, it’s certainly not one of the best *selling* books. Help fix that. Or at least borrow it from your local library.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Genuinely, one of the best books of the past couple of years. Alom is a master science communicator.

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments

I’ve been moved to a new room, and there are multiple cameras which is slightly unnerving 👀

submitted 11 days ago • 7 comments

It’s been a pretty wild 48hrs, from relatively standard back pain, to a trip to A&E for a medical emergency and, today, neurosurgery. But today I got to meet this fella, and he totally made my day:

submitted 12 days ago • 11 comments

Not that well known, but I’m a massive wrestling fan, and love LA Knight. Love him even more now. He cut this promo last night, and boy do we need more guys with platforms saying stuff like this. It’s okay to cry.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

I've had multiple members of my family die from smoking-related cancer. It's an absolutely horrific thing to watch someone go through. Not only is using this as an analogy for social media harms misguided and detached from the science, I'm also starting to find it pretty offensive.

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

New study backs up what a lot of us have been saying for a while now: smartphone bans in school aren't a magic fix for everything we're worrying about. It's time to start seriously thinking about how we build better digital literacy skills: www.theguardian.com/education/20...

submitted 22 days ago • 3 comments

This whole thing is incredibly cult-coded - hand-picked kids working unpaid for a billionaire, told to operate in secret.

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

Genuinely fascinating piece, one of those posts that upends what I thought I knew about a topic, in this case why the US isn’t actually able to use its own oil. 🤯

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

I have just been sent a shareable link so this article can be accessed for free: www.wsj.com/health/welln...

submitted 26 days ago • 6 comments

From a journalist friend: Just spreading the word. The CDC is purging data, so people should archive their favorite CDC datasets today, namely ones around race/ethnic diversity, LGBTQ, and reproductive health. Also health data involving climate. The youth risk behavior survey has already gone down.

submitted 27 days ago • 166 comments

Wow it must be really annoying for someone to just use your data like that without asking

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

A thoughtful, considered article on screens and “brain rot”:

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Child: <ties shoelaces> Me: algorithms are banned now kid <calls police>

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

There’s a report out today which recommends that we should “ban algorithms for under 16s” and I just can’t even. Can we please stop with the silliness.

submitted 30 days ago • 3 comments

“We’ve become digital peasants, petitioning various lords and kings to please, please fix the internet for us. … This learned helplessness isn’t just pathetic—it’s exactly what the tech giants want. The more we believe we need them to solve our problems, the more power they accumulate.”

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment