Cohort data from the Understanding America Study, spotlighted by John Burn-Murdoch and discussed by Yascha Mounk, show sharp declines in conscientiousness and extraversion and a rise in neuroticism among young adults over the last decade. If personality traits are moving this fast at the population level, the smartphone/social-media environment is acting like a mass psychological intervention.
— Treating personality drift as an environmental externality reframes tech regulation, school phone policies, and mental health strategy as tools to protect population-level psychology.
2025.10.07
55% relevant
The article addresses the broader controversy over smartphone/social media impacts on youth psychology by convening experts to assess evidence across claims, providing a methodological counterweight to polarized interpretations like population‑level personality shifts tied to smartphones.
Arnold Kling
2025.09.28
55% relevant
Tim Carney’s 'social dissociation'—people treating others as NPCs in a contactless, remote life—aligns with evidence that the smartphone/social media environment acts like a mass psychological intervention altering personality and social behavior.
Tim Estes
2025.09.21
90% relevant
The author cites the Understanding America Study (via the Financial Times) to claim conscientiousness among 18–29 year‑olds is in 'freefall,' using it to argue that tech environments are reshaping youth personality in harmful ways.
Tyler Cowen
2025.09.10
70% relevant
The cited study (Gimbrone et al.) finds post‑2010 increases in internalizing symptoms with the largest jump among female liberal adolescents, aligning with the thesis that the smartphone/social‑media environment acts like a population‑level psychological intervention with subgroup‑specific impacts.
Carol Graham
2025.09.05
55% relevant
Both pieces document a distinct post‑2010s youth malaise: the essay reports young people are now the least happy and lonelier with rising suicide/anxiety, while the existing idea shows sharp cohort shifts in conscientiousness/extraversion/neuroticism consistent with a smartphone/social‑media environment effect.
Matthew Gasda
2025.08.20
50% relevant
The piece’s account of boys learning masculinity through short‑form clips and parasocial media aligns with evidence that the smartphone/social media environment is acting like a mass psychological intervention on youth behavior and development.
David Pinsof
2025.08.19
65% relevant
The post cites a study that just 30 minutes on Twitter/X makes users report lower positive affect, reinforcing the broader pattern that digital environments act like population-level psychological interventions.
Arnold Kling
2025.08.19
80% relevant
Kling quotes Yascha Mounk linking rising youth neuroticism and declining relationship formation to smartphones and online life, echoing cohort data showing sharp personality shifts among young adults.
Yascha Mounk
2025.08.14
100% relevant
Burn-Murdoch’s FT chart based on the Understanding America Study showing decade-scale Big Five shifts in youth.
Steve Stewart-Williams
2025.08.14
55% relevant
Both pieces argue personality traits can change at the population level due to environmental inputs; this article adds causal, event-level estimates (job, marriage, divorce) that complement cohort-level shifts attributed to smartphones/social media.
Gurwinder
2025.08.03
55% relevant
By proposing a micro‑mechanism—rapid novelty and context switching degrading time tracking and memory—the piece helps explain how the smartphone environment could drive population‑level psychological shifts (e.g., lower conscientiousness, higher neuroticism).
Erik Hoel
2025.07.31
70% relevant
By showing that most six‑year‑olds already own tablets and 5–8 year‑olds average 3.5 hours/day on screens, the article reframes early personality and habit formation as partly driven by a policy‑made 'literacy lag' that cedes kids’ attention to smartphones during a sensitive window.
Dan Williams
2025.07.26
60% relevant
Where the existing idea treats recent psychological shifts as likely effects of the smartphone/social-media environment, this article questions the causal weight of platforms in driving broader societal deterioration.
2023.04.25
72% relevant
Jean Twenge highlights a sharp post‑2012 shift in teens’ time use (less in‑person socializing, more social media) alongside rising depression/anxiety, and NPR notes new causal studies (e.g., Alexey Makarin) pointing in the same direction—supporting the broader thesis that the smartphone/social‑media environment acts like a mass psychological intervention on youth.