Tom Metherell
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tommetherell.com
Tom Metherell
@tommetherell.com
/ˈmɛðərəl/. He/him. PhD candidate in Mental Health Science @clscohorts.bsky.social, @sriucl.bsky.social. Social media + mental health 📱🧠🏳️‍🌈

tommetherell.com
Reposted by Tom Metherell
Reminder: Haidt is not actually an "expert" in this field and actual experts have called out that he's just wrong about almost everything.

www.techdirt.com/2025/09/10/e...
January 14, 2026 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
Three days left to vote safely.
Workload is out of control, your vote is how we change it.
Post your ballot today. Vote YES.
November 23, 2025 at 8:01 PM
In case you need to feel better about the progress of one of your manuscripts, I just received a first-round editorial decision... 418 days after submission. #academicchatter #phdlife
November 15, 2025 at 10:51 AM
There is a LOT to be done at UCL to allow its queer staff and students to feel safe and supported
November 6, 2025 at 4:20 PM
"Trans, bisexual, non-binary and queer staff... experience UCL as an unsupportive and difficult workplace"; "The Institute of Education was highlighted... as being a hostile place for LGBTQ+ staff and students" – damning indictments that unfortunately don't surprise me. www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resour...
www.ucl.ac.uk
November 6, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
🚨Job alert!🚨

We are looking for a 🧮 quant postdoc researcher to join the AMAZING Jay Das-Munshi @jdasmunshi.bsky.social George Ploubidis @georgeploubidis.bsky.social & myself at @kingscsmh.bsky.social in collab with @clscohorts.bsky.social

All info: my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru...

Closes 18 Nov!
my.corehr.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
We’re into week two of the ballot, time to get back to basics.

Why vote? Because your voice is the only way to change what’s happening in our sector:
📉 Falling pay
⚠️ Rising insecurity
💬 Broken national agreements

Every vote counts.
Vote YES. Post your ballot.

#WeAreTheUniversity
October 28, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Voted yes/yes in the @ucu.org.uk strike ballot. Our sector is crumbling and now we're expected to take another pay cut - enough! #wearetheuniversity
October 27, 2025 at 9:39 AM
It's been a great @sllshome.bsky.social #SLLS2025! On Tuesday I presented the initial results of our study on social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in adolescents in England. You can read the preprint here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
September 11, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
🚨 Last chance to apply! We're looking for a new Director. Find out more about the role and apply on the CLS website, closing date TOMORROW: bit.ly/452oe4v
September 1, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
We have a ✨NEW PREPRINT✨! Using data from the @clscohorts.bsky.social Millennium Cohort Study and linked healthcare records, we tested the association between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in young people in England. This is still a work in progress - feedback welcome!
Characterising the longitudinal relationship between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in adolescents in England: https://osf.io/87cze
July 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
If you're interested in learning #JuliaLang and are currently an #RStats user (or even if you're not!), then here's a little introduction to getting started! 📊

Blog post: nrennie.rbind.io/blog/introdu...

#QuartoPub #Julia @tidierjl.bsky.social
Introduction to Julia for R users – Nicola Rennie
This blog post will give R users an overview of what Julia is and why they might want to use it, introduce some data processing Julia packages, and show how they can incorporate Julia into existing R ...
nrennie.rbind.io
August 18, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
"[The Online Safety Act] requires victims of sexual assault to submit government IDs to access support communities. People struggling with addiction must undergo facial recognition scans to find help quitting drinking or smoking."
August 5, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
Wrote about how the UK's online age verification requirements are already proving to be a disaster (as UK regulators were clearly warned it would be) and how unhelpful the UK's response to this mess has been, including their tech minister saying anyone who complains supports predators.
August 5, 2025 at 12:31 AM
truly appalling to equate that to the other (worthy!) causes in the list
August 7, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About

Well, well, well. The “age assurance” part of the UK's Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking requirements kicking in a week and a half ago. And what…
Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About
Well, well, well. The “age assurance” part of the UK's Online Safety Act has finally gone into effect, with its age checking requirements kicking in a week and a half ago. And what do you know? It's turned out to be exactly the privacy-invading, freedom-crushing, technically unworkable disaster that everyone with half a brain predicted it would be. Let's start with the most obvious sign that this law is working exactly as poorly as critics warned: …
www.techdirt.com
August 4, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Today I presented my work on data from the @unicefinnocenti.bsky.social Disrupting Harm survey at #IPC2025 in Brisbane! It was a great opportunity to engage with other researchers interested in investigating youth mental health in the population.

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
July 17, 2025 at 12:16 PM
thanks to much-needed input from @jonathan-bartlett.bsky.social on how the hell to put together a principled missing data strategy for this thing
July 14, 2025 at 8:52 AM
July 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
We have a ✨NEW PREPRINT✨! Using data from the @clscohorts.bsky.social Millennium Cohort Study and linked healthcare records, we tested the association between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in young people in England. This is still a work in progress - feedback welcome!
Characterising the longitudinal relationship between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in adolescents in England: https://osf.io/87cze
July 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
Happy to share my new study, publ. in Social Science Research 🎉 Bottom line: Yes, adolescents use their phones a lot 🤳 But I find no support for the notion that this use displaces reading, homework, hobbies, physical act., sleep... Instead: Changing media preferences 📺 ->📱. doi.org/10.1016/j.ss...
July 7, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
Shame on the Guardian for publishing this as if Sullivan is an independent expert. Sullivan is a well-known gender-critical campaigner, & advisor to Sex Matters, a prominent GC campaign group which is reported to be deeply entangled with anti-LGBTQ+ movements: yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/home-af...
UK universities have failed to protect gender-critical academics, report finds
Report’s author raises ‘stark concerns about barriers to academic freedom’
www.theguardian.com
July 2, 2025 at 10:39 AM
is starting the first conference session at 07:30 part of an experiment to test the effects of lack of sleep on the mental health of psychiatry conference participants?
June 30, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Had a great first day at #SIPS2025! Don't miss our session tomorrow morning on the challenges of public engagement in a post-truth society 🗯️

(@sarahbakirci.bsky.social @zefreeman.com)
June 26, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Reposted by Tom Metherell
🚨New preprint 🚨

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐬: 𝐀 𝐋𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞-𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨-𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵

Using a novel micro-narrative method, we collected ~ 900 first-person accounts of social media harms from young people across the UK and US.
June 24, 2025 at 10:58 AM