Tom Hollenstein

Understanding Maximum Likelihood Estimation, now in 3D!: rpsychologist.com/likelihood #dataviz #stats #rstats

Superstar Emma Galarneau compared various techniques for indexing emotion regulation repertoires across 7 samples! Latent profiles (on centered vars) best. & great team: @jplougheed.bsky.social Kalee De France Tyler Colasante Katie Faulkner Megan Wylie www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We have a newly minted PhD in the house! Please join me in congratulating Dr. @danielnault.bsky.social on his successful doctoral defence today! 🎓

from this graph, that conclusion is totally unfounded. 2023-2026? Did it go up? Down? No idea*. "We do not know yet" is a wonderfully rigorous statement. Stop putting conclusion before data. *note, this critique is not specific to this particular instance

“We're excited to really build a series that capitalizes [on] and shares knowledge within the Kingston community broadly. So we have so many curious folks with lots of different experiences," said Dr. Karalyn McRae. Details on the series and first lecture here: www.kingstonist.com/news/queens-...

Enjoyed talking to @psychscience.bsky.social about my group’s new(ish) paper for the Observer. I’ve talked about this on here at an earlier stage. In 4 studies, we found no evidence that asking young adults to cut back on their social media improves well-being. Small thread 🧵 follows:

Mike Males reminds us to look adult mental health and abuse within homes versus headlines if we want to really understand depression among girls. He also reminded me of the time I was called crazy for letting my child use social media. That was interesting... mikemales.substack.com/p/gee-our-to...

If you only read one of them (and you should read all of them before you post about the issue), make it this one. www.jmir.org/2024/1/e59585

One of the most important (often ignored, always misinterpreted) papers: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27929304/ With < full lifetime data, only 17% never had clinician confirmed Dx, so that number has to get closer to 0 for full lifespan. Everyone's "disordered"? What's "normal"? What's mental health?

A few thoughts on why I changed my mind about age-gating as a way to protect young people online, as France races forward with their plans to ban under 15s from social media open.substack.com/pub/candiceo...

Gen Z is Crossing the Threshold into Adulthood and We Need to Show Up for Them substack.com/@isabelagran...

#ICYMI "Emotions are not weaknesses. They can... help us recognize when we feel secure, connected, and at peace, or when something in our lives needs to change," writes Resolve's Director of Community Services Tara Everitt in our latest op/ed. Read more here: www.kingstonist.com/mental-healt...

I think the difficulty of understanding feedback loops underlies many big debates in science: Origin of life: "genes first" vs "metabolism first" (neither, it's a feedback loop) Development: "nature vs nurture" (neither, it's a feedback loop) Neuroscience: "brain vs behaviour" (you guessed it!)

“Social media is ‘one of the least influential factors’ in teen depression and anxiety; girls who are already depressed go on to use social media more, not the other way around.”

This looks awesome, @aidangcw.bsky.social ! So important. Agree it is deeper than just method. Ontological process. Can't wait to read it! thank you

Candice Odgers is the reasoned, evidence-based, and child-centric voice that EVERYONE needs to listen to. If you are TRULY concerned about youth, so many more effective things can be done to improve their lives. Banning phones is SUPREMELY stupid, and harmful. Thank you, Candice.

Watch the entire talk here: go.ted.com/candiceodgers

The more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it is true. But please, don't believe everything you hear about teens today. Science and how well they are doing, despite the suffering of adults around them, tells a different story.

In 1908 the Lancet called for an 18+ age limit on reading in bed for U.K. children.

"Banning children from social media is not the answer, UN warns – platforms must be made safe by design" news.un.org/en/story/202...

Canada is getting ready to ban social media for kids under 16. The quote going around by cabinet minister Marc Miller: "it's obvious why it's a priority. Kids are dying." Every death by suicide is a tragedy but the numbers don't support this claim. I pulled Statistics Canada data to illustrate: 🧵

A brilliant rebuttal to that NYT opinion piece from earlier in the week (Yes, THAT one) "We don’t need fewer games – we need better ones, and a deeper commitment to designing learning experiences that invite students to not simply respond, but to think" www.gamesforchange.org/blog_posts/t...

Really great #SRA2026 roundtable session this morning by @mitchprinstein.bsky.social , @evatelzer.bsky.social , Brinleigh Murphy-Reuter and Sunny Liu all about advancing responsible social media research. Heartening to hear so many thoughtful perspectives, and no moral panic about teens and screens!

The DSEC Lab is in Pittsburgh for #SAS2026! 🎉 We’re excited to present some of the latest findings from the lab and to learn from the incredible work being shared by others at the conference! Our team will be presenting on Friday and Saturday, so stay tuned for some conference highlights!

#ICYMI As we get closer to March Break, our friends at The Screening Room are making some family-friendly and wallet-friendly plans! Read more: www.kingstonist.com/news/the-scr...

Great use of state space grids!

Lazy Scholar is available on Chrome: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/lazy-... and Firefox: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo...

Agreed, Andrea. That direction is never considered by the pre-convinced crowd. aaannnndd....PANAS is not a wellbeing measure. Feeling negative emotions is NORMAL. Please please please MAKE THE SCHLOCK STOP!

@affectscience.bsky.social notices are out! 🎉 If you’re going to #SAS2026, consider attending its very first Developmental Affective Science pre-conference too! @eriknook.bsky.social and I hope to see you there. 🤞🏻 Spread the word!

If only adults could pay attention to something other than teenagers’ phones…

Our department is hiring! We’re looking for a new colleague (Assoc/Full) in Social/Affective Neuroscience to join us at Queen’s starting July 2026. Amazing people, great facilities, supportive community. Please share!! Full ad here: www.queensu.ca/psychology/n...

I JUST posted about another one. A meta-analysis. Zero reality. On the plus side, great teaching tools. bsky.app/profile/tomh...

Updating my comparative public admin seminar class—which was decimated by AI last year—to maybe be a little more LLM-proof by adding a 20–30 minute start-of-class writing & discussion activity. Will it work? Who knows! Full details and PDF here: governancef25.classes.andrewheiss.com/assignment/c...

Not surprisingly I have lots of thoughts on this. But in a nutshell, Yes, we should support teachers and no students should not be on their phones in class (unless they are integrated into the class plan or supporting learning), but, most teachers and schools had already solved this problem...

with phones in backpacks, lockers, or in holders at the back of the room. So the bans are doing little to change access to phones, are costing us lot of money (with these bizarre yonder pouches), time, and resources and are not solving any of the real problems that young people are facing - so...

the danger is that adults claim victory and believe they have saved the children, when in reality they have just kicked down an already open door and did nothing to support youth mental health (oh, and by the way, we are in the midst of an adult mental health crisis but keep pointing only at youth)

mikemales.substack.com/p/new-figure...

More details on [the program here](liminal-learning.com/program). Liminal Learning is a nonprofit, aiming to provide 30% of its places on scholarship over its lifetime.

The yearlong program helps young people find their way in work, study, and life. We start with a weeklong retreat in the wilderness (Quest), and continues with online and offline programming. Check out some of the testimonials from our last cohort: liminallearning.substack.com

We've got 5 scholarship places open for Liminal Learning's next cohort, starting October 19: liminal-learning.com/upcoming-que...!