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Decoding Academia: Moral Entrepreneurs, Measurement Issues, & Screentime with Andrew Przybylski (Patreon)

Published:
2026-02-21 08:20:20
Edited:
2026-02-21 21:51:01
Imported:
2026-02
Tags:

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Content

Another episode where the guest is not a sensemaking prophet or a galaxy-brained guru, as we engage in academic dialogos with Oxford psychologist Andrew Przybylski. Andrew's work spans many topics but his most recent crime is that he studies the impact of technology and has not found evidence that it is destroying wellbeing and leading to civilisational collapse. We discuss the ongoing moral panic around smartphones, social media, and teenagers’ allegedly pulverised minds, and why much of the debate rests on statistical techniques roughly equivalent to staring deeply at Excel spreadsheets and hammering SPSS until the desired narrative appears.

We get into measurement issues around screen time, why small correlations become front-page catastrophes, and how the discourse rewards confident storytelling much more than boring responsible causal inference. Also covered are the potential impact of Warhammer 40k on Western civilisation, cross-cultural evidence , and why we probably should not be basing government policies on airport pop science books.

Relevant Research (Przybylski & collaborators)

Andrew's Academic Profile and Personal Website

Fassi, L., Ferguson, A. M., Przybylski, A. K., Ford, T. J., & Orben, A. (2025). Social media use in adolescents with and without mental health conditions. Nature human behaviour, 9(6), 1283-1299.

Vuorre, M., & Przybylski, A. K. (2023). Estimating the association between Facebook adoption and well-being in 72 countries. Royal Society open science, 10(8).

Vuorre, M., Orben, A., & Przybylski, A. K. (2021). There is no evidence that associations between adolescents’ digital technology engagement and mental health problems have increased. Clinical Psychological Science, 9(5), 823-835.

Orben, A., & Przybylski, A. K. (2019). The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use. Nature human behaviour, 3(2), 173-182.

Orben, A., Dienlin, T., & Przybylski, A. K. (2019). Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(21), 10226-10228.

Przybylski, A. K., & Weinstein, N. (2017). A large-scale test of the goldilocks hypothesis: quantifying the relations between digital-screen use and the mental well-being of adolescents. Psychological science, 28(2), 204-215.

Johannes, N., Vuorre, M., & Przybylski, A. K. (2021). Video game play is positively correlated with well-being. Royal Society open science, 8(2), 202049.

Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). A motivational model of video game engagement. Review of general psychology, 14(2), 154-166.

Comments

Ema

Typical Australia. Everyone likes bringing in new rules. But nobody actually cares about the issues. So they bring in the ban and then everyone just continues vaping and using social media like nothing happened. Anyway, really interesting interview!

Linda Sears

I’ll listen. I actually don’t care if young people use computers, tablets, and phones to play video games, FaceTime with their friends, watch movies, listen to music, and scroll through Tik Tok and Instagram as long as they are not doing it in my classroom while I’m teaching, which many of them do.

Amy

This was a really interesting and educational discussion. I have a lot of mixed feelings about kids using social media based on my experiences when I was a teen. It wasn’t healthy. There was a lot of cyber-bullying. These kids would’ve been bullies either way but social media made it easier. But cyber-bullying was also a thing before social media. So ultimately I think education and better systems to protect kids are the better solutions than an outright ban. 🤷‍♀️

Nina Davies

From what I can tell in the UK, the actual political conversations (rather than social media conversations) are attempting to restrict the Internet for children in similar ways to the 'real world'. So emphasis is on restriction to porn and meeting potentially predatory adults online. I think the other practical issue is the problems schools have around policing phones. They would probably like children to have no phones or non-smart phones because it would take away classroom management issues. When I was a child, I can vividly remember schools recommending that parents restrict access to the TV. All sorts of programmes were considered inappropriate, including the News and programmes made for children like 'Grange Hill' which presented social problems like addiction and truancy.

Dean

You should consider making this available on YouTube for free. I'd love to share this with a few peope.

Dries T.

Wow, you guys are really spoiling us with all of these recent Decoding Academia episodes!

Jake

Should this episode be on one of the RSS feeds? I can't see it on the public or galaxy brain ones.

iffydonatello

Anecdotal, but Warhammer 40k lore videos have completely destroyed my mind

Kasperissim0

This episode (at least for me) doesn’t appear in any of the podcast feeds (normal/galaxy brain). Thought I should let you know. Great episode nonetheless 👍

Rich F

Just firing out thoughts. Only just started listening. The urge to find causality (which is a real word and contextually appropriate i think) ...Also the willingness by ppl and organisations to agree on something as arbitrary as (for example) "screen time" as being *the* thing to worry about... yep. That's quite shit. Yeah. There's an acceleration of access to potentially harmful online experiences. There's no standardised effective guardrails. Then again if humans are helped to think rationally in any given online situation. Or in real life... they build their own rails. But also Brexit, Ethno-nationalistic horseshit, failure to vote in accordance with pragmatic ideas, etc. If you can't navigate you're f***ed. But popular voices require you to be bad at navigating. OK that's enough. im listening now.

Rich F

Andys alright. My initial blurted-out comments didn't really address what he was saying, mainly because I said them before I'd begun listening. Without trying to score any points, I feel a kind of instinctive anxiety about the landscape we now navigate. Hopefully we navigate it successfully and give good advice to young people. But at the same time I feel like its excessive to mis-prioritise and obsess about *hot button* talking points. Most ppl will definitely continue to do both of those things tho. Including me to some extent if I'm honest.

Thomas

The ad hom. "lady from San Diego State" was kinda weird. Like why isn't Jon Haidt "Some guy from NYU"? If she was from Harvard would her work be more valid? He said San Diego State like more than a few times when trying to portray Twinge as low quality in some way. Just kinda sus.

Sam Leeming

Andrew Huberman is quoted as an expert in the "National Geographic". This month it's a special on ADHD. In the chapter about overuse of technology they quoted him as saying.. "smartphone use can induce adult ADHD". 🤷🫠 There was me excited about getting a deepdive on the newest findings about ADHD. These popular podcasters really are taking over.

Linda Sears

Just from listening, it sounds like trying to come up with good data cross culturally is extremely difficult. We see a lot of students with mental health issues at my college. I can see why people want easy answers to the problem. Personally, I’m very thankful that social media did not exist when I was a teenager/young adult since I and my twin suffered from bad self-esteem issues because we compared ourselves to others and each other in unhealthy ways. Had one of us been more “liked” than the other that could have led to serious problems.

John Pohl

Wait. Dr. Przybylski stated that Jonathan Haidt used a ghost writer. Is this true?

Chomagerider

Very much enjoyed my first Decoding Academia episode. Thank you. Just a question. What's the main beef with these ban proposals that are literally everywhere these days (quite crazy actually). A. The bans are ineffectual because kids will find workarounds anyway B. We dont actually know whether social Media is even that bad for kids? C. It's a conservative talking point / moral panic that's taking away too much oxygen from actually fact-based discussions? D. The ban will actually actively harm a subset of children (isolated ones, minorities etc)? E. (...)

Cole Gibson

Any references for similar insights as this conversation, but specifically for the debate around screens and education? Since the senate testimony of Jared Horvath etc are making their way around the discourse.

Nancy Hale

Excellent discussion! Andrew is very articulate and excels at describing what serious researchers do. The New South Wales premier’s wife reminds me a bit of Tipper Gore, wife of then-US Senator Al Gore, back in the 1980s. If you were in the US at that time you know what I mean. The moral panic for youth at that time was lyrics in pop, rock, and hip-hop tracks.

Chomagerider

A genuine question: what was the interviewee referring to when he said South Korea shut the internet off for under 18 year olds for 10 years? I'm aware of the Cinderella law but that was only for video games between midnight and 6am for under 16 year olds. Surely that's not what he meant when he said "shut the internet off"?

Molly Bretthauer

Loved this episode. I joined the patreon so I could listen to the Decoding Academia. Through the podcast I started learning that a lot of the pop- psychology books I had been reading were possibly based on crap analysis and a dose of confirmation bias. Anyway, I just wanted thank you guys again for making the Academia episodes. 🪫🧠🔋

Kawaii Leonard

Fellas, I’ve just come across knowledge of a sense-making endeavor of Jeffrey Epstein himself. Book called “What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty” where he contributed an essay. I’ll try and figure out what’s in there somehow. Wasn’t too impressed with how he tackled “big questions” in the Bannon tapes

Marc Alexander

This was great. I’d fallen off trying to keep up with social media’s effects and this was super enlightening.

Dial-1-2-enter-in-2-diaLOGOS

There are some mentions of methodological issues with research by Twenge. Do you have any suggestions for blog posts, articles or books that explain these? I always struggle a bit with learning more complex stuff by audio alone.

Jillian fon Swa

The whole world needs to hear this. So fascinating

Michael Henderson

Have to say, hearing Powerwash Simulator get a mention made me laugh, considering I played through the entire first game and am currently playing through the second, all while listening to DTG.

Elissa

Loved this , my first decoding academia episode. I’m not a scientist or an academic . I am however a career teacher and curriculum designer for many decades in the arts. Personally I’ve seen a decline in student / teacher interaction in the classroom over a steady period since phones / easy internet access. I think the clarion call of : good science needed here people is probably too little way late. But I do hope some fucker gets to doing it - for gods sake folks! I’ve a niggling thought / question: how much of the jump on the ban screens bandwagon is linked to fears over porn use by younger and younger children ? As someone who sees themselves as a very sex positive open individual, I’m concerned for young people in this regard. I’ve wanted to broach the subject with students from a deconstruction of media standpoint at several points in my career , and although it was widely accepted that ‘all students’ watched ‘a lot’ of it, we had no support to discuss. So a widening gap was created between the daytime and nighttime reality of students and teachers. Albeit perhaps exposed in media production studies. Just some thoughts. How about some decoding on porn studies and porn addition academic researchers . I’m all ears

NIALL DAVISON

I don't know about the rest of the world, but walk into any barber shop in the UK or Ireland and you'll witness how kids can't sit in a chair for fifteen minutes without a smartphone or an iPad while getting their hair cut — there's something not right about that. Sometimes you don't need science to realise the next generation is fucked. Also, is Matt not meant to be some sort of addiction expert? Is there a more pointless addiction on the planet than vaping?

Ad Tastic

As an Aussie, I think the fact Australia banned something is all the proof you need that a ban is poorly thought thru, half-baked, and libel to cause unintended consequences worse than the initial "problem". I have never lived in a country where so many people show so much conviction to make sure you are not doing what they dont want you to do. Nanny state doesnt even begin to describe how hysterical this national mental health defect is.

Roland Weber

I'm looking for a link about that sloppy introduction of the social media ban in Australia. Does someone have it at hand?