Speaker and professor. New book: 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World https://xitter.cf/t.co/qOibKZtJ6U Updates: https://xitter.cf/t.co/nAzNtRqybI
San Diego, CA
Joined April 2017
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Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
I strictly limit my kids’ internet usage at home, but their schools let them surf YouTube.
NEW: Last school year, a 7th grader viewed 4,700 YouTube videos during class.
An 8th grader viewed 5,700 videos in class.
A 2nd grader viewed ~500 in just 2 months.
Less than 5% were educational.
@nbcnews analyzed the YouTube watch histories of students from across the country. My new story shows how far some take it on their school laptops and iPads -->
nbcnews.com/specials/hooked-…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Americans have a "revealed preference" for doing less of basically everything except going online and I have serious doubts that this is making us happier.
slowboring.com/p/americans-n…
What's the biggest generational difference in work attitudes? And more, from the Oprah podcast:
generationtechblog.com/p/wha…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Last week two different chatbot companies were in the news. First, Character. ai filed for bankruptcy, in an effort to avoid accountability. New reporting suggests Disney asked the company to file for bankruptcy as part of their deal to acquire the technology. They didn’t want to buy the company outright because of the legal liability. Kids were harmed. That debt does not disappear in bankruptcy court.
Then eight state AGs filed coordinated lawsuits against OpenAI this week. First coordinated state action against an AI company. The allegations: deceiving parents about safety, designing products that create emotional dependency in children, and failing to protect young users from self-harm content. Nebraska’s suit is the one to watch. It’s the first enforcement action brought under a state design code law. That’s a milestone worth marking.
While CharacterAI seeks to use the bankruptcy process as a get out of jail free card, OpenAI’s defense? Parental controls. We’ve heard that before. You cannot parental-control your way out of dangerous design. The burden of proof belongs on these companies.
These stories show the AI chatbot industry is running the same playbook social media ran. Race to scale. Worry about safety later. We know how that story ends.
theguardian.com/technology/2…
This. 👇 I truly don't understand: Why do school districts allow unfiltered access to YouTube on school-issued devices? Either block YouTube, streaming, etc. or go back to paper and pencil learning. Parents are often powerless bc you can't put parental controls on a school device. This has got to stop. nbcnews.com/specials/hooked-…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Results: academic performance improved (0.073 SD), with the largest gains among the weakest students. And students who experienced the ban became more supportive of it.
science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Evidence on the harmful cognitive effects of TikTok, Reels, and other short form video keeps growing. It's not just the content, it's the attention fragmentation and the declining ability to plan for the future.
From @juliejargon
wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/t…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Reading scores fell 14 points from 2022 to 2025, across 35 OECD countries with comparable data.
PISA also shows increasing instances of “hasty reading,” when students answer quickly but wrongly.
Learn more: oecd.org/en/publications/202…
#OECDPISA #Education #Skills
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
More screen time, less storytelling for 3 yr olds.
✅ 83% of 3-year-olds w/ <1 hr of screens can tell a story
✅ Just 56% w/ 4+ hrs can
✅ Gap holds after controlling for income, education & family structure
@IzzybellaDini @grantjbailey @FamStudies
ifstudies.org/blog/more-scre…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
A new survey of college students asked whether the "world has been getting better or worse over the last 50 years" (on extreme poverty, life expectancy & literacy).
Despite clear evidence to the contrary, only 38% said "better," w/ the % much lower for women than men (23%-46%).
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Today is the publication day for Artificial Intimacy. There are so many moments in the life of a book. The day you finished the proposal. The day you settled on the right outline. The copyedit. The corrected pages. But there is nothing like the day that you see your book in a bookstore. All of those other landmarks fall away. In winter 1978, I stood outside Harvard Book Store, nose pressed to the window, and watched a young woman take Psychoanalytic Politics off the shelf. She looked at it and put it back. But I was content. My book, my first book, was in the hands of strangers. And now, these feelings rush back: Artificial Intimacy is in the world, and I feel humbled. hachettebookgroup.com/titles…
Identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) has plummeted among younger teens in 2025 in the nationally representative YRBS survey from the CDC. Older teens show relative stability, consistent with data from young adults.
There's also a decline in LGB sex among younger teens who are sexually active, so it's not just identification. Details in Generation Tech:
generationtechblog.com/p/ide…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
I created two indexes of religious behavior.
One is private acts like reading holy texts, reading devotionals, watching services online.
The other is social acts like attending in person worship, attending small groups, and speaking to others about religion.
No matter how high one scores on the private dimension, happiness doesn't change at all.
But as social religious behavior increases, so does self-reported happiness.
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
The evidence that social media is a cause (not just a correlate) of poor mental health keeps piling up. We lay it out in an accessible form here. We also go beyond mental health to review evidence of many other harms, esp. short form videos and cognitive functioning:
afterbabel.com/p/the-many-li…
Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) retweeted
Reading underpins all learning.
That makes its continued decline one of the most concerning findings from the latest #OECDPISA.
The ability to find, evaluate, interpret and reflect on information matters in an increasingly digital and #AI-driven world.
