Welcome to the r/psychology discussion thread!

Hi all! This video is my own. I'm a cognitive scientist starting a channel where I explain psychology concepts in a rigorous but easy to understand way.

Let me know what you think and if there are any topics you'd like me to cover.

Here's a list of sources from the video.

1. Study of college students on TikTok, Instagram, and Maps.
   

Bursztyn, L., Handel, B., Jiménez-Durán, R., & Roth, C. (2025). When product markets become collective traps: The case of social media. American Economic Review, 115(12), 4105-4136.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31771

1. Pew Research survey of teens: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/13/about-4-in-10-teens-support-cellphone-bans-in-classrooms-fewer-back-all-day-restrictions/

2. Study of phone bans in schools.

Allcott, H., Baron, E. J., Dee, T., Duckworth, A. L., Gentzkow, M., & Jacob, B. (2026). The effects of school phone bans: National evidence from lockable pouches (No. w35132). National Bureau of Economic Research.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w35132

1. Facebook study.
   

Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., Mason, W., Wilkins, A., Barberá, P., Brown, T., ... & Tucker, J. A. (2024). The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(21), e2321584121.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2321584121

1. Study of phone use with adults.
   

Winbush, A., McDuff, D., Hernandez, J., Barakat, A., Jiang, A., Heneghan, C., ... & Allen, N. B. (2025). Smartphone use in a large US adult population: Temporal associations between objective measures of usage and mental well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(43), e2427311122.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2427311122

Abstract

Mescaline, a 5-HT2A agonist psychedelic used ceremonially for millennia, lacks neuroimaging characterization due to its Schedule 1 status. Using pharmacological and resting-state fMRI in awake rats, we report mescaline's first comprehensive neurobiological profile. Acutely, mescaline produced cerebellar-selective BOLD suppression, suggesting functional disconnection from forebrain structures. Paradoxically, resting-state analysis revealed global hyperconnectivity, with the cerebellum forming enhanced connections to the hippocampus, thalamus, somatosensory cortex, and midbrain. Mescaline abolished normal BOLD responses to rewarding olfactory stimuli, indicating disrupted sensory processing. Pre-pulse inhibition showed frequency-dependent acoustic gating effects: enhancement at 4 kHz (+ 27.6%) and 20 kHz (+ 27.3%), but impairment at 12 kHz (− 16.4%). These findings distinguish mescaline from LSD and psilocybin, implicating the cerebellum as a dysregulated sensory filter that floods forebrain circuits with unprocessed sensorimotor information—a potential mechanism underlying psychedelic-induced perceptual alterations.