MrMathNerd

Two more studies show that when young people quit or reduce social media for as little as one week, their anxiety/depression drops. One (with no control group) was written up in the NYT: nytimes.com/2025/11/24/hea… The other, much more rigorous, was conducted by Meta and then buried. But a description of it came out during the lawsuits. It was called "Project Mercury". Read about it, and many other damning findings that Meta is hiding, here, from @JeffHorwitz: reuters.com/sustainability… Here is the key passage: In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said. Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company. Privately, however, a staffer insisted that the conclusions of the research were valid, according to the filing. “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.”

Them: Phonics is drudgery and will turn off our kindergarteners from reading! Kindergarteners: @MCScommunicates #Reading360

Broadly, I agree with you. Both parties have chosen to pursue policies they treat as proxies for demanding better school performance (school choice on the right and “more funding” on the left), when in fact, neither is proven to consistently deliver better outcomes. However, I see real promise in the state-scale reforms in MS, LA, TN, and AL. They share a common playbook, which has delivered gains at state-scale – a remarkable achievement in K-12 terms. I wrote about them here in February: karenvaites.org/p/the-southern… Recently, I wrote about the prospects for replication in other states, as the Southern Surge gained national attention: karenvaites.org/p/the-southern… Spoiler: there is a great deal of potential, but also a good deal of implementation failure in other states chasing these reforms. Additional clarity on the playbook and stronger state leadership are both needed. As I detail in the linked pieces, I agree with your thesis about missing federal leadership. Both Cardona and McMahon have chosen not to advance this work, and we need to create other catalysts for change. Personally, I believe a public pressure campaign is necessary if we want to see these reforms in other states. I would be thrilled to speak with you about nascent efforts in this space. (There is much to say that’s not-yet-public.) All of this takes nothing away from the impressive district-scale work in Houston. I could also point to districts working from the Southern Surge playbook and seeing growth, like @AldineISD, arguably the fastest-growing district in TX: houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t… I admire these districts, but I am most inspired by the opportunities to take this work up a notch via state-level reforms.