How have achievement gaps grown in the US since 2015? Surprisingly, not much BETWEEN demographic groups, but the bottom 25% WITHIN each group has dropped a lot. A discovery by Jakey Lebwohl (age 16), Emma Park, @ZachMRausch at

The avg young person today is on course to spend 25 years of their life on their phone. (Plus more on other screens). Most of them don't want to live this way, but feel trapped. How about we delay giving smartphones and tablets till at least 14?

I focused on anxiety/depression in Anglo countries. But @sapien_labs cast a broader net and finds much more extensive psychiatric harm linked to phone-based childhoods, globally. Earlier phone = lower mental health as young adult

Coming Dec. 30: A version of The Anxious Generation for kids! More here, at @SheKnows Pre-order at

Story time is good for kids, humans are story-telling animals. Good movies on a TV or large screen is good screen time. Short videos, watched alone on a touch screen, is bad screen time. It fragments attention I discuss this with People Magazine:

Kids need risky play and thrills. Dads have a special role to play. I hope this is not controversial, but dads more than moms seem to enjoy pretending to be a predator trying to catch and eat their own children. I discussed this with Parents Magazine:

What the Manhattan Statement gets wrong on university reform - and why HxA’s Open Inquiry U Reform Agenda is different.

Yes. Writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. Writing *is* thinking. Students, academics, and anyone else who outsources their writing to LLMs will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.

An encouraging sign: I'm hearing more and more about Gen Z "rebels" who refuse to get sucked into the social media lifestyle. They choose to do hard things and analog things.

The book. The lesson.