Pnewsology

Jane Ogden (Professor in Health Psychology, Emeritus; email janeogden509@gmail.com; based on a conversation with James Cannon at Radio Surrey; 8.40 am 27/03/2026)

Week ending 27/03/2026

All opinions are those of Jane Ogden

This week, social media has made the headlines together with ongoing evidence that phones have changed how we live our lives (and now have wars!).

The jury in LA made a groundbreaking decision to hold meta (for facebook) and Google (for you tube) responsible for addiction and concluded that they have been deliberately built to be addictive.  This was following a charge brought by a young woman who argued that social media had caused her body dysmorphia, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.  Whilst the extremely rich and powerful tech companies are bound to appeal, this is a major step in the right direction to having some limits imposed on what they do.

We also heard that banning phones in schools in The Netherlands has resulted in an improvement in pupil behaviour; that social media bans are to be trialled for teenagers in the UK; that the UK government have released guidelines and suggest that screen time should be limited to one hour per day for the under-fives, and that even the developer of Roblox recommends that parents monitor their children’s screen time 24/7.   

The message is getting through that screen time can do harm and that social media can be pretty damaging! It seems clear that it can trigger or exacerbate mental health problems and lead to addiction – they obviously drew upon the basic psychology of partial reinforcement, unpredictability, social networks, colour, speed and pleasure to drew us in and keep us hooked. 

But it also does harm, simply by exposing us to so much rubbish. 

One report described how false online posts are fuelling self-diagnosis of problems such as ADHD and Autism; another described the wealth of fake reviews of Just Eat and Auto trader and one showed how fake videos of sexualised black women had been taken down from Tik Tok after a BBC investigation.  We also heard how the young darts player Luke Littler has trademarked his face to avoid AI fakes.  And now the US and Israel seem to be waging war in the Middle East through ‘Truth social’ with policies being made in brief sound bites posted out in the early hours of the morning.

Out there in the virtual world of our phones sits easy gambling, easy porn and easy violence.  But it is also just wall to wall lies.  We see incredibly convincing videos of cities burning (that are not on fire), of people speaking words (they never said) and of people doing things (they never did).  So, most damaging of all, we stop believing anything.  We give up.  We withdraw from the real world, stop questioning, stop searching for the truth and stop trusting anyone or anything.  We think ‘its all lies’ and go back to watching fluffy cats or clever gorillas.  And then all the really dangerous lies get told when we are no longer watching and those that want to get away with murder have been given an empty space to do so.  And worse still, if we ever challenge them, we are called a liar as well!