Risk landing on mental health: stress, anxiety, depression, cognition and cognitive decline.
File photo: a teenager texting on a smartphone. Photo: Summer Skyes 11, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. In the news · June 2026 A Eurobarometer survey of 26,297 teenagers and 12,750 parents across the EU, carried out in March and April 2026, found that 25% of teens exceed six hours of daily screen time…
Key takeaways · 12 min read The backfire effect comes from a 2010 paper whose own second experiment failed to reproduce it at the group level. The largest test since — five experiments, more than 10,000 people, 52 corrected claims — found it zero times. Across the literature, 81% of reported backfires used a single-question…
The famous figure came from 392 people, applied only to strained spouses, with a confidence interval starting at 1.00. Larger studies found the reverse — and inside them, strain still predicts death.
A systematic review of 26 studies found 1,984 people struck by kinetic impact projectiles: 53 died and 300 were permanently disabled. Neither that review nor its companion on tear gas can give you a rate, and both say so.
File photo: a woman sitting by a large window. Photo: Alexandre Chambon (Unsplash), via Wikimedia Commons, CC0. In the news · April 2026 A Scientific Reports study from Turkey surveyed 333 women aged 20 to 40 in romantic relationships. Using standardized scales and mediation analysis, it found that higher self-silencing was linked to greater exposure…
File photo: an English Jobcentre Plus office. Photo: Hassocks5489, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0. In the news · April 2026 The 2026 Economic Report of the President says workers displaced in mass layoffs face 50-100 percent higher mortality in later years, cutting life expectancy by roughly 1 to 1.5 years. It values that loss at about…
The 50 per cent figure everyone quotes is an average across measures that disagree. Across 90 cohorts and 2.2 million adults, social isolation raised mortality risk 32 per cent and loneliness 14 — and every improvement in method makes the number smaller.
A comparison of 200 romance fraud victims with 10,723 people who were never scammed found victims middle-aged and better educated, with self-rated security knowledge predicting nothing. The current version of the fraud asks for an investment rather than a favour, stepping between the two standard warnings.
Zero tolerance, peer mediation, group treatment and assemblies are all identified as misdirections — and one of them can leave the bullied child worse. What works cuts bullying by about a fifth, and that figure needs a caveat.
The 2024 Lancet Commission put 45% of dementia cases down to 14 modifiable risk factors. Two were added that year — midlife cholesterol and untreated vision loss. Almost none of the list is something you buy, and no supplement appears on it at all.
