Feb. 2026 Could a biological signal circulating in the bloodstream influence whether people interact with others face-to-face or through social media? And more specifically, does inflammation push individuals toward digital social environments, or could social media use itself contribute to inflammatory stress? A recent study by Lee, Jiang, and Way (2026) examined whether systemic inflammation predicts the type of social interaction individuals prefer. Using C-reactive protei

Feb. 2026 David S. Lee , Tao Jiang  & Baldwin M. Way   Emerging research suggests that whether inflammation promotes social approach or social avoidance behavior may depend on the context. However, little is known about what such contexts are. Addressing this gap, the present research examined how inflammation is associated with two common daily social behaviors varying in interaction modality. Building on work showing inflammation’s role in psychological states such as fatig

Mowafa Househ , Hurmat Ali Shah , Zain Ul Abideen Tariq , Diana Alsayed Hassan , Mohamed Khalifa , Jens Schneider , Mounir Hamdi , Alaa Abd-Alrazaq , Arfan Ahmad , Barry Solaiman , Andre Kushniruk  & Saleem Khaldoon Al-Nuaimi   Digital mental health (DMH) encompasses telepsychiatry, mobile apps, games and artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented interventions. In recent years, there has been a steady increase in the development and deployment of DMH solutions, particularly thos

Feb. 2026 What is a digital phenotype? It is the behavioral “fingerprint” generated by our daily interactions with smartphones — patterns of movement, typing speed, sleep timing, app switching, communication rhythms, and sensor-derived data that, when aggregated, can reflect psychological states. Because many of these variables are proxies for biological rhythms — sleep–wake cycles, motor activity regularity, autonomic arousal inferred from usage bursts — smartphone apps or p

Feb. 2026 Background: In today's digital era, the internet plays a pervasive role in daily life, influencing everyday activities such as communication, work, and leisure. This online engagement intertwines with offline experiences, shaping individuals' overall well-being. Despite its significance, existing research often falls short in capturing the relationship between internet use and well-being, relying primarily on isolated studies and self-reported data. One major contri

Feb. 2026 Karim Bettache Psychology has rendered capitalism invisible, treating individualism as cultural inheritance rather than a response to contemporary economic conditions. Building on my recent theoretical framework (Bettache, Personality and Social Psychology Review , 29, 215, 2024), this article explores how capitalism functions as a missing link in psychology—an overlooked generative mechanism that shapes the phenomena we study. Three ‘capitalist syndromes’—Gain Prim

Feb. 2026 What happens when diagnostic language becomes a social currency online?And what happens when the same digital ecosystem that shapes self-narratives also intensifies work strain and leaves molecular traces of chronic stress? The 2026 scoping review by Alexander and colleagues maps an under-theorized but increasingly visible phenomenon: post-secondary students adopting mental health labels through social media use (Alexander et al., 2026). The review shows how “label

Feb. 2026 The trial of Mark Zuckerberg and other tech executives risks appearing almost absurd in its narrow framing. The courtroom debate revolves around whether Instagram or YouTube were “designed to be addictive” and whether specific internal emails prove intent to maximize user time. Yet the architecture of behavioral capture on social media extends far beyond isolated corporate documents. The real issue is not a single executive’s past growth targets, but a systemic ecos

Feb. 2026 Ying Dai  & Na Ouyang   The digitalization of modern society has introduced complex sociological challenges for children and adolescents by altering the structure of their daily lives and social interactions. These changes often result in increased sedentary behavior and disrupted routines, creating barriers to maintaining optimal mental health. This study explored the relationships between screen time and child and adolescent mental health problems, including anxie

THE MENTAL FORECAST A recent article in the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction demonstrates that visual prompts presented for only a few hundred milliseconds can bias gaze allocation and increase the probability of selecting specific products (Luca, Legoux, Forster, & Khammash, 2026). Spatial positioning influenced attention at approximately 350 milliseconds, while chromatic salience — particularly red — exerted stronger influence closer to 750 milliseconds.

Feb. 2026 N icholas O’Toole , Tie-Yuan Zhang , Eamon Fitzgerald , Xianglan Wen , Josie Diorio , Patricia P. Silveira , Benoit Labonté , Eric J. Nestler & Michael J Meaney ABSTRACT Background Chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) is a validated animal model for depression that produces sustained behavioral and transcriptional changes in the brain, notably the nucleus accumbens (nAcc). Research design and methods We used genome-wide analysis of cytosine methylation patterns in m

Feb. 2026 Jamshid Faraji, Gerlinde A.S. Metz Highlights Environmental factors strongly influence biological systems through epigenetic processes. Epigenetic mechanisms provide plasticity and resilience but can also mediate disease risk when dysregulated. Reversibility of epigenetic marks opens opportunities for targeted interventions and precision medicine. Ethical and policy considerations are critical as epigenetic screening and interventions expand. Transgenerational epige

Roy H. Perlis, MD, MSc ; Faith M. Gunning, PhD ; Ata A. Uslu, MSc Key Points Question   Are greater levels of generative artificial intelligence (AI) use by US adults associated with greater levels of depressive symptoms? Findings   In this survey study of 20 847 US adults, 10.3% reported daily use of generative AI, including 5.3% who used it multiple times per day. Greater levels of AI use were associated with modest increases in depressive symptoms, with odds of at least mo

Jan. 2026 Lucy Osler There is much discussion of the false outputs that generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok create. In popular terminology, these have been dubbed “AI hallucinations”. However, deeming these AI outputs “hallucinations” is controversial, with many claiming this is a metaphorical misnomer. Nevertheless, in this paper, I argue that when viewed through the lens of distributed cognition theory, we can better see the dynamic way

SELF-WATCHDOG The contemporary subject is increasingly constituted as a self-contained unit of responsibility, coherence, and performance. Psychological stability, success, emotional regulation, and social legitimacy are framed as outcomes that must be produced internally by the individual self. This configuration is not a neutral psychological evolution; it is historically and politically produced through neoliberal rationalities that relocate social, economic, and instituti

Jan. 18, 2026 The digital environment has normalized a motivational regime long critiqued in educational psychology: reward–punishment conditioning. Decades before social media, Punished by Rewards demonstrated that external incentives — grades, praise, gold stars — undermine intrinsic motivation and degrade the quality of engagement. What the platform economy has done is scale this logic to everyday life. Likes, streaks, badges, and notifications operate as continuous micro-

Jan. 2026 Guozhu Ding, Zuer Liu, Shan Li , Jie Cao, Zhuohai Ye Highlights We examined opinion dynamics using LLM-based multi-agent simulation. Opinion shifts were examined across diverse simulated social community compositions. Negative mindsets show greater perspective change when influenced by others. Positive viewpoints more effective in causing opinion shifts than neutral ones. Dominant mindset in a community shapes the public opinion environment. Abstract This study exam

Jan. 15, 2026 THE MENTAL FORECAST Why do people often spend more time on their phones, social media, or digital platforms precisely when they feel anxious, overwhelmed, or under pressure? This question challenges the widespread assumption that digital media are the primary cause of stress. Empirical research instead suggests that stress-related psychological states — such as anxiety, fear of missing out, and emotional dysregulation — often precede intensified digital engageme

THE MENTAL FORECAST Jan. 11, 2026 From a psychoanalytic perspective, the superego designates the psychic instance through which social authority is internalized as constraint. It is not reducible to moral conscience; it is the structure that produces guilt, shame, self-surveillance, and the internal demand to conform to an ideal. Historically, the superego emerged from identifiable figures of authority — parents, institutions, religious or cultural law — and operated through