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Integrating technostress and individual performance: a meta-analysis based on structural equation modeling
Jan. 2026 Shengyang Liu a Kuntai Song Dejun Cheng Meng Pan Research on the relationship between technostress and individual performance has produced a wide of inconsistent empirical insights. This study distinguished between in-role and extra-role performance and interpreted these findings through a meta-analytic procedure based on 192 papers, 201 studies and 80,523 independent samples. The study found that overall technostress is detrimental to both an individual’s in-role a


Examining the Association Between Internet Use and Perceived Stress in Adults: Longitudinal Observational Study Combining Web Tracking Data With Questionnaires
Jan. 2026 Mohammad Belal ; Nguyen Luong ; Talayeh Aledavood ; Juhi Kulshrestha 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, rel


An Agent‑Based Simulation of Politicized Topics Using Large Language Models: Algorithmic Personalization and Polarization on Social Media
Jan. 2026 Ljubiša Bojić , Velibor Ilić , Veljko Prodanović Vuk Vuković Digital platforms now act as the primary environments for public discourse, where recommender systems shape visibility, emotion, and interpretation. This study introduces the Recommender Systems LLMs Playground (RecSysLLMsP), a simulation framework designed to examine how algorithmic personalization interacts with language generation to influence engagement and polarization. The research provides a rep


When do Employees Perceive Technology as Stressful? A Meta-Analysis of work-related Technostress Antecedents
Jan. 2026 Magdalena Kotek, Ivana Vranjes Workplace technostress, a consequence of technology use at work, has garnered significant attention in recent scientific investigations. However, existing findings on technostress are often dispersed and contradictory, necessitating a systematic exploration of its contributing factors. In this study, we build on transactional stress theory to consolidate information on potential antecedents of technostressor perceptions at work: techn


Beyond the Metrics: A Critical Analysis of Digital Success in Western Societies
Jan. 2026 Yaron Ariel Bina Nir Digital technologies and social media platforms have reconfigured traditional conceptions of success in Western societies, shifting emphasis from intrinsic flourishing, as articulated through Aristotelian eudaimonia, to externally measured metrics, such as follower counts and engagement rates. Historically, the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) played a pivotal role in this shift, recasting success as an outward sign of moral worth, thereby facili


Hype, Resistance, Power and Inequalities: Why Synthesizing Critical Perspectives Is Essential to AI Research
Jan. 2026 Jian Xiao , Pieter Verdegem This article proposes an integrated theoretical framework combining critical political economy and cultural studies to analyze AI and its societal implications. While political economy illuminates the structural inequalities and power concentrations that characterize AI capitalism, cultural studies reveals how individuals and communities negotiate, resist, and find agency within these systems. The framework addresses the limitations of a


Twin Threats in Digital Workplace: Technostress and Work Intensification in a Dual-Path Moderated Mediation Model of Employee Health
Jan. 2026 Muhammad Jawwad Nasir Malik, Mubashar Ali, Asad Malik, Shamir Malik Highlights Public Health Relevance: How does this work relate to a public health issue? The study examines how technostress and work intensification, two growing psychosocial hazards in digitalized workplaces, contribute to employee health harm within manufacturing sector. By identifying psychological strain mechanisms/pathways (IT strain and exhaustion), the study highlights emerging occupational h


Epihiper—A high performance computational modeling framework to support epidemic science
Jan. 2026 Jiangzhuo Chen Stefan Hoops Henning S Mortveit Bryan L Lewis Dustin Machi Parantapa Bhattacharya Srinivasan Venkatramanan Mandy L Wilson Chris L Barrett Madhav V Marathe This paper describes Epihiper, a state-of-the-art, high performance computational modeling framework for epidemic science. The Epihiper modeling framework supports custom disease models, and can simulate epidemics over dynamic, large-scale networks while supporting modulation of the epidemic evoluti


BOOKS WATCHDOG | The Mental Forecast
Jan. 2026 E.U.LABORATORY’s Books Watchdog monitors recent academic publications that illuminate how contemporary economic and technological architectures are reshaping mental health. Rather than reviewing books as isolated intellectual objects, this watchdog reads them as signals — early indicators of structural transformations in belief systems, attention regimes, and psychosocial risk. The present selection converges on a shared diagnosis: digital capitalism increasingly g


SCIENTIFIC WATCHDOG — NEUROPLASTICITY UNDER DIGITAL REWARD SYSTEMS
Dec. 28, 2025 Neuroplasticity has become a central mechanism for how the brain reorganizes itself in response to repeated digital exposures. Contemporary work underscores that online environments rich in micro-rewards, algorithmic novelty, and variable reinforcement do more than occupy attention — they shape synaptic trajectories of learning. Platforms engineered for engagement are effectively training environments : repeated, patterned inputs that bias neural circuits toward


Making the Brain, Concealing the Subject: A Dialogue between Epistemological History and Decolonial theory
Dec. 2025 In recent decades, knowledge about the brain has transformed radically, enabling neuroscience to venture into domains traditionally reserved for the humanities and social sciences. This expansion has prompted critiques regarding the potential implications and consequences of neuroscience’s engagement with domains such as education, law, politics, and the self. Building on these concerns, this study seeks to foster a dialogue between two onto-epistemological perspect


THE SILENT DETONATION OF ATTENTION: HOW VIRTUAL INFLUENCING REWIRES THE SUBCOGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE OF MENTAL LIFE
Dec. 25, 2025 Liviu Poenaru What happens to mental life when belief, desire, and attention are shaped before we are even aware of choosing — and when this process is scaled like an industrial reaction? Recent neurobehavioral research reveals that distinctions between human and virtual sources of influence are not just sociological curiosities but neurologically consequential events. Qingxi Yao and colleagues (2025) show that virtual versus human influencers produce distinct


THE EARLY CODING OF WORTH: MATERIALISM BEFORE CHOICE
Dec. 20, 2025 Liviu Poenaru THE MENTAL FORECAST New interdisciplinary research confirms a troubling but clinically coherent reality: beliefs about success, money, and self-worth are not later cognitive distortions — they are installed early, quietly, before children have language for value. A landmark experimental study in Scientific Reports demonstrates that even preschoolers can associate possessions with happiness and social success, revealing that materialism is not a cu


“YOU’RE NOT CRAZY”: A CASE OF NEW-ONSET AI-ASSOCIATED PSYCHOSIS
Dec. 2025 Joseph M. Pierre, MD; Ben Gaeta, MD; Govind Raghavan, MD; and Karthik V. Sarma, MD, PhD ABSTRACT Background: Anecdotal reports of psychosis emerging in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot use have been increasingly reported in the media. However, it remains unclear to what extent these cases represent the induction of new-onset psychosis versus the exacerbation of pre-existing psychopathology. We report a case of new-onset psychosis in the setting o


Commentary: AI PSYCHOSIS IS NOT A NEW THREAT: LESSONS FROM MEDIA-INDUCED DELUSIONS
Dec. 2025 Per Carlbring, Gerhard Andersson Background: Reports of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots fueling delusions in vulnerable users have popularized the notion of “AI psychosis”. We argue the risk is not unprecedented. Individuals with psychosis have long incorporated books, films, music, and emerging technologies into their delusional thinking. Methods: We review historical parallels, summarize why large language models (LLMs) may reinforce psychotic thinking via s


DELUSIONAL EXPERIENCES EMERGING FROM AI CHATBOT INTERACTIONS OR “AI PSYCHOSIS”
Dec. 2025 Alexandre Hudo N ; Emmanuel Sti P The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into daily life has introduced unprecedented forms of human-machine interaction, prompting psychiatry to reconsider the boundaries between environment, cognition, and technology. This Viewpoint reviews the concept of “AI psychosis,” which is a framework to understand how sustained engagement with conversational AI systems might trigger, amplify, or reshape psychotic experiences in vu


THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VIDEOCONFERENCE FATIGUE AND PSYCHOPHYSICAL STRAIN OVER TIME: ARE AGE AND REMOTE WORK RISK FACTORS?
Dec. 2025 Damiano Girardi , Elvira Arcucci , Sebastiano Rapisarda , Laura Dal Corso , René Riedl , Alessandra Falco Building on the Conservation of Resources theory, in this study we investigated the longitudinal relationship between videoconference fatigue (VF)-also known as Zoom fatigue-and psychophysical strain, defined as psychophysical symptoms associated with work-related stress. We also investigated the role of age and flexible work arrangement (i.e., remote vs in


THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF IDEALIZED INSTAGRAM CONTENT: SELF-AFFIRMATION INTERVENTIONS DO NOT MITIGATE DECREASED BODY SATISFACTION AND LESS POSITIVE AFFECT
Dec. 2025 Amelia C Couture Bue , Dar Meshi Women who use highly visual social media platforms (e.g., Instagram) frequently experience body dissatisfaction and negative affect, but evidence of effective interventions is limited. Self-affirmation interventions, which reinforce a positive self-image prior to a threat, provide a promising but understudied solution to body image disturbance following social media use. In this experiment, 250 college-aged women from the U.S. were


GENERATIVE AI MENTAL HEALTH CHATBOTS AS THERAPEUTIC TOOLS: SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF THEIR ROLE IN REDUCING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
Dec. 2025 Qiyang Zhang ; Renwen Zhang ; Yiying Xiong ; Yuan Sui ; Chang Tong ; Fu-Hung Lin Background In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has driven the rapid development of AI mental health chatbots. Most current reviews investigated the effectiveness of rule-based or retrieval-based chatbots. To date, there is no comprehensive review that systematically synthesizes the effect of generative AI (GenAI) chatbot’s impact on mental health. Objective This revi


ARE SCREENS MAKING US AGE FASTER? THE EPIGENETIC COST OF DIGITAL SEDENTARISM
Dec. 18, 2025 What if leisure screen time is not merely eroding attention and mental health, but actively accelerating biological aging at the molecular level? This question is no longer speculative. Genetic epidemiology now forces a revision of how digital lifestyles are understood. Leisure screen time can no longer be treated as a neutral behavioral choice or a simple correlate of inactivity; it now appears as a causal biological exposure . Using Mendelian randomization, Zh
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