Leo Röhlke

Screenshot of a preprint titled “Digital Behaviourism: A functional approach to behaviour in digital environments”

Our preprint has evolved!

v2 of “Digital Behaviourism” is out now with a new title, new co-authors, and a deeper dive into the behavioural concepts that shape our online lives.

It’s time to move beyond “screen time” and focus on function of online behaviours.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

My favorite non-specification is when an abstract says the study (published in an international journal, of course) is based on a „national“ sample without naming the country.

Im my experience, if neither abstract nor title specify the population, it will be from the US in 99% of cases. I‘ve always wondered whether this was an established phenomenon 😄

A new paper by George Borjas—who served this past year in the Trump White House designing some of its anti-immigration policies—claims to display evidence of ideological bias among researchers who study immigration.

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

🧵 Thread—>

Huh I wonder if there were any other global events happening in in 2008. Guess we’ll never know.

Our new study on the everyday effects of digital disconnection on well-being is finally out! 🎉

Amazing, congratulations! 🥳

ICT interest and self-concept as determinants of Swiss adolescents’ vocational choices - Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training This study examines whether adolescents’ interest and self-concept regarding information and communication technologies (ICT) affect their subsequent career paths through the selection into different vocational education and training (VET) programs. Drawing on Eccles’ situated expectancy value theory and related theories, we argue that ICT interest and self-concept should influence adolescents’ vocational choices, possibly contributing to occupational gender segregation regarding ICT. Using longitudinal data from the TREE2 study (Transitions into Education and Employment) on 1,995 Swiss adolescents transitioning into firm-based VET, we find strongly gendered patterns. ICT interest predicts selection into occupations with greater intensity of basic and advanced ICT use, but this positive association is driven entirely by girls. In contrast, ICT self-concept significantly predicts ICT use intensity in future occupations only among boys. Selection into ICT specialist occupations is associated exclusively with adolescents’ ICT self-concept rather than their ICT interest, questioning whether girls’ lower average ICT interest represents a relevant barrier for entry into ICT specialist occupations in the context of VET. Our findings emphasize that ICT are an important content domain of adolescents’ vocational choices today and highlight how gendered interests and self-concepts towards ICT perpetuate occupational gender segregation.

📣New paper:
Are Swiss adolescents' (gendered) self-perceptions towards ICT related to selection into VET occupations?
💡ICT interest ↔️ ICT-intensive careers
💡ICT self-concept ↔️ ICT-specialist occupations
💡Gender diff.s in ICT interest contribute to occupational segregation
doi.org/10.1186/s404...

Der Begriff Social Media ist hier m.E. schwierig - was fällt (nicht) darunter? YouTube? Twitch? WhatsApp? Das ist ein Grundproblem für die Regulierung und stellt auch die Aussagekraft dieser Statistik in Frage. bleibt die Zustimmung wirklich so hoch, wenn konkrete Dienste benannt werden?

Thank you, Michal, for bringing us all together! 😊

Who Supports the Digitalization of Education? New Survey Evidence From Six OECD Countries This paper investigates how citizens perceive and evaluate the digitalization of education. Drawing on original survey data from six OECD countries (Germany, Japan, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the US)...

Another new paper out - this one is about public support for the digitalization of education systems. Many in politics believe that the promotion of digitalization in education is a no-brainer, this paper shows that the public is more cautious...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I hate the argument that AI is being used in lots of jobs so students have to learn how to use it in school. AI is not that hard to use. Lots of jobs also use job-specific convoluted enterprise software and we don't teach them how to use those in school.

@leoroe.bsky.social finds no evidence that early adolescents spend less time on enrichment, physical activity, or sleep after acquiring their first mobile phone. Read this open access article here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

What happens when kids get their first smartphone?

They spend less time watching TV/movies, but no less time sleeping or engaging in enrichment activities like reading or going to museums or playing musical instruments or…

From @leoroe.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#psych

You may have heard of the back-door criterion and the front-door criterion for causal identification.

Introducing: The door-in-the-face criterion (start with outrageous causal claim and hedge) and the foot-in-the-door criterion (start with trivial causal claim and escalate).

Thanks a lot!

Not surprised by the results? Good for you! But the notion of harmful displacement is still alive and kicking, see e.g., a recent OECD report on children, screens and wellbeing. So far, we did not have a lot of robust evidence to show where adolescents take all the time to use their phones instead.

This study is based on amazing longitudinal time-use data from Australia. Using weighted DiD, I analyzed how early adolescents‘ (ages 10-13) time use changes after they receive their first own mobile phone

Happy to share my new study, publ. in Social Science Research 🎉 Bottom line: Yes, adolescents use their phones a lot 🤳 But I find no support for the notion that this use displaces reading, homework, hobbies, physical act., sleep... Instead: Changing media preferences 📺 ->📱. doi.org/10.1016/j.ss...

Being a social scientist means holding two truths at once: 1. This is all deeply complicated 2. I have to submit something by Tuesday

Conni geht zu weit

Social media use in adolescents with and without mental health conditions - Nature Human Behaviour Using a nationally representative UK sample of adolescents with clinical-level mental health symptoms, this Registered Report examined differences in social media use. The results suggest that adolesc...

After 3 years in the making, our Registered Report is out in @nathumbehav.nature.com!

We analyse nationally representative UK data from 3,340 adolescents (aged 11–19) to examine how social media use differs between those with and without mental health conditions. 🧵

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All The vast ‘brains’ of artificial intelligence models can memorize endless lists of rules. That’s useful, but not how humans solve problems.

We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at All

Maybe you've heard that AIs are "black boxes"

But a growing body of research keeps arriving at the same conclusion: Today's AIs all work in surprisingly similar -- and simplistic -- ways

1/2

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-...

Some cool German/Swiss postdoc opportunities for a quantitative sociologist or similar in this thread:

"Very thrilled to share my new working paper on..."

thanks, Michal!

Screenshot of the title and the abstract of the scientific paper which is referenced in the post. Title: Socioeconomic disparities in Swiss children's use of digital technology: A typological approach based on parental reports". Journal: Journal of Children and Media.

🎉 Happy to share my first PhD paper, published in @journalcam.bsky.social!

💡 4 types of Swiss children’s ICT use 🧒📱
💡 Higher-SES: Limited use vs. learning-oriented use as competing strategies
💡 Lower-SES: Parents more critical of ICT, but limited use is still less common

doi.org/10.1080/1748...

Finally an AI model full of self-doubt, constantly requiring external validation, and taking several months to write a single paragraph.

Sciences Po campus Saint-Thomas, Paris (France)

‪Best wishes! Interesting opportunity to join us in 2025: Sciences Po - CRIS (Paris) is hiring an Assistant Professor (Tenure track)! Candidates with a recent PhD dealing with digital inequalities with a solid methodological background + an ambitious research agenda www.sciencespo.fr/osc/sites/sc...

Are young men and women in Europe becoming more polarized in their political ideologies?
It depends. Across 32 countries:
14 show no meaningful gender gap
7 have a stable small to medium gap with women leaning more left
11 show widening modern gender gaps
osf.io/preprints/os...