iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 04/08/2026

Delighted to share the first published paper from my PhD project! We studied the relationships between online connection/internet use and mental health among adolescents in 12 countries in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa 🧵 Now out in @springernature.com SPPE 👉 rdcu.be/fxNgP

Screenshot from the published article in Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, entitled "Children's social connections, internet usage and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South: evidence from Disrupting Harm". The authors are Thomas E. Metherell, Sebastian Kurten, Sakshi Ghai, George B. Ploubidis, Darío Moreno-Agostino and Amy Orben.

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 18/05/2026

famously, iPhones were the only thing to happen in the late 2000s

Graph entitled "Could digital media be affecting birth rates?" which contains numerous lines (meaning unspecified) showing a steep decline in total fertility rate following an event entitled "smartphones take off".

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 24/02/2026

Delighted to share that our paper "Associations between early-life mental health and abnormal sleep duration in midlife: findings from a prospective cohort study in Great Britain" is now published in @springernature.com European Journal of Epidemiology! rdcu.be/e5rAK 👇

The header of our article "Associations between early-life mental health and abnormal sleep duration in midlife: findings from a prospective cohort study in Great Britain" on the European Journal of Epidemiology website.

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 27/10/2025

Voted yes/yes in the @ucu.org.uk strike ballot. Our sector is crumbling and now we're expected to take another pay cut - enough! #wearetheuniversity

A postbox with me inserting an envelope into it

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 11/09/2025

It's been a great @sllshome.bsky.social #SLLS2025! On Tuesday I presented the initial results of our study on social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in adolescents in England. You can read the preprint here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Me presenting the paper "Characterising the longitudinal relationship between social media use and psychiatric diagnoses in secondary care in adolescents in England" at the SLLS 2025 conference in Fribourg, Switzerland.

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 17/07/2025

Today I presented my work on data from the @unicefinnocenti.bsky.social Disrupting Harm survey at #IPC2025 in Brisbane! It was a great opportunity to engage with other researchers interested in investigating youth mental health in the population. Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Me (in a blue jumper and at a lectern labelled "Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre) presenting at the 30th International Population Conference.

The panel of speakers in our session, smiling and posing for the camera behind the table.

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 26/06/2025

Had a great first day at #SIPS2025! Don't miss our session tomorrow morning on the challenges of public engagement in a post-truth society 🗯️ (@sarahbakirci.bsky.social @zefreeman.com)

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 20/06/2025

Today I was in Birmingham for the @popmhuk.bsky.social Innovation Lab in Children and Young People's Mental Health! It was really great to see researchers, practitioners, public institutions, community organisations and young people in one room to connect and identify areas for collaboration 📈🤓

View of the "cinema space" at the Innovation Lab today

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 04/06/2025

😬 (but the real answer is that the pipeline is locked up in a secure data environment and everything is fine, it just looks more complicated than I imagined)

Key entry showing that the blue colour in my previous image refers to "outdated"

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 04/06/2025

this {targets} business is getting out of hand (@brodriguesco.bsky.social this is your fault)

The pipeline dependency graph from a {targets} project in R. It has more nodes than I can count. And lines all over the place.

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 17/03/2025

In Westminster today for #AIUK! This morning we had a great session promoting @harmonydata.bsky.social, an AI tool for harmonising survey data 🥳

A conference hall setting. On the stage, the words "AI UK" are projected and there is purple lighting.

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 24/10/2024

Captured on candid camera by @sarahbakirci.bsky.social at today's @mqmentalhealth.bsky.social & DATAMIND meeting! A great event as always with interesting discussions about the benefits and risks of data linkage, following on from yesterday's excellent natural language processing workshop 🙌

Me (captured in a very strange pose, looking a bit conspiratorial) presenting my poster (entitled "Relationship between social media use and mental health service use in adolescents in the UK Millennium Cohort Study" and most of which is occupied by a large directed acyclic graph) at the Data Science meeting

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 22/07/2024

We need to have a reckoning in academia about conflicts of interest and what they really are. IMO, it is unacceptable to describe this report as "independent

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 18/07/2024

It was an honour and a privilege to march with #OutatUCL at this year's @PrideInLondon, and to stand up for the human rights of my trans siblings, which should never be up for debate. (📸: James Tye

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 14/07/2024

I have had concerns about editorial standards at The @ObserverUK for a while now, but this really is a new low

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 10/06/2024

I'm in Nairobi for SIPS 2024 (@improvingpsych.bsky.social)! Tomorrow I'm leading an Unconference session about resources to help in switching to open-source software 🤓

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 29/05/2024

Thrilled to be in Montréal 🇨🇦 for @LHRS2024! Tomorrow afternoon I'll be presenting our work on the relationship between mental health in childhood and sleep duration in adulthood 🎉

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 04/03/2024

Great first day of the "Promise and Pitfalls of Pre-registration" meeting @royalsociety today! Looking forward to hearing more debate tomorrow on this important subject

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 14/02/2024

i've seen this one before x.com/AndyMasley/sta…

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 12/02/2024

i spent another 1h+ in the rabbit hole today #Rstats

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 31/01/2024

this is what they took from us

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 24/01/2024

i can't think what would have led me down this high-stress career path where i am expected to continuously produce results #phdlife

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 23/01/2024

seriously having ideas is great but does it always have to be after 11pm #phdlife

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 11/01/2024

i truly love being forced to answer questions like this as part of my "skills development" 🫠

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 15/12/2023

🚨NEW PREPRINT ALERT!🚨 Presenting "Associations between early-life mental health and abnormal sleep duration in midlife: findings from a prospective cohort study in Great Britain" together with @GeorgePloubidis @dmorenoagostino doi.org/10.1101/2023.1…

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 18/10/2023

everyone looking at social media and we didn't consider the insidious impact of milk tea x.com/unnombrealazar…

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 04/10/2023

Please, under no circumstances revert your analysis from open-source to proprietary software 😭

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 28/09/2023

I think this neatly sums up academia

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 11/07/2023

Excited to be at the @usociety conference! Watch out for our (@SebKurten) symposium "relation between social media use and adolescent mental health in different socio-economic contexts" today at 15:45!

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 13/06/2023

Great to present at the @clscohorts Millennium Cohort Study's 21st birthday conference today! Looking forward to hearing about loads more excellent research using this and similar cohorts today and tomorrow #mcsconf

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 22/05/2023

HUGE turnout for our @pintofscience event about mindfulness! So many people came to hear from @MarchantLabUCL (and our fabulous host @EllaWTuominen)! Still tickets available for tomorrow and Wednesday nights 👉#pint23 pintofscience.co.uk

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 16/05/2023

Fantastic to attend @CommonSense @NSPCC @Ofcom's "Healthy Young Minds" event at Bloomberg this morning! Great nuanced discussions of the importance of & challenges in regulating tech, starting with a fantastic panel of young people, who should be at the heart of decision-making

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 20/03/2023

Just finished pre-registering my second PhD rotation project, and a new challenger has appeared in my GitHub... (I feel a bit scared, and also a bit like I'm cheating on R) #JuliaLang

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 20/03/2023

In a letter in today's @FT paywall), @OrbenAmy and I argue that technology is being used as a scapegoat for poor teen mental health outcomes. ft.com/content/2b4387…

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 25/01/2023

So great to be at the @UCLMentalHealth Children & Young People's Mental Health ECR event today! Both to listen to the fascinating talks and finally stand in front of an actual, physical poster 🎉

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 25/01/2023

*in the tone of a hostage pleading with their captor* WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME????????????????

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 22/01/2023

In fairness, I have read it a few times now...

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 16/02/2022

Hello #SPSP2022 attendees! Come (virtually) and talk to me about our (@SakSGhai @OrbenAmy) poster on digital exclusion and adolescent mental health during COVID, Saturday 12:30-13:30 PST / 20:30-21:30 GMT! #digitalinequality #digitalwellbeing #mentalhealth

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 02/02/2022

Super excited to present my first poster! Come and chat with me (virtually) about it at #SPSP2022 on 19th Feb!

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Tom Metherell @tommetherell.com · 14/01/2022

... fair enough tbh @tldrpapers doi.org/10.1101/2021.1…

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