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Saw this on my LI feed. IMO a good example of taking potentially interesting data but drawing shaky conclusions from it...

2) Nothing in the paper mentions doomscrolling. Liberals in the study just mentioned using the internet and social media more.

3) "Helps explain why conservatives are happier" is a really big claim not found anywhere in the cited paper. Happiness data, as I understand it, is very tricky since it involves self-reporting across different demographics and cultures.

4) The correlations seems relatively small to me (averaging at around 0.09 if I'm reading it right).

5) The study is around one university in Texas (which the paper does a good job citing as a limitation!) It doesn't really surprise me that conservative students there spend more time at frats and religious places while liberals might spend more time at home.

6) The data is from 2016/2017, well before COVID and barely into Trump's first term. Which is obviously okay for a study, but extrapolating it out to explain general behavior *today* feels... ambitious.