Home screens, classrooms, and game consoles. Digital life isn’t just about how much we use screens, but how and why. Two new studies dig deeper than time logs: one in schools, one in gaming. Both point toward the importance of meaning, alignment, and internal tension when looking at tech usage.

AI in the classroom
In the NPR / The1A survey, students, teachers, and parents voiced both anxiety and ambition about AI’s role in schools. While some fear students will offload thinking to chatbots, others argue AI could force a reimagining of learning. Some schools are already piloting AI tutors (e.g. “Skrappy”) that prompt, question, and nudge rather than answer outright.

Underlying it all: a tension between efficiency and development - will AI accelerate shallow work, or scaffold deeper thinking? And will access to AI widen the gap between resource-rich and marginalised, resource-poor schools?

Gaming, time spent, and life fit.
The Nintendo Switch study upends a core assumption that many parents and therapists have held since the days of Duck Hunt and Saturday morning screen warnings: more gaming time ≠ worse mental health.

By analyzing over 140,000 hours of objective play data from 703 U.S. adults across 150 Nintendo Switch games, the Oxford-based researchers found no consistent link between hours played and life satisfaction, mood, depression, or well-being.

What did matter strongly was a player’s subjective “gaming life fit” or in other words, how well their play aligned with or conflicted with other life domains (work, rest, relationships). Interestingly, a small “last-hour” uplift effect also appeared, possibly reflecting a brief mood rebound, but it was neither strong nor lasting.

This week I gave a team workshop on conflict- in the context of avoiding it — or, as I prefer to call it, feedback we’ve politely repackaged into silence. It’s funny how quickly a room of highly capable clinicians can freeze when the words “say it how it is” appear on a slide. We’re brilliant at empathy, less so at saying, “That didn’t land well for me.” It’s the curse of a kind team: we care so much about each other that we end up cushioning the truth until it loses its shape entirely.

What stayed with me from the presentation wasn’t the laughter or the activities, but the quiet resistance — the visible effort it took to even start. The way people glanced at one another before speaking, weighing how much truth the room could take. It’s easy to talk about openness in theory; harder when you’re looking at someone you respect and realising you might bruise them with what you need to say. There’s always that split-second calculation: is this worth the ripple? But if we can’t speak inside a team built on trust, where exactly can we practise it? That’s the heart of the work, isn’t it? — the willingness to risk the relationship in order to strengthen it.

To me feedback isn’t really about judgment, it’s about maintenance. It’s how we keep the machinery of a team from seizing up. And sometimes, when we say we don’t want to hurt feelings, what we actually mean is that we don’t want to feel uncomfortable. But discomfort is information, and information is how we improve. To do this work, to stay human in the middle of it all, we have to tolerate the awkward, the uneven, the unsaid.

I keep coming back to the idea that “nice” and “honest” aren’t opposites, but they do pull against each other. The art is in the tension. We can be a kind team that still tells the truth, a safe team that still holds heat. That’s the both/and of it. Maybe that’s where maturity sits — in saying the thing you’d rather swallow, but doing it with care.

Because to me the real test of a team is how gracefully we disagree.

If you’ve ever wondered why the things that irk you about your partner (or ex) can make you feel like your teenage self all over again - congratulations, you’ve just met the heart of Imago therapy.

Developed by psychologists (and married couple) Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Imago therapy proposes that we’re unconsciously drawn to partners who give us the chance to heal old childhood wounds. In this view, conflict isn’t proof that something’s broken; it’s an invitation to grow.

The goal isn’t to find someone who never triggers us, but to learn how to turn those triggers into opportunities for understanding, repair, and deeper connection.

Last weekend, I went to the Integratron in Joshua Tree, a gleaming white dome in the desert built initially in the 1950s for time travel experiments (yes, really). Now it’s better known for its sound baths, where quartz bowls reverberate through the space in ways that feel both cosmic and grounding.

I tend to have a hard time shutting down my thoughts, and I welcome any experience that helps me find inner quiet. During the sound bath, my mind was so full of sound that there wasn’t room for anything else. To add to this, the facilitator explained that the dome’s unique structure creates binaural sound waves, which really resonated with me as an EMDR therapist.

By the time it ended, my mind felt quiet in a way that didn’t come from trying, but from being fully immersed in something larger than me.

This one’s for anyone who manages, mentors, supervises other humans or just tries to get through their week in a team without losing their s**t (so, most of us).

The podcast Boss Better Now, hosted by Joe Mull, is my current listen of choice. Refreshingly no-nonsense. Equal parts leadership mentor and workplace therapist, it cuts through the buzzwords to talk about what it means to lead well. It’s sharp, kind, and challenging.

If you’ve ever sat through a meeting wondering who’s steering the ship, this one’s worth a listen.

Oh and as promised, Autumn Watch !

Researchers in the U.K. may be one step closer to an objective test for chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a condition that affects roughly

Using a technology called EpiSwitch®, scientists analyzed how DNA folds within blood cells. In samples from 47 people with severe ME/CFS and 61 healthy controls, they identified a 200-marker genetic “signature” that distinguished the two groups with 96% accuracy.

The study also found biological patterns tied to immune and inflammatory signaling, hinting at potential treatment targets in the future.

But there’s room for caution The study participants were those with severe ME/CFS; it’s unclear if the same signature holds in milder cases. The test was compared against healthy controls, not people with other illnesses that mimic ME/CFS (e.g. autoimmune or inflammatory disorders). The Guardian raises concerns about false positives in real-world, mixed clinical settings and highlights the need for Independent validation in larger, more diverse samples (geographically, demographically) before clinical rollout ,alongside Cost and accessibility: Early estimates suggest the test could cost about £1,000, potentially limiting uptake in standard health systems. And there are Public messaging risks: With media headlines calling it a “breakthrough blood test,” there’s space for hype. Some in the field worry patients’ expectations may overshoot what this early work can deliver.

Source: Journal of Translational Medicine, Oct. 8, 2025.

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