This reflection challenges the common framing of social media as an addiction problem. Rather than treating digital engagement as a failure of discipline or self-control, the piece explores how social media platforms exploit ordinary human needs for connection, comparison, belonging, and social awareness. Drawing from research on human cognition, social comparison, and technology-mediated connection, it argues that the deeper issue is not addiction, but vulnerability: human minds evolved for embodied, reciprocal relationships and are now navigating artificial systems designed to simulate social engagement at scale.

I’m a therapist and educator who spends a lot of time thinking about relationships, emotional skills, and what helps people feel connected. Recently, my Human Sexuality students took up the question of AI intimacy, and their responses gave me a lot to sit with. Let’s unpack what their response and modern thinking about human-AI interactions say about us and the robots.

Post on education, leadership, and reflective capacity. I’m wondering whether schools and universities are stuck because we lack solutions, or because we haven’t built the adult capacity to think honestly together about the problems in front of us.

When organizations benefit from AI-assisted work but leave workers guessing about the rules, the risk falls on the person with the least power. Covert AI use is not just a conduct problem. It is a governance problem.

Make safe disclosure easier than secrecy.

An executive summary outlining the current state of youth mental health in Oregon, highlighting persistent poor outcomes despite improved access to services, recent Medicaid expansion changes affecting school-based supports, and policy recommendations focused on building district-level implementation capacity.

Are AI chatbots crossing dangerous lines?

As language models move into therapeutic spaces, we’re seeing alarming failures: from chatbots encouraging self-harm to reinforcing delusions. In my latest piece, I break down real-world cases, explain why these failures happen, and outline how we can build safer AI systems without sacrificing human care. Safety isn’t optional when vulnerable lives are involved.