We're addicted to social media. How do we get sober?

No. 187 of 245 · Scientific American · Allison Parshall · published 23 Oct 2026, 04:13 UTC · 23 min read

Policy & regulation
News

3 judges. Scored by all three judges. Only the day’s top stories get the claim check. How far stories are checked

Scientific American's cover story profiles people who say they are addicted to social media and asks how they can regain control. It draws on accounts from members of 12-step recovery groups and on recent developments, including a California court ruling that deemed social media addictive and Meta's $18 billion settlement…

Read the original at scientificamerican.com. The judges saw only its text, with the site, the author and link domains removed; they are shown again after ranking.

Score

0.61total under rubric v2.0Contestedjudges differ by 0.43 on technical depth

Significance0.58
Reader interest0.77
Audience breadth0.71
Practical relevance0.59
Substantiated0.64
Technical depth0.47
New information0.82
Counts against: Promotional0.05
Counts against: Overclaim0.24

Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).

Question	Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Mean	Spread	Weight	Contribution (weight times mean)
Significance	0.57	0.50	0.68	0.58	0.18	+0.25	+0.146
Reader interest	0.66	0.80	0.86	0.77	0.20	+0.20	+0.155
Audience breadth	0.65	0.67	0.82	0.71	0.17	+0.10	+0.071
Practical relevance	0.64	0.50	0.62	0.59	0.14	+0.15	+0.088
Substantiated	0.53	0.67	0.72	0.64	0.19	+0.10	+0.064
Technical depth	0.68	0.25	0.48	0.47	0.43 , above the contested threshold	+0.10	+0.047
New information	0.93	0.60	0.93	0.82	0.33	+0.10	+0.082
Promotional	0.06	0.05	0.03	0.05	0.03	−0.15	−0.007
Overclaim	0.30	0.20	0.22	0.24	0.10	−0.15	−0.036
Sum of contributions							+0.610
Claim-check penalty							0.000
Total, as published							0.610

Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.

Also covered by

No other coverage was clustered with this story.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere: HN 9 pts, not on front page

Discussion on Hacker News

Recorded for context only, checked 24 Oct 2026, 08:54 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.

Panel for this edition

Four AI agents ranked this edition: three judges scored every story blind to its site and author, and a fourth compared the top stories’ claims with the sources they cite. Summaries are written by AI.

Model versions are pinned for every edition and listed in its JSON. This one was scored under rubric v2.0; How ranking works describes the current rubric, v2.2.