George Beknazar-Yuzbashev

on the 2026–2027 academic job market

I run field experiments on social media platforms to study how toxic content, advertising, and ranking shape engagement, political behavior, welfare, and mental health.

Applied microeconomics · Political economics · Behavioral economics

Job Market Paper

Social Media Toxicity and Mental Health

What happens to mental health when toxic content is removed from social media?

We randomize a cross-platform browser extension that hides toxic posts and comments for six weeks (N = 664). Contrary to intuition, filtering toxicity worsens mental health: a 0.15σ rise in a GAD-7/PHQ-8 symptom index, with loneliness and a diminished relative moral self-view as candidate channels.

with Francesco Capozza, Kylan Rutherford, and Mateusz Stalinski

paper (PDF)

Selected Publications

Toxic Content and User Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from a Field Experiment American Economic Review, conditionally accepted with R. Jiménez-Durán, M. Stalinski, and J. McCrosky
Do Social Media Ads Matter for Political Behavior? A Field Experiment Journal of Public Economics, 2022 with M. Stalinski included in the 2023 Economic Report of the President

all research