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It might be surprising to think about browsing for therapists and ordering up mental health care the way you can peruse a menu on Grubhub or summon a car on Lyft. But over the last decade, digital access to therapy has become increasingly common, in some cases replacing the traditional model of in-person weekly sessions between a therapist and client. Apps for mental health and wellness range from mood trackers, meditation tools and journals to therapy apps that match users to a licensed professional. My team’s research focuses on therapy apps that work by matching clients to a licensed professional. As a social work researcher, I am interested in understanding how these apps affect clients and practitioners. My research team has studied the care that app users receive. We have talked t...

Writing during what seems – in retrospect – to have been the wildly carefree summer of 2019, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday lamented that “sex is disappearing from the big screen.” Fast forward two years, and, improbably enough, it’s conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat who’s pleading for “sex and romance [to] make a comeback at the movies.” Both commentators blame this sexual stagnation on what they see as an abstinence-only policy in Hollywood, fueled by the Weinstein effect on one hand and family-friendly franchise fever on the other, where libidinal energy has been sublimated into buff-yet-sexless superheroes. To Hornaday and Douthat, sexual prudence seems to be tipping into prudery. Hornaday and Douthat are correct that the traditional sex scene – a tasteful...