In bits: Deconstructing our digital lives
Dr Liam Challenor and Dr Nicola Fox Hamilton explore areas of cyberpsychology that you’re curious about, with a different topic each week. From social media “addiction” to attention span changes, from trolling and harassment to online activism, from gaming to online dating, from misogyny to radicalisation online.
Our lives are fully immersed in technology, and people have concerns about how it might be affecting us all. There is a lot of poor media reporting and scaremongering in the field of cyberpsychology, but far less evidence-based content to offer an alternative. This podcast is informative and educational, directly addressing peoples’ concerns, worries and hopes, while also being entertaining and enjoyable to listen to. We breakdown challenging and sometimes difficult topics “in bits” to make them approachable, fun and easy to understand.
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In bits: Deconstructing our digital lives
Dr Liam Challenor and Dr Nicola Fox Hamilton explore areas of cyberpsychology that you’re curious about, with a different topic each week. From social media “addiction” to attention span changes, from trolling and harassment to online activism, from gaming to online dating, from misogyny to radicalisation online.
Our lives are fully immersed in technology, and people have concerns about how it might be affecting us all. There is a lot of poor media reporting and scaremongering in the field of cyberpsychology, but far less evidence-based content to offer an alternative. This podcast is informative and educational, directly addressing peoples’ concerns, worries and hopes, while also being entertaining and enjoyable to listen to. We breakdown challenging and sometimes difficult topics “in bits” to make them approachable, fun and easy to understand.
We have a fun episode to start the new year, where we explores the psychology, history, and science behind the internet's (and Nicola’s) obsession with feline content. We were lucky to have a guest in studio with us for this episode, Dr Grace Carroll, an expert in animal behaviour, with a particular interest in cats!
We trace the evolution of cat memes from the 2007 launch of "I Can Has Cheezburger?" through to today's weird and viral AI cat Chubby.
We unpack how baby features in animals activate our caregiving instincts, why cats might be like cuckoos, how domestication works, what the "cute aggression" phenomenon is (that urge to squeeze adorable things), and how cat videos genuinely improve mood, reduce anxiety, and combat loneliness!
Cats conquered the internet because they're perfectly engineered for it—cute, funny, and capable of triggering real emotional connections across all cultures.
And for once we need no content warning! And check our instagram for pictures of the cats we talked about in the episode!
Special thanks to Joel Veitch of the band Rathergood.com who kindly allowed us to use the viral song The internet is made of cats in this episode: https://open.spotify.com/track/1VoLR7BNTIODmwvVWLnobX
Links to stories/media
The history of I Can Has Cheezburgerhttps://www.cnet.com/culture/the-history-of-i-can-has-cheezburger/https://icanhas.cheezburger.com/
BBC - How cats won the internet - Maria Bustillos 2015 https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150918-how-did-cats-win-the-internet
Maru's Youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/mugumogu
The unstoppable rise of Chubby: Why TikTok's AI-generated cat could be the future of the internet https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240819-why-these-ai-cat-videos-may-be-the-internets-future
Studies
Shiri Lieber-Milo (2025). Cuteness and Its Emotional Responseshttps://www.mdpi.com/2673-8392/5/3/146
Stavropoulos & Alba. (2018). “It’s so Cute I Could Crush It!”: Understanding Neural Mechanisms of Cute Aggressionhttps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00300/full
Zhang et al. (2025). Animal Video Lovers Always Have Company: The Role of Cyber-Mediated Animal Attachment in Loneliness, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/17/2593
Li et al. (2025). Psychological Benefits of Companion Animals: Exploring the Distinction Between Ownership and Online Animal Watchinghttps://brill.com/view/journals/soan/aop/article-10.1163-15685306-bja10244/article-10.1163-15685306-bja10244.xml
Kogan et al (2018). Use of Short Animal-Themed Videos to Enhance Veterinary Students’ Mood, Attention, and Understanding of Pharmacology Lectureshttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28960127/
Jessica Gall Myrick. (2015). Emotion regulation, procrastination, and watching cat videos online: Who watches Internet cats, why, and to what effect?https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.06.001
InBits
In bits: Deconstructing our digital lives
Dr Liam Challenor and Dr Nicola Fox Hamilton explore areas of cyberpsychology that you’re curious about, with a different topic each week. From social media “addiction” to attention span changes, from trolling and harassment to online activism, from gaming to online dating, from misogyny to radicalisation online.
Our lives are fully immersed in technology, and people have concerns about how it might be affecting us all. There is a lot of poor media reporting and scaremongering in the field of cyberpsychology, but far less evidence-based content to offer an alternative. This podcast is informative and educational, directly addressing peoples’ concerns, worries and hopes, while also being entertaining and enjoyable to listen to. We breakdown challenging and sometimes difficult topics “in bits” to make them approachable, fun and easy to understand.
