Observatory of American Life  ·  Nanocentury AI  ·  2026

Technology
& Society

How AI reveals the way Americans connect,
vote, trust, and live online.

See the Reports Explore the MCP
Mission

A rigorous, ongoing assessment of how technology reshapes political life, social trust, and mental health in America — now powered by an AI research assistant that queries 38 waves of national panel data and delivers publication-ready findings in minutes.

Reports
6 ENTRIES · 2025–2026
REPORT · JUNE 2026 · Platforms, Democracy
Splintering the Public Square
The demographics of alt-tech platforms — Truth Social, Gab, Parler, Mastodon, and Bluesky — and what platform sorting means for the digital commons.
REPORT · MAY 2026 · Platforms, Safety
Digital Battlegrounds
A map of online abuse and harassment across major platforms — and the demographic groups most often targeted, from 2022 to 2026.
REPORT · APRIL 2026 · Health, Platforms
Scrolling Away Sleep
How problematic TikTok use disrupts sleep, attention, and mental health — a PHQ-9 analysis across 38 survey waves of nationally representative data.
REPORT · MARCH 2026 · Platforms, Democracy
Migration After Musk
Who left X after the Elon Musk acquisition — and where they went. A logistic regression analysis of platform migration by demographics and partisan identity.
REPORT · FEBRUARY 2026 · Trust, Politics
Who Trusts What
Institutional trust in science, government, and media across the partisan spectrum — and how the rise of AI chatbots is reshaping the trust landscape.
More liberal More conservative
REPORT · JANUARY 2026 · Geography, Platforms
The Geography of the Feed
A state-by-state analysis of platform adoption, political posting, and how geography shapes the American social media experience.
How It Works

Ask a question.
Get a publication-ready report.

The CHIP50 MCP server connects Claude AI directly to 38+ waves of national panel data on social media use, political attitudes, and mental health. Ask a research question in plain English — no SQL, no scripting required.

Claude selects from 24 specialized analysis tools, runs population-weighted queries against the CHIP50 BigQuery database, and delivers tables, trend analyses, regression output, and full PDF reports — ready for a paper, brief, or press release.

View MCP Documentation →
01
Connect Claude to the MCP
Add the CHIP50 connector in Claude's settings. Authenticate with Google OAuth. The server is already live — no installation, no API keys.
02
Ask your research question
Type any research question in plain English. Claude automatically selects the right combination of tools and executes them in sequence or parallel.
generate_crosstab
get_platform_trends
run_ols_regression
run_logistic_regression
generate_marginals_by_wave
generate_pdf_report
03
Receive publication-ready output
Population-weighted tables, trend charts, regression results with confidence intervals, and full PDF reports — with title pages, methodology sections, and reproducibility appendices.
04
Privacy-by-design, throughout
Cell suppression (n < 30) at the SQL layer. PHQ-9 returned as population-level aggregates only. No PII. OAuth authentication. All outputs are weighted, anonymized estimates.
The Data

CHIP50 is a large-scale, nationally representative repeated-wave panel survey tracking how Americans use social media — and how that connects to political attitudes and mental health — since 2020.

0
Survey Waves
0
Respondents Per Wave
0
Platforms Tracked
0
AI Analysis Tools
Social Media Platforms
  • Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter
  • TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat
  • LinkedIn, Reddit, WhatsApp
  • Truth Social, Gab, Parler
  • Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads
  • Usage · Frequency · Trust · Posting
Demographics & Politics
  • Age (8-category), Gender
  • Race / Ethnicity (5-category)
  • Education, Income (10-category)
  • Party ID (3-point and 7-point)
  • Ideology (7-point scale)
  • All 50 states + DC
Health & Attitudes
  • Full PHQ-9 mental health scale
  • Depressive symptom severity
  • Institutional trust (6 items)
  • Trust in science, gov., media
  • Conspiracy beliefs
  • Voting behavior, protest activity
Get Access

Connect in four steps.
Start researching in five.

The CHIP50 MCP server is live on Google Cloud Run. All you need is a Claude account and a Google login. Access is managed — request it at the authentication screen.

Once connected, try:

"What variables are available in the CHIP50 dataset? Show me how TikTok usage has changed across all waves."
01
Open Claude Settings
In Claude Desktop or claude.ai, navigate to Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
02
Enter the connector URL
https://social-media-demographics-mcp-dnbn5uv2jq-uc.a.run.app/mcp
03
Authenticate with Google
Claude will redirect you to a Google sign-in page. Log in with your authorized Google account. Request access if prompted — you'll be notified once approved.
04
Start your analysis
The CHIP50 connector will appear as active. Call introduce_mcp() first for a full schema overview, then ask your first research question.