Abstract

Theme: Social Behaviour & Communication

Concerns about the impact of social media use on adolescent well-being and mental health are common. While the amount of research in this area has increased rapidly over the last 5 years, most outputs are still marred by a multitude of limitations. These shortcomings have left our understanding of social media effects severely limited, holding back both scientific discovery and policy interventions. This talk discusses how developmental, cognitive and neuroscientific approaches might provide a new and improved way of studying social media effects. It will detail new studies in support of this idea, and raise potential avenues for collaborative work across the Cambridge Neuroscience community. As the digital world now (re)shapes what it means for us to live, communicate and develop, only an interdisciplinary approach will allow us to truly understand its impacts.

Amy’s research uses large-scale data to examine how digital technologies affect adolescent psychological well-being and mental health. She uses innovative and rigorous statistical methodology to shed new light on pressing questions debated in policy, parenting and mental health. She also campaigns for better communication of trends in data and the wider adoption of Open Science.

Amy is a College Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and a Research Fellow at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge.

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