Rostock Demographic Seminar Series

Social Media Use and Teen Mental Health: What We (Don’t) Know and What We Can Do About It

Amy Orben
Hybrid Presentation, May 24, 2022

Amy Orben from the University of Cambridge gave a talk about social media use and teen mental health.

Abstract

In this talk, Amy Orben will provide a scoping overview of what we currently know about social media use and its link to adolescent mental health. She will reflect on how she became involved in this area of research and how her studies, published in outlets such as Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications and PNAS, have tried to address this societally pressing research question. On the way, she will uncover a variety of debates and disagreements, highlight common misunderstandings and methodological pitfalls that researchers in this field, including herself, have faced. She will reflect on the progress – or lack of progress – that has been made and how this has limited policy, advice, and regulation. Finally, she will look into the future and discuss how new interdisciplinary approaches her research group is pioneering can establish fruitful new directions of study to aid researchers, adolescents, parents, and policymakers.

About the Speaker

Amy Orben is a psychologist and Programme Leader Track Scientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge. Her research group investigates the links between digital technology use, mental health and cognition in adolescence using a variety of methodological approaches from cognitive and developmental neuroscience. Alongside her research, Dr Orben campaigns for the adoption of more transparent and open scientific practices. Before joining the University of Cambridge, Dr Orben completed a DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, for which she was awarded the British Psychological Society Award for Outstanding Contributions to Doctoral Research, and an MA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.