Exciting Announcements and a New Academic Year
After a wonderful summer break, the Digital Mental Health Group is back with some exciting announcements!
New pre-print!
Our third-year PhD student, Luisa, pre-printed her study investigating the link between social media use and wellbeing in adolescent clinical populations. The study addressed two key questions: 1) What proportion of research on social media use and mental health has been in adolescent clinical populations? And 2) Is the relationship between social media use and mental health different in clinical populations compared to the general population?
These questions were answered with a systematic review and meta-analysis which synthesed, quantified and compared evidence on the relationship between social media use and internalising symptoms in adolescent clinical and community samples. The main findings show that, out of 775 effect sizes, only 8% examined clinical samples. In these samples, a meta-analysis showed a positive, significant yet small meta-correlation between social media use and internalising symptoms, both for time spent and user engagement. These associations mirrored those found in community samples. Overall, this study highlights a critical lack of research on clinical populations and the need to consider how digital technologies affect vulnerable groups in order to design effective prevention programs and interventions.
Trip to California
In September, Sebastian, Luisa, Sakshi, Amanda, Georgia and Amy travelled to Newport Beach, California, to participate in the annual CERES Fall Intensive. The Fall Intensive is organised as part of the CERES network, an interdisciplinary network of academics and scholars, funded by the Jacobs Foundation, working together to research and innovate youth mental health and education. As part of the programme, Luisa, Sakshi and their collaborator Maddi Pownall organised a hugely successful, interactive workshop about how to adapt Open Science practices for Education Technology Research. They had a great time meeting current and potential new international collaborators, hearing fascinating research talks..... and finally having a go (to varying levels of success) at surfing in LA.
Congratulations Sakshi!
We have one last exciting thing to mention in this month’s newsletter, and that is a huge congratulations to our wonderful Sakshi Ghai for completing her PhD with a successful viva at the end of September.
Sakshi’s thesis focused on two complementary strands of research inquiry: applied research into the effects of digital technologies on adolescent well-being, and meta-scientific research into the diversity of behavioural science.
She has now taken up a postdoc position at the Oxford Internet Institute and will continue building her program of research on diversifying social media research. As sad as we are to see her fly the nest, we know she will flourish in her new role, and keep your eyes out for upcoming collaborations! Once again, enormous congratulations Sakshi!