Missing link in research? How diverse is our undergraduate curriculum?
This month has been a great success for the digital mental health group, with two new publications, another podcast appearance and a chance to get creative!
Considering adolescent development in digital mental health research🧠
A newly published Nature Commentary by Amy Orben and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore highlights the importance of considering adolescent development in research about social media and mental health.
In recent years, the prevalence of mental health conditions in adolescence has increased, alongside an increase in time spent on social media. These trends are shown below, in a figure generated by Lukas Gunschera, a research assistant in our group. While these trends might suggest a link between mental health and social media, existing research has struggled to explain potential associations. Amy and Sarah-Jayne suggest that adolescent developmental changes might be the missing link in digital mental health research.
Adolescence is a time when people experience a multitude of changes to their bodies, brains, cognition, emotion, social and cultural lives. Many of these changes overlap with the aspects of life that social media might amplify or enhance. For example, as adolescents become more sensitive to social feedback, social media provides the unique opportunity to quantify social approval through likes or comments. This might serve to exacerbate anxieties about self worth and amplify the impact of judgement from peers.
To understand the association between adolescent mental health and social media use better, the Commentary suggests we consider developmental stage in social media research, rather than averaging across large age ranges which might disguise such fluctuations. Such research could implement methodologies from fields such as developmental neuroscience or developmental psychology, creating opportunities for exciting interdisciplinary collaborations.
The full Commentary can be found here, and elaborates on existing challenges and future directions to advance the field of digital mental health.
Diversity of Undergraduate Curriculums🌏
In a Nature Career Column, Sakshi Ghai, PhD student in the group, discussed her recent diversity audit of our undergraduate Psychology curriculum at the University of Cambridge. In order to investigate the diversity of our undergraduate curriculum, and start acting to improve it, Sakshi and two colleagues, Lee de-Wit and Yan Mak, combed the syllabi and reading lists of mandatory courses. They extracted authors’ institutional affiliations, location and demographic of the study participants, and other key features. Here are some of their most striking findings:
All first authors of primary research papers were affiliated with a university in a high income country.
No authors were affiliated with an institution based in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
No studies focused solely on groups from the global south.
Less than 20% of articles reported diversity markers such as income or race.
Following this audit, Sakshi has designed a lecture series on rethinking diversity, which explores why diversity is a scientific necessity for advancing psychology and the ethics of diverse recruitment. This will be delivered to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Furthermore, these findings have been shared with the broader faculty to revise reading lists for the next academic year.
We are immensely proud of Sakshi for all her hard work, and it is truly amazing to see steps being taken towards improvement. To read more about the audit, the action and Sakshi’s suggestions for other institutions about how to improve the diversity of their own curricula, the full column can be found here, and an overview can be found in Nature Briefings.
Podcast Appearance🎧
Luisa Fassi, PhD student in the group, recently appeared for a segment on the Science Rehashed podcast to discuss how adolescents create a sense of self in an online world. Luisa spoke about some of the positive and negative effects of social media, and shed light on the debate as to whether online profiles are an extension of offline identities or something separate entirely. Luisa drew on aspects of her upcoming projects and explained nuances with both detail and clarity. We would highly recommend listening!
And finally…another away day!🏺
As a break from all the hard work in our group at the moment, we decided to get crafty and try our hand at pottery making! We had a great time making plates, dishes and decorations, and unleashing our creative sides. We can’t wait to see the finished products but here is a sneak peak in the meantime…
This newsletter was written by Amelia Leyland-Craggs (Research Assistant)