New Members and Joining Social Media!
We're on TikTok! And a few other exciting announcements...
We’re in the middle of a busy term and have some exciting announcements to share, starting with a big welcome to our three newest members! Aslihan Baser is our new part-time research assistant. She is researching how social media influences adolescents’ identity development. Amira Skeggs has joined us as a new PhD student and is interested in young people’s perspectives on social media usage and interventions to improve mental health. And finally, Jasmine Fardouly is visiting the lab from the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on the influence of social media on users’ body image and mental health and takes a mixed methods approach to examine both positive and negative social media activities for users. Welcome to our new members, we’re excited to have you!
Are you interested in joining the Digital Mental Health Group?
We are looking for a new research assistant to join our team and contribute to our exciting digital mental health research! The position starts in the new year, with more details here. Applications close on Thursday, November 30th, so get in quick!
Exciting updates from our post-docs…
Amy and Sebastian secured a grant from the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) for a project addressing child online safety. The research aims to understand and combat online child exploitation globally, utilizing datasets spanning countries in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Anticipate more updates as we progress in this exciting project!
Amanda and Georgia recently pre-printed a novel Bayesian framework for understanding social uncertainty in online social environments (like social media). The social world is inherently uncertain, and successfully navigating it requires that we integrate evidence from multiple social cues. While there is considerable research on the cognitive strategies required to do this, this work has consistently overlooked how much of our lives now play out online. In this framework, we suggest the designs of online environments (e.g., quantification of feedback; ‘likes’) modulate the uncertainty of incoming social information (affecting the Bayesian ‘likelihood’), with downstream consequences for our inferences about the social world (Bayesian ‘posteriors’; figure panel A). The paper argues that online environments increase uncertainty about what others are thinking and feeling, but decrease uncertainty about social status (figure panel B).
A trip to Parliament!
Amy recently went to UK Parliament to give evidence for the House of Commons Education Select Committee who were discussing the topic of screen time, wellbeing and education. Our team had previously submitted a written report on this topic, which is available here. You can also view the full session (with lots of exciting discussions) from the Education Select Committee here.
We’re on TikTok!
Last, but definitely not least, the Digital Mental Health Group is on TikTok. Follow us if you want to see what life at Cambridge is really like (or just find a good meme). We will also be posting opportunities to participate in our research, so keep your eyes peeled!