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Latest research from the Nuffield Foundation. Great place to start.

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What Gen Z do online and why, matters more than screentime - Nuffield Foundation

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New analysis reveals the influence of digital technology on Gen Z is more complex than screentime.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Lucy Foulkes, Jack L. Andrews & Tessa Reardon

2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Tessa Reardon

3. Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK

Argyris Stringaris

4. Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK

Argyris Stringaris

Contributions

L.F. conceptualized the manuscript and wrote the original draft. All authors reviewed and edited subsequent drafts, and read and agreed to the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lucy Foulkes.

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Research recommendations for assessing potential harm from universal school-based mental health interventions - Nature Mental Health

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There is growing evidence that universal school-based mental health interventions can lead to negative outcomes in young people. This is a critical ethical issue, especially when young people cannot easily opt out of interventions run during school hours. So far, however, there is no guidance available about potential harms for researchers designing and running these interventions.

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Social media and youth mental health: Simple narratives produce biased interpretations.

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Many academics and pundits contend that social media use is the primary cause of an international youth mental health crisis. However, these claims often rely on correlational evidence, ignoring the confounding effects of developmental, environmental, social, and psychological factors that influence mental health. This oversimplifies the complex etiology of mental health problems. We call for a more nuanced understanding of the role of social media in youth mental health that avoids oversimplification. Additionally, we urge researchers to move beyond vague, narrative-driven verbal theories and encode them into precise, testable causal models. Using simulation techniques and specification curve analyses, we show how misspecified models that ignore these confounding factors can lead to biased conclusions about social media’s adverse effects. This simplistic focus on social media use diverts attention from the broader factors contributing to youth mental health problems, hindering the development of effective interventions and support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

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Impact of mobile phones and wireless devices use on children and adolescents’ mental health: a systematic review - European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

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Growing use of mobiles phones (MP) and other wireless devices (WD) has raised concerns about their possible effects on children and adolescents’ wellbeing. Understanding whether these technologies affect children and adolescents’ mental health in positive or detrimental ways has become more urgent following further increase in use since the COVID-19 outbreak. To review the empirical evidence on associations between use of MP/WD and mental health in children and adolescents. A systematic review of literature was carried out on Medline, Embase and PsycINFO for studies published prior to July 15th 2019, PROSPERO ID: CRD42019146750. 25 observational studies published between January 1st 2011 and 2019 were reviewed (ten were cohort studies, 15 were cross-sectional). Overall estimated participant mean age and proportion female were 14.6 years and 47%, respectively. Substantial between-study heterogeneity in design and measurement of MP/WD usage and mental health outcomes limited our ability to infer general conclusions. Observed effects differed depending on time and type of MP/WD usage. We found suggestive but limited evidence that greater use of MP/WD may be associated with poorer mental health in children and adolescents. Risk of bias was rated as ‘high’ for 16 studies, ‘moderate’ for five studies and ‘low’ for four studies. More high-quality longitudinal studies and mechanistic research are needed to clarify the role of sleep and of type of MP/WD use (e.g. social media) on mental health trajectories in children and adolescents.

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Abstract

Research linking social media use and adolescent mental health has produced mixed and inconsistent findings and little translational evidence, despite pressure to deliver concrete recommendations for families, schools and policymakers. At the same time, it is widely recognized that developmental changes in behaviour, cognition and neurobiology predispose adolescents to developing socio-emotional disorders. In this Review, we argue that such developmental changes would be a fruitful focus for social media research. Specifically, we review mechanisms by which social media could amplify the developmental changes that increase adolescents' mental health vulnerability. These mechanisms include changes to behaviour, such as sharing risky content and self-presentation, and changes to cognition, such as modifications in self-concept, social comparison, responsiveness to social feedback and experiences of social exclusion. We also consider neurobiological mechanisms that heighten stress sensitivity and modify reward processing. By focusing on mechanisms by which social media might interact with developmental changes to increase mental health risks, our Review equips researchers with a toolkit of key digital affordances that enables theorizing and studying technology effects despite an ever-changing social media landscape.

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Acknowledgements

A.O. and T.D. were funded by the Medical Research Council (MC_UU_00030/13). A.O. was funded by the Jacobs Foundation and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/X034925/1). S.-J.B. is funded by Wellcome (grant numbers WT107496/Z/15/Z and WT227882/Z/23/Z), the MRC, the Jacobs Foundation, the Wellspring Foundation and the University of Cambridge.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Amy Orben & Tim Dalgleish

2. School of Business, Economics and Society, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany

Adrian Meier

3. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

4. Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Contributions

A.O. conceptualized the manuscript; A.O and A.M wrote the original draft; A.O., A.M., T.D. and S.-J.B. reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors contributed substantially to discussion of the content, and reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amy Orben.

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Nature Reviews Psychology thanks Emily Weinstein, who co-reviewed with Beck Tench; Nastasia Griffioen; and Margarita Panayiotou for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Orben, A., Meier, A., Dalgleish, T. et al. Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability. Nat Rev Psychol 3, 407-423 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00307-y
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Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability - Nature Reviews Psychology

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Declines in adolescent mental health over the past decade have been attributed to social media, but the empirical evidence is mixed. In this Review, Orben et al. describe the mechanisms by which social media could amplify the developmental changes that increase adolescents' mental health vulnerability.

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