Social Media Mechanisms Affecting Adolescent Mental Health (SoMe3)

青少年估计他们每天上网的时间不到5个小时。这几乎和他们在学校的时间一样多，在英国，平均每天的上学时间为6.5小时。青少年心理健康状况在过去十年中也大幅下降，给英国的卫生服务、社会和经济带来了巨大压力。这让许多人担心，数字化正在积极损害青少年的心理健康。然而，我们对这些担忧是否有根据仍然知之甚少。英国皇家精神科医学院院长（“我们迫切需要对技术使用的利弊进行更多的研究”）和英国首席医疗官(“……卫生机构和研究机构应支持更全面的研究。需要建立一种适当的机制来衡量儿童的数字参与情况……”)。许多关于数字化和青少年心理健康的研究都集中在社交媒体上，这是一种特别高风险的数字创新。青少年大量使用社交媒体（16-17岁的青少年中有94%拥有社交媒体档案），社交媒体给社会环境带来了变化，可能会放大先前存在的脆弱性。例如，同龄人排斥在青春期尤为突出，是一种心理健康风险因素。社交媒体通过“点赞”计数来量化青少年从同伴那里获得的社会反馈，这可能会增加拒绝等社会反馈的显著性，从而增加心理健康风险（机制A）。此外，社交媒体允许继续接触同龄人，这对青少年非常有吸引力。这可能导致习惯性地使用社交媒体和自我控制失败，直接或间接地影响心理健康（机制B）。然而，调查社交媒体使用与精神疾病之间联系的研究结果在很大程度上并不一致，共识只是表明这种联系很复杂。这使得设计基于证据的建议和干预措施来解决社交媒体对社会、政策和行业的影响（例如，在线安全法案）变得非常具有挑战性。我的奖学金将通过提供突破性的基础和应用研究组合来解决这个问题。我的团队将采用一种新颖的机制方法，调查社交媒体对青少年心理健康影响的潜在机制（例如，机制a和B等）。我们将首先使用三个不同层次的科学解释（经验、算法和生物/认知）的观测数据来研究这些感兴趣的机制。然后，我们将在纵向研究中系统地操纵他们，以测试他们在个人层面上的心理健康影响。这将使我们能够选择两个目标，这些目标将在奖学金的5-7年级制定和部署，作为政策和干预措施，使青少年能够尝试改变他们自己的社交媒体使用情况，以改善他们的心理健康。这项研究将通过与政策制定者和利益相关者的敏捷联合调查和知识交流渠道加以补充，以解决当前政策和实践中的问题，确保这项投资在整个奖学金期间不断为年轻人产生积极影响。这将得到一项实习计划的支持，该计划招募来自学术研究中代表性不足的背景的有才华的本科生，以协助我的团队和政策合作伙伴选择夏季项目“冲刺”。透过与青年及家长的深入合作，研究成果及传播将更切合实际。因此，我的奖学金提供的证据将为有关儿童和数字化的关键国家决策提供依据，这些决策将塑造我们今天的孩子和未来几十年的成年人的生活。

Adolescents estimate that they spend just under 5 hours online every day. This is almost as much time as they spend at school, with the average UK school day lasting 6.5 hours. Adolescent mental health has also declined substantially over the last decade, putting large-scale pressures on UK health services, society and the economy. This has made many concerned that digitalisation is actively damaging adolescent mental health. However, we still know relatively little about whether such concerns are warranted. This is a scientific supply issue highlighted by both the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists ("We desperately need more research into the benefits and harms of technology use") and the UK Chief Medical Officers ("...more comprehensive research should be supported by health bodies and research institutions. An appropriate mechanism for measuring children's digital engagement needs to be developed...").A lot of research on digitalisation and adolescent mental health has focused on social media, a particularly high-risk digital innovation. Social media is used heavily by the adolescent population (94% of 16-17s have a social media profile) and introduces changes to the social environment that could amplify pre-existing vulnerabilities. For example, peer rejection is especially salient in adolescence, and a mental health risk factor. Social media quantifies the social feedback adolescents receive from peers through 'like' counts, which could increase the salience of social feedback such as rejection, and therefore increase mental health risk (Mechanism A). Further social media allows for continued access to peers, which is very attractive to adolescents. This can lead to habitual social media use and self-control failures that impact mental health directly and indirectly (Mechanism B). Results of research examining the link between social media use and mental ill health have however been largely inconsistent, and consensus has not moved far beyond statements that the link is complicated. This has made it very challenging to design evidence-based recommendations and interventions to address the impacts of social media across society, policy and industry (e.g., the Online Safety Bill). My fellowship will address this issue by delivering a ground-breaking portfolio of basic and applied research. My team will take a novel mechanistic approach, investigating the mechanisms underlying the impact of social media on adolescent mental health (e.g., Mechanisms A and B, among others). We will first study these mechanisms of interest using observational data across three distinct levels of scientific explanation (experiential, algorithmic, and biological/cognitive). We will then systematically manipulate them in a longitudinal study, to test their mental health impact on an individual level. This will allow us to select two targets that will be developed and deployed in Years 5-7 of the fellowship in both policy and as an intervention that allows adolescents to experiment with changing their own social media use to improve their mental health. This research will be complemented by an agile pipeline of co-investigation and knowledge exchange with policymakers and stakeholders to address current questions in policy and practice, to ensure this investment is continuously creating positive impact for young people throughout the fellowship. This will be supported by an internship scheme that recruits talented undergraduate students from backgrounds underrepresented in academic research to assist my team and policy partners on select summer project 'sprints'. In depth co-creation with young people and parents will further tailor research outputs and dissemination throughout the fellowship. The evidence provided by my fellowship will therefore feed into crucial national decisions about childhood and digitalisation that will shape the lives of our children today and adults tomorrow, for decades to come.