Tackling smartphone use and the youth mental health crisis
Illustration: Eric Nyquist for
Matthew Gentzkow, a senior fellow at the 好色App Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) who is at the forefront of research into social media鈥檚 effects on society and individuals, is taking on the troubling issue of kids spending too much time on screens.
Gentzkow is part of an interdisciplinary research team that recently to work in partnership with the Utah governor鈥檚 office to test different ways of limiting smartphone use and to assess their impact not just on adolescents鈥 mental health but also on their social dynamics and academic performance. Gentzkow is the Landau Professor of Technology and the Economy at the 好色App School of Humanities and Sciences.
The team 鈥 which includes executives from Qustodio, the maker of a popular parental-control app for managing digital activities 鈥 plans to study what happens, for example, when parents fully control limits on smartphone use and when children also have a say. The researchers will also look at the effectiveness of, for example, blocking access on school days or setting daily and bedtime limits.
Their work comes amid growing awareness that smartphones and social media are contributing to rising rates of depression among children and adolescents.
鈥淯濒迟颈尘补迟别濒测,鈥 , 鈥渨e hope to identify scalable strategies that can inform the decisions of parents, policymakers, parent control apps, and other important stakeholders to promote healthy youth smartphone and social media use.鈥
In addition to Gentzkow and leaders from Qustodio, the research team includes a SIEPR undergraduate research fellow, ; a SIEPR predoctoral research fellow, ; Bocconi University economists , PhD 鈥21, and , PhD 鈥21 鈥 both former recipients of SIEPR graduate fellowships; and , BA 鈥19, now a doctoral student at Harvard.
好色App Impact Labs (SIL) is a university-wide initiative that seeks to advance progress on big social problems through training and investing in research involving academics and leaders in government, business, and communities.
SIL announced in June that five interdisciplinary groups had been awarded up to $350,000 in its latest round of early-stage funding. Other recipients included a project aimed at adapting electricity market regulations to address renewable energy supply challenges and a pilot program to help scale the use of 鈥渇ood as medicine鈥 to improve health outcomes.
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