Adolescence and Social Media: Separating Nonsense from Science
Learn more about the rise in anxiety and depression among teens and the claims that social media is to blame. Examine the mixed effects of social media use — both helpful and harmful.
Lene Arnett Jensen, Senior Research Scientist, Clark University
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Senior Research Scholar, Clark University
In recent times there has been a substantial rise in reports of anxiety and depression among American adolescents, especially among girls. Is social media use to blame? Some researchers in psychology have made this claim, and the US Surgeon General has asked Congress to require warning labels on social media apps. In this webinar we critically examine the evidence for and against this claim, concluding that adolescents use social media for many purposes, some helpful, some harmful, and most innocuous.
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About the speakers
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Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Senior Research Scholar, Clark University
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a senior research scholar in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 1986 from the University of Virginia and did 3 years of postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. From 1992 through 1998, he was an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Missouri. In the fall of 2005, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark; from 2010 to 2011, he was the Nehru Chair at Maharaja Sayajirao University in India; and from 2017 to 2018, he was a visiting professor at the University of Bordeaux in France.
His primary scholarly interest for the past 20 years has been in emerging adulthood. He coined the term, and he has conducted research on emerging adults concerning a wide variety of topics and involving several different ethnic groups in American society. He is the founding president and executive director of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA). From 2005 to 2014, he was the editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research (JAR), and currently he is on the editorial board of JAR and 5 other journals. He has published many theoretical and research papers on emerging adulthood in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the book Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties (2024, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press), among many others. For more information, visit his website.
Lene Arnett Jensen, Senior Research Scientist, Clark University
Lene Arnett Jensen is a senior research scientist in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 1994 from the University of Chicago and did a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to coming to Clark University, she taught at the University of Missouri and Catholic University of America. She has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University, Shenzhen University in China, Aalborg University in Denmark, Maharaja Sayajirao University in India and the University of Bordeaux in France. She has taught courses on developmental psychology for more than 30 years.
As the originator of the “cultural-developmental approach” to theory and research, she aims to move the discipline of psychology toward understanding development both in terms of what is universal and what is cultural. Her publications include Immigrant Civic Engagement: New Translations (2008, Taylor-Francis), Bridging Cultural and Developmental Psychology: New Syntheses for Theory, Research and Policy (2011, Oxford University Press), The Oxford Handbook of Human Development and Culture (2015, Oxford University Press), Moral Development in a Global World: Research from a Cultural-Developmental Perspective (2015, Cambridge University Press), and The Oxford Handbook of Moral Development (2020, Oxford University Press). From 2004 to 2015, she was editor-in-chief for the journal New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (with Reed Larson). She served as program chair for the 2012 biennial conference of the Society for Research on Adolescence (with Xinyin Chen) and currently serves on the boards of several journals. For more information, visit her website.