Social Media Artistic tRaining in Teenagers (SMART)

LV was recently asked to write an opinion piece for the European Public Health Alliance leveraging her growing expertise on the topic of mental health and digital technologies.

The article does an overview of the importance of the topic, mentioning then the recent legal and social pressures that social media companies have had to face to take responsability for some of the tragic consequences that their products have had on children and adolescents. It then focuses on the limitations the field presents while experimenting to try to define a more straightforward link between social media use/overuse and mental health markers. Finally, the piece closes by proposing an educative approach, where critical thinking around social media and stimulant activities such as the arts could potentially promote a healthier use of social media.

Picture by Triệu Thanh Tâm, extracted from pexels.com

The SMART project was briefly mentioned in the piece, jointly with several other examples trying to use stimulant activities and/or critical thinking to promote a transformation of social media usage and its consequences. SMART’s research team is very excited to have been considered to share their point of view on this fascinating topic, and to have the opportunity to reach public health professionals and policy makers, as well as other stakeholders outside the scientific community.

The article has been published under the title ‘Social media is bad for youth mental health: Where do we go from here?’, and it can be read here.