Social Media Artistic tRaining in Teenagers (SMART)
Excessive social media use during childhood and adolescence has been associated with severe mental health problems such as depression and anxiety that may persist into adulthood. The objective of this project is to determine the effectiveness of digital-art interventions in changing the way teenagers use social media platforms and reducing the negative effects associated with excessive social media use. Our investigation will explore the impact of social media use on mental health, cognition, and brain plasticity, and how artistic experiences can modulate that impact. In this context, innovative interventions based on music and visual arts are being developed to enhance creativity, critical thinking, and cognition in adolescents, which could potentially be used in the future both for prophylactic / therapeutic purposes in managing depression and anxiety symptoms and for educational purposes in improving social media use in this population.
Image by cottonbro studio (obtained at Pexels)
briefly introducing the SMART project
Image by Ravi Roshan studio (obtained at Pexels)
A brief infographics summarizing the project’s plan can be seen below:
The SMART project is registered as a Clinical Trial under the ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT06402253
The study protocol and methodology has been considered to align with national and international ethical rules and, thus, has been approved by the New York University Institutional Review Board (NYU Protocol Record IRB-FY2023-7419), as well as by the New York City Department of Education Institutional Review Board (NYC DOE IRB protocol number 4952).
Image by Antonio Borriello (obtained at Pexels)
Social Media Artistic tRaining in Teenagers (SMART) 