What’s your name? What’s your department?
Alex Buddendeck, double major in Youth & Social Innovation and Psychology, 4th year.
What’s your hometown?
Falls Church, Virginia
How are you connected to TYDE?
This past summer, I got to work with Stefanie Sequeira and Bethany Teachman on a systematic review and a companion scoping review that dove into the research (and real-world programs) around teens, social media, and mental health.
What’s your research about?
We’re looking at digital mental health interventions aimed at improving adolescent wellbeing, things designed to help teens build healthier relationships with social media and their phones. The most exciting part for me is seeing how much nuance there is in “what actually works.” It’s not just about screen time limits. The interventions that seem most promising are the ones that build digital fluency and critical thinking skills, rather than just restricting access.
In your opinion, what are the main challenges that young people face navigating the world of digital technology and/or social media?
I think one of the biggest challenges is that social comparison is baked into the design of these platforms. It’s not just an unfortunate side effect, it’s often the whole point. Teens are constantly measuring themselves against curated versions of other people’s lives, and their brains are still developing the tools to put that in perspective. On top of that, a lot of the “solutions” out there are just about limiting screen time use, so kids aren’t necessarily getting the tools they need to navigate social media well.
What do you wish people knew about youth mental health and digital technology?
I wish people knew that this isn’t a simple “social media is bad” story. The research is genuinely mixed and context dependent. How a teen uses a platform, why they’re using it, and what’s happening in the rest of their life all matter more than raw hours of screen time. Blanket bans or moral panic headlines don’t capture that nuance, and they can actually distract from the interventions that could really help.
