What’s your name? What’s your department?
My name is Ava, and I’m a graduating, fourth-year undergrad in the psychology department at UVA.
What’s your hometown?
McLean, Virginia
How are you connected to TYDE?
I’ve had the privilege to serve as senior TYDE research assistant for the past year, where I work on awesome projects like the Hackathon and other youth-focused initiatives.
What’s your research about?
My research interests are very aligned with TYDE’s mission, as I’m fascinated by understanding how technology affects mental health and how we can leverage technology to increase access to mental healthcare. My undergraduate thesis focused on youth preferences for digital mental health interventions to help people use social media in healthier ways. It involved analyzing the youth-designed interventions produced at the 2025 TYDE Hackathon and running a follow-up study with study interviewing college students about their thoughts on such interventions.
What do you wish people knew about youth mental health and digital technology?
I wish people understood that the story is not as simple as it appears at first glance. There is a pervasive sense that digital technology is awful for youth mental health. Still, digital technology is remarkably ubiquitous in today’s world, and so it’s no surprise that youth use it in extremely diverse ways. These ways can be beneficial, harmful, or neutral, and the nuance therein is exactly why we should focus on understanding this complex relationship instead of banning technology use completely or vilifying it.
If you were the U.S. digital technology czar, what kinds of policies would you recommend to help young people thrive?
I think there are too many uncertainties in the research around the relationship between digital technology and mental health for me to comfortably advise specific policies on this aspect of technology use. However, we do know that powerful companies have an almost unfathomable amount of information on each one of us that’s at risk of leaking at any moment. It’s also unclear how they are using this data. It can certainly be harmful to youth to have this unprecedented level of information out there about them and out of their control, so I would focus on policies that regulate how much data these companies can keep on young people. I believe youth would benefit from this protection in ways that would help build a strong foundation for a healthy relationship with digital technology.
