Scientists from our Psychology Department have been awarded a major funding of £764,947 to investigate how and why teenagers use social media.
The funding, awarded by the Huo Family Foundation, will support the Chasing Likes project led by Dr Niklas Ihssen and Professor Mary Hanley.
The project aims to better understand the mechanisms underlying young people's social media use, including its impact on brain responses.
The Chasing Likes Project
Social media platforms such as Instagram have become a major part in young people's everyday lives.
Many parents have expressed concerns about its impact on young people's mental health, calling for the ban of social media.
But what makes social media so appealing to adolescents in the first place?
The Chasing Likes project will examine how social media use is linked to the seeking of 'social rewards' such as peer approval.
Social media offers plenty of such social rewards in the form of likes and shares. The project aims to understand how teenagers' developing brains respond to these rewards and how this relates to excessive social media checking/bingeing.
For the first time, the researchers will track social reward in children before they start using social media through to later adolescence.
The researchers will use a range of methods including brain imaging and longitudinal measures to study teenager's general use and overuse of social media.
Young people will shape the research from the outset, generating insights that are authentic and meaningful for promoting healthy social media use.
A four-year project with expert partners
The four-year long project is led by our Psychology Department and supported by its award-winning research technicians.
It brings together new partners including the Advanced Learning Partnership, who will involve young people in the project, and the Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Imaging Centre.
Dr Niklas Ihssen, Principal Investigator of the project, said: "The Chasing Likes project is a unique opportunity to shed light on the psychological and neural mechanisms that drive teenagers to pick up their phone so frequently and prevent them from putting it down."
