One of our current Supervisors, Ms Amy Orben of the University of Oxford, leads the team exploring compulsive Facebook use on top of her broader research on how social media influences the way people connect and interact.

Recently, in her role as a representative of the British Psychological Society, she has given both written and oral evidence to the UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology regarding their inquiry into the effects of smartphones and screen time on children. She was invited to give testimony due to her previous work on the effects of technology use on children. Her work stresses the need to examine the size of psychological effects before making policy decisions. Specifically, her work shows that the negative effects of technology use on children are routinely dwarfed by other effects, such as the positive nature of getting enough sleep or having breakfast before school. Thus, she argued that, given the current data, there is no conclusive evidence that there is a causal relationship between social media use among young people and their mental wellbeing.

In her hearing, Amy raised questions about where it is best for government to invest funds for improving the lives of the youngest in society. She also queried about the feasibility of a variety of other proposed policies like a universal children’s daily social media use limit, or a ban on smartphones in schools. Her testimony and research will be a contributing factor in creating policies that tackle these issues and we are delighted to see her work bringing attention to such an important topic.

If you would like to see the full testimony, you can view it here (start at 10:54).