Psychological Science in a Digital Age: From Individual Well-being to Societal Processes

The increasing integration of digital media into daily life – ranging from social media communication to AI-powered assistance – presents both significant opportunities and complex challenges. As social media influences how we communicate, access information, and manage daily tasks, individuals experience changes in well-being, cognition, and behaviour; organisations navigate shifts in productivity, work-life balance, and organisational dynamics; and society faces broader issues such as misinformation, polarisation, and pressures on democratic processes.

To meaningfully address these challenges, a dual approach that considers both system-level (e.g., platform architecture, algorithms, and regulation) and individual-level factors (e.g., user behaviour, cognition, and media literacy) is required. Psychological science is uniquely positioned to understand the individual-level component in particular, but also how it interacts with the broader technological and social systems, which is crucial for effective policy and intervention design.

We are delighted to invite project proposals from current PhD students and early-career postdoctoral researchers exploring psychological contributions (e.g., social, clinical, health, developmental, political, work and organisational, educational) to understanding and navigating the opportunities, challenges, and effects of digital media.

Example projects include but are not limited to:

1. How do group identities relate to misinformation belief (Pereira et al., 2021)?
2. How does limiting social media use affect well-being (Hunt et al., 2018)?
3. How do people perceive the trade-off between free speech and content moderation (Kozyreva et al., 2023)?
4. How is social media use related to life satisfaction in adolescents (Orben et al., 2019)?
5. What individual factors predict the use of Large Language Models for academic cheating (Greitemeyer & Kastenmüller, 2024)?
6. How do organisational communication norms and digital media expectations contribute to employees’ experience of telepressure (Barber et al., 2023)?

Stay tuned for more details on jSchool. The supervisor applications will be announced shortly. In the meantime, questions about the theme can be directed to Ms. Friederike Stock, Research Officer 2026-27, [email protected].