Leveraging Existing and Emerging Large-Scale Social Data to Build Robust Evidence-Based Policy for Children in the Digital Age, 2005-2023

This project leveraged existing datasets to ground policy for children in the digital age for the first time. The project provided evidence to policy-makers, parents, teachers, and GPs on the impact of digital technologies in the lives of British children, highlighting key risk and resilience factors for future interventions. Using existing data, advanced statistical techniques, and robust open science methodologies, we addressed three main research questions: 1. What risk and resilience factors influence the effect of digital technology on adolescents' psychological well-being? 2. How does digital technology use relate to psychological well-being, and do identified risk factors mediate this relationship? 3. What are the causal pathways between risk factors, digital technology use, and psychological well-being that could inform future interventions? This helped develop profiles to explore long-term technology use and effects, distinguishing between over-hyped concerns, like social isolation, and those warranting further scrutiny, such as poor sleep. While the data cannot be shared or underlaying code is made available open access under Related Resources.