Our research harnesses emerging and innovative technology to rigorously examine social media use, sleep and circadian rhythms, and suicide risk using intensive monitoring and prospective designs. Several ongoing and recently-completed studies use smartphone technology to passively capture social media use patterns and other features (e.g., phone and app usage, communication, accelerometer) combined with ecological momentary assessment (EMA), actigraphy, questionnaires, and interviews among adolescents (community and high-risk samples).

 

Our Pathways Linking Use of Social Media to Teen Outcomes (PLUS-2) study aims: 1) To better understand how and in what ways adolescents are using social media, 2) Examine how social media use relates to adolescent sleep and circadian rhythms and suicide risk, 3) Explore whether sleep disruption mediates the link between social media use and suicide risk among high-risk youth, and 4) Develop new tools that are accessible and scalable for future research to capture social media and sleep using smartphones to prevent adolescent suicide.