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DIORA: Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and Resilience in Adolescence

A multi-method study of the mental health risks and benefits of digital technology use

It is time to understand the role played by "digital engagement" in the emotional lives and mental health of adolescents, so that policymakers and practitioners can tailor their support effectively.

Professor Sonia Livingstone

We can’t say whether it is the internet use that drives mental health or mental health states that drive internet use. This makes sensible intervention to improve mental health impossible.

Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke

 

A collaboration between King’s College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), this project explores adolescents’ online experiences and their relationship to changes in mental health.

Research highlights adolescent digital engagement either as a mental health risk or as a source of support or resilience. However, the ways in which digital engagement has its effects during adolescence, either positive or negative, remain poorly understood.

Many questions remain. Do different mental health conditions lead to different patterns of digital engagement or exposure to risks or benefits? What aspects of digital engagement contribute to different mental health outcomes?

To address these issues, in DIORA we examine whether digital activity predicts an increase in depression symptoms over a 12-month period in middle adolescence (i.e., age 13-14 years), the developmental period when depression risk is beginning to increase.

The study will explore:

  • The two-way relationship between depression and risky digital activity. We will also test if there is a relationship between digital activity and wellbeing;
  • Whether adolescents' emotional reactions explain the relationship between digital activity and depression, and what the role of personal resilience, as well as other risk and protective factors, is;
  • Whether adolescents are concerned about how their digital activity affects their mental health and if they change their digital activity as a result.

Methods

DIORA combines a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches. We will conduct an observational study of mid-adolescent development with three assessment points: baseline (T1), 6 (T2), and 12 (T3) months. We will aim to recruit a minimum of 276 adolescents aged between 13 and 14 years from secondary schools in the United Kingdom and one caregiver for each adolescent. All study questionnaires will be completed online.

We will also conduct qualitative interviews to get a detailed account of adolescents’ own understanding of their digital engagement, how they are affected by it and how they use digital technologies for the self-management of their mental health.

The data analyses will chart a range of models to examine the direct and indirect associations between digital activity, the reactions it induces, depression and wellbeing, and individual and contextual mediators and moderators drawing on the structural equation modelling framework.

As part of DIORA, we developed the Digital Activity and Feelings Inventory (DAFI) which measures distinct dimensions of digital activity and the reactions evoked by them. The DAFI is available for research use under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. Find out more about using the DAFI.

Access the study protocol.

DIORA was preceded by a pilot project on Adolescent mental health and development in the digital world involving a multi-stakeholder qualitative study on the risks and benefits of digital technology use.

Publications and resources

Publications

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Project team

Project Leads

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Edmund Sonuga-Barke is Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. Inspired by his own childhood experiences his research focuses on understanding neuro-developmental disorders and their mental health consequences across the life span. To this end, he employs basic developmental science approaches to study the pathogenesis of such conditions, their underlying genetic and environmental risk and resilience sources and their mediating brain mechanisms. Professor Sonuga-Barke was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2016), a Fellow of the British Academy (2018), amongst the ‘most influential scientific minds’ in psychology and psychiatry by Clarivate (2018) and an Honorary Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark (2019).

Sonia pic for YSKills

Sonia Livingstone DPhil (Oxon), FBA, FBPS, FAcSS, FRSA, OBE is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has published 20 books including “The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age” and Parenting for a Digital Future (July 2020). She directs the projects “Children’s Data and Privacy Online,” “Global Kids Online” (with UNICEF) and “Parenting for a Digital Future”, and she is Deputy Director of the UKRI-funded “Nurture Network.” Since founding the 33 country EU Kids Online network, Sonia has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe, OECD and ITU.

Sonia tweets @Livingstone_S

 

Researchers

Kasia

Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Queen Mary University of London. Kasia’s research broadly concerns risks and opportunities created by access to digital technology within the context of family and child and adolescent mental health. This includes developing evidence-based parenting interventions that use mobile phone technology to provide low-cost and scalable support for parents of young children both in the community and within children’s health services. She is also interested in examining the mechanisms that underpin the associations between childhood and adolescent mental health difficulties and digital engagement.

Kasia tweets @kasiakostyrka

MariyaStoilova2016(1)

Dr Mariya Stoilova holds a postdoctoral research position at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). With a strong focus on multi-method evidence generation and cross-national comparative analyses, her work focuses on the intersection of child rights and digital technology use, well-being and family support, and intimate life, citizenship and social inequalities.

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Dr Peiyao Tang is a Research Associate at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. Peiyao is interested in the cognitive and emotional risk factors in young people's mental health, particularly depression and anxiety disorders. Her PhD investigated the role of future thinking in symptoms of adolescent depression and generalised anxiety, where she used methodologies including systematic review and meta-analysis, qualitative research, questionnaire development and validation (psychometrics), and longitudinal studies.

Eliz

Eliz Azeri was a BSc Psychology undergraduate student at King’s College London, on a work placement year before her last year at university. Eliz is particularly interested in the myriad of factors affecting young peoples’ mental health, especially within the fast-paced climate of newly emerging digital technologies. She is also interested in how the combined effects of different environmental factors and genetic vulnerabilities influences young peoples’ mental health to varying degrees.

Jake2

Dr Jake Bourgaize is a Research Associate at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London and a Senior Research Officer at the Centre for Brain Science, The University of Essex. Jake’s research focuses on how individuals perceive food given various factors (such as how much the individual likes the food they are looking at, or if they have an eating disorder). This also includes how an individual’s brain activity changes in line with their eating behaviours. His other research interests include student motivation while completing classwork and digital software solutions that can assist in the day-to-day lives of those living with visual field loss.

Funding and partners

The project is funded within UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Digital Youth Programme. It is led by the University of Nottingham (Prof Chris Hollis and Prof Ellen Townsend) with partners at King’s College London, LSE and Bath University, Glasgow University, Open University, Oxford University, University College London, University of Auckland (New Zealand)  and UKRI Emerging Minds Network.

We acknowledge the support of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Digital Youth Programme award (MRC project reference MR/W002450/1) which is part of the AHRC/ESRC/MRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind programme.