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Essay for UNICEF

Essay for UNICEF

Dutch adolescents spend about six hours per day on their mobile phones,  of which two and a half hours are spend on social media. What does this their mean for their mental health? 

In an essay written for UNICEF Patti Valkenburg, Amber van der Wal  and  Ine Beyens try to answer this question. The essay is in Dutch and is titled:   "Schermgeluk en schermverdriet: de invloed van social media op de mentale gezondheid van jongeren."

Recent Publications & Project Updates

July 06, 2026

Encouragement of suicide in the feeds of young Dutch people

Fenna van Loenhout from Nu.nl spoke with Project AWeSoMe post-doctoral researcher Rebecca Godrad about harmful content on the TikTok feeds of Dutch adolescents. Preliminary findings suggest that nearly all youth from a community-based sample encounter…
June 15, 2026

Project AWeSoMe wins Open Science Award ⭐

We are very proud that Project AWeSoMe has been awarded an Open Science Community Amsterdam (OSCA) Award in the category “Transparency / Metascience / Preregistration / Reproducibility” 🏆 Since the founding of AWeSoMe in 2018, Open Science principles…
May 19, 2026

Project AWeSoMe article among most-read in Child Development🥇

Project AWeSoMe is proud to share that the article Changing or stable? The effects of adolescents' social media use on psychosocial functioning by Loes Pouwels, Ine Beyens, Loes Keijsers, and Patti Valkenburg has ranked within the top 10% most-viewed…
March 02, 2026

Publication Alert: How Does Social Media Make Adolescents Lonely?

How does using social media relate to feeling lonely, and why do some adolescents seem to be more affected than others? A new study by Rebecca Godard, Amber van der Wal, and Ine Beyens sheds light on these questions using intensive, real‑time data from…

This project is funded
by a NWO Spinoza Prize awarded to Patti Valkenburg

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