A one day conference at the University’s Canterbury campus on 4 July will explore the positive and negative effects of social media on young people.
The programme includes a combination of recent research into how young people use social media and its effects on them. For example, the heaviest users of social media are also those most vulnerable to low wellbeing, symptoms of anxiety and depression, in addition to other harms such as loss of empathy. In younger children more than two hours a day of recreational screen time is associated with reduced working memory, processing speed, attention levels and executive function.
There will also be a series of workshops focusing on specific areas of concern to schools, colleges, youth and community groups and services. These include poor mental health, cyberbullying, sexting and sexual harassment, online pornography, sexual solicitation online and radicalisation.
Professor Karen Douglas and Dr Afroditi Pina from the School of Psychology are both speaking at the conference titled ‘Identity and Belonging 2019: Growing up in the Digital Age’. The event will be hosted by the University of Kent and Kent Educational Psychology Service.
For more details and the registration link, please go to the Kent News Centre story.