Rachel Fieldhouse & Mohana Basu in Nature:

For Susan Sawyer, a physician-researcher specializing in adolescent health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, the start of the social-media ban this week meant entering the next phase of her research. Over the past two months, Sawyer and her colleagues interviewed 177 teenagers aged 13–16 about their social-media use, screen time and mental health before the ban came into effect. She and her colleagues plan to survey the teenagers again in six months, to see whether the ban has affected their use of the platforms or their mental health. The researchers will also survey the participants’ parents about problematic Internet and social-media use by their children.

Another research collaboration between the Kids Research Institute Australia, the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University, all in Perth, will examine whether the ban is presenting new parenting challenges and what family conflicts have arisen as a result.

Amanda Third, a researcher at Western Sydney University in Australia who studies how children use technology, says the ban is an opportunity to collect data about the effect of policies that restrict young people’s access to the Internet and social media.

More here.

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