Keynote Speakers
Rogier Kievit Radboud University
Screen Savers: Protecting Adolescent Mental Health in a Digital World
Amy Orben
University of Cambridge
In our rapidly evolving digital world, there is growing concern about the impact of digital technologies, including social media, on the mental health of young people. Researchers face increasing pressure to produce evidence that can inform policy and practice, yet research progress is slow while technological change accelerates.
Digital companies have created highly popular environments that differ in important ways from the offline contexts in which humans have traditionally developed and interacted. By revisiting the psychological foundations underlying these design choices, we can gain deeper insight into how digitalisation may shape outcomes such as mental health. In this talk, Professor Orben examines these issues from multiple methodological perspectives.
On the one hand, developmental vulnerabilities that predispose young people to mental health difficulties may be exacerbated by digital environments. On the other hand, specific design features can interact with cognitive and learning processes, creating environments that are difficult to disengage from.
Beyond questions of impact, the talk also addresses more fundamental challenges of studying rapidly evolving technologies, including what it means to do rigorous science in this domain and how researchers, practitioners and policymakers might be able to keep pace with ongoing technological change.
Biography
Professor Amy Orben is a Research Professor at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She leads the UK’s largest research programme investigating the links between mental health and digital technology use in childhood and adolescents. She routinely advises policymakers and public servants around the world, for example as Director of a 2025 UK Government independent research commission on this topic and as a member of the Science Advisory Council at the UK Department for Education.
Esther Roozendaal
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Children are avid users of digital media. They stream movies and series on Netflix and Disney, scroll through videos on YouTube and TikTok, interact and share with others on WhatsApp and Snapchat, play games such as Roblox and Minecraft, and browse all kinds of websites in search of information. These activities offer them many opportunities in terms of entertainment, learning, social connection and identity formation, but also present challenges and risks for their wellbeing and safety. Although many children are aware of strategies to cope with online challenges and risks, they often struggle to apply those strategies in practice.
In this talk, I will explain the reasons behind this gap and what can be done to bridge it. To do so, I adopt an integrated approach, combining theoretical insights from the field of media literacy, developmental psychology and behavioral sciences. In addition to this integrated theoretical perspective, I will elaborate on why it is essential to also take children’s experiential knowledge into account. Children’s experiential knowledge enriches theoretical knowledge and offers a deeper insight into their digital resilience and what they need to grow and flourish in the digital society.
Biography
Esther Rozendaal is full professor of Digital Resilience at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Together with her team, she addresses complex and pressing societal issues related to youth, digital media, and well-being. Her goal is to gain insights that help children and young people make optimal use of the opportunities offered by digital media, while also equipping them to cope with its risks.
She employs participatory research methods, actively involving young people as co-researchers. Esther is also co-founder of the Movez Network, in which she collaborates with other stakeholders (e.g., schools, social organizations, parents) and young people to empower the next generation to become smart, healthy, and happy media users. See: https://movez-network.eu/
