Published: November 5, 2026 (full-text PDF) in Sage Open

Abstract
Declines in adolescent mental health have been attributed to social media use. However, this narrative overlooks structural trends—including the decline of free play, educational reforms, and intensive parenting—that increasingly restrict youth autonomy. Addressing a critical gap, we argue failing to control for shifting social opportunities introduces omitted-variable bias. Rather than an ‘anxious generation’ harmed by screens, today’s youth are a ‘constrained generation.’ Social media use is a response to these constraints rather than their cause; like other forms of unstructured contact, it should support self-esteem, which is protective of mental health.

Methods: We conducted a three-year longitudinal study following 653 adolescents from grades 8–9 to 11–12. Using cross-lagged panel modeling, we examined reciprocal relationships between social media use and self-esteem, controlling for change in extracurricular activities and in-person socializing.

Findings: Social media use in early adolescence was prospectively associated with subsequent increases in self-esteem for girls, with no significant relationship for boys. Consistent with developmental models, social media use was associated with subsequent decreases in time with family, but not friends. Using internal benchmarking, the positive relationship between social media use and girls’ self-esteem was comparable in magnitude—but opposite in direction—to the negative relationship observed with pandemic-era lockdowns. It was also similar in magnitude to the difference in self-esteem reported between boys and girls from early to late adolescence. We conclude that social media likely serves as a protective ‘stand-in’ for diminishing opportunities for voluntary, unstructured interaction, particularly for girls. Consequently, policies restricting social media access may inadvertently remove a critical buffer against internalizing behaviors.

Published: June 7, 2025 (full-text PDF) in Information, Communication & Society

Abstract
Concerns about the detrimental effects of screen time on adolescents’ academic achievement are widespread. However, this perspective often overlooks the potential educational benefits of online leisure time, and gender differences in online and offline activities. We examine the relationship between digital media use (social media, video games, etc.), digital skills, and standardized test scores (SAT) in a sample of 2,582 students in grades 8-11. Using path analysis, we find a compensatory mechanism.

Findings: Like unstructured time spent in-person with peers, time spent on social media has a small, negative, direct relationship to academic achievement. However, unlike time spent in-person, digital activities offset the small, negative relationship to achievement with a larger, positive, indirect relationship through digital skills. Notably, boys benefit more than girls in reading and writing from unstructured digital media use, with little difference in math. This potentially mitigates some gender-based achievement gaps. Gender differences are tied to media preferences and the relationship between different digital activities and different digital skills.

These findings challenge the simplistic view that unstructured leisure time spent on digital media is inherently harmful or unproductive. We underscore the need for shifts in policy and parenting practices to recognize the benefits of casual leisure and unstructured time with peers, both online and offline, for learning and development.

[I also wrote an overview ‘blog post’ about this paper: you can read that here]

Doctoral Dissertation
Published: April 15, 2026 (full-text PDF) in Michigan State University Library, ProQuest

Abstract
This dissertation examines the relationship between adolescent unstructured digital media use, including social media, playing video games, web browsing, and youth human and social capital outcomes such as academic achievement, educational aspirations, STEM career interest, and extracurricular participation. By developing a digital capital exchange framework, grounded in Coleman's (1988) Capital Theory and digital inequality scholarship, this research investigates how digital skills and networked capital resources may connect online engagement with adolescent capital enhancement and psychosocial development. This approach examines how digital media is now fundamentally (1) integrated within contemporary adolescents’ day-to-day academic, aspirational, and social success, and as such, (2) embedded within existing digital and traditional inequalities (e.g., access quality, gender gaps). In doing so, I account for the contextual (but often neglected) factors inherent to unstructured digital media use in adolescence and examine whether young peoples’ screen time and online “play” may function as a positive mechanism for youth social and human capital.

Analysis & Methods: Four primary quantitative studies consisted of a mix of cross-sectional (path modeling) and longitudinal (cross-lagged panel modeling) analyses collected among a pooled sample of 5,825 adolescents across the same eighteen schools before and after the COVID-19 pandemic—2019 and 2022 (N=2,876 and N=2,949, respectively; longitudinal N=653).

Findings: Study findings reframe debates and concerns surrounding adolescent screen time. Instead, this dissertation demonstrates that time spent on unstructured digital media, particularly by mobilizing the web-based and social digital skills developed from such use, can be exchanged for youth academic achievement and social well-being. Unstructured digital media use exhibited limited and outcome-specific direct associations with adolescent human capital—academic achievement, aspirations, and STEM career interest (Chapter Four). In contrast, digital inequalities, especially unreliable home connectivity and technology maintenance constraints, emerged as substantially larger predictors of academic decline. Digital skills were strong positive contributors to achievement and aspirations across adolescence, while also mediating the relationship between online engagement and human capital both before and after pandemic lockdowns—especially among students with fast and reliable home access (Chapter Five). When extending this framework to conventional psychosocial development (Chapter Six) and youth social capital (Chapter Seven), findings indicate that certain forms of digital engagement and online skillsets complement, rather than undermine, adolescent developmental competencies such as grit and self-efficacy, and participation in face-to-face structured social activities (e.g., organized sports, paid work and volunteering, adult-led school clubs), particularly when observed alongside face-to-face peer and family interaction.

Published: September 18, 2023 (full-text PDF)

Motivation & Background
The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed how Americans viewed the importance of broadband Internet connectivity. In a short period of time, a national emergency shifted how and where people accessed work and education, how they interacted with friends and family, and how they spent their time. An inadequate infrastructure for broadband access left rural Americans and particularly rural youth at higher risk. This study was designed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on home Internet connectivity, student achievement, and adolescent well-being. The focus is on middle and high school students enrolled in rural and small-town schools.

This report builds on the findings of a study on Broadband and Student Performance Gaps released in the weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Hampton et al., 2020). That report highlighted the low levels of broadband access by rural Michigan students and the detrimental impact from a lack of access on their academic performance, educational aspirations, career choices, and general well-being. In 2022, we returned to the same schools that we first surveyed in 2019. We asked students about their experience with Internet technologies and with learning from home during the pandemic. Our findings paint a picture of how rural school districts and other stakeholders rapidly mobilized to address a national crisis. In a remarkably short period of time, schools accessed state and federal resources to close gaps in rural Internet access and computing devices.

Key Findings: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, during the 2020-21 school year, the vast majority of rural Michigan students spent considerable time learning from home like many students across the country. Our findings show that students with better home Internet access experienced fewer problems learning from home. We found evidence that learning from home boosted students’ competencies with digital technologies. It also helped insulate some students from a broad pandemic decline in career interests related to science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM).  During the COVID-19 pandemic, learning from home did not, however, protect students from a large drop in intention to pursue post-secondary education at a college or university. Although students reported exceptionally high feelings of isolation during the pandemic, these feelings have rapidly diminished.

We found no substantive difference in young people’s self-esteem in comparison to before the pandemic. Young people are now spending more time in person with their friends than they did in the years before the pandemic. As youth leisure activities shifted, we also found that those young people, who spend more time using a variety of media, especially social media, are spending the most time in person with friends.

[I also wrote an overview ‘blog post’ about this paper: you can read that here]

Published: August 29, 2025 (full-text PDF) in Human-Machine Communication

Abstract
To extend our understanding of CASA‍ ‍(computers are social actors; Nass et al., 1994) and account for changes in technological complexity and configuration, this research asks:Do increasing levels of social cues in a media representative that is separate from the core technology it represents lead to increased perceived anthropomorphism of the core technology? And: does such perceived anthropomorphism predict positive treatment of the core technology? We conducted two complementary studies observing e-scooter use and treatment, an online experiment focused on responses to video stimuli and a field experiment focused on actual user behavior.

Findings: Our studies suggest that, indeed, social cues in a media representative (i.e., an e-scooter rental mobile application) of a separate core technology (i.e., the e-scooter itself ) leads to positive attitudes about the core technology, potentially because of increased perceived anthropomorphism.

Published: December 1, 2022 (full-text PDF) in PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality

Abstract
The present work examines why some studies of the Proteus effect—the phenomenon that people tend to conform behaviorally and attitudinally to their avatars’ identity characteristics—facilitate the phenomenon more effectively than others. A previous meta-analysis of the Proteus effect (Ratan et al., 2020) failed to examine potentially notable moderating factors of the phenomenon, so we examine such factors through a meta-analysis of the 56 quantitative experimental Proteus effect studies published at the time of this analysis.

Findings: Studies that utilized virtual reality technology (e.g., head-mounted displays) elicited stronger effect sizes than those that utilized flat screens, as hypothesized. No support was found for the hypothesis that effect sizes differ by software type utilized (commercial or custom-built). We offer suggestions for future research into the Proteus effect, and how to best examine possible variables of the phenomenon.

[I also wrote an overview “blog post” about this paper: you can read that here]