Erin Vogel
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center, OK·Psychology·Early-career
Teenagers and young adults spend much of their day on social media, and over the same years, rates of depression, eating disorders and nicotine vaping in these age groups have risen. Research has mostly measured social media use only as screen time.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
social media
adolescent mental health
depressive symptoms
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2028
What they work on
- Characterize what kinds of social media content prompt social comparison among teens aged 13–18, using screenshots and surveys sent from a smartphone app during everyday life (ecological momentary assessment).
- Test within-day and day-to-day links in both directions between specific social media activities, how intensely teens compare themselves, and depressive symptoms and body dissatisfaction, using two 14-day bursts of phone surveys.
- Identify personality and sociodemographic traits that are most strongly tied to risky social media activity and mental health symptoms in adolescents.
- Test in a randomized trial whether incentivized cuts to social media use lower young adults' exposure to vaping content, their social comparison, and their mental health symptoms.
- Examine whether reducing social media use lowers vaping days, vaping episodes per day, and puffs per episode among young adults who vape nicotine.
- Explore digital strategies for reducing young adults' social media use and vaping and for improving their mental health, through focus groups informed by the risk factors found in the trial.
More about the research
It has not shown which specific online activities cause harm, or whether harm runs in both directions. These projects ask how particular kinds of social media use relate to young people's mental health and vaping. A recurring focus is social comparison, the habit of measuring yourself against others. The goal is to find concrete, changeable targets for future prevention programs.
Why it matters
Depressive symptoms, body dissatisfaction and nicotine vaping are common among adolescents and young adults, and they can progress to major depression, eating disorders and nicotine dependence. By pinpointing which social media activities carry risk and which young people are most vulnerable, this work could guide prevention programs and future digital interventions. It may also inform regulation of vaping-related content on social media platforms.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Madhukar Trivedi
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Investigate how the amount of social media use and positive or negative online experiences affect depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation trajectories over six months in 100 at-risk Texas youth.
Leslie Adams
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Modify an existing smartphone digital phenotyping protocol, combining ecological momentary assessment surveys with passive GPS and accelerometer data, so it is appropriate for Black youth.
Michael Arthur Russell
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether TAC sensor features, namely rise rate, peak and rise duration of each day's alcohol curve, predict alcohol-related consequences on individual drinking days, compared with EMA phone self-reports, in 500 young adults.
The school
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center: 11 labs on PI Pages, $474M a year on research, 31 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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