Laura Marciano

 

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What are you currently working on?

I am very grateful to Marco Gui for nominating me as the next CAMmer in the spotlight. Thank you! It is an honor to be able to share my current work with other CAM members.

My research is currently focused on how social media and smartphone use influence teens’ well-being, defined by positive well-being indicators such as flourishing, happiness, and thriving. To do so, I use intensive data collection (like Ecological Momentary Assessments), trace data, screenshot donations, and recently even a biomarker.

My overall research aim is to disentangle what drives teens’ well-being through a multi-disciplinary approach, stemming from my background rooted in psychology, neuroscience, and health communication.

In particular, I am currently working on a project titled “HappyB2.0: The role of online/offline social relationships in adolescents’ happiness”,  funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, USA) as Principal Investigator, together with Prof. K. Viswanath (Harvard University, USA) and Prof. N. Osgood (University of Saskatchewan, Canada) as co-Investigators. I think this team is incredibly powerful, as it combines disciplines such as public health and computer science that are crucial to include in the ongoing conversation on digital media effects today. I am deeply motivated to develop and implement solutions that promote health, well-being, and equity.

The project focuses on online versus offline relationships’ role in adolescents’ loneliness and happiness. Within this project, I will also collect hair cortisol concentrations as a digital biomarker of stress. The HappyB2.0 project is built on my previous HappyB project. HappyB Project is a longitudinal study that includes about 1600 adolescent participants funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and in collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The aim was to assess adolescents’ happiness. I have directed all the data collection phases of HappyB and the team working on the project for over two years (2022-2023) in close collaboration with high school principals, teachers, students, and parents in Switzerland.

Through these projects,  I aim to launch a research line focused on the biological correlates of adolescents’ and children’s well-being, in combination with new digital approaches to collecting and tracing well-being.

In addition, I am also involved in many science communication activities thanks to the collaboration with the IBSA Foundation for scientific research in Lugano, Switzerland. Among others, I am leading an SNSF Rolling Agora project titled “Happiness2.0: Social media use and well-being in adolescence”, together with Prof. Schulz (USI Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland) and Dr. Silvia Misiti (director of the IBSA Foundation for scientific research, of which I am part of the Advisory Board). The projects will involve science communication activities for teens living in Switzerland, as well as parents and stakeholders. Through the combination of science and art, we will discuss how social media use influences adolescents’ well-being over time through laboratory experiences (e.g., the use of art activities to explain scientific concepts) and engagement with experts. A final communication event for stakeholders, teachers, and high school principals will also take place.

What has been your most memorable project so far, and why?

My most memorable project is HappyB. The reason is that that was the first project that I led completely, and it started immediately I finished my PhD. I was honored that during the last months of my PhD, I had already received an SNSF Fellowship to carry out this project and go to Harvard. It was life-changing for me. I received great help from all the high school principals involved, including teachers and collaborators. I remember that I literally finished the data collection, for whici I personally went to visit 24 classrooms in person for one hour, encountering more than 400 students to invite them to download the app used in my study. I finished the data collection on a Thursday. The next Monday, I was moving to Boston. I really dedicated all my heart and energy to that project.

Which achievement are you most proud of, and why? 

I think being able to get an NIH grant as Principal Investigator in a system completely new for me (the US one), and very competitive, in the second year of my post-doc. More importantly, this project is now allowing me to be more independent and collaborate with a fantastic group of people, internationally.

What is an important question from parents and practitioners that we as academics cannot provide a good answer to yet?

Parents and practitioners want to receive clear examples, rules, social norms, definitions of what is a healthy digital environment that allows the child to achieve complete psychophysical well-being. This is why I am largely involved in science-communication activities: for me it is the fastest and easiest way to really “translate” my current research and fresh results in something the society needs now.

As I have described in this short book for children and adolescents, adolescents are more vulnerable to all those behaviors that can lead “out of control”. An inappropriate use of social media and smartphone can easily facilitate these behaviors. This is one of the reasons why minors are subject to special protection, where “protect” means “protect from themselves”. In this this article, I used a metaphor. “Is a car safe for someone that is not able to drive?”. To drive safely, we need to learn many new skills and increase our attention to information we were not even thinking about. We need to learn how to accelerate, recognize road signs, make fast and safe decisions, and follow the rules. For me, the same reasoning can be apply to promote a healthy use of social media in children and adolescents.

What would be your work motto?

“Keep it simple”. I think that sometimes it is challenging not to get lost in the endless research questions and data analyses that are possible to explore. However, we need to keep it simple and finalize a paper with results that can possibly be translated into practical decision-making. That is possible only if they can be understood easily. This is not only for us as researchers but for the recipients of our communication and research (other scholars, experts, or society).

Which of your publications is your favorite, and why?

This paper: “Digital Media Use and Adolescents’ Mental Health During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” for two reasons. First, it answered timely to a critical public health concern – the use of digital media in young people during the COVID-19 pandemic and its association with mental health. Indeed, it is one of my most frequently cited papers. Second, for the story of the paper. I was supervising a bachelor’s student, Michelle, co-author, and I was impressed by her due diligence and motivation.

If you had unlimited resources, what kind of project would you want to do and why?

I have always been inspired by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is focused on happiness and well-being. So, my dream is to carry out a large-scale project following teens and families in different EU countries and collecting digital media use, well-being, trace data, EMAs neuroimaging data, and biological markers of well-being. I am sure that some studies are already doing that to some extent (like the ABCD study in the US), but I would like to be able to do that across countries and for many, many years.

If you had to give one piece of advice to young CAM scholars, what would it be?

“Think outside the box”. I would suggest young students try to be curious and courageous about other disciplines and be able to bring in their research something that is actually “outside” their background or research curriculum. In my case, I was able to bring my neuroscientific and psychological background into the projects I have worked on during my PhD years. That was a successful combination.

Who would you like to put in the spotlight next, and why?

Emily Weinsten of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Emily has done an amazing job with her book “Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing)” (with Carrie James, The MIT Press, 2022) and in leading the new Center for Digital Thriving. I met her on several occasions, she is a lovely person and she also supported my NIH project, for which I am grateful.