Social media and teen health have been trending among researchers, healthcare providers, parents, and the public for several years. The SMAHRTeam has been engaging in research through it all. Over those years, our principal investigator and team members have been asked to comment on our findings and serve as experts in this area.
While standing in this public spotlight, we have had many interview requests… from teens themselves.
Within academia, an important part of the research process is sharing what we found with other scholars, parents, and teens. Traditional strategies to share findings usually include presenting at a national conference, publishing in an academic journal, and maybe even being interviewed by a reporter. Providing interviews to teens is not typically part of a research team’s scope of work. Here at SMAHRT, our team makes these interviews a priority.
Here’s why.
A core team value is involving teens in our research, they are the experts.
SMAHRT has been a fierce advocate for including teens in the planning, interpreting, and even conducting social media and adolescent health research. Over the years, we have maintained several youth advisory boards, where we routinely meet with groups of teens to get their feedback on ongoing projects, as well as provide them with learning opportunities about resumes, job interviews, and the research process. Why would we stop there? Our team members jump at the chance to answer teens’ questions about our findings on social media and health.
Teens ask great questions and challenge our understanding of our work; they make us better researchers.
In our experience working directly with teens, they come to this topic with personal experiences but are often open to hearing other perspectives and asking thoughtful questions. These questions often leave our team members with new research ideas or perspectives on how the research findings can be applied to the real world. Here are some example questions that teens have asked us:
- What restrictions do you think would be beneficial in order to make social media use more healthy?
- If you could go into every school and teach adolescents one thing about social media, what would it be and why?
- Why does the media focus so heavily on negative impacts of social media?
Teens listen to other teens.
We know that adolescence is a time when teens develop trusted and deep friendships with other teens. They confide in each other when they are struggling, as well as celebrate their collective wins. If a teen is looking to do a project on how social media impacts adolescent health, we want to meet with them to provide all the evidence that we have about both the positive and negative implications that social media could have on teens. There is a chance that our findings could be shared and used by other teens in that class or at that school.
It is a fabulous learning opportunity.
Being interviewed by a teen for a school project or newspaper article is a great media training exercise for not only the teen but also our team members. It is a great opportunity for both sides to ask and prepare for questions.
In 2024, our team members completed 12 interviews with students from six states and two countries. We are eager to see what requests come in for 2025. Next time you or your team[MOU1] is approached by a teen for an interview, do it! You won’t regret it.