The Center of Digital Lives researches everyday digital life and its consequences for individuals and their social relationships. The basic working principles are to take into account the complexity of the use of digital media and effect patterns, as well as to conduct research within an international and interdisciplinary network. Key topics include research into the contextual effects of digital media on mental health, media use in the family and media choice in stressful contexts.

Current projects

In the project Unmasking the Power of Social Influence Processes in Social and Mobile Media's Effect on Mental Health we investigate how social influence (e.g. social norms, communication with close others) influences the perception of one's own use of social and mobile media (e.g. more guilt, more overestimation of usage time) and how these perceptions influence media effects on mental health (PhD Project of Anisha Arenz, University of Amsterdam, supervised by Lara Wolfers, Susanne Baumgartner, Ine Beyens).

In the EMBRACE project, we are researching the effects of parental smartphone use on the parent, the child and the parent-child relationship together with American and Canadian colleagues. In the study, mothers are followed over months 2-5 of their child's life and complete monthly questionnaires, participate in video observations, and take part in one-week “bursts” in which they provide information about current behavior and feelings several times a day. Their smartphone usage time is also recorded. The aim of the project is to better understand how smartphones are integrated into everyday life in the first months of life and what negative and positive effects this use has. (Collaboration with Brandon McDaniel, Alison Ventura, Adam Galovan, Sarah Coyne)