What’s Happening at the Lab

Dr. Michael Rich will be meeting with the parents/caregivers and educators of Brookline, MA to discuss strategies for encouraging kids’ and families’ healthy and balanced use of technology and media.

The Lab’s Medical Librarian Kaitlin Tiches is speaking with high school students about maintaining a healthy balance of online and offline time.

The Lab’s Medical Librarian Kaitlin Tiches will be attending the conference at Simmons University titled “Linking Librarians of Today and Tomorrow,” with a content focus on AI, competitive intelligence, and knowledge management.

The Lab’s Research Team will host the latest installment of our regular meetings convening experts and supporters to discuss our latest findings and how they can be used to improve kids’ wellbeing in an online world.

Angie Neal, MS CCC-SLP from the Office of Special Education Services in the South Carolina Department of Education will be joining the Digital Wellness Lab team to share insights about kids’ digital wellness from a speech-language pathologist’s perspective.

The Digital Wellness Lab is leading the formation of a cross-university coalition of labs and centers focused on youth and interactive media, including the Center for Digital Thriving and Berkman Klein Center. The Coalition’s kickoff meeting at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education will finalize the group’s goals and path forward this year.

Dr. Michael Rich will be presenting as part of a panel at The Gifford School to provide parents and educators with research- and clinically-derived guidance for supporting their children’s healthy technology and media use.

Dr. Michael Rich will be meeting virtually with families from Mt. Alvernia Academy to discuss digital safety, device management, and strategies for designing device use plans as students head into the summer months.

The Lab’s Executive Director, Cori Stott, will join Inspired Internet Pledge signatories and advisors for a one-day summit hosted by Pinterest and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center focused on answering the question what is needed to ensure kids’ healthy outcomes in a digitally saturated world? To learn more about the Pledge: https://inspiredinternet.org/

Kathy Cooney, LICSW and Dr. Michael Rich, both providers in the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders (CIMAID), will be presenting about Problematic Interactive Media Use (PIMU) at the Boston Children’s Hospital Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine Post-Graduate Course.

Given the concerning recent trends in youth mental health, EveryMind is hosting a youth-focused town hall series in 2024. Dr. Michael Rich will take part in the upcoming town hall event titled Making Technology Work for Our Teens’ Mental Health. With technology playing such a significant role in the lives of our youth, the event will focus on ways teens can navigate the digital world mindfully and constructively.  Learn more and register.

On May 20th, Kaitlin Tiches presenting a poster at the Medical Library Association conference. The poster discusses the source selection and search strategies associated with creating a timeline of an ill-defined set of terminology in literature.

At the second annual meeting of the Sync Summit, the Digital Wellness Lab’s work and the Inspired Internet Pledge will feature prominently as a core element of the discussions about how to exist in positive, healthy relationship with technology every day.

Dr. Michael Rich is presenting to parents about how they can better understand the role of social media in kids’ lives and how families can help their children build healthy relationships with technology and interactive media.

At the Digital Parenthood Summit, Dr. Michael Rich will be giving a presentation on Building a Better Internet with Emma Lembke, Viraj Doshi, and Dr. Michael Preston discussing: What would online life look like if the most popular platforms were designed with kids’ and teens well-being—and their ideas—front and center? What positive effects—from mental and physical health and self-esteem to improved relationships “IRL”—might we see if tech investors, designers, policymakers prioritized the voices and futures of their young users?

Dr. Michael Rich will be meeting with families and coalition members to discuss his book “The Mediatrician” and healthy habits for screen use during the summer.

On this panel discussion, Dr. Michael Rich will be sharing a presentation on the findings in his new book, The Mediatrician’s Guide, to kick off Panel 1: Screens and Children’s Mental Health which will focus on sharing perspectives on working in children’s education and development. After this presentation, there will be other childhood education and development panelists joining in a discussion on Screens and Impacts on Teaching and Education.

Zoey (Zhiying) Yue will be presenting a co-authored paper titled Perceived Patient-Provider Communication Quality and Social Media Use for Health: Insights from Pre-, Early-, and Post-COVID-19 Pandemic which unveils the evolving correlation between patient-provider communication quality and social media use for health-related purposes throughout the different stages of the pandemic. The findings of this study offer critical implications for designing future health interventions, highlighting the role of digital media in fulfilling healthcare needs.

Each year, the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) Advisory Committee organizes a Health Summit, and this year Nicole Powell will be giving a presentation, “Connecting the Dots: Digital Practices to Foster Mental Wellness Among Youth,” which will define digital wellness, discuss best practices for device management and digital safety, and emphasize the importance of being resilient.