Live webinar air date: September 26, 2025, 4:30 p.m. Eastern time
Date
CE credits
2
Exam items
15
Series
Child and Adolescent Development
Purchase all four items in this series for a discounted price
Description
This webinar explores the complex effects of digital media on adolescent development and adjustment. Key topics include how specific social media features and content contribute to internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. Discussion will center around how digital media affects relationship skills, academic engagement, and displaces healthy behaviors. The presentation will address why adolescents are particularly sensitive to social media cues and consider individual differences like gender, race, sexual orientation, and pre-existing mental health vulnerabilities. Positive uses of social media and how to promote them, including ways clinicians can support healthy development in the digital age, will also be explored.
This program is part of the Professional Development Training Institute on Child and Adolescent Development.
Learning objectives
- Identify the specific social media features, behaviors, and content linked to adolescent mental health issues.
- Discuss developmental factors and individual differences that heighten adolescent sensitivity to digital media influences.
- Develop strategies for discussing and promoting healthy digital habits with adolescent clients.
Presenter
Anne J. Maheux, PhD
An assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Winston Distinguished Fellow at the Winston National Center on Technology Use, Brain, and Psychological Development. Her research addresses sociocultural and technological influences on adolescent development. She emphasizes the need to move beyond “screen time” to understand the precise ways that digital and social media affect diverse youth in potentially harmful or helpful ways.
