Mike Parent is working with youth to understand how they use technology

Amid widespread concern about youth mental health—from rising rates of depression to exposure to hateful rhetoric—digital technology is often framed as a primary culprit. In 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murphy issued an advisory warning of the “profound risk” social media may poseopens in new window to adolescent mental health. A 2025 report from Common Sense Mediaopens in new window found that 80% of parents express concern about their children’s exposure to digital media.

With the rapid rate of change in the way teens use technology, it’s easy to blame technology for what has been called a “mental health crisis” among adolescents. But the real story is more nuanced, says Mike Parent, principal researcher at Hopelabopens in new window, a social innovation lab and impact investor.

“The dominant narrative is that social media is bad and every problem that young people have is because of it,” Parent said. “That’s not true. There are both problems and opportunities.”

Parent began his career researching gender, sexuality, and behavioral health. Later, as an assistant professor of counseling at Texas Tech University and associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, his research narrowed in on adherence to traditionally masculine gender norms—particularly anabolic steroid use and the drive for muscularity.

Post academia, Parent shifted his focus to youth well-being. At Hopelab, he works directly with young people and research partners to produce public-facing reports focused on the intersection of identity, mental health, and technology—work that aims to complicate, rather than reinforce, dominant narratives.

“Our work is to make sure those narratives are balanced,” Parent said.

Today’s teens spend less time interacting in person than previous generations. In a 2023 Pew Research Center studyopens in new window, 72% of teen participants reported socializing more online than offline. But these shifts do not necessarily signal weaker social connection overall—especially for teens who struggle to meet others like them in person, Parent says.

Parent first recognized the need for greater nuance in conversations about technology during his work at Texas Tech. At the time, graduate students in counseling psychology were often advised to avoid dating apps to prevent unprofessional interactions with clients. This advice struck Parent as simplistic and unrealistic. In response, he conducted interviews with 11 graduate students about their dating app use. The results, published in 2019 in the journal Training and Education in Professional Psychologyopens in new window, found that while participants worried about encountering clients on dating apps, the platforms also served as an important source of connection, especially for sexual minorities.

“If you’re LGBT+, if you’re in the kink community, if you’re nonmonogamous, dating apps are the way you meet people,” Parent said. Participants, he added, did not want to avoid the apps altogether but instead sought clearer guidance on how to use them without jeopardizing professional boundaries.

When he transitioned to his work at Hopelab, Parent carried forward this interest in the role of technology in the lives of sexual and gender minorities. While a substantial body of research examines teens’ relationships with digital media, far less research focuses on the experiences of marginalized youth.

For a 2025 reportopens in new window, researchers at Hopelab, in collaboration with the Born This Way Foundationopens in new window, surveyed 1,267 LGBTQ+ teens and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24. In addition to the survey, they interviewed 20 young people to help contextualize the findings. The researchers found that finding connection online was tightly linked to participants’ well-being. Nearly half reported feeling safe in online spaces, compared with less than 10% who did in person. In interviews, these teens spoke of deep and meaningful friendships. “It feels like I’ve met people who will stay with me no matter what happens, and I even found someone who thinks of me as their sibling,” one nonbinary young adult shared.

Parent and his coresearchers have even found that LGBTQ+ teens and young adults benefit from parasocial relationshipsopens in new window—one-sided relationships with media figures, such as online content creators.

“People can have exposure to a much wider range of possible experiences than in the past,” Parent said. “It’s a kind of vicarious learning where people can explore in pretty safe ways through the experiences of others.”

Artificial intelligence is an emerging area of research for Parent and his team at Hopelab—focusing in particular on the relationship between AI chatbots and teen socioemotional development. Through interviews and surveys, the researchers have found that only a minority of teens engage in ongoing conversations with chatbotsopens in new window. For most teens, this technology serves as a source for one-off advice, or a quick venting session.

But 40% of teens do engage with ongoing conversations with AI chatbots—akin to texting a friend. (Parent notes that this data was collected before the explosion in popularity of ChatGPT, so the proportion of young people engaging in these conversations may have increased in the years since.)

Parent can identify a few potential issues with teens overrelying on AI to fill these social roles. For one, AI chatbots don’t engage in conversation like human beings. “AIs tend to be indulgent, if not sycophantic,” Parent says. Normal interactions, he points out, involve conflict and disagreement. “So a potential outcome would be young people not knowing how to manage interpersonal conflicts if their primary relation is with AI.” And the advice they receive from chatbots tends to be questionable—for instance, Parent has found that AI tends to encourage passive-aggressive communication.

But for the majority of young people who don’t rely primarily on AI for social interaction, Parent sees no evidence that these interactions are harmful. In a 2024 report, he and his coresearchers found that for sexual or gender minorities, AI may even offer a safe space to practice difficult conversationsopens in new window, like coming out to family and friends.

In one particularly striking example, a transgender research participant described using a chatbot to role-play affirming parents. “If I had a supportive mom and dad, what would they say to me if I told them?” Parent says. “That was pretty moving.”

A central throughline in Parent’s research is the importance of considering research participants—both their experience taking part in a study and their perspectives on how research is framed. As a graduate student, he worked to simplify the Conformity to Masculine/Feminine Norms Inventory to make it more participant-friendly. Toward the end of his academic career, while conducting annual surveys of Austin’s LGBTQ+ population to inform care at a local Queer Wellness Center, Parent realized he wanted to pursue work outside of academia that was more grounded in community.

Youth cocreation is a core component of Hopelab’s work. “We don’t want to come in as adults and tell young people what we think is important to them,” Parent said.

Instead, teens are consulted at every stage of the research process, from survey design to how reports are framed, and are financially compensated for their involvement. Through this work, Parent has been struck by how thoughtful and informed his young collaborators are. He views their participation not as a “rubber stamp of approval,” but as a meaningful contribution to the research itself.

“The most important thing is not the questions that I’m coming up with,” Parent says. “It’s the process of asking young people in careful, respectful ways what they think is important to ask.”