In this episode, we are joined by Sebastian Kurten, a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, whose pioneering work focuses on unraveling the impact of social media on adolescent well-being. Sebastian is actively engaged in groundbreaking research, in partnership with UNICEF, aimed at identifying the risk factors affecting adolescents subjected to online abuse. Drawing from his earlier career in social work, we expand the conversation to encompass topics such as leadership, the dynamics of high-performing teams, and the crucial issue of burnout. Join us as we navigate the multifaceted world of social media and its implications for the well-being of young individuals.
In our discussion, we delve into how social media affects adolescent well-being across diverse societies and demographics. With his background in social work, Sebastian sheds light on the intricate interplay between individual differences and societal context, offering a holistic perspective on this complex issue.
We explore the nuanced impact of social media on adolescent mental health. While research indicates a small negative impact on average, we delve into the vulnerabilities that adolescents face during the transition from childhood to adulthood, when social media's influence can be most pronounced. The discussion extends to how social media affects children's development, and we emphasize the need for empirical data to hold social media platforms accountable for hosting abusive content.
Social media regulation is a hot topic, and we explore the challenges it presents. Sebastian highlights the importance of thoughtful policy changes and societal action, especially in the global South, to address issues beyond individual control.
Workplace pressure is another pressing issue. We examine how excessive pressure can erode trust and lead to mental health strain among healthcare workers, especially in child protection services which has a broader knock on impact.
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Fiona 0:02
Today I am very happy to welcome Sebastian Kurten to and have I said your surname correctly there? Yeah. I have a well that's that's something to celebrate. I'm not always very good at pronouncing names. Sebastian Kurten. Tell us a little bit more about you. Who are you? What do you do at the moment? And then maybe we could talk a little bit more about what led you to do this?
Sebastian Kurten 1:13
Yes, thank you for introducing me. My name is Sebastian, I'm a postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, at the medical school at the cognitive and brain science unit. And what my main field of research is at the moment, we investigate the effects that social media has on the person's well being. And, yeah, to do so we run like a lot of different studies to look at adolescents in multiple countries, we look at adolescents, multiple backgrounds, and what really interests me is, for example, yeah, how adolescents in different societies, for example, in poor countries in Southeast Asia or in Africa, or adolescents growing up in deprived families in the UK, how their well being is associated with social media using what are the differences in the different subgroups of adolescents?
Fiona 2:14
From a sort of a more academic perspective, what I'm thrilled to hear you say there, as you're looking at populations, other than just the UK or Europe, it's taking it further afield, because there are massive differences. And we have had a history in psychology of focusing a lot of our research on to America and Europe, or maybe Australasia. And so that's fantastic that you're looking at different demographics and different populations.
Sebastian Kurten 2:51
Yeah, so what kind of draw my attention to that. So, before I joined academia, I was working as a social worker. So I'm trying a by training, I'm a social worker, and a statistician. And so I worked a lot with Yeah, in public child protection, and what really sparked my interest there is that when you work with, with adolescents, and you realise that, you know, adolescents COVID number of different life realities, and some, some of them have more chances than others, then that really sparked my interest in Yeah, what are like specific risks, for example, associated with growing up in specific settings? And, yeah, what, what we what I find interesting about it, that it's also sometimes not so much about, like, the individual differences, or some but it's more about like, Okay, what about societal context? So as the product of a specific societal context that you grow up? And what what does that then do? To how, yeah, how you see life, how you grow up.
Fiona 4:03
And again, I'm thrilled to hear that because as an organisational, occupational psychologist, it's, we are very conscious of context and looking at things within the bigger context. But again, with research, I think, aside from social psychology, there can be a tendency to look at individuals in isolation of their context, which doesn't make sense, because we're completely interconnected with the people around us in particular. And, I mean, I'm massively interested in that from personal perspective, because the second book I wrote was about some of the neuroscience behind social learning. So I could geek out for hours on this, but let's talk more about you so I didn't realise that you had been a social worker. Was that You're sort of first career calling, is it? Where did you train? What? Where did you grow up? And how? How did it lead you to have an interest in those things and pursue them as a career?
Sebastian Kurten 5:14
Yeah, so I grew up in, in Germany, basically where I spent, where I used to work for, like a short time as a social worker. So I started so I grew up in Cologne. I studied social work that like a small university. For five years, I work half a year in child protection. I worked in educational, educational things. It's like science communication. Yeah. And so yeah, my main focus was on was on child protection. And this is what I started pursuing. It's like a research, research assistant, working on a research project, investigating stress and well being among staff in social work, because that was something doing, doing, doing working as a social worker, what what really came to my attention, I think, like a lot of people always complain about their jobs. But there, it became apparent that there's maybe some more substance to these complaints than maybe with other people. Yeah, this this was like my first, like, kind of my first career, but I only worked in this for for like, a year before I switched.
Fiona 6:40
I mean, it's a tough environment. Being a social worker, I think it can feel and this is me, hypothesising. And asking questions as much as anything is disempowered by the environment, because you just want to help these families. And there aren't always ways to help. And so, I'm guessing, did that lead you to the sort of the curiosity of wanting to understand more about some of the mechanisms that that enable or?
Sebastian Kurten 7:15
Yes, yes, exactly the unique kind of challenge, I think that you have in this field, you kind of you basically have two demands, you want to help, but you also you also need to have control, in a sense. And that makes working in these fields quite difficult. So for example, you can have like, how it how it is organised in Germany, basically means the Prime Minister, your primary purpose is to help and for example, parents, they reach out and they ask for help, and then you get a mandate to help them. And only in a small proportion of cases, your demand to get to kind of protect and to control in a sense, when like, a well being of children is at severe risk. And this is also what what puts a high strain, or what can put a high strain on workers, because if you're in an occupation, for example, where you would only help that it's way easier, for example, to to get rewarded for that. But if you have this control demand, it can be quite challenging, like an example would be. So for example, yeah, for example, one situation that would encounter quite often is it would be in the the afternoon, you basically almost finished a whole workday. And then you come into a situation when there's some, some crisis in the family, and you need to take a child to another place, or you need to get active. And, for example, you need to take a child out of a family. And that will be and that will be the very end of your workday, you've already worked like for eight hours, and this is then kind of like, coming up and, you know, naturally, you're exhausted, and then you need to deal with a challenging situation. And it's not like, it would be a situation for example, where the parents will be very happy to see you as like, Oh, you made it after long work that so nice, please take our children are like, fine. This is what can make it a challenge because of this. It can be Yeah, there can be an absence of rewards, in a sense, basically.
Fiona 9:35
And that and did that lead you to do the research that you did on the impact of transformational leadership on perceived effort reward imbalance among social workers?
Sebastian Kurten 9:48
Yes, exactly. So what our idea was then to find a model to explain that and identify mechanisms that could help Social Workers in this situation to do their job better. So the model that is used in various fields to describe that thing is the effort reward imbalance model, which basically assumes that you have certain a job, for example, comes with certain efforts. And, and we will rewards of different times, and that there always needs to be a balance of a sword. So, for example, a very easy example would be if you need to work a lot of hours, if you need to make over hours, and for example, then if your payment would be very high, to get some kind of reward for it, and even though we need to work a lot, you can also then do a fancy vacation once per year, two weeks, because we have all that money. And that could then kind of offset these these efforts. Or these efforts and rewards can also come in different form. So it can be emotionally challenging what I think is a very strong motive in in social work, because you're working with people in very challenging situations, and this puts on the sort of a lot of like emotional strains. And yeah, and therefore, it is very important that there are rewards, basically. But we also saw that these wards are kind of in risk, because the payment is not exceptionally high. It is, yeah, it is very difficult because, because you also in this protective settings, we have to follow a lot of like, objective rules, it is a very kind of standardised process, which can make it additionally, challenging,
Fiona 11:44
but it takes away your autonomy, doesn't it? And I think we know that autonomy has a huge, hugely positive impact on people's emotional health in the work environment.
Sebastian Kurten 11:57
Yes, yes. Exactly. The autonomy will like agency and different perspectives of looking at this this construct. Yeah, that basically, is a very, it's a thing that can improve your well being because it gives you the feeling of being in control. And this, yeah, this feeling of not being in control is something that can, yeah, that can challenge you. And this is also where transformational leadership kind of comes into play. Because the idea, the idea of transformational leadership is basically that you perceive your employees or you give you a as a leader of a workgroup or for team, you'll give your employees the the resources that they need to kind of transform themselves to perform their job well. So as a transformational leader, you would ask basically, or you would ask yourself, or ask your employee, okay, what can I do to help you succeed in your job? Or what kind of resources do you need in succeeding in your job? How can I provide them? How can I help you in doing that, basically,
Fiona 13:14
and that feels like a very fundamental human need to to, to feel supported by the person that is in effect controlling you, which is a further level of disempowerment. But then if you've got someone like that, in that transformational leadership, taking that stance of transformational leadership, it, it provides comfort, empowerment, motivation, it gives back some of the agency you're talking about, helps people navigate the environment they're in and provides. I mean, the thing that's probably hardest, and most important is the emotional support.
Sebastian Kurten 13:56
Yes, yes, exactly. It's what you say it's the paradigm of the idea of supporting that is very important in these social work settings. from a leadership perspective, I think, what what is still kind of a lot of words, they're quite dominant in a lot of like the leadership idea. So like, how leadership is done in a lot of institutions, is the idea of control that like leader or boss, so to say, is supposed to control its employees. But this this idea or this paradigm, it hits borders, if you work in very challenging situations, with with people, for example, like when you so take the take the daily work as a social worker, you have to deal with very complex situations. And so you assume that everyone is trained really well, and they are experts in dealing with these situations. So It will be very difficult for a leader to, to control someone in this situation because there's so much information. And the person making this decision in the moment is seen as the expert, because it is it is a very complex decisions. So the idea of controlling, saying people how they should behave in certain situations, is very difficult because every situation is very unique if you work with people, basically, and this is why supporting employees is seen as rather effective compared to the controlling employees, it also has to do a lot with trust. And trust. It's also like a very basic human, even if you feel that, you know, your leaders or your colleagues trust you, then you feel much more empowered to perform a certain job, basically.
Fiona 15:53
And trust is I mean, it's fundamental, isn't it, when I worked with leadership teams, with the aim of becoming high performing teams, that the foundation always has to be trust, if trust isn't there, then you can almost just not bother, because it has to underpin every every effective relationship. But again, when you're talking about the complexity, and the strain, and the pressure, that social workers are under all these things, the volume is turned up on them. So like you describe in different organisations, of course, the same sort of thing applies, and it matters. But when you're in such a high pressure environment, the volume is really turned up. And so you see the levers play out a lot more before your eyes, or you're able to do great research, like like you did.
Sebastian Kurten 16:51
Yes, yes, exactly. I think pressure is awesome. It's fine. Yeah, I think what you said like that trust is a foundation of good working teams, I think that is also key here. Because control is something that can that can undermine trust, basically, and if you if the pressure is always high on these people, because there's also a mechanism at play, is basically because the pressure on these teams is so high, and the work is challenging. A lot of people leave, and then you have less people and the people that kind of remain even have to deal with the situation. And yeah, it is it is really challenging. At the moment, please work with us. So that's that's also what we saw in our research that there's a positive influence on off transformational leadership on this behaviour. I mean, what we basically did, we asked 200, a bit less than ethics, 180 or 200, social workers from very different child protection, like the public child protection services in Germany. And we asked them about their experiences and how they, how they perceive leadership behaviour. And indeed, we found that this, like, there's some data to it that this supports their well being and feeling of
Fiona 18:20
autonomy. And you can see exactly the same in the NHS, where you have nurses who are under and doctors, but nurses under huge level of strain. The pressure can often lead someone a manager or leader of the group to to act in a non transformational way, which then increases the the impact the negative impacts on the people within that team undermines trust creates a vicious cycle, because then you have people leaving puts more pressure on the people that are already there. And the boss gets more stress, the boss returns to more of a command and control way of operating. And here we go again.
Sebastian Kurten 19:11
Yeah, that's that's exactly a mechanism. The models that we use, like transformation, leadership effort, reward imbalance, that is something that originated exactly in research on occupational health in health service workers. Because it is indeed and another field that is very closely related where you're very similar mechanisms and the vicious circles, that you describe that. Yeah, that is the thing you can get easily into in this working environment. Another issue that we encountered was that people who described that they were that were struggling a lot with with their with their well being with the workplace well being, but they also were Very highly committed, like we protect there were over committed to some extent and that put additional strain to them. Because yeah, overcommitted, overcommitment kind of makes you lose a bit, the ability to recharge yourself and take like a critical distance. So yeah, we could even go so far and say that over commitment, it's kind of a losing game for your mental health in the in the workplace.
Fiona 20:30
And I think particularly when it's something that's so vocational, because you're, you're doing this not for the money, you're not doing it because you're gonna be have a luxury car at the end of it, or your fancy holidays or anything like that you're doing it because you care. And, and you want to make a difference. It's interesting as well, the research within doctors and nurses, this this piece of research, specifically doctors, but it's been repeated globally, that burnout increases as levels of empathy increase. So you see, the more caring someone is, the more they care, the more they will burn out. Although that there's an interesting there are, there is also counter research saying that burnout results from people who have lower empathy. So I think that I think there's a lot to unpack and to understand that we don't really know the details on yet. And that's what I love about our fields with psychology and Brain Sciences. And there's still a lot to learn, and it's so complex. And so that, I mean, that is massively interesting. It's something that I'm really passionate about, I don't I've never worked with social workers. I have worked with doctors and nurses and find them massively. I just, I feel like they are just angels, but the work that they do and how they do it. And it's the same that's true of social workers, because they put themselves in positions of physical and emotional risk the whole time, for the sake of of looking after others. And so what led you from that? Where obviously, you were dealing with children, you were dealing with situations where you were seeing not not nice environments, and you wanted to try and understand that more. You've ended up in the UK. So just in terms of you, and now very much focused on that research around children of teenagers in particular adolescents, and how they respond to social media.
Sebastian Kurten 22:57
Yes, so it was basically was a bit of the idea to kind of shift from the very practical side of view, to take more of like a bird's eye view on things. And to look at it from a research perspective, it was, yeah, it was mainly the idea of taking, taking another perspective on the same thing. So what I basically did afterwards, I, I stopped working as a social worker, and and I studied statistics and did a PhD in social science. And then afterwards, I came to the UK to work on one project together. Yeah, with my colleagues, ameyaw and Sakshi. Guy who are like, wonderful. colleagues on this project, what we basically do, we work together with UNICEF on a big study, that's called disrupting harms. And the main idea of the study is to look at yet to look at online related abuse of adolescents in different countries, specifically in the global south with the data from African, south southeast Asia. And what motivated me to do this switch is that you basically, you have the, you have the possibilities of of doing these studies, and then investigating in a very large scale, what are the risk factors for Adolescent WellBeing? And how can we, or how can we identify ways of improving adolescent mental health and adolescent well being? And it's the idea that, you know, we were working on this really hard to, because we have the idea that we can really make an impact by doing that well, and you know, producing a thoroughly researched Yeah, study by I'm Yeah. And that was that was my motivation to come to the UK basically.
Fiona 25:05
So there's a drive to want things to improve, to find out how you can be part of making that happen. At scale.
Sebastian Kurten 25:16
Exactly, exactly at scale. And because I think it's so relevant at the moment, I was even surprised. I don't know whether you've watched the Champions League final last week, this week?
Fiona 25:30
No, I'm sorry, I probably should have done but no, I did.
Sebastian Kurten 25:34
And they have. They they even you know that the way far they always have these campaigns against racism and awareness for certain things. And they had a campaign, the campaign thing was against online abuse, or like online related online abuse of young women. And I thought that was quite interesting, because it just was exactly what we were researching. And it is now I feel, it is now coming in more in the in the public sphere. Another example, why became so relevant was like this during the last year, a couple of months ago, when Elon Musk pod Twitter was basically a lot of lay off in teams in different countries, for example, in the Philippines, or MPs teams were mainly busy with content moderation, like investigating harmful content. And so what we basically see is other The main problem, I think, is we have a lot of social, like, we have billions of people using social media. And we don't really know how many children are victims of online related abuse on different platforms, different channels, and we don't really, we first we don't know how many victims and we also don't know how many, how many we can or how we can protect them from it, or how we can improve the situation. And this is basically what we want, we want to investigate. And so yeah, this is why we think that this is very relevant. That
Fiona 27:10
is huge. It's hugely relevant, it's hugely important. I have a teenage daughter, myself, and I have another daughter who's 10, so about to become a teenager. And there's an elusiveness about what happens online, even when you can look over their shoulder, it's different from when I was growing up, when my parents could come into the room and see what was on television. Or pick up the book that you're reading and look at the cover. But with online, it's, it's it's so pervasive, and yet so easy to hide it from people who could protect or want to protect that teenager.
Sebastian Kurten 27:56
Yes, yes. That's, that's true. Yeah, I think that the research how it was characterised the last couple of years, it was very much about the US in Western societies basically, a couple of years as reaches is collected, trying to figure out a bit. Okay, our the common observation was all our children out on social media, is that is that bad? Or bad for the children? What does it what does it do? What does it what does it do to them? And then we spent a couple of years of researching. And I think it's fair to say now that there are like, maybe, like, small, negative links between media use, and yeah, and well being among adolescents. I can talk about that. More later. Yeah, I'd love to. But what what I think is what we still don't know is that is a very western perspective. Don't know, what are social media do to adolescents? in Sub Saharan Africa? Yep. To live, like to grow up on a very different? Yeah, in a very different context. Very different possibilities. And so I think, now, after we figured out kind of our western perspective of things, it's maybe time to like, think about it globally and see, okay, well, what do we need to do on a on a larger scale to to deal with social media or how to improve it for adolescents?
Fiona 29:35
Absolutely. And I think it's more important than ever to have that global view because all social media is accessible. I mean, I know there are some blocks in certain countries but globally, and so it's really important to know how one piece of content has a different effect on different individuals in different in environments and different cultures. So that that the data you have it was it was it one of the first studies where it's looking at the alcohol use up what
Sebastian Kurten 30:14
I was talking about now there was a study where we look at where we look at media use and the prevalence of media related abuse in different in different countries. Like research on research on media use and substance use. There were studies we conducted in Belgium, that was the first basic one and two years ago, is always I think this, this is what we did, like the last couple of years figure out the European West. And now, the next is we need to move on and kind of look at it
Fiona 30:52
on the rest of the world.
Sebastian Kurten 30:55
Basically, yes, yes.
Fiona 30:56
Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, I've read all sorts of different research. And I think there's some research that says social media doesn't have an impact in the summer researchers, as social media does have an impact. At some that says, if a child already has a propensity towards anxiety and depression, then it's more likely to exacerbate that. Which actually makes sense when you start looking at some of the mechanisms. But it's all very, it's all a bit vague still, isn't it? A lot of the research? Fakes probably not the right word. But you know what I'm getting with?
Sebastian Kurten 31:37
I definitely, I would maybe replace the word vague with like, Laird,
Fiona 31:43
they're very, that's much better word.
Sebastian Kurten 31:46
Yeah, like with crystal very much depends on perspective, how I would, from my perspective, sum up the current evidence on media use and well being mental health of adolescents, that on average, I'm saying, in general, on a general level, I think that we see, we see evidence for like, a small, negative, a small, negatively, of social media use and well being, and then well being, but also like a small negative thing, for example, what you mentioned before, like risk behaviour, like alcohol consumption or other risk behaviour. I think that does that. That doesn't mean that you should be worried if you're, if your child is on social media. But what I think is, too, so in addition to this claim, that there are small negative associations are like three, three, major piece of three things, I think, to keep in mind that for me, the first thing is like, probably, on a general level, social media doesn't do massive harm to mental health, in general, but it was probably also not a super beneficial thing. And I haven't shared it. So if, yeah, it always depends on what is the alternative? If, yeah, if you're like just sitting at home for an hour, don't have anything to do with it, then on social media, or like, less than a social media that won't probably do massive harm. But you know, if you prefer to stay on social media, instead of being outside with friends, or doing other activities, which could be better for your men, which could actively improve mental health or well being, then there's kind of opportunity costs for being a social media, I think it's a second thing that is really important is the child vulnerability, basically. So in different subgroups, different content, can be indeed very harmful. So for example, one study that my group did under the leader, Amy Orban was to basically show that there are certain windows of sets sensitivity, during which children are vulnerable to react to negative effects of social media use. And what what they identified basically, that you have practice, you have these vulnerabilities during the onset of puberty. So I think it's 1314 for girls, and one or two years later, for boys. And the mechanism that we hypothesise basically, is that a social media is a it's a medium, where comparisons are increased because you're constantly confronted with okay, what do my peers do? What do my friends do? And this is a period where you pay a lot of attention to that when you can improve another vulnerable phase was from the age 18. And it basically finished school and transition into adult life. I remember that an exam of my personal life like my sister, she's 90. Now, she also studies psychology. And when she finished school, she she would often tell me like, oh, look like my friend, she got this very competitive placement as like a very prestigious university. I will never get that, as I think, or like someone would have a very fancy apartment, it's like, wow, how did you find that apartment, I will never find a flat on my own. And this age faces, I think, in which doing rich adolescents are very vulnerable. And I think the third thing is, is the content, basically, because their specific content that is in the order can be very harmful for adolescents. And so if adolescents are confronted with a content that is the major risk, I think, for mental health and well being I talked earlier about, yeah, for example, sexual abuse, like soliciting and grooming on social media, like for example, the adolescents are unwillingly confronted with pornographic content. They are they are solicited for sending sexual conduct themselves, that it can be very harmful for adolescents. But other things. If we think about mental health condition this, for example, if an adolescent is struggling, for example, with eating disorder, for example, we we see there are studies that show that for example, the algorithms of Instagram, other problems, they can they have the tendency to keep confronting you for them with anorexia related content. And that can command make it very difficult for adolescents to to overcome certain challenges when they also can find support. And so, for example, if you think about suicidal tensions among adolescents, they can find communities which support them, but this is a very, yeah, very kind of slippery slope, it can be negative, it can be positive, it's it depends very much on the individual on the on the individual adolescent about whether it's harmful or not. And that is, I think, also, that is why it's so important to make parents aware of these effects, because they are, they are best at judging what's best for the adolescents. And we as researchers, we can make some general advice could do some studies, but it's up to parents to kind of take the input and make decisions in relation to that children.
Fiona 37:47
What's interesting there is I think there's a huge pressure on parents, because parents don't know, it wasn't there when they were growing up. They don't know how to navigate it. They don't know what to do what to check. The rules are not there. They haven't seen it model themselves, which I think makes it to me. I come back to the meta and it the Elon Musk, and those people who are running these organisations, I believe, have a really big moral responsibility, which they do not take seriously enough.
Sebastian Kurten 38:31
Yeah, that's, that's something we're currently working on to identify, for example, to put numbers to put empirical data to this idea to kind of see, okay, on which platforms do justice, for example, is negative politics, abuse related content on which platforms does it appeal? And then if we if we have empirical data and can say, okay, look, we see that there are risks on these platforms, then you can formulate a demand to policymakers saying, look, here's the data on that. And now, we as a society, I think we should advance policymaking and take these people move on to responsibility. I think that's that's a fair demand. As soon as we have the data, I think that I'm very, very confident that we can then make more precise conclusions or demands in that direction.
Fiona 39:28
Absolutely. I think that's amazing. I think it's brilliant that you're doing that because it's desperately needed. And I think I'm coming back to what you're saying about that. I've read studies. Like, like you were I think summarising in your three points was that it depends what else a child could be doing in that time. So, and for me, one of my core pet areas of passion is social and emotional learning. And my concern is that we don't have research on this. But when a child is looking at a screen, they're not developing their social and emotional skills in the same way as they would if they were interacting with another human face to face if they were even outdoor playing, because whilst that's them on their own, they're learning about their own emotional regulation. That really worries me.
Sebastian Kurten 40:27
Yeah, I think that that's, that's indeed, an important point, we saw that. We saw that a bit during COVID, which is, of course, an extreme example. But I very much agree that yeah, the alternative or like the, when you're on social media, then doing something else is important to consider what would that do with that lesson? Because I think they, everyone would probably agree that when children play outside, together, that is probably better for the emotional cognitive development than when they are on their own on social media, basically. But of course, there are also individual differences are different cases for their, for example, imagine a group of adolescents who would kind of meet up online and then play together certain video games would be on their headphones communicate together, there could also be a there's a lot to learn there a lot. A lot at stake. So I think that also re emphasises what what is what I said earlier that I think it's up to the parents, and, you know, the very individual life situation is very much agree that it's, yeah, there's always the perspective of how can how can my child grow? Or like, How can my children, what is best for my children terms of development, that this is a very good perspective to judge media use by?
Fiona 42:02
And I guess, in that, on that sense, it's helping parents, which I know, you've done with some of your recommendations. But parents, obviously, they want the best for their kids. Not always, I mean, you'll have seen examples when you've been a social worker when they when they don't, but in the majority of cases, that's, that's a parent's job is to want the best for their kids. But we don't always know how to do that. And so the more evidence that you can accumulate and then translate into something that's pragmatic and usable, the better.
Sebastian Kurten 42:37
Yes, exactly. I would disagree with one point, I think even when working in child protection, I think most of the time saw parents who would always want the best for the children, but I think in almost any cases, it is, it is a question of knowledge, and resources. So yeah, I would, I would. So as a researcher, for example, I very much see why, as an adolescent researcher, I very much see myself for like the duty of myself to help parents like to generate that evidence to help parents and then to reach out to parents. Yeah, to go beyond publishing a scientific paper and, you know, reach out to parents say, Look, this is what we found. This is, this is our average, this is the evidence, take it, do what it do with it what you want, we think it could translate in this and that way to everyday life, we don't know for sure. But you go, you make a decision, what you think is best for for your, for your children. And I think this is, this is very much how it is I see a big, substantial aspect of my role as a researcher,
Fiona 43:56
which again, is brilliant, because if you look at it from from looking at it from psychology perspective, my concern is that psychology focuses on developed world in terms of studies and you're, you're blowing that out of the water, as it were, and disproving that and researching different areas. And the other concern I often have with psychology is we have academia. And we have pragmatic and we're not translating that academia into the pragmatic and the real life. So the fact that you're doing that, whether it's presenting evidence for policy or whether it's actually translating evidence for parents is something to be celebrated. So thank you for doing that.
Sebastian Kurten 44:42
Yeah, but I think it's also important to point out or to state is, they also think not all the responsibility should report to parents, because it is also it's an easy position. You say, Oh, there's evidence your parents will go do they think for example, when it comes to over topically about when it comes to content, like to abuse related content, online content and stuff, I think that is something, we also need to put responsibility on policymakers on companies. So we can't just say, okay, parents take care that your children are fine social media platform, which has any content you could ever think of. And I hope, I hope your child doesn't get on the wrong on in the wrong corners of the internet. So this is also some, like pet you pointed out correctly, that, you know, educating and reaching out to parents. That's one point, but then also to demand policy changes and reach reach out to policymakers. That's that's the other point because some things are beyond control. What what a parent or what an individual user on a certain platform could could control. So this is why we also, yeah, action on society levels.
Fiona 46:01
Do you see differences in the willingness to take action across the different countries where you're studying?
Sebastian Kurten 46:11
I think we are not yet there in that phase of our study, it is very much in the face of accumulating evidence. And then at the later stage, we will be possible to make recommendations. I also think that there there's also the risk, or like a similar risk that I think we don't take, for example, if we research we do research a lot on like the global South, that we then don't put the burden on rather smaller countries and like, smaller governments in these countries, because obviously, yeah, the US and we as European Union, and UK. Sadly, yeah, we have a lot of leverage in influencing these policies. And I think the arena has to fight in other European Union, the US and the United Nations. And it is very much I think, important that we find a consensus, as you know, with different countries how to address the power of or how to how to deal with the power of big multinational corporations like metta. Yeah, tick tock and these these companies, because, like you pointed out earlier, they are they they act very internationally. And so to get beyond the control of individual countries to address these challenges in relation to social media,
Fiona 47:51
and do you feel like we will always be slightly a step behind? I mean, sometimes that's, in some ways, it's inevitable, because you can't research what's not already there. But it does feel like it's getting almost further and further away the speed at which everything is developing.
Sebastian Kurten 48:10
Yeah, I mean, I think that is kind of the nature of the game. A big company spends years developing a product than they they put they make the product accessible to the broader public. I mean, a recent good example was Chad GPT. They've been working on it for years, then they put it out. And now slowly, like people are policymakers researchers are saying okay, what what can we do with it and in, in our field with with social media? We are I think we a couple of years behind the proper deregulating the these big platforms, but I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it wouldn't be better to be quicker. But it, I would, I would advocate that it's better to plan to roll studies to thorough research, maybe take a bit more of a time, but then come to more substantial, more grounded more robust conclusions. I'm not an expert on the policymaking process. But I would also assume that there's probably better to take a little bit of more time if the end product is better. Because once if you will introduce a regulation once I think it will be very difficult to change it afterwards. So probably do something that maybe a little bit later but then do it right. And so I think it's not a bad thing. It can it can seem quite frustrating always behind, but I don't think I don't think it's too bad.
Fiona 49:49
No, it's very good. Very good reasoning there. I hadn't even thought of that she about how you can get that regulation incorrect and then it's very difficult to do To fine tune or to adjust it once, once that's been put in place. Good point well made. What? So what are you actually working on right now? So you did you said when we came on that your voice was a little quirky because you did a two hour lecture in an air conditioned lecture hall yesterday, what were you lecturing?
Sebastian Kurten 50:27
I was I was just lecturing statistics. It wasn't, it wasn't
Fiona 50:32
it? See, I don't think people understand the level of statistics that there isn't psychology. So when I did my MSc part of it was we had to do advanced statistics. And medicine and psychology are the two areas where you have so many different variables that you have to have quite an in depth understanding of that.
Sebastian Kurten 50:52
I mean, my approach is a bit more I did I didn't lecture like advanced statistics. I like we have a course, we basically teach robust statistics, you could say like, the course is quite robust.
Fiona 51:05
That's a good name. I
Sebastian Kurten 51:06
like that. Yeah, because so I did a, I studied a bit of maths and statistics and the law statistics during my PhD, and there is super sophisticated stuff super advanced. And every year, more advanced techniques come up. But I think it's the most important thing is that we understand the basics. And we do them, right.
Fiona 51:31
I mean, I think that's so important. It's like you can apply the wrong models to the same data, and you get a totally different outcome.
Sebastian Kurten 51:39
Yes, exactly. One example from my current work, which is related to that is the study in collaboration with UNICEF, I just talked about. So we are interested in getting estimates, proper estimates of how often adolescents in different countries and counter. Yeah, abuse related content online. So we basically, only if you want to simplify for basically only occupied estimating needs. And we've been working on that, since half a year. Because if you really want to properly estimate the mean, very many things to keep in mind, like sampling theory, a lot about survey statistics, like how can you combine data from different countries? How can you represent the population accurately, and so on on this project, we basically we run very simple statistics, more or less, and I'm really happy with it, I think this is a bigger challenge. For me, as a statistician, probably the biggest challenge I've had in my young career so far, because you, if you really want to get it honey, like you can never can get 100%, right. But if you really want to get it right to like, you want to be confident about your results to a very high degree, and doing simple cross tabulations of can be very challenging. And so this is what I also tried to try to transport or try to convey to, to students during lectures. And yeah, I think it would be good if we all to come with back move to the roots and focus on that. But that's also not my individual opinion. There's a big movement in research and what that also inspire me.
Fiona 53:38
Interesting, I didn't know that. I didn't know there was a big moment. So I'm conscious of your time, you've got amazingly important things to do. So grateful for your hour, explaining the research you've done and you're doing. I'm also hugely grateful for the work you're doing because it is so needed, and it does need to be done properly. Not just sort of, I think this is this or I throw out some numbers here. It's hugely important. So thank you on behalf of all parents of adolescent kids, globally, and please keep doing it because someone needs to be doing it and doing it. Well.
Sebastian Kurten 54:29
Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. I think it's also very, you do a very important contribution and making these things visible and discussing these so I'm very happy to talk about
Fiona 54:41
it. Thanks so much, Sebastian.