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Safeguarding young users on social media through academic oversight

Nature Reviews Psychology (2024)Cite this article

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The EU commission’s Digital Services Act aims to protect children and adolescents from psychological harm on social media platforms. This initiative needs to be carried out in close cooperation between the EU commission and independent academics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

    Christian Montag

  2. Institute of Communication and Health, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

    Peter J. Schulz

  3. Department of Communication & Media, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea

    Peter J. Schulz

  4. Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Laura Marciano

  5. Mental Health | Policy | Economics Group, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Andres Roman-Urrestarazu

  6. Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Andres Roman-Urrestarazu

  7. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany

    Hans-Jürgen Rumpf

  8. State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Benjamin Becker

  9. Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Benjamin Becker

Authors
  1. Christian Montag
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  2. Peter J. Schulz
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  3. Laura Marciano
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  4. Andres Roman-Urrestarazu
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  5. Hans-Jürgen Rumpf
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  6. Benjamin Becker
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Montag.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

C.M. was part of a discussion circle (Digitalität und Verantwortung, https://about.fb.com/de/news/h/gespraechskreis-digitalitaet-und-verantwortung/) debating ethical questions linked to social media, digitalization, and society and democracy at Facebook. In this context, he received no salary for his activities. C.M. is financially compensated for his role as independent scientist on the scientific advisory board of the Nymphenburg group (Munich, Germany) and role on the scientific advisory board of Applied Cognition (Redwood City, CA, USA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region or the Innovation and Technology Commission.

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Montag, C., Schulz, P.J., Marciano, L. et al. Safeguarding young users on social media through academic oversight. Nat Rev Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00311-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00311-2

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