Munmun De Choudhury

Tech companies “are barely scratching the surface” of what they might do to help support young users, says Munmun de Choudhury, who studies the intersection of social media and mental health and founded the Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab at Georgia Tech. Apps like TikTok and Instagram can be resources for teens to explore their identities, form communities, and learn about mental health. Instead of banning social media outright, she says, legislation should push companies to understand young people and to rethink the mechanisms that keep kids scrolling past their own comfort level without restricting the ways the platforms can be helpful.

Munmun De Choudhury, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, is also examining digital data for insights into well-being. Dr. De Choudhury’s work over the years has focused not only on population studies, like the Hedonometer, but also on the individual.

In 2013, she and colleagues found that by looking at new mothers on social media, they were able to help predict which ones might develop postpartum depression, based on their posts before the birth of their babies. One of the most telling signs? The use of first-person singular pronouns, like “I” and “me.”