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Matthew Gentzkow, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) who is at the forefront of research into social media’s effects on society and individuals, is taking on the troubling issue of kids spending too much time on screens.

Gentzkow is part of an interdisciplinary research team that recently to work in partnership with the Utah governor’s office to test different ways of limiting smartphone use and to assess their impact not just on adolescents’ mental health but also on their social dynamics and academic performance. Gentzkow is the Landau Professor of Technology and the Economy at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.

The team — which includes executives from Qustodio, the maker of a popular parental-control app for managing digital activities — plans to study what happens, for example, when parents fully control limits on smartphone use and when children also have a say. The researchers will also look at the effectiveness of, for example, blocking access on school days or setting daily and bedtime limits.

Their work comes amid growing awareness that smartphones and social media are contributing to rising rates of depression among children and adolescents.

“U���پ������ٱ����,” , “we hope to identify scalable strategies that can inform the decisions of parents, policymakers, parent control apps, and other important stakeholders to promote healthy youth smartphone and social media use.”

In addition to Gentzkow and leaders from Qustodio, the research team includes a �������undergraduate research fellow, ; a �������predoctoral research fellow, ; Bocconi University economists , PhD ’21, and , PhD ’21 — both former recipients of �������graduate fellowships; and , BA ’19, now a doctoral student at Harvard.

Stanford Impact Labs (SIL) is a university-wide initiative that seeks to advance progress on big social problems through training and investing in research involving academics and leaders in government, business, and communities.

SIL announced in June that five interdisciplinary groups had been awarded up to $350,000 in its latest round of early-stage funding. Other recipients included a project aimed at adapting electricity market regulations to address renewable energy supply challenges and a pilot program to help scale the use of “food as medicine” to improve health outcomes.

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