Frazer Faculty of Education, Ontario Tech University
Mental Health in the Digital Age Lab
Researching digital wellness and holistic well-being across the lifespan to promote flourishing in the digital age.
Recent Publications
We are excited to share a selection of our most recent publications below!
For a complete list of publications, click here!
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Tech with a Conscience: A Technology Intervention for Student Mental Health
Jennifer Laffier, Madison Westley, Aalyia Rehman, Gorm Eriksen, & Rune Sønderby
Post-secondary campuses are overwhelmed trying to support students' mental health needs, with some reports suggesting that over 60% of students meet mental health crises. Due to the urgent need for more sustainable support in student mental health, many schools are exploring creative or alternative ideas, such as the role of technology. If technological programs or devices are used for student mental health, their design and delivery should align with research on student well-being, learning principles, and best practices in psychological interventions. Although evaluation methods often examine their effectiveness, there should also be an evaluation of their design. This can support the tools' usability and usefulness, promoting proactive mental health support through features such as screening for early detection, psychoeducation, and personalized interventions. This paper explores how technology tools for mental health can be evaluated based on mental health research and learning theories. We present a case study of a Denmark program, StudentPulse, that provides mental health support for post-secondary students. An evaluation of the tools presents examples of how evidence-based their design is. This includes features such as immediate feedback, validation, and completion length. Recommendations for evidence-based mental health technologies such as this are provided.
Exploring Digital Wellness: A New Psychological Framework that Supports Psychoeducational Practices
Jennifer Laffier
As we move further into digitally enriched worlds, children and youth must have the skills and knowledge to thrive. Youth can benefit from 21st-century skills and global competencies such as media literacy, critical thinking, and global citizenship. In response to the focus on the 21st-century learner, many educational settings adopted Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship models. Several valuable frameworks were adapted and have been used by educators to teach children how to be wise and safe technology users and creators. However, an area garnering more attention is digital wellness, which grew from the awareness of technology's impacts on mental health and well-being. Although digital wellness was recognized in some digital literacy and citizenship frameworks and discussions, it deserved its framework from a psychological lens that would benefit therapeutic and psycho-educational practices, including those in education. This research aimed to create a framework to inform policy education and treatment in digital wellness, an essential skill for thriving in a digital and ever-changing world. Using grounded theory, a new framework for digital wellness was created: the Psychological Digital Wellness Model (P-DW). This paper highlights the new framework's components and how it can inform educational and psychological practices to support student and educator well-being.
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The Promise of Digital Wellness to Promote Youth Well-Being and Healthy Communities
Jennifer Laffier, Aalyia Rehman & Madison Westley
The chapter explores how digital wellness can enhance youth interpersonal skills and relationships to contribute to their well-being and community wellness. A literature review was conducted to investigate how digital wellness influences individual well-being, mainly through developing interpersonal skills, and how this may, in turn, support community well-being. The findings suggest that digital wellness is vital in enhancing youth well-being by fostering essential interpersonal skills such as emotional intelligence and empathy, addressing key developmental needs, and nurturing positive emotions. This promotion of individual well-being, in turn, promotes community well-being; youth engage with each other in more optimistic, ethical, and inclusive ways. Digital wellness should be explored further as a key skill for healthy interpersonal relationships in a digital age.
Deepfakes and Harm to Women
Jennifer Laffier & Aalyia Rehman
As deepfake technologies become more sophisticated and accessible to the broader online community, their use puts women participating in digital spaces at increased risk of experiencing violence online and abuse. In a ‘post-truth’ era, the ability to discern what is real and what is fake allows malevolent actors to manipulate public opinion or ruin the social reputation of individuals to wider audiences. While the scholarly research on the topic is sparse, this study explored the harm women have experienced in technology and deepfakes. Results of the study suggest that deepfakes are a relatively new method to deploy gender-based violence and erode women’s autonomy in their on-and-offline world. This study highlights the unique harms for women that are felt on both an individual and systemic level and the necessity for further inquiry into online harm through deepfakes and victims’ experiences.
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