Empowering Parents in the Digital Age: Mitigating Social Media’s Impact on Youth Development - Part 2

Last registered on March 26, 2025
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Empowering Parents in the Digital Age: Mitigating Social Media’s Impact on Youth Development - Part 2
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015600
Initial registration date
March 19, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
March 26, 2025, 8:46 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Margaux Suteau
Affiliation
London School of Economics
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Greta Morando
PI Affiliation
Department of Economics at the University of Sheffield
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PI Name
Sonkurt Sen
PI Affiliation
Department of Economics at University of Bonn
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-03-25
End date
2025-05-30
Keywords
Behavior, Education, Health
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
As social media (SM) usage skyrockets among youth, concerns mount over its impact on their development and well-being. This research investigates the crucial role parents play in regulating their children's SM experiences. Leveraging new data sources, we aim to provide a rich account of parents' beliefs about SM's effects, their strategies for guiding their children's usage, and how parental mediating practices are associated with family characteristics and child outcomes. Moreover, this project will provide novel evidence on how to foster better parenting practices to promote young people's emotional health and strengthen parent-child bonds in the digital age. Our findings will reveal inequalities stemming from varied parental approaches and inform policies to safeguard the next generation from SM's potential risks while harnessing its benefits. As regulation proves challenging, empowering parents emerges as a vital step towards ensuring SM positively impacts youth development.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Morando, Greta, Sonkurt Sen and Margaux Suteau. 2025. "Empowering Parents in the Digital Age: Mitigating Social Media’s Impact on Youth Development - Part 2." AEA RCT Registry. March 26. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15600-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The growing number of resources designed to help parents manage their children's social media use has not been accompanied by sufficient scientific evidence on two key issues: parents' actual needs and the effectiveness of existing interventions. To address this gap, the research agenda includes two related projects: one to understand parental needs around social media and another to evaluate the impact of interventions. This pre-analysis plan focuses on the second project, which involves assessing the effectiveness of an intervention.

Participants will be randomly assigned to either a control group or a treatment group. The treatment group will receive a structured intervention delivered through WhatsApp, aimed at closing knowledge gaps and equipping parents with effective strategies. The intervention will be delivered in four parts over four weeks. To measure the intervention’s impact, surveys will be conducted at five points: two weeks before the intervention starts, after each weekly session, one week after the intervention ends, one month after completion, and six months later.
Intervention Start Date
2025-04-07
Intervention End Date
2025-05-05

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
First, the baselinesurvey (a) will ask:
- Parental mental health via the GAD scale (As in our previous experiment)
- Beliefs about the danger of social media (As in our previous experiment)
- Children Strengths and Difficulty Questionnaire (SDQ)

Next, at the end of each week (b), we will collect information on their understanding of each week’s information treatment.

The midline survey will focus on short term changes:
- Beliefs about the danger of social media (As in our previous experiment)
- Willingness to act (As in our previous experiment: signing the petition, giving to charity)

The endline surveys (d & e) will try to delve deeper into the intervention's effects by exploring:
- SM use: we will try to check if practices have changed following the intervention. (As in our previous experiment)
- Parenting practices: Evaluating any shifts in parenting practices related to SM mediation, through both self-reported data and observational measures. (As in our previous experiment)
- Children Strengths and Difficulty Questionnaire (SDQ) again
- Educational outcomes: Collecting data on children's academic performance to evaluate the potential impact of the intervention on educational attainment.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Important secondary outcomes for control variables and to run important heterogeneity include:

- Gender of the responding parents and children
- Age of the parents and children
- Parents marital status
- Residency
- Parents education and occupation

These are the same as the one collected in the first part of the experiment.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experimental design involves randomly assigning participants from a pool of interested parents to either a control group or a treatment group. The treatment group will receive a four-week intervention delivered through WhatsApp, with each week focusing on a different aspect of social media parenting: (1) parental control and monitoring tools, (2) fostering open communication, (3) role modeling and positive practices, and (4) reinforcement of key strategies. Data will be collected through eight surveys administered via Qualtrics: a pre-intervention survey, five weekly surveys, and two post-intervention surveys (one month and six months after completion). The primary outcomes include changes in parental beliefs about social media, parenting practices, and children's emotional and educational outcomes, measured through validated scales such as the GAD and SDQ. The analysis will estimate the effect of the intervention using a simple linear regression model, where the treatment variable indicates participation in the intervention. If the response rate is insufficient, the procedure will be repeated to meet the target sample size.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
The randomization will be performed by Qualtrics, and 50% of the sample will receive the intervention.
Randomization Unit
The unit of randomization is at the individual level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
No cluster
Sample size: planned number of observations
The sample size has a planned number of equal to 800 individuals. We estimate the number of valid responses, based our planned attrition and attention checks, to be 700.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Our two treatment and control group are estimated to contain about 350 parents.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
London School of Economics
IRB Approval Date
2025-03-19
IRB Approval Number
526925
Analysis Plan