Categorizing, Measuring, and Mitigating Social Media Harms Among Adolescents

Join the Cyber Policy Center Tomorrow, April 22nd from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Categorizing, Measuring, and Mitigating Social Media Harms Among Adolescents, a seminar with Jeff Hancock, Director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and Co-director of the Cyber Policy Center. It will be moderated by Sunny Xun Liu.
About the Seminar
The conversation surrounding social media and youth wellbeing is becoming increasingly complex, as researchers, policymakers, and tech industry leaders strive to understand both its potential harms and benefits. New regulatory efforts—such as the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA)—require platforms to adopt risk-based approaches to identifying and mitigating online threats. Still, critical questions remain: How are these risks defined and measured? What kinds of harm most affect young people? Which strategies effectively reduce risk without compromising the positive aspects of social media? And how can we ensure safety while also respecting privacy, free expression, and innovation? Hancock will explore these issues and share insights from the recently released Stanford Youth Safety and Digital Wellbeing Report.
Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar. The Spring Seminar Series continues through the end of May; see our Spring Seminar Series page for speakers and topics.
About the Speaker:
Jeff Hancock is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, Founding Director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, and co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. He is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). A leading expert in social media behavior and the psychology of online interaction, Professor Hancock studies the impact of social media and AI technology on social cognition, well-being, deception and trust, and how we use and understand language. Recently Professor Hancock has begun work on understanding the mental models people have about algorithms in social media, as well as working on the ethical issues associated with computational social science. He is also Founding Editor of the Journal of Trust & Safety.
His award-winning research has been published in over 100 journal articles and conference proceedings and has been supported by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense. Professor Hancock’s TED Talk on deception has been seen over 1 million times and his research has been frequently featured in the popular press, including the New York Times, CNN, NPR, CBS and the BBC.
Professor Hancock worked for Canada Customs before earning his PhD in Psychology at Dalhousie University, Canada. He was a Professor of Information Science (and co-Chair) and Communication at Cornell University prior to joining Stanford in 2015. He currently lives in Palo Alto with his wife and daughter, and he regularly gets shot at on the ice as a hockey goalie.