“Half of young people consider themselves (somewhat) addicted to social media.”
Research focus: Social media use; Problematic social media use, Internet-related addictions
Regina van den Eijnden is associate professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University. Van den Eijnden has a background in social psychology and obtained her PhD at the University of Groningen in 1998.
Research focus on addictive behaviour
Van den Eijnden’s research mainly focuses on gaining insight into processes that underlie the development of adolescents’ Internet-related addictive behaviours (problematic social media use, gaming, smartphone use, online porn use), as well as the impact of these behaviours on adolescents’ mental and psychosocial well-being.
Van den Eijnden is particularly interested in questions such as “why do some adolescents develop patterns of problematic (‘addictive-like) social media use, whereas others remain to be healthy users of social media?” and “to what extent is adolescents’ psychosocial and mental well-being affected by excessive and problematic social media use? These questions are studied in relationship to adolescents’ personal characteristics, upbringing, family relationships, and peer relationships. These questions are studied both nationally (Digital Youth project, Digital Family project) and cross-nationally (HBSC project).