Digital Technology and Child and Adolescent Mental Health: Development, Vulnerability, and Public Health Prevention

A substantial evidence base now documents associations between digital environments and youth mental health outcomes. The challenge facing public health systems, governments, schools, and technology platforms is no longer whether digital environments matter for young people’s mental health - but how to act on that evidence effectively, equitably, and at scale. This Research Topic does not revisit the evidence on associations and mechanisms; instead, it invites contributions that translate that evidence into prevention, governance, and systems-level change. We are particularly interested in what works, for whom, in which contexts - and how those solutions can be implemented across diverse populations, settings, and resource environments.

Public health systems, schools, families, and policymakers face an urgent implementation gap: the evidence on digital harm is accumulating faster than the tools, frameworks, and governance structures needed to act on it. Upstream, population-level responses remain underdeveloped, and the field lacks sufficient evidence on how to scale effective interventions, engage cross-sector actors, and reach the most marginalized young people. At the same time, digital technologies increasingly offer scalable platforms for early identification, prevention, and mental health promotion - opportunities that are unevenly distributed across socioeconomic, cultural, and geographic contexts.

This Research Topic seeks to consolidate and advance the evidence base for action. We welcome contributions from prevention science, implementation science, public health, health policy, education, and digital governance. We are particularly interested in evaluations of programs and policies already in operation; implementation research on barriers and enablers to scale; equity-focused analyses of who is reached and who is not; and work from low- and middle-income country contexts that is frequently absent from the global evidence base. We are also interested in the role of technology platforms, regulators, and cross-sectoral governance frameworks as levers for population-level change.

We're focusing on prevention, intervention, governance, and implementation. Studies primarily examining associations between digital exposure and mental health outcomes, neurobiological mechanisms, or developmental pathways without an intervention or policy component are outside the scope of this topic.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Population-level evaluations of school- and community-based digital literacy and mental health promotion programs

- Implementation science and scale-up of evidence-based digital wellbeing interventions across diverse settings
Effectiveness of digital wellbeing curricula, parental mediation strategies, and family-focused prevention programs

- Prevention of cyberbullying, online harassment, and youth exposure to harmful content

- Public health responses to problematic social media, gaming, smartphone, or AI-related use patterns in young people

- Cross-sectoral governance: roles of technology platforms, regulators, and health systems in protecting youth mental health

- Age-appropriate design standards, default privacy settings, and algorithmic safeguards as public health tools

- Evaluations of platform design changes, age-assurance mechanisms, and regulatory or legislative interventions

- Whole-of-government and whole-of-school approaches to digital wellbeing policy

- Use of digital tools - including apps, chatbots, and AI - for scalable early identification, screening, and preventive support

- Cost-effectiveness and economic analysis of digital mental health prevention interventions

- Workforce and caregiver capacity-building for digital mental health promotion

- Equity-focused studies on digital determinants of mental health across underserved, marginalized, or neurodivergent youth populations

- Digital health equity: closing gaps in access to prevention resources across socioeconomic, cultural, gender, and geographic lines

- Lessons from low- and middle-income country contexts on implementing and scaling digital mental health prevention

- Methodological innovations for measuring prevention outcomes, intervention fidelity, and implementation effectiveness in digital mental health research

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: digital wellbeing, adolescent mental health, public health prevention, media literacy, screen time

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.