Young Minds, Screentime and a Family-Inspired Thesis

Decoding how kids think

Fourth-year school psychology PhD student Athena Vafiadis, GE’27, hopes to minimize risks and consequences associated with youth social media use and help parents and educators understand how they can play a part.  

From Philadelphia, Pa., Athena earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in neuroscience close to home. Her goal? To understand how the brain works. 
 
“My brother has autism,” said Athena. “That really guided my early career—trying to understand what it was that made him different than me."
 
During her graduate studies, Athena worked in a research lab examining social development and neuroscience, namely how the brain looks in kids that have social anxiety and social aggression. She came to understand how the brain functioned; she then wanted to understand how to help.  
 
“My supervisor at the time reminded me that school is where kids spend the majority of their day, and that’s where you can see them in action and help in different environments,” said Athena. 
 
As she was researching doctoral programs, Athena learned about Dr. Laura Crothers, school psychology program director in Duquesne’s School of Education.
 
“She’s the resident expert in bullying behaviors, and her knowledge encouraged me to apply and commit,” said Athena. 

Helping schools and families

Athena’s dissertation looks at how children engage and interact with the online environment and how it affects their behavior. She’s participated in practicum experiences since her first year, working in school district, private practice and hospital settings. An internship in her fifth year will round out her experience in the program.  
 
These practicum experiences complement classroom learning to create a holistic education experience and encourage students to confidently address systemic challenges in education.
 
“In class, we learn about best practices for school psychology, for example the psychology of how people learn and how to write education reports and evaluations,” said Athena. “Then the hands-on experience is great because you see how that best practice translates to day-to-day work.”
 

Athena feels pride as she assists children and families through this work. She recalls a kindergartener who spent a great deal of time online watching age-inappropriate YouTube videos and modeled negative behaviors from those videos in the classroom. She’s proud of the progress they made together.
 
“I reached out to his parents and teacher to get a whole community support around his care, and we worked together over the course of the entire school year,” she said. “We practiced scenarios of how to act in class, and we started to see an increase in pro-social behaviors.”
 
Athena and her student were thrilled with the improvement. She notes that he was moving toward being “the hero” in his stories. Her hard work as a trusted partner was recognized by the boy’s parents, who presented Athena with a bouquet of flowers at the end of the school year to express their gratitude.
 
“I wanted him to have a positive experience with therapy because even though my time with him was ending, it wasn’t the end of his therapy journey,” she said. “We built a great rapport and that’s hopefully going to help him with therapy in the future.”

An inspired and supported journey

As Athena began her dissertation, the faculty member who inspired her at the onset of her PhD journey was still walking alongside her, taking the time to mentor her and trusting in her potential. 
 
“Dr. Crothers has definitely been a huge help in narrowing down what I wanted to do,” said Athena. “I'm very independent, but I can overthink. She has a lot of personal experiences with this topic, and she’s been my sounding board and helping to guide my research questions.”
 

Athena primarily wanted to explore how students feel when they interact with others online. Do they feel respected? Do they feel like they have a community? She’s worked with school districts across Pennsylvania to recruit students and families for her study and to test the new measure she proposes to collect information from students, which she hopes will eventually be used in schools as a screening device to gauge how engaged students are with social media and to inform digital literacy efforts. 
 
“It's been really exciting,” said Athena. “I created resources for parents about what these different social media apps are and where they can go for parent controls and general information about how they should monitor their kids online. I want to make sure that we're also spreading knowledge about social media while I'm trying to study it.”
 
As she wraps up her studies, Athena can keep her options open. She’s prepared for anything thanks to the experience she gained through a variety of practicum settings, and she has a good sense of what she wants to achieve. 
 
“I see myself working with communities in need, and maybe in the longer term coming back to academia,” said Athena. “Research is something I can’t give up.”