Join the Cyber Policy Center on May 20th from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Adding Nuance in the Debate on Adolescent Social Media Use and Mental Health with Drew Cingel, Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor for the Department of Communication at UC Davis. It will be moderated by Jeff Hancock. 

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 Talk:

In this talk, Dr. Drew Cingel will discuss and present recent studies aimed at understanding the nuance in how adolescents' mental health is uniquely affected by social media use. His talk will touch on individual differences in use, cultural differences in use, and differences based on algorithmic recommendations. Overall, this talk will shed light on the adolescents that are susceptible to both positive and negative effects of social media use on mental health, with implications for ongoing policy discussions.

About the Speaker:

Drew Cingel (PhD, Northwestern University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the Human Development Graduate Group. He is the Director of the Human Development and Media Lab. He studies the interaction between human development and media effects. He is particularly interested in understanding how facets of child and adolescent development influence media choice and the effects of exposure to media, including the areas of social media use on adolescent mental health and social-emotional development, children’s learning from media, including television and tablet computers, and the influence of media on child and adolescent moral development. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, New Media & Society, Media Psychology, and Human Communication Research, among others. He currently serves as Chair of the Children, Adolescents, and Media division of the International Communication Association, and is Co-Editor of Media Psychology.

Join the Cyber Policy Center on May 6th from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Scale Dichotomization Reduces Customer Racial Discrimination and Income Inequality, with Katy DeCelles, a 2024-2025 Fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. It will be moderated by Jeff Hancock. 

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 Seminar:
 

Dr. DeCelles will present three studies from her collaborative work recently published in Nature. This research examines racial discrimination in online platforms. Online platforms are rife with racial discrimination but current interventions focus on employers rather than customers. We propose a customer-facing solution: changing to a two-point rating scale (dichotomization). Compared with the ubiquitous five-star scale, we argue that dichotomization reduces modern racial discrimination by focusing evaluators on the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ performance, thereby reducing how personal beliefs shape customer assessments. Our research offers a promising intervention for reducing customers’ subtle racial discrimination in a large section of the economy and contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on evaluation processes and racial inequality.

About the Speaker:

Join the Cyber Policy Center on April 29th from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine - Real Magic or Technological Illusions? with Jonathan H. Chen MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics) and of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University. It will be moderated by Jeff Hancock. 

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 Seminar:

Pandora’s box has opened in the form of publicly available generative AI systems for every imaginable (and many unintended) purposes. With a global scarcity of medical expertise against the unlimited demand of people in need, AI's potential to democratize healthcare knowledge, access, and to recover efficiencies is desperately needed. The implications are vast as we converge upon a point in history where human vs. computer generated content can no longer be reliably distinguished. This session will review the attention and intention required for AI applications in the high-stakes world of healthcare as we distinguish real magic from convincing illusions.

About the Speaker:

Join the Cyber Policy Center on April 15th from 1PM–2PM Pacific for The Unforgiving Hour: New Technologies, Old Ideas, and the Fragility of American Power, a seminar with Amy Zegart, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. It will be moderated by Jeff Hancock. 

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 Seminar:

The foundations of American power are eroding due to a failure to adapt to a new era in which knowledge and technological innovation are the primary sources of national strength. Traditional measures of power—military might, natural resources, and economic scale—are increasingly insufficient. Instead, intangible assets such as education, research capacity, and control over emerging technologies determine long-term geopolitical influence. The United States is losing ground in these areas, with declining K–12 educational outcomes, reduced federal investment in basic research, outdated immigration policies, and growing reliance on private-sector actors whose interests may diverge from national objectives. Meanwhile, global competitors—particularly China—are rapidly expanding their innovation capacity. The U.S. must look toward a strategic shift in policy to enhance knowledge power through educational reform, immigration modernization, increased public research funding, and improved coordination between government, academia, and industry.

About the Speaker:

Join the Cyber Policy Center on April 8th from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Social Media and Youth Suicide Prevention, a seminar with Jo Robinson. It will be moderated by Jeff Hancock. 

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 Seminar

Concerns exist regarding the relationship between social media, self-harm and suicide. However, social media is commonly used, in particular by young people, and research has identified several potential benefits, such as the potential for connection, seeking help and support and helping others. Therefore, we need to identify ways to minimize the risks without diminishing the benefits. Potential levers for maintaining safe online environments include equipping users to keep themselves and others safe; policy approaches, whereby governments develop and implement legislation to support online safety; and industry approaches whereby the social media industry takes responsibility for maximizing safety on its platforms.

In this presentation Prof Robinson will present a body of work that has examined the role of social media in suicide prevention. It will include three brand new studies that together have led to a suite of recommendations for both industry professionals and policymakers regarding approaches to online safety. She will also present a case study of one evidence-based educational approach to supporting young people to engage with self-harm and suicide-related content safely on social media. This approach has been tested widely and is now supported by governments across Australia and New Zealand as well as overseas.

About the Speaker:

Join the Cyber Policy Center on April 1st from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Human-Compatible AI for Digital Media, a seminar with Sandy Pentland. It will be moderated by Jeff Hancock. 

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 Seminar

Human beliefs and norms evolve through a process of collective search and evaluation; the practice of science is a classic example of this sort of collective abductive reasoning.  We can accelerate this search process while protecting human human agency by using AI to accelerate the laborious or inefficient aspects of collective search. We have built and tested social media style systems that support improved belief and norm development in the domains of science, patents, law, finance, and democratic deliberation without unduly replacing human judgement. Finally, we have just embarked on a project called “consumer champions” that inverts the standard social media advertising model by using these same methods.
 

About the Speaker:

Sandy Pentland is a Center Fellow at Stanford's HAI. He directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, co-leads the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives, and is a founding member of the Advisory Boards for Nissan, Motorola Mobility, Telefonica, and a variety of start-up firms. He has previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future Health.