Sumer Vaid

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2022 - 2023 Academic Year

Digital Media and Wellbeing in India: A Digital Phenotyping Study

To understand how digital media impacts psychological wellbeing in India, we propose a smartphone sensing study that captures people's everyday behaviors and psychological experiences. We focus on collecting data from representative urban and rural regions of India using previously validated Hindi and Tamil translations of instruments measuring psychological wellbeing. We develop an analytic plan that derives descriptive, predictive and causal findings from sensing data. Our work has broad implications for informing public policy legislation pertaining to the use of specific digital media platforms (e.g., Facebook, WhatsApp).

Sumer Vaid, Department of Communications

Sumer Vaid's uses computational tools to examine the psychological effects of digital technologies, with an emphasis on studying people in their everyday life. Said is developing a regional specialization in South Asia. Vaid's latest research examines how the contexts in which mobile technology is used (e.g., locations) shape their effects on mental health and psychological wellbeing.

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