MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
Amy Orben
Programme Leader
Amy.Orben@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
01223 766 166
Professor Orben is a Research Professor and Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge and a Fellow at St. John's College, University of Cambridge. She leads the Digital Mental Health programme at the MRC CBU: one of the UK's largest and most influential research teams studying the impact of digital environments on young people. She is recognised as an international expert on the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescence.
Professor Orben routinely advises senior politicians, policymakers and public servants around the world, for example as Director of a 2025 UK Government independent research commission and as a member of the Science Advisory Council at the UK Department for Education. She completed her DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and MA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
She has received a range of prestigious awards including the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award (2024), Medical Research Council Early Career Impact Prize (2022) and the British Psychological Society Award for Outstanding Contributions to Doctoral Research (2019). She also received the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award (2020) for her work to improve scientific practice and research culture in her field.
Amy's work is supported by key national and international funders, charities and foundations including UKRI (MRC, ESRC and EPSRC), Wellcome Trust, Jacobs Foundation and National Institute of Health. She is currently both a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and a Jacob's Foundation Fellow.
Her CV is available here.
CBSU publications
DAVIDSON, B.C., TURNER, G., PALMINTERI,S., Tomova, L., Eichstaedt, J.C., Salecha, A., Subrahmanya, S., GUNSCHERA, L.J., ORBEN, A. (In Press) Prolonged Social Isolation is Associated with Increased Behavioural BSensitivity to ‘Likes’ on Social Media, https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/65tdz_v1 [Open Access]
FERGUSON, A., RICHARDS M., GUNSCHERA, L.J., Mutak, A., Modecki, K.L., Goldberg, R.E., ORBEN, A. (In Press) Digital Parenting in the 21st Century: Development and Validation of a New Digital Parenting Scale, SSRN [Open Access]
Bak-Coleman, J., Lewandowsky, S., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Narayanan, A., ORBEN, A. , Oswald, L. (In Press) Moving towards informative and actionable social media research, arXiv:2505.09254 [Open Access]
SKEGGS, A., Metha, A., Katiyar, T., YAP, V., Burn, A-M., Slovak, P., ORBEN, A. (In Press) Youth Perspectives on Social Media Harms: A Large-Scale Micro-Narrative Study, PsyArXiv, m38u6_v2 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. (2025) The fight to keep big tech in check: digital researchers are in ‘David and Goliath’ battle, Nature 640, 571 (2025) [Read More]
SKEGGS, A & ORBEN, A. (2025) Social media interventions to improve well-being, Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages1079–1089 (2025) [Open Access]
Dienlin, T., Smahel, D, ORBEN, A. (2025) Global Analysis of Perceived Social Media Effects on Well-Being, Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking,2025 Aug;28(8):588-593. [Open Access]
Barreda Ángeles, M., Amendola, S., Da Silva, C., Somià, T., Boucher, P., Schade, S., Meier, A., Mansfield, K., Gunschera, L., ORBEN, A. , Turner, G., Griffiths, M.D., Hartmann, T., Freeman, G., Gui, X., Kou, Y., Baumgartner, S., Vuorre, M., Ohme, J., Hine, E., López Richart, J. and Belmoussi, O. (2025) Virtual Worlds and Well-being: Current Research and Future Directions, JRC Publications Repository, JRC143343 [Open Access]
YAP, V.Z.Y., SKEGGS, A., FERGUSON, A.M., , LEYLAND-CRAGGS, A., Boeschoten, L., Welbers, K., KURTEN, S., ORBEN, A. (2025) Digital Data Donation With Adolescents, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: 1554(1), 251-266 [Open Access]
Albajara Sáenz, A., Kurten, S., Saxton, J., Kardefelt‐Winther, D., Ford, T., Orben, A. , & White, S. R. (2025) Mental health measures among adolescents in 12 low-and-middle-income countries: Measurement invariance and cross-sectional analyses of Disrupting Harm survey data, JCPP Advances [Open Access]
PURBA, A.K., Katikreddi, S.V., McKee, ORBEN, A. (2025) Addressing youth violence on social media: time to prioritise digital sanitation, Archives of Disease in Childhood, , archdischild-2025-329117, 28 Oct 2025 [Open Access]
FASSI, L., FERGUSON, A.M., Przybylski, A.K., Ford, T.J. & ORBEN, A. (2025) Social media use in adolescents with and without mental health conditions, Nature Human Behaviour, 05 May 2025, 9(6):1283-1299 [Open Access]
KATIYAR, T., Hunt, A., ORBEN, A. , Chaudhary, N., Jaeggi, A.V. (2025) Digital Technologies & Evolutionary Mismatch: Harming, But Also Healing Mental Health, Psychological Review [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Matias, N. (2025) Fixing the science of digital technology harms, Science, 10 Apr 2025, 388(6743):152-155 [Open Access]
TURNER, G., FERGUSON, A.M., KATIYAR, T., Palminteri, S., ORBEN, A. (2025) Old strategies, new environments: Reinforcement Learning on social media, Biological Psychiatry, 97(10), 989-1001 [Open Access]
Goodyear, V.A., James, C., ORBEN, A. , Quennerstedt, M., Schwartz, G., pALLAN, m. (2025) Approaches to children’s smartphone and social media use must go beyond bans, BMJ 2025;388:e082569 [Open Access]
FERGUSON,M., TURNER, G., ORBEN, A. (2024) Social uncertainty in the digital world, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(4):286-289 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Meier, A., DALGLEISH, T., Blakemore, S-J. (2023) Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability, Nature Reviews Psychology, 04 May 2023, 6(1):25 [Open Access]
Miller, J., Mills, K.L., Vuorre, M., ORBEN, A. , Przybylski, A.K. (2023) Impact of Digital Screen Media Activity in Functional Brain Organization in Late Childhood: Evidence from the ABCD Study, Cortex, 169:290-308 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Blakemore, S-J. (2023) How social media affects teen mental health: the missing factor, Nature, 614(7948):410-412 [Open Access]
Leightley, D., Bye, A., Carter, B., Trevillion, K., Bramthonne-Foster, S., Liakata, M., Wood, A., Ougrin, D., ORBEN, A. , Ford, T., Dutta, R (2023) Maximising the positive and minimising the negative: Social media data to study youth mental health with informed consent , Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13:1096253 [Open Access]
Ghai, S., FASSI, L., Awadh, F., and ORBEN, A. (2023) Lack of Sample Diversity in Research on Adolescent Depression and Social Media Use: A Scoping Review and Meta-Analysis, Clinical Psychological Science [Open Access]
Anvari, F., KIEVIT, R.A., Lakens, D., Pennington, C.R., Przybylski6, A.K., Tiokhin, L., Wiernik, B.M., and ORBEN, A. (2023) Not all effects are indispensable: Psychological science re-quires verifiable lines of reasoning for whether an effect matters, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(2):503-507 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Lucas, R.E., FUHRMANN, D., KIEVIT, R.A. (2022) Trajectories of adolescent life satisfaction., Royal Society Open Science, 03 Aug 2022, 9(8):211808 [Open Access]
Piera Pi-Sunyer, B ., Andrews, J.L., ORBEN, A. , Speyer, L.G., Blakemore, S.J. (2022) The relationship between perceived income inequality, adverse mental health and interpersonal difficulties in UK adolescents., Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 14 Nov 2022, 64(3):417-425 [Open Access]
Livingstone, S., ORBEN, A. , Odger, C. (2022) Debate: Should academics collaborate with digital companies to improve young people’s mental health?, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 28(1), 150-152 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Minihan, S., Songco, A., Fox, E., Ladouceur, C., Mewton, L., Moulds, M.L., Pfiefer, J., Van Harmelen, A-L., Schweizer, S. (2022) Social Determinants of Mental Health During a Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Development and Psychopathology, 07 Jul 2022, :1-13 [Open Access]
Ghai, S., Magis-Weinberg, L., Livingstone, S., ORBEN, A. (2022) Social Media and Adolescent Well-being in the Global South, Current Opinion in Psychology, 10 Mar 2022, 46:101318 [Open Access]
Modecki, K.L., Goldberg, R., Wisniewski, P., ORBEN, A. (2022) What is digital parenting? A systematic review of past measurement and blueprint for the future, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(6):1673-1691 [Open Access]
Kievit, R., McCormick, E.M., FUHRMAN, D., Deserno, M.K., ORBEN, A. (2022) Using large, publicly available datasets to study adolescent development: Opportunities and challenges, Current Opinion in Psychology 44(4 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. (2022) Digital Diet: A 21st century approach to understanding digital technologies and development, Infant and Child Development, 31(1), e2228 [Open Access]
McCrosky, J.D., Parry, D.A., Sewell, C.J.R., ORBEN, A. (2021) Using Browser Data to Understand Desires to Spend Time Online, PsyArXiv Preprints [Open Access]
Vuorre, M., ORBEN, A. , Przybylski, A. (2021) There is no evidence that associations between adolescents’ digital technology engagement and mental health problems have increased, Clinical Psychological Science, 9(5), 823-835 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Weinstein, N., Przybylski, A.K. (2020) Only holistic and iterative change will fix digital technology research, Psychological Inquiry, 31(3), 235-241 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Tomova, L., Blakemore, S-J. (2020) The effects of social deprivation on adolescent social development and mental health, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 4(8):634-640 [Open Access]
Kaye, L.K., ORBEN, A. , Ellis, D.A., Hunter, S.C.,Houghton, S. (2020) The Conceptual and Methodological Mayhem of “Screen-time”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(10), 3661 2020 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Przybylski, A.K. (2020) Reply to: Underestimating digital media harm, Nature Human Behaviour, 4(4):349-351 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Lakens, D. (2020) Crud (Re)defined, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3(2), 238-247 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. (2020) The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(5), 1143-1157 [Open Access]
FERGUSON, A., RICHARDS M., GUNSCHERA, L.J., Mutak, A., Modecki, K.L., Goldberg, R.E., ORBEN, A. (In Press) Digital Parenting in the 21st Century: Development and Validation of a New Digital Parenting Scale, SSRN [Open Access]
Bak-Coleman, J., Lewandowsky, S., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Narayanan, A., ORBEN, A. , Oswald, L. (In Press) Moving towards informative and actionable social media research, arXiv:2505.09254 [Open Access]
SKEGGS, A., Metha, A., Katiyar, T., YAP, V., Burn, A-M., Slovak, P., ORBEN, A. (In Press) Youth Perspectives on Social Media Harms: A Large-Scale Micro-Narrative Study, PsyArXiv, m38u6_v2 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. (2025) The fight to keep big tech in check: digital researchers are in ‘David and Goliath’ battle, Nature 640, 571 (2025) [Read More]
SKEGGS, A & ORBEN, A. (2025) Social media interventions to improve well-being, Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages1079–1089 (2025) [Open Access]
Dienlin, T., Smahel, D, ORBEN, A. (2025) Global Analysis of Perceived Social Media Effects on Well-Being, Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking,2025 Aug;28(8):588-593. [Open Access]
Barreda Ángeles, M., Amendola, S., Da Silva, C., Somià, T., Boucher, P., Schade, S., Meier, A., Mansfield, K., Gunschera, L., ORBEN, A. , Turner, G., Griffiths, M.D., Hartmann, T., Freeman, G., Gui, X., Kou, Y., Baumgartner, S., Vuorre, M., Ohme, J., Hine, E., López Richart, J. and Belmoussi, O. (2025) Virtual Worlds and Well-being: Current Research and Future Directions, JRC Publications Repository, JRC143343 [Open Access]
YAP, V.Z.Y., SKEGGS, A., FERGUSON, A.M., , LEYLAND-CRAGGS, A., Boeschoten, L., Welbers, K., KURTEN, S., ORBEN, A. (2025) Digital Data Donation With Adolescents, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: 1554(1), 251-266 [Open Access]
Albajara Sáenz, A., Kurten, S., Saxton, J., Kardefelt‐Winther, D., Ford, T., Orben, A. , & White, S. R. (2025) Mental health measures among adolescents in 12 low-and-middle-income countries: Measurement invariance and cross-sectional analyses of Disrupting Harm survey data, JCPP Advances [Open Access]
PURBA, A.K., Katikreddi, S.V., McKee, ORBEN, A. (2025) Addressing youth violence on social media: time to prioritise digital sanitation, Archives of Disease in Childhood, , archdischild-2025-329117, 28 Oct 2025 [Open Access]
FASSI, L., FERGUSON, A.M., Przybylski, A.K., Ford, T.J. & ORBEN, A. (2025) Social media use in adolescents with and without mental health conditions, Nature Human Behaviour, 05 May 2025, 9(6):1283-1299 [Open Access]
KATIYAR, T., Hunt, A., ORBEN, A. , Chaudhary, N., Jaeggi, A.V. (2025) Digital Technologies & Evolutionary Mismatch: Harming, But Also Healing Mental Health, Psychological Review [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Matias, N. (2025) Fixing the science of digital technology harms, Science, 10 Apr 2025, 388(6743):152-155 [Open Access]
TURNER, G., FERGUSON, A.M., KATIYAR, T., Palminteri, S., ORBEN, A. (2025) Old strategies, new environments: Reinforcement Learning on social media, Biological Psychiatry, 97(10), 989-1001 [Open Access]
Goodyear, V.A., James, C., ORBEN, A. , Quennerstedt, M., Schwartz, G., pALLAN, m. (2025) Approaches to children’s smartphone and social media use must go beyond bans, BMJ 2025;388:e082569 [Open Access]
FERGUSON,M., TURNER, G., ORBEN, A. (2024) Social uncertainty in the digital world, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(4):286-289 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Meier, A., DALGLEISH, T., Blakemore, S-J. (2023) Mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent mental health vulnerability, Nature Reviews Psychology, 04 May 2023, 6(1):25 [Open Access]
Miller, J., Mills, K.L., Vuorre, M., ORBEN, A. , Przybylski, A.K. (2023) Impact of Digital Screen Media Activity in Functional Brain Organization in Late Childhood: Evidence from the ABCD Study, Cortex, 169:290-308 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Blakemore, S-J. (2023) How social media affects teen mental health: the missing factor, Nature, 614(7948):410-412 [Open Access]
Leightley, D., Bye, A., Carter, B., Trevillion, K., Bramthonne-Foster, S., Liakata, M., Wood, A., Ougrin, D., ORBEN, A. , Ford, T., Dutta, R (2023) Maximising the positive and minimising the negative: Social media data to study youth mental health with informed consent , Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13:1096253 [Open Access]
Ghai, S., FASSI, L., Awadh, F., and ORBEN, A. (2023) Lack of Sample Diversity in Research on Adolescent Depression and Social Media Use: A Scoping Review and Meta-Analysis, Clinical Psychological Science [Open Access]
Anvari, F., KIEVIT, R.A., Lakens, D., Pennington, C.R., Przybylski6, A.K., Tiokhin, L., Wiernik, B.M., and ORBEN, A. (2023) Not all effects are indispensable: Psychological science re-quires verifiable lines of reasoning for whether an effect matters, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(2):503-507 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Lucas, R.E., FUHRMANN, D., KIEVIT, R.A. (2022) Trajectories of adolescent life satisfaction., Royal Society Open Science, 03 Aug 2022, 9(8):211808 [Open Access]
Piera Pi-Sunyer, B ., Andrews, J.L., ORBEN, A. , Speyer, L.G., Blakemore, S.J. (2022) The relationship between perceived income inequality, adverse mental health and interpersonal difficulties in UK adolescents., Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 14 Nov 2022, 64(3):417-425 [Open Access]
Livingstone, S., ORBEN, A. , Odger, C. (2022) Debate: Should academics collaborate with digital companies to improve young people’s mental health?, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 28(1), 150-152 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Minihan, S., Songco, A., Fox, E., Ladouceur, C., Mewton, L., Moulds, M.L., Pfiefer, J., Van Harmelen, A-L., Schweizer, S. (2022) Social Determinants of Mental Health During a Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Development and Psychopathology, 07 Jul 2022, :1-13 [Open Access]
Ghai, S., Magis-Weinberg, L., Livingstone, S., ORBEN, A. (2022) Social Media and Adolescent Well-being in the Global South, Current Opinion in Psychology, 10 Mar 2022, 46:101318 [Open Access]
Modecki, K.L., Goldberg, R., Wisniewski, P., ORBEN, A. (2022) What is digital parenting? A systematic review of past measurement and blueprint for the future, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(6):1673-1691 [Open Access]
Kievit, R., McCormick, E.M., FUHRMAN, D., Deserno, M.K., ORBEN, A. (2022) Using large, publicly available datasets to study adolescent development: Opportunities and challenges, Current Opinion in Psychology 44(4 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. (2022) Digital Diet: A 21st century approach to understanding digital technologies and development, Infant and Child Development, 31(1), e2228 [Open Access]
McCrosky, J.D., Parry, D.A., Sewell, C.J.R., ORBEN, A. (2021) Using Browser Data to Understand Desires to Spend Time Online, PsyArXiv Preprints [Open Access]
Vuorre, M., ORBEN, A. , Przybylski, A. (2021) There is no evidence that associations between adolescents’ digital technology engagement and mental health problems have increased, Clinical Psychological Science, 9(5), 823-835 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Weinstein, N., Przybylski, A.K. (2020) Only holistic and iterative change will fix digital technology research, Psychological Inquiry, 31(3), 235-241 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Tomova, L., Blakemore, S-J. (2020) The effects of social deprivation on adolescent social development and mental health, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 4(8):634-640 [Open Access]
Kaye, L.K., ORBEN, A. , Ellis, D.A., Hunter, S.C.,Houghton, S. (2020) The Conceptual and Methodological Mayhem of “Screen-time”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(10), 3661 2020 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Przybylski, A.K. (2020) Reply to: Underestimating digital media harm, Nature Human Behaviour, 4(4):349-351 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. , Lakens, D. (2020) Crud (Re)defined, Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3(2), 238-247 [Open Access]
ORBEN, A. (2020) The Sisyphean Cycle of Technology Panics, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(5), 1143-1157 [Open Access]
