The internet plays an important part in our daily lives, and our research addresses the psychological, social and educational implications of the internet across the full lifespan, with a particular focus on children and young people.
We employ theoretically diverse approaches and an array of methods (including experiments, interviews and national surveys) to investigate the benefits and risks associated with the internet in everyday life.
With technology now such an integral part of our daily lives and increasingly so for adolescents, it’s crucial we understand what’s driving these shifts in wellbeing and whether technology is a consistent underlying factor across all nations.
Professor Andrew Przybylski
Professor of Human Behaviour and Technology
It is often claimed that the overall mental well-being of young people is undergoing a pronounced period of decline and some have implied that digital technologies might be driving this trend. This program of research aims to address both of these assumptions directly with empirical data drawn from more than two dozen countries over the past 30 years.
Of central interest are three research questions:
To answer these questions we need to draw translate and harmonise many datasets, integrate data on technology and mental health on an annualised basis for each country, and perform both time series and structural equation modelling to test overall, comparative, and technology-related trends.
This project aims to reveal the determinants of success in entrepreneurship, startups and innovation ecosystems using data science and qualitative research methods.
This project will develop useful and responsible machine learning methods to achieve real-world early detection and personalised disease outcome prediction of inflammatory arthritis.
AI technologies are increasingly being promoted to automate or augment work in the education sector. With the growth of these technologies, this project asks what tasks and skills are being affected by the adoption of AI in the education sector.
13 May 2025
Expert Comment: Professor Andy Przybylski explains how the social media debate on teen mental health is missing the point.
30 April 2025
New Oxford study offers roadmap for understanding video games’ complex impact on wellbeing
12 March 2025
New analysis finds that the number of hours spent playing Nintendo games did not significantly affect adults’ mental well-being, life satisfaction, emotional state, or depressive symptoms.
New York Times, 08 May 2025
An avatar of the long-dead British novelist is “teaching” an online writing course. But do we want to learn from a digital prosthetic built by artificial intelligence?
New Scientist, 07 May 2025
The makers of an AI model called Foresight say it could help predict disease or hospitalisation rates, but others have expressed concern about the fact it is trained on millions of health records.
Nature, 06 May 2025
Researchers fed an artificial-intelligence model called Foresight with anonymized data from a huge swathe of patients in England’s National Health Service.
Professor of Education, the Internet and Society
Rebecca Eynon's research focuses on learning and the Internet, and the links between digital and social exclusion.
Rebecca Eynon is Professor of Education, the Internet and Society, with her post held jointly by the OII and Oxford’s Department of Education.
Her research explores the relationships between education, the Internet and inequalities, and has been published in top journals including Information, Communication & Society, Learning, Media and Technology, and British Journal of Educational Technology. She has also published two books on education and technology with Routledge. She was co-editor of Learning, Media and Technology from 2011-2021. She is currently on the editorial board for Learning, Media and Technology and Information and Learning Sciences.
Her work has been supported by a range of funders including the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Commission and Google. Projects she has worked on have investigated the ways in which creative human/AI collaboration might contribute to human flourishing, asked about the causes of lapsed internet use among young people, and developed new survey measures of peoples’ digital skills.
Rebecca teaches on the MSc Social Science of the Internet at the OII and on the MSc Education (Digital and Social Change) at the Department of Education. At both departments, she supervises DPhil students interested in digital education and social justice.
Director, Associate Professor, Senior Policy Fellow
Victoria Nash is the OII's Director and a Senior Policy Fellow. Her research focuses on the opportunities and risks experienced by children using digital technologies; she also leads OII engagement on Internet regulation and digital policy issues.
Professor of Human Behaviour and Technology
Professor Przybylski is a psychologist who studies how online social media and video games platforms influence users’ mental health. His research focuses on how data from these platforms can inform regulation, policymaking, and expert advice.
Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Bernie Hogan examines how to capture, represent and think about social networks, especially personal social networks. His work focuses on the role of design in social media, network capture techniques and theories of relationships.
