Linda Charmaraman, PhD

Dr. Linda Charmaraman is a senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. She received her PhD in Human Development and Education from UC Berkeley and is founder/director of the Youth, Media, & Wellbeing Research Lab. Her longitudinal work on adolescent social technology use and parental media monitoring has been funded by NIH, Children & Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. Linda’s research interests include social media literacy, identity & agency development, wellbeing, digital citizenship, and marginalized youth. She was co-author of the American Psychological Association’s (2023/2024) advisory on adolescent social media use and the recent 2025 APA advisory on the use of AI and adolescent wellbeing. She provides expert advisory consulting for the Google Kids and Families Team, Common Sense Media, Jed Foundation, among others. Media mentions of her research include New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Good Morning America, USA Today, ABC News, NBC News, Discover Magazine, The Conversation. Together with a youth advisory board, she co-organizes Digital Wellbeing workshops for middle school girls and allies from underserved backgrounds in the US and beyond. Recent workshops voted on by youth themselves have focused on self-esteem, emotional regulation, body image, community empowerment, AI literacy, parental monitoring of technology use, and the power of youth voice in their future digital ecosystems. You can follow her lab’s work on Instagram @ youthmediawellbeing.

COI Statement: I provide periodic advisory consulting for the Google Kids and Families Team, Common Sense Media, and the Jed Foundation. I currently have NIH funding as a subawardee of Tufts University. The following organizations have paid for my travel to speak: American Psychological Association, Society for Research on Child Development, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.