Alison Tuck (2025)

Alison Tuck is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. Much of her research examines the influence of social media on mental health. As a clinical scientist, she is particularly interested in understanding the clinical implications of social media use, including identifying those at greatest risk for its negative consequences and what people can do to develop healthy social media habits. She hopes her research will guide strategies for clinicians and policymakers alike.

In her dissertation work, Alison is examining ways in which social media use may be emotionally healthy versus unhealthy for adolescents. Specifically, she is assessing how four distinct types of social media behaviors that her previous research uncovered make adolescents feel and are used by adolescents to regulate their emotions, and she is examining how these effects vary by adolescent depression. This multimethod investigation incorporates both subjective (i.e., adolescent self-reports) and objective (i.e., heart rate, respiration) measures of emotional responding. It includes a lab-based experiment in addition to a week-long period in which adolescents are surveyed on their phones several times a day to report how they are engaging in social media, how they have been using social media to shape their feelings, and how they feel. These methods allow for the examination of adolescent social media use and emotional wellbeing in a controlled experimental setting, during which adolescents engage in one type of social media behaviors at a time, and in everyday life contexts, where adolescents engage in multiple types of social media at a time naturalistically.

The 2025 NISS Dissertation Grant will support Alison in her collection of this original research data and in travel to conferences to disseminate her work. Alison holds a B.A. in psychology from Binghamton University and an M.A. in clinical psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.