Taking the Long View on Digital Culture and Mental Health: Principles From Critical Realism

There is a widespread concern that some aspects of digital media use may be detrimental to mental health. Digital media such as social media, video games, and artificial intelligence profoundly influence the daily lives of young people through practices embedded in global and particular digital cultures. Because digital technologies and their uptake are actively evolving in ways that cannot be fully anticipated, research must "take the long view" to develop robust theories that stand the test of time. The philosophical approach of critical realism, developed by Roy Bhaskar and others in the 1970s-1990s, provides helpful parameters for studying complex phenomena such as the relationship between digital cultures and mental health. Critical realism sees science as a social process that aims to uncover the generative structures of reality, with the understanding that causal mechanisms exist at multiple levels of inquiry, from the material to the social. Drawing from the work of Bhaskar and other critical realists, this article outlines three methodological guiding principles for the study of digital culture and mental health: (1) focusing on the causal effects of digital media, located in individual practices, technologies, sociocultural structures, or elsewhere; (2) combining methods (qualitative and quantitative) and disciplines; and (3) actively engaging with the social dimension of research. Research on digital media and mental health has the capacity to illuminate causal mechanisms and their possibilities for human emancipation, even when these mechanisms are not fully actualized or directly observed.