Young people do not simply spend time online. They learn, argue, compare themselves to others, follow the news, maintain friendships, encounter advertising, and form judgments about the world there.

That makes "screen time" an increasingly blunt way to describe digital life.

Kokosing research examines what young people actually do on different platforms and how those habits relate to well-being, attention, social comparison, and information consumption. We are interested in distinctions that broad debates about social media often collapse: active communication versus passive scrolling, entertainment versus news, connection versus comparison, and heavy use that feels valuable versus heavy use that does not.

We also study how young people decide what information online deserves their trust. In an environment where professional journalism, political messaging, personal testimony, advertising, satire, and misinformation can appear in the same feed, understanding those judgments has become increasingly important.

The question is not simply whether social media is "good" or "bad." We want to understand which kinds of digital experiences matter, for whom, and why.