Fellow's Profile
Colleen Sheridan
Fellow's Profile
Colleen Sheridan
Designing Digital Spaces That Support Mental Health and Social Harmony
Fellowship
- Themes
- Focus
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Tackling social media harm
- Countries
- Fellowship year
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2026
Contact
Biography
I am a research associate at the University of Cambridge with a personal interest in how social media is changing our relationships with ourselves, and with others.
Social media algorithms are designed to be highly rewarding - promoting emotive content with variable reward schedules, resulting in compulsive use patterns becoming a new 'norm'. Furthermore, promoted content can be misleading, or harmful. I would like to learn about how we may protect minds from such algorithmic harm. To complement building personal resilience, I would like to consider what structural changes may be helpful so that these platforms are designed with, rather than against, human best interest.
My motivation for this project stems from a complex relationship with social media. My generation entered adolescence with smartphones and adulthood with short-form content, and I can see the profound effect the changes in these technologies had on my life, and the lives of others. I am building a tool to develop resilience to online harms, and I hope to use my time as a Churchill Fellow to learn how such a tool may optimally be developed, alongside how we may better regulate the field.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
