FRAMER

Portfolio

Research

Previous Project

Digital Detoxes: Finding Social Media Balance

Year 2 Research Project, supervised by Dr Emily Troscianko, University of Oxford

This project investigated whether the language and emotions in online digital detox communities reflect — or shape, real experiences of behavioural change. I designed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study: first analysing 7,000 Reddit posts using NLP and topic modelling to identify emotional patterns, then running a 5-day digital detox intervention with 24 university students using wellbeing scales, journals, and interviews.

Approach

The key finding was that the dominant shift from powerlessness to empowerment visible in community discourse did appear in individual experience, but was more temporally complex than static community analysis could capture. The research concluded that sustainable digital wellbeing depends less on individual willpower and more on peer infrastructure and collective meaning-making.

Outputs included a video explainer for a university wellbeing programme, with recommendations for student-led, relational support spaces as an alternative to one-size-fits-all digital wellness advice.