Sophie Mayen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana, Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, affiliated with the Institute of Public Health (IPH). Sophie holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from the University of Vienna. Her doctoral research, titled Growing Up Digital, examined adolescents’ digital media use, well-being, and academic performance using experience sampling and longitudinal modeling. Since March 2025, Sophie has been a postdoctoral researcher at the IPH, working on the funded AWARE and GIOCO projects. Her work integrates media psychology, public health, and health communication, with a methodological focus on micro-longitudinal and longitudinal designs. She manages the AWARE project and also examines how exposure to mental illness content on social media relates to adolescents’ well-being and symptoms of anxiety and depression. In GIOCO, she studies children’s and adolescents’ play across analog, digital, and hybrid contexts, focusing on how perceptions of play relate to psychological needs over time.