Expressions of interest: Evaluating the mental health impact of online technology restrictions

The UK Government has launched a consultation on the possible introduction of restriction measures for social media use and other online technology for children and young people.  

There is an urgent need for independent, rigorous evidence on the mental health implications of any measures introduced. Wellcome will support multidisciplinary research teams to deliver robust, policy relevant evaluations of any policy changes, with mental health impacts as the primary focus.

Wellcome’s mental health programme  

Wellcome aims to drive new and improved early interventions for anxiety, depression, and psychosis, emphasising personalised treatment options that span pharmaceutical, psychological and social interventions, and digital approaches. We do this in collaboration with the people most affected.

Find out more about our mental health programme.

We are inviting expressions of interest from UK-based research teams who are capable of delivering rigorous and policy relevant evaluations of potential age-restriction measures on online technologies, with a particular focus on social media use. Given the rapidly changing policy environment, we will prioritise teams that can leverage existing infrastructure, established participant networks, and longitudinal data to support rapid evaluation.

These teams will work in a cohort to deliver a complementary set of evaluations, and study design will be guided by expert recommendations supported by Wellcome.

We are particularly interested in teams that can demonstrate:

1. Strong, existing access to populations and data

Teams should have established research access to children and young people through, but not limited to, largescale cohorts, longitudinal studies, school networks, population panels or community embedded partnerships that already collect repeated or long-term data and can quickly extend this work to evaluate policy impacts. Teams must be able to draw on research active participant groups, and existing data linkage systems. We are also interested in groups who may be disproportionately affected by restrictions, such as children from low-income families, LGBTQ+ youth, rural and remote communities and migrant communities. Importantly, applicants must be able to collect baseline data before any government measures are introduced, ensuring strong pre-post or staggered rollout comparisons. Work is expected to start as early as October 2026.

2. Expertise in youth mental health and digital behaviour

Teams must have strong expertise in adolescent mental health and digital behaviour, and the ability to implement validated, clinically meaningful measures suitable for repeated and time sensitive evaluation.  

Applicants must understand digital technology use in ways that go beyond screentime metrics and be capable of examining the specific features of digital media that may influence mental health (for example, algorithms, infinite scroll).

3. Capability for robust causal and real-world evaluation

Teams must be able to apply study designs to evaluate real-world policy implementation. They must have the ability to deliver rapid evaluation, including mobilising field work or data pipelines quickly. Teams must be ready to begin work as early as October 2026. We expect evaluations to run for a minimum of one year.  

4. Ethical, safeguarding, and data governance excellence

Applicants should establish high quality ethics and safeguarding processes, including appropriate consent and assent procedures for under-16s and protocols suitable for school, community, or digital settings. We are looking for teams committed to privacy-preserving, proportionate data collection with young people, with clear governance for partnerships involving schools, local authorities or digital platforms.

5. Commitment to coherence and collaboration

Teams must be willing to contribute to a coordinated UK-wide evaluation effort, adopting shared measurement frameworks to ensure comparability across funded projects. Applicants should be open to aligning approaches for research priorities, study design, minimum datasets and measures and based on expert advice and consensus.

For information on roles and eligibility please refer to our guidance on Wellcome funding applicants. Please focus on the roles of ‘Lead applicant’, ‘Coapplicant’, Collaborator’.  

All applicants and administering organisations must be able to sign up to our grant conditions and comply with our grant funding policies. The administering organisation is where the lead applicant is based. If your expression of interest is selected to progress, the administering organisation will be responsible for submitting the final application to Wellcome and managing the finances of the grant if it is awarded. The administering organisation must be a higher education institute, research institute, healthcare organisation or a non-governmental organisation.

The lead applicant:

• must be based in the UK
• must have a permanent, open-ended, or long-term rolling contract for the duration of the award

The Coapplicants:

• can be based anywhere in the world, apart from mainland China
• must have a guarantee of space from their administering organisation for the duration of their commitment to the award, but do not need to have a permanent, open-ended, or long-term rolling contract at their administering organisation

Please provide a short expression of interest outlining how your team is positioned to deliver a rapid, rigorous evaluation aligned with potential UK social media age restriction measures for under-16s. Your expression of interest must be a maximum of two A4 pages using Arial font size 11.

Your expression of interest should cover:

Access to populations and data

A summary of the cohorts, school networks, longitudinal studies, population panels or community partnerships you can draw on, including the scale and characteristics of the populations involved. Please confirm your ability to extend existing repeated measures or longitudinal datasets and your readiness to begin work by October 2026.

Expertise and capability

A short overview of your team’s relevant experience in youth mental health, digital behaviour, and real-world evaluation methods. Highlight any previous work involving rapid fieldwork, natural experiments, quasi-experimental designs or time sensitive data collection.

Ethics and governance

A concise statement on your established processes for ethics, consent and assent, safeguarding and privacy preserving data collection with under-16s, as well as any relevant governance arrangements for partnerships with schools, local authorities or digital platforms.

Key risk and dependencies

A short paragraph on the main risks or dependencies that could affect your evaluation (for example: data availability, ethics, recruitment), and how you would plan to manage or mitigate them.

Team details 

An outline of who would be lead applicant, coapplicant(s) and collaborator(s). Include the names, affiliations and relevant expertise of key team members and a lead contact for follow up.