Today's children and adolescents are immersed in a (digital) media landscape that surrounds them across contexts. The Covid pandemic increased unequal opportunities for children and adolescents to use digital media. There are differences in digital media access, motivation/skills to use digital media, and support of key persons (e.g., parents/teachers/peers). Understanding mechanisms in children's and adolescents' digital media use related to their development helps them and key persons to act in evidence-informed ways to reduce inequality. A better understanding of these factors is especially important during transition periods (i.e., from kindergarten to primary school or the early years in secondary school). During these periods, deviations in development could strongly impact children's and adolescents' opportunities. The aim of the NWA project is that scientists, parents, professionals and children and adolescents understand the mechanisms that influence the relations between children's and adolescents' digital media use, their development and opportunities. Furthermore, we want to develop skills and tools to support a positive impact of children's and adolescents' digital media use on development and equality of opportunities.

This specific PhD project is innovative in taking the full cross-contextual media landscape into account. The project concerns the role of emergent and advanced digitalization for equality of opportunities for young children and early adolescents. As a PhD, you will develop measures for the digital media landscape and for cultural, socioeconomic and linguistic diversity of family backgrounds. Furthermore, you will analyse data for the assessment of inequalities in digital media use in cross-contextual media landscapes and its effects on development. The focus will be the effects on cognitive, identity and social development separately. Finally, you will conduct interviews to provide more in-depth meaning to the quantitative results with the aim to better understand how and why early adolescents with different backgrounds have different cognitive, identity, and social development outcomes from the revealed patterns of digital media use. This project is part of a set of seven interrelated PhD-projects that are part of a large nationwide consortium of researchers and practitioners.

• You are an enthusiastic and highly motivated researcher with strong skills in literature research, study design, participant recruitment, data collection and analysis, data preparation and management
• You hold a MSc degree in social sciences (e.g., Psychology, Communication Sciences, Sociology, Educational Sciences) preferably in relation to media, inequality and developmental science
• You have proven skills in mixed methods research
• You enjoy working in multidisciplinary teams
• You are creative, dedicated and a proven team-player
• You are interested in participating in educational activities (for practice)
• You are proficient in Dutch and in English (oral and written)

• As a PhD student at UT, you will be appointed to a full-time position for five years (0,8fte), with a qualifier in the first year, within a very stimulating and exciting scientific environment
• The University offers a dynamic ecosystem with enthusiastic colleagues
• Your salary and associated conditions are in accordance with the collective labour agreement for Dutch universities (CAO-NU)
• You will receive a gross monthly salary ranging from € 2.541,- (first year) to € 3.247,- (fourth year)
• There are excellent benefits including a holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary, an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%, and a solid pension scheme
• A family-friendly institution that offers parental leave (both paid and unpaid)
• You will have a training programme as part of the Twente Graduate School where you and your supervisors will determine a plan for a suitable education and supervision
• We encourage a high degree of responsibility and independence, while collaborating with close colleagues, researchers and other staff

The Technology of Human and Institutional Behavior department

The HIB-department is one of four departments at the Behavioural, Management, and Social sciences faculty. The department is committed to design, evaluation, and implementation of and teaching about comprehensive technology-based solutions supporting people in behavior that promotes their health, safety, resilience, connectedness, and joy. The HIB-department comprises sections of Communication Science; Psychology, Health & Technology; Psychology of Conflict, Risk and Safety; and Public Administration. You will be working in the section Communication Science.