Science Programme 2026 Funding Round – Guidance

The information is provided as a guide for drafting your research proposal.

Scientific Remit, Definitions and Expectations

We are interested in research on the effects of usage of and exposure to digital technologies on brain development and function (including physiological responses), social behaviour and interactions, and/or wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. An application does NOT need to address all aspects of this range of interest.
Digital technology, for the purpose of this funding call, means social media, online gaming and/or AI chatbots.
Besides usage for social or entertainment purposes, proposals may also investigate the informational use of digital technology and its effects. Exemplary areas include news consumption or the exposure to mis- and disinformation.
The research should focus on toddlers, children, adolescence and/or young adults within the age range of 2-24 years old. We are using this broad range so the full human developmental timeframe is covered.
Study designs should attempt to understand causal pathways and directions.
We encourage randomised approaches to studying the effects of the use of digital technologies on the brain, mind, physiological responses, and behaviour of children and young people. This may include the use of randomised controlled trials (RCT) methodology.
We encourage the use of existing population (epidemiological) cohorts and data sets. We also encourage precision and deep-dive studies within these existing cohorts and data sets.
We will consider mechanistic studies of smaller, well-defined participant groups.
Research involving diverse cohorts and participant groups is welcomed.
Given the scarcity of longitudinal evidence, we encourage work that involves follow-up and repeated observations. This can help address directionality, changes over time and sensitive windows of vulnerability.
Work can look at a regular use as well as problematic or addictive use. It is possible to study at-risk populations.
Projects do not need to exclusively focus on potential harms. Projects are also welcome to study potential beneficial effects of digital technology use.
Public And Community Involvement, Engagement And Participation (PCIEP): Proposals are expected to involve and engage young people (children, adolescents and/or young adults) and any other relevant stakeholders (parents, teachers, etc) in the study design and during the delivery of the proposal.
We are keen to support multi-disciplinary work to help advance the research and the field of knowledge. Applications are welcome from researchers from all relevant fields, which may include but is not limited to neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, public health, computer science, social science, economics. We welcome applicants with training in one or more of these or related disciplines.
We want to support the training of the next generation of exceptional scientists in this rapidly evolving field.
Studies should produce new knowledge that contributes to the understanding of the occurrence, distribution, causes, mechanisms and impacts (e.g. social, behavioural, physiological, health and well-being, economic) of the effects of the usage of digital technology on children, adolescents and young adults.

Examples of Research We Want To Support

At the very high level, we have identified various scientific areas and approaches that are of particular interest to the Foundation:

Pathways and mechanisms of the effects of the usage of or exposure to digital technology on brain development and function, social interactions and behaviour, and well-being and mental health. Please note, an application does NOT need to address all aspects of this range of interest.
The effects of digital technology on key processes such as arousal, attention, learning, reward system, resilience, sleep.
How different developmental time windows (childhood, adolescence, early adulthood) might involve different development processes that can give rise to different susceptibilities.
Experimental studies and RCTs on the effects of limiting exposure to digital tech, and disconnecting from or banning devices.
How the effects of digital tech on children and young people differ by social and demographic factors. This would look at how factors such as age, gender, income, education, ethnicity, family situation, and location, influence behaviours, health, and lifestyles for individuals and groups.
Studies looking at neurobiological mechanistic pathways and susceptibilities.
Work that studies exposure to digital tech in a way that is relevant at the public health, societal and/or political level.
Developing and using new tools for more accurately and objectively measuring exposure (i.e. usage information) for different forms of digital tech and environments to reduce bias and improve precision to look at causal pathways and relationships. This may include collecting information about specific activities, nature of the content and the type of engagement.
Work that also involves data-sharing partnerships with digital tech companies to have access to better data, in which case there need to be clear statements about data security, ongoing data access arrangements, Intellectual Property and publication policy.
Using the latest methods, such as machine learning/AI to help analyse data to make better inferences/predictions that will generalise. If proposing to use machine learning/AI please be specific about which applications/algorithms will be employed and how they will benefit the analyses.

Research Involving Young Children and Adolescents

Given the potential impact of digital technology on early development, the age remit for the 2026 funding call has been expanded to include toddlers (from 2 years) and young children.

Some relevant exposures and moderators of use of digital technology by children that could be considered include:

General parenting practices and parent-child relationship (e.g., autonomy granting, sensitivity, trust, monitoring)

Screen- or tech-specific parenting (limit setting, parents’ own screen use/modelling, involvement)

Peer relations: online and offline, social integration, loneliness

To be noted: as social context may moderate the effect of technology use, specific attention should be paid to the statistical power to detect such interaction effects.

Research Involving Chatbots

If your proposed research involves investigating AI (such as generative AI or chatbot use for information, companion/character AI, AI chatbot toys for 2–6-year-olds, etc), some relevant points, in no particular order, that could be considered are:

Descriptive information: demographic differences in frequency of use (especially age and gender); AI attachment, psychosis, frequency, etc; psychological correlates; AI literacy

Relationship affordances: quality of relationships compared to human relationships; associations with prior psychopathology; compensatory functions among people experiencing social stress/exclusion; interactions with AI chatbots as addition to or replacement for human interaction

Social neural network activation: chatbot vs human relationships; across different chatbot types; changes in activation or connectivity across age and with extent of chatbot use

Harmful stimuli: encouragement of aggressive or suicidal behavior; contamination (i.e. seeding mistrust) of relationships with humans; exposure to harmful or inaccurate content

The above list is not exhaustive. Other questions or approaches may be considered.

Many of the points raised above are relevant for social media use and for gaming.

Research Involving Brain Activity

As part of the wider remit of the call, we are interested in the patterns of brain function underlying the impacts of digital technology. We are supportive of the deployment of neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods, appropriate to your research question(s), to understand better the relevant changes in neural activation and/or connectivity. This will provide a greater mechanistic insight that cannot be obtained through self-report or behavioural measures alone.

Relevant methods include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and magnetoencephalography (MEG).

As with all studies in your proposal, any study involving brain activity measurements should be focussed, based on a clear theoretical framework, be well justified, and be a coherent and integrated part of your wider proposal.

Examples of Key Outcomes

Some relevant outcomes that could be considered when drafting your proposal may include:

Typical measures such as mental health, cognitive development and executive functioning

Personal development (e.g., self-esteem, identity)

Effects on educational attainment

Quality and quantity of social relationships online and offline, most notably with peers and family (also as moderators)

Problematic screen use: internet gaming disorder/gaming disorder, social media ‘addiction’

Health behaviours and health-related outcomes (e.g., sleep, drug use, physical activity, obesity)

Civic engagement, online and offline

The above points are provided as a non-exhaustive list.

Guidance on Content and Approach of Your Proposal

When writing your proposal, please take note of the following:

Projects should assess the impact of digital technology on one or more levels. This could be at the level of the individual and any effects of digital technology on the brain, mind or behaviour of children and young people. Projects could also investigate effects on the meso level of social groups or organisations and the macro level of society as a whole.

Studies and designs may look at combinations of and connections between these different levels of analysis, ensuring there is sufficient statistical power to do so.

Projects do not need to exclusively focus on potential harms. Projects are also welcome to study potential beneficial effects of digital technology use.

Importantly, projects do not have to include all dimensions and types of effects. It is better to focus on a few and implement high-quality methods and designs than to look at all possible levels and outcomes without going into depth.

Projects should not exclusively focus on effects on the momentary level (e.g., emotional states), but also include assessments of long-term effects (e.g., on behaviour, attitudes, or other trait-level attributes).

You should provide a clear theoretical framework and comprehensive review of extant theories and literature to underpin your arguments, hypotheses and approaches.

Your proposal should clearly articulate which parts are theory-informed hypothesis testing and which are exploratory and why.

The sample size should be clearly justified. All studies should be sufficiently powered, and take appropriate account of potential confounding effects. A useful reference for different types of sample size justification may be: Lakens, D. (2022). Sample Size Justification. Collabra: Psychology, 8(1), 33267. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.33267. Where appropriate, please include power calculations to help demonstrate scientific rigour, feasibility and ethical use of the resources. We acknowledge that there are studies of particular design where power analysis is difficult or impossible, and would suggest you use other appropriate approaches: existing data, qualitative research, exploratory/data-driven research, proof-of-principle studies with small/hard-to-reach populations.
We recommend you use your scientific network of peers and mentors to get advice and feedback on your proposal before submitting.

Public and Community Involvement, Engagement and Participation (PCIEP)

Applications should demonstrate good practice on how the relevant community (e.g. children and young people, parents, teachers, etc) are involved, engaged, and participating in the proposed research. This is to ensure that people on which the research is focussed have a meaningful role in shaping it.

Effective PCIEP can inform the research questions, co-create the study design, build trust and legitimacy, and improve the quality, relevance and impact of the research outcomes.

Proposals are expected to involve and engage relevant stakeholders such as young people (children, adolescents and/or young adults) in the study design and during the delivery of the proposal.

Common approaches include:

public consultations and ‘town hall’ meetings

community advisory boards, steering groups or focus groups

co-design labs

participatory research

Some key questions to consider, include:

1. Who will you involve and why? (Who is affected, whose voices are most important, and who may be missing)

2. How and when will people be involved? (Methods, timing, and level of influence)

3. What decisions will PCIEP inform or shape? (This includes decision-making power)

4. How will you ensure inclusion and accessibility?

5. How will participants be supported and compensated?

6. How will you feed back to participants and use the new knowledge and the lessons learnt?

You should cost in the relevant PCIEP activities into your grant application.

Work That Is Out Of Scope

We will not support the establishment of new population (epidemiological) cohorts.

We will not consider applications that look at the development and/or deployment of digital technology (to include, but not limited to, web-based programmes, mobile applications, applications of generative AI, chatbots, extended reality, wearable devices or video games) to deliver treatment for mental health problems.

We will not consider applications that look at the development and/or deployment of digital technology to deliver educational learning.

Proposals including randomised controlled trials or similar methodologies should not include the testing of drugs, medical treatments, medical/healthcare/well-being devices, diagnostic procedures, or apps for a mental health intervention.

We will not consider applications on clinical service provision/reorganisation.

Studies should not include work involving animals.
We will not support systematic reviews.

Programme contact

HFF Science Team science@huofamilyfoundation.org