Psychology Lecture Series: Dr. Sophia Choukas-Bradley

The psychology department welcomes Dr. Sophia Choukas-Bradley as the second speaker in its 2022-2023 lecture series: The Psychology of Close Relationships.

Dr. Choukas-Bradley will speak on "Camera-Ready: Social Media and Gender Influences on Adolescents’ Interpersonal Relationships and Body Image."

Why do body image concerns and mental health symptoms increase at the transition from childhood to adolescence? Why are girls and LGBTQ+ youth at heightened risk? How can we help all adolescents navigate the complexities of interpersonal relationships and identity development in this new era of social media? These are the questions that drive my program of research. In this talk, I will present results from my recent quantitative and qualitative studies, grounded in developmental–sociocultural theories of adolescent development. I will focus primarily on my research on the role of social media use in adolescents’ body image and mental health concerns, with an emphasis on how social media may exacerbate gendered cultural appearance pressures. I will also discuss current and future directions, highlighting my recent work on transgender adolescents’ body image and mental health disparities, as well as my new line of work on Black young women’s gendered racial identity development, body image, and sexuality. 

Sophia (Sophie) Choukas-Bradley is a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brown University in 2008 and a PhD from UNC Chapel Hill in clinical psychology in 2016. She completed her pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh. After two years at the University of Delaware, Sophie moved back to Pittsburgh this summer with her wife Anna and tuxedo cat Balsam. At Pitt, Sophie is a core faculty member in the Developmental, Clinical, and Social Psychology Programs and the director of the Teen and Young Adult Lab. Her research focuses on interpersonal and sociocultural influences on adolescent mental health, with an emphasis on social media use, body image, gender and sexuality, and LGBTQ+ youth. She has published over 70 academic publications and recently received a Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science. Sophie teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on adolescence, social development, and psychopathology. She is passionate about advocacy related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and she has worked on initiatives related to antiracism and LGBTQ+ issues in psychology for the past decade. You can learn more about Sophie’s work through her Psychology Today blog, Psychology of Adolescence: The Science of Teens, Screens, Gender, and Sexuality.

Free and open to the public.

This event may be used to satisfy the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC206 and PSYC493/494.