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On Friday 20 June, Gonneke Stevens, professor of Adolescent Health & Wellbeing, will hold her inaugural lecture. With her Plea for the Complex Story, she responds to the common tendency to attribute the declining mental health of youth to one factor, such as social media. Stevens: "That tendency leads to overly simple solutions, which do not contribute sufficiently to reducing the problem."

In her inaugural lecture, Stevens will show that the cause of declining mental health among young people can be traced back to several societal developments, which moreover reinforce each other: the corona crisis, performance pressure, social media, overinterpretation of mental problems, worries about crises in the world and the way parents raise their children. She also demonstrates how the effects of social developments can play out completely differently for different groups of young people, especially those from affluent and less affluent families. "As professor of Adolescent Health & Wellbeing, I want to contribute to making the complex story more concrete, because that is crucial for addressing the challenges of our youth."

Gonneke Stevens' inaugural lecture can be followed via from 16:15 on Friday afternoon, 20 June.