Candice Odgers

Professor Psychological Science UC Irvine

  • Irvine CA

Candice Odgers is a developmental psychologist who studies adolescents’ mental health and development.

Contact

UC Irvine

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Biography

Candice Odgers is a developmental psychologist who studies adolescents’ mental health and development. Her research team tracks adolescents’ daily mental health and device use via smartphones and has built new virtual tools for capturing the neighborhoods where children live and attend school.

Areas of Expertise

Early Adversity
Quantitative Psychology
Social Inequality
Technology and Young People
Digital Inequality
Developmental Psychology
Adolescent Mental Health

Accomplishments

Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest Early Career Award

2015

American Psychological Association

Janet Taylor Spence Award

2012

Association for Psychological Science

Excellence in Mentorship Award

2012

Institute for Clinical and Translational Science

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Education

University of Virginia

PhD

Psychology

2005

Simon Fraser University

MA

2001

Simon Fraser University

BA

1999

Affiliations

  • Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology : Editorial Board
  • Perspectives on Psychological Science : Editorial Board

Media Appearances

AI Is Still an Unknown Country — and Teens Are Its Pioneers

EdSurge  online

2025-06-13

When artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT were first introduced for public use in 2022, Gillian Hayes, vice provost for academic personnel at the University of California, Irvine, remembers how people were setting up rules around AI without a good understanding of what it truly was or how it would be used. … Seeing a need for more and clearer data, Hayes and her colleague Candice L. Odgers, a professor of psychological science and informatics at UC Irvine, launched a national survey to investigate the use of AI among teens, parents and educators. Their goal was to collect a broad set of data that could be used to continuously investigate how uses and attitudes toward AI shift over time.

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Kids having smartphones is likely fine and may even be beneficial (Opinion)

Tampa Bay Times  online

2025-03-25

In a staunch rebuttal to “The Anxious Generation,” University of California, Irvine psychologist Candice Odgers wrote in Nature last spring that the book’s portrayal of digital technology as the main culprit behind poor childhood mental health simply isn’t supported by science. … Economic hardship, abuse, exposure to violence, and systemic discrimination are among the main contributors to childhood mental health disorders cited by researchers, Odgers wrote.

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How COVID Shaped a Resilient Generation of Kids

Scientific American  online

2025-03-11

COVID’s emotional and educational strain on children still lingers, but educators and mental health specialists say they are far from a “lost generation” … “We have to be careful that we look with a little more nuance and skepticism about what the long-run impacts of this really will be and not to write off an entire generation of young people as lost—because they are not,” said Candice Odgers, UC Irvine professor of psychological science.

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Articles

Annual Research Review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: facts, fears, and future directions

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

2020

Adolescents are spending an increasing amount of their time online and connected to each other via digital technologies. Mobile device ownership and social media usage have reached unprecedented levels, and concerns have been raised that this constant connectivity is harming adolescents’ mental health.

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Young Adolescents' Digital Technology Use, Perceived Impairments, and Well-Being in a Representative Sample

The Journal of Pediatrics

2020

To examine the cross-sectional associations between young adolescents' access, use, and perceived impairments related to digital technologies and their academic, psychological, and physical well-being.

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Adolescents’ perceptions of family social status correlate with health and life chances: A twin difference longitudinal cohort study

PNAS

2020

Despite growing up in the same family, siblings do not always see their family’s social standing identically. Eighteen-year-old twins who rated their family as having higher social standing, compared with their cotwin’s rating, had fewer difficulties negotiating the transition to adulthood: they were less likely to be convicted of a crime, not in education, employment, or training, and had fewer mental health problems.

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