Social Media & Youth Mental Health Webinar Series

This video was recorded from the live webinar on October 23, 2025.

Social Media & Youth Mental Health
Psychological Damage Assessments

In this webinar, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Staci Weiner discusses the impact of social media on mental health in children and adolescents, and the process used to assess psychological damages for cases in litigation. This session will also focus on the role of social media in cases of inappropriate relationships between adults and minors from the perspective of psychological damages.

Transcript Excerpt

So what I do is I do a comprehensive clinical evaluation, and that establishes the history of that individual. We look at documents, that could be school records, it could be psychological evaluations, mental health history, treatment records, written police reports, behavior records, anything that will help me understand what is this person like? What was this person like prior to this relationship or this traumatic event?

Who was this person? And did they make friends easily? What was their affect like? Were they a happy person? Were they social? What, you know, did they get along with others?

Did they function? How did they do academically or in their work? So I'm looking at all of those factors prior to this event and also after the event, and understanding what their functioning level is currently, and even just after the event.

And obviously, of course, we do a document review. We do that clinical interview piece, and that could look different on a case by case basis. It depends on what the situation is. If we're looking at a situation with a child or adolescent, I could have an interview with them if it's appropriate and or I can have an interview with a family member because obviously family members parents really understand, they're with the child every day. They understand how that child was impacted and they're able to express usually any changes that they see in that child after the traumatic event.

And of course, we do standardized psychological assessments to measure objectively their social emotional functioning. Do they have anxiety or depression or, any even dissociative behaviors. And looking at the clinical symptoms of trauma, do they have hypervigilance? Are they afraid? They have a lot of fear, whereas maybe they didn't have fear in the past. Are they isolating themselves? Are they afraid to get into relationships, whereas in the past, they trusted people? So there are a whole host of questions that I'm asking myself as a clinician when I'm doing a clinical interview and an assessment.

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In order for damages to be assessed, there has to be a life impact, a disruption to their current functioning, to their daily functioning. So in terms of work or school or their relationships or their quality of life, so often I see quality of life being a factor because they're so fearful, of even just sometimes even going out of their house or of making a friendship or of going to school or whatever it is that's happening, and it it just impacts them every single day at times. Like I said, it's a spectrum, so it doesn't have to impact them every single day. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. 

Their symptoms may require therapy, medication, accommodations at school or at work. So that's something that I do is to help them understand what their current symptoms are and how we can help them.

Featuring

Staci B. Weiner, Psy.D., APIT

Psychologist

Dr. Staci Weiner is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified school psychologist with 20+ years of experience. Dr. Weiner's forensic casework often involves assessing the impact of a… read more.