Youths’ involvement in organized crime is worrisome, as it not only disrupts a healthy development, but also aggravates youths’ criminal behavior, and makes it harder to return to living a crime-free life. Social ties play an import role in the way youths get and stay involved in organized crime, that is why interventions are needed that target the youth, but also the youth’s social environment. We examine hotspots and mechanisms underlying organized crime involvement and use the knowledge gained to improve and implement intervention strategies. This way, the proposed project directly contributes to effectively decreasing youths’ involvement in organized crime.

Many adolescents have experienced cyberhate, as witnesses, victims and/or perpetrators. This has profound negative effects on their wellbeing, and potentially lead to acts of violence and social fragmentation. This project examines who is vulnerable to cyberhate victimization and perpetration (Study 1), how it develops (Study 2), under what circumstances cyberhate becomes more likely (Study 3), and what can be done about it in schools (Study 4). The projects results will generate important new knowledge on the understudied topic of cyberhate, which can help generate solutions for preventing and solving this global issue.

Social media are purposely designed to keep young users hooked, often making them spend more time online than they actually want. To tackle this issue, we need theoretical insights and empirical evidence on the connection between how these platforms are designed and the problem of overuse. This project aims to pinpoint effective design elements that help teens take back control of their social media use.

In recent times, more parents are aiming to raise their children in a gender-neutral way. But what exactly does gender-neutral parenting involve? And how can we assess variations among parents in how they approach gender-neutral parenting? This study seeks to address these questions by comprehensively reviewing and synthesising existing scientific research on the subject. The insights gained will then inform the creation of a new questionnaire, developed collaboratively with parents, to measure gender-neutral parenting practices and in future studies examine its impact on child and adolescent development. A first validation of the new measure is also conducted.