The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the NIH is reissuing funding opportunity RFA-MH-25-206 for short-term R21 grants focused on the bidirectional relationship between adolescent social media use and mental health. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) aims to foster exploratory and high-risk studies that examine both the impacts of social media on adolescent mental health and how adolescents' mental health may influence their social media engagement. It encourages applications without preliminary data but requires a solid theoretical basis and methodological rigor. This NOFO differs from its companion R01 opportunity (RFA-MH-25-205) by offering a shorter funding period for higher-risk, preliminary research that investigates the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of social-media-based interventions and services.

The research scope targets adolescents aged 10-20, a period marked by extensive neurodevelopmental changes, social re-orientation, and heightened susceptibility to mental health conditions. Research should go beyond basic time-spent metrics on social media and explore more nuanced aspects, such as content exposure, interaction modes, and cross-platform behavior. Methods may include passive data collection (e.g., digital traces, GPS, or language analysis), as these data points provide a richer context for understanding adolescent interactions with social media. Studies are encouraged to involve adolescents with varying mental health backgrounds, including those with current or historical diagnoses (e.g., ADHD, depression, eating disorders), to examine social media's differential impacts.

Research under this NOFO should address critical social determinants and identify both individual and contextual risk and resilience factors. Priority areas include understanding how social media behavior affects or reflects adolescent psychopathology, identifying neurobiological and psychological factors as intervention targets, examining social media's role in fostering supportive or harmful environments, and assessing how parental and peer influences impact mental health outcomes. Additionally, studies on algorithmic exposure to harmful content and its impact on mental health, as well as the effects of social comparison on psychopathology, are encouraged. Projects may also compare digital and in-person interactions and explore emerging technologies like virtual reality and artificial intelligence in the adolescent mental health context.

In terms of interventions, the NOFO supports projects that leverage social media as a tool for identifying at-risk youth, encouraging mental health service engagement, and delivering scalable preventive or therapeutic interventions. These could include real-time interventions for youth exposed to negative content, digital citizenship programs, app-based tools for managing social media use, and methods to enhance the delivery of evidence-based care. Emphasis is on using human-centered design principles to ensure interventions are feasible, sustainable, and grounded in the needs of end users, including adolescents and their families.

The R21 funding structure provides up to $275,000 for direct costs over two years, with no more than $200,000 in any single year. This funding is intended to support pilot studies that lay the groundwork for more comprehensive research in future projects. Given the R21 grant’s exploratory nature, applications should focus on establishing the feasibility and preliminary utility of interventions rather than long-term efficacy. Applicants are also advised to align their projects with the NIMH experimental therapeutics approach, including hypotheses about the mechanisms driving intervention effectiveness and corresponding data collection and analytic plans.

Eligible applicants include higher education institutions, nonprofits, for-profit entities, government agencies, and foreign institutions. Multiple applications are allowed as long as they are scientifically distinct. Applicant institutions must complete required registrations, including SAM, eRA Commons, and Grants.gov, prior to submission. Applications will be due on January 28, 2025, and October 20, 2025, with letters of intent recommended 30 days before submission. The maximum project period is two years, and applications will not be accepted after the deadline.

This NOFO strongly encourages applications that consider youth mental health disparities, focusing on underserved groups, including rural, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities. Researchers are encouraged to contact NIMH program staff to ensure alignment with NOFO goals and discuss application requirements. Full application instructions, including budget details and submission guidelines, must be followed precisely, and updated application forms (FORMS-I) will be available prior to the earliest submission date.