Wilson researches the role fathers can play in promoting healthy cognitive development in adolescent boys.
Annie Wilson had a successful career in finance before she decided to turn to psychology. After the 2008 financial crisis, which marked a “major turning point” in his life, Wilson returned to college to earn his third degree – a bachelor’s in psychology. He previously held a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in business studies.
Wilson has committed himself fully to the work of psychology in recent years, and is currently working on his doctoral research on the mental development of adolescent boys supported by the Craig Dobbin Doctoral Scholarship in Mental Health supported by the University College Dublin (UCD) Foundation.
What inspired you to become a researcher?
For me, research is the foundation upon which all reliable mental processes are built. Without it, clinical decisions would be based on experience, tradition, or anecdote rather than evidence.
In child and adolescent psychology in particular, research has been revolutionary. It has developed early interventions that have better long-term outcomes, identifying risk and protective factors for mental health problems.
I have always wanted to work with children and young people. The latest movement in the internet world got me thinking about how this will play out in society as children grow into adulthood.
Can you tell us about the research you are currently working on?
I even became interested in the world of the internet, and how what children and teenagers consume online is changing the way they interact with their peers.
As I began to look at this place, I was especially attracted to the boys. The literature is beginning to provide evidence about the strong disconnect between boys’ online world and their emotional lives.
I was curious to know what the world would look like 10 years from now to young boys and how what they see will change their behavior and basic beliefs. It began to ask urgent questions about identity formation, mental health, and help-seeking behavior.
Given boys who are already underutilizing mental health services, and the manosphere’s stories of risk as weakness, I wondered if long-term interventions and relationships could move the needle?
After many discussions with my supervisors and my RSP (Research Studies Panel), Gordon Harold, Brian O’Donohue and Marina Everri, it got me thinking about where the fathers are in this equation. Could they be part of the solution?
This developed my research question for my scoping review which is, what is known in the existing literature about the relationship between father-son attachment and sons’ digital behavior, the mediating effect of emotion regulation and what gaps exist in understanding this relationship as a basis for developing targeted relationship interventions?
In your opinion, why is your research important?
I believe it is important how the relationship will develop in the coming years. We may move away from what is done equally to both men and women in western society.
According to the CyberSafeKids survey by 2024, 99pc of 12-14 year olds have their own smart devices. 38pc have experienced cyberbullying. 61pc have unrestricted access.
There are many aspects to this, social comparison. Exposure to well-made images [has been] related to body dissatisfaction and depressive symptoms. Teachers are concerned about harmful/toxic content in student feeds.
We need to start looking at long-term solutions to problematic social media use. As we wait to see how countries like Australia proceed with social media bans, we need to look at other solutions.
It cannot be reformed with a single intervention, we need a number of ways to deal with the change we have in young boys in terms of content and their habits. I wonder if relationship relationships, hold the key to this need?
What commercial applications do you foresee for your research?
At the moment, I don’t see if there is any commercial application in the current study. However, that doesn’t mean it won’t have real-world value.
I see it playing an important role in shaping the way we design digital literacy programs, the kind that help young people, especially boys, develop healthy relationships with technology.
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, the research points to something more thoughtful – building skills gradually, layer by layer, in a way that really sticks.
That kind of evidence-based framework can be a real help to schools, parent organizations, and anyone developing resources in this space.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a researcher in your field?
There are many challenges in this area, to get a true picture of how much the behavior of young men has changed.
How to understand in real time, how the use of TikToks, reels, porn images and videos and how that will shape their future relationship and how they present themselves to the world as an adult.
It’s nuances and we study children and their attachment to their parents. It will be difficult to find much research, I will rely more on qualitative findings through interviews with focus groups. We need to ensure that we protect everyone who takes part in research so that they feel heard and understood.
Are there any common misconceptions about this area of research? How would you talk to them?
There are many common misconceptions in father-son attachment research. The main two are that fathers play an important role in the development of young people. This is a myth.
Research contradicts this, father involvement is independently associated with better mental health outcomes, stronger emotion regulation, and less risky behavior in adolescent boys, more so than mother’s influence.
Another misconception is that boys do not need an emotional connection with their father. Cultural narratives about masculinity suggest that boys need discipline and challenge from fathers rather than emotional intimacy.
In fact, adolescent boys with emotionally available fathers show greater psychological resilience, better peer relationships, and are more likely to seek help when struggling.
We hope by looking at the attachment of fathers and sons, and investigating whether modeling about rupture and repair can help regulate emotions, and may protect boys from problematic social media use.
We want to develop interventions that put fathers and sons at the heart of the process. That we can develop a relationship intervention, which is a stable and basic framework for fathers to use.
What are some of the research areas you would like to see addressed in the coming years?
Looking ahead, we would like to see research that really reaches people, in the places where families really live: schools, community groups, and youth services.
Another area we are passionate about is finding better ways to support boys and their fathers in navigating the digital world. Screen time and internet culture are shaping the way young men think, behave, and relate to others and we still don’t have enough practical, real-world tools to deal with that.
We would like to explore how father-son programs can be woven into existing settings, whether it is a school, a local sports club, or mental health services such as CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) and so that support is available to families who need it most, without requiring a new program to be built from scratch. That kind of collaborative, scalable approach feels especially important in a country like Ireland, where mental health services are already stretched thin.
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