We are in the midst of a public reckoning about the relationship between technology and youth well-being. Concerns about harmful influences of social media have accelerated with the growth of AI-powered apps. Following growing momentum to ban cell phones in schools, Australia became the first country to rush to legislate a national social media ban in 2024. More recently, in two bellwether U.S. cases, juries ruled in favor of young people who sued Meta and Google for harms related to their mental health. This high-stakes environment demands rigorous, research-grounded frameworks and understandings of youth experience.
We have collaborated for over two decades in investigating young people’s engagement with digital technologies. In response to emerging concerns over well-being, we synthesized research on social media and youth well-being, established the Center for Digital Thriving, and tapped our networks to curate an edited collection for researchers and thought leaders. We are delighted to announce the publication of this collection, initially shared online as a work in progress, at a timely moment when our field is in the national and international spotlight. Youth Well-Being by Design: Integrating Research, Critical Perspectives, and Innovation offers a comprehensive and grounded accounting of evidence, theory, and design approaches, authored by top scholars and innovative practitioners.
Below, we describe how the volume offers a research-based alternative to the current dominant narrative and policy approach, and share a preview of the contents.
The Problem with Magical Thinking
The energy now focused on limiting access to technology stems from well-intentioned concerns about the rise of mental health problems among youth. Unfortunately, it rests on flawed assumptions that are challenged by the research consensus represented in this collection. The prevailing policy approach – exemplified by cellphone bans and sweeping age-based restrictions on platform access – rests on an implicit model of technology as something external to society: a contaminant that can be identified, isolated, and removed. It rests on hopeful but magical thinking that if a device or platform can be eliminated, social and psychological problems such as bullying, depression, or social disconnection will be solved.
This model is beguiling in its simplicity, but it draws attention away from the true drivers of stress and disconnection in young people’s lives – including but not limited to poverty, racism, lack of supportive peer and caregiver relationships, climate anxiety, family upheaval, and school achievement pressure. Social media and digital platforms are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives and can amplify both positives and negatives. To treat them as external and extractable misunderstands the nature of the problem. Rather than an external force or contaminant, online communication is now more akin to a circulatory system that provides vital functions but can also become compromised or impaired. The answer to an ailing circulatory system is not amputation, but regenerative treatment and repair.
From Bans to Co-Design
Youth Well-Being by Design offers careful diagnosis through rigorous research, as well as treatment and repair through co-design with young people and adult stakeholders alike. Contributors draw from foundational research in psychology, sociology, education, and cultural studies to understand how new technologies intersect with longstanding research on young people’s well-being. They open the black box of technology to understand specific patterns and features that are both driven by and drive specific behaviors and activities. From there, they dive into policy recommendations and solutions that recognize young people’s diversity and agency in how they shape their own technology use.
Central to the volume is a commitment to design as a critical arena of practice and intervention – one that recognizes complexity and collective responsibility. In contrast to top-down bans, the research and design methodologies in this volume involve diverse stakeholders in shaping and enacting solutions. It recognizes that harms are a result of specific choices that individuals make as well as organizational practices and platform features.
The volume offers both a roadmap for understanding and inspiration for taking action, for academics and professionals working in education, public health, technology design, and policy. It curates the core research that should be, but too often is not guiding the current public debate. Contributors synthesize what we know about the underlying drivers of youth well-being in relation to technology, offering a rigorous empirical foundation and concepts that are accessible but not reductive.
Equally valuable are the methodological frameworks for co-design and frameworks for understanding what design features matter and why. Readers will come away with an understanding of platforms not as monolithically good or bad, but as designed spaces with specific features that can influence healthy and unhealthy engagement. These frameworks are part of an essential toolkit for researchers, educators, policymakers, and technologists who are seeking to shape (rather than simply ban) technology to support youth well-being.
Overview of the Volume
The volume is organized according to three forms of research and design practice.
RESEARCH: Understanding Young People’s Experiences with Digital Technology includes essays focused on empirical research on young people’s engagement with digital media. The section starts with an essay by Jenny Radesky on Digital Well-Being in Early Childhood. Sophia Choukas-Bradley offers an overview and analysis of research on adolescents and the relationship between social media use and body image. The essay by Bradley Kerr and colleagues unpacks the implications of using different kinds of social media use measures for our understanding of the relationship between adolescent mental health and well-being. Complementing the essays in this section focused on the field of psychology, Vikki Katz and Luna Laliberte offer a qualitative, sociocultural look at college student experiences with technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
CRITIQUE: Dismantling the Default Setting includes essays with a critical analytic perspective that diagnose prevalent design biases and offer alternatives. Tiera Tanksley applies a critical race approach to tech design and offers a vision for empowering Black youth to (re)design technologies in abolitionist directions. Cherise McBride and Earl Aguilera take on ed tech design, distilling humanizing principles to guide both the design of technologies and their use in educational contexts. In their essay, Monica Clark and colleagues highlight humanizing collegial pedagogies that support young journalists’ reporting on, with, and for well-being. Finally, taking a developmental lens, Stephanie Reich and colleagues argue against one-size-fits-all design and for approaches to defaults that meet youth where they are and lend them more control over their digital experiences.
DESIGN: Co-Developing Solutions with Young People focuses on efforts to design technologies, stories, and educational programs that grow from the assets, wisdom, culture, and perspectives of diverse young people. In their essay, Katie Salen Tekinbaş and colleagues describe design features of “care(full)” online communities created by and for youth. In Emily Weinstein and colleagues’ account, teens’ perspectives, pain points, and wisdom directly inform the design of interventions to bolster their well-being as they engage with social media apps. Young people’s experiences with cruel relational dynamics – both offline and online – inform Tijana Milosevic and colleagues’ efforts to design effective anti-cyberbullying interventions. Similarly, in Linda Charmararan and colleagues’ essay on action research in the context of a youth advisory board, youth expertise is centered toward the design of relevant digital well-being interventions.
Please join us in spreading the word about this new collection.
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– Mimi Ito and Carrie James
