The surgeon general has issued a national warning around the use of social media by children and adolescents.
Features on these social media platforms are designed to nudge children into risky behaviors, and 75 percent of them use AI to recommend children’s profiles to strangers and potential predators. So how are we addressing it?
In the spring of 2023, the d.school, GoodforMEdia and the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing brought together youth activists, social media companies, families and policy experts to explore the issues around social media and the mental health of young people all over the country.
An event on social media and youth mental health
With the passage of the California Age Appropriate Design Code bill in 2022, and the flurry of other bills recently being proposed across the country, the regulation of the potential harms of social media on youth became a pressing topic. Together with the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing’s GoodforMEdia team, we planned an event that could make space for youth voices to weigh in on the next steps needed to put these laws into practice in ways that are supportive of young people’s wellbeing and autonomy.
This youth-centered event set out to offer hands-on workshops and interactive activities that would encourage youth to take the lead in critiquing and creating policies and design choices that directly affect them. The overall goals were to 1) directly engage youth in the policy and design decisions that impact them on a daily basis, 2) pause to gather and share their innate wisdom on this issue, and 3) co-create stimulating exercises that could easily be replicated and incorporated in to coursework across the University or future events in order to embed principles of ethical design into future technologies.
Our panel of experts: what we heard
The evening’s panel spanned a range of issues that sparked questions around youth agency on social media. We thought together about whether technology companies were responsible for, and had enough guardrails in place around, mental health.
“I felt so many emotions as a young person at the table and being so deeply involved in the conversation around social media’s impact on youth mental health. There is no lack of irony that a topic so heavily centered on young people’s well-being has excluded youth for so long and I am grateful to be part of the shift towards greater inclusivity of youth voice. It meant so much to me to not just represent my experience as a young person but also as a minority and child of immigrants, which are other underrepresented groups disproportionately impacted by social media dis/misinformation. I am incredibly grateful to my fellow panelists and the community that showed up–it’s an incredible opportunity to be invited to share my insights but it was just as much of a privilege to learn from other people and their experiences.”—Khoa-Nathan
A space to speak up: what we shared
The Youth Voices testimonial space was specifically curated for young people who attended the event to ensure there was a safe environment for them to share their ideas through video recording, written feedback, and conversations with peers in the space.
Thought-provoking prompts were posted around the space to help stimulate conversations around social media design and policy. Young people expressed enthusiasm in having a collaborative space to think about social media design ideas with other passionate youth who have experienced the complex effects of social media use on their mental health. They also appreciated learning about aspects of current social media design and design frameworks (such as speculative design). One major topic of discussion was how youth voices are underrepresented in the process of designing social media platforms and legislation. Together, youth brainstormed ways to amplify their voices via youth social media advisory councils, focus groups, and testimonials. Young people shared their excitement about having a unique space at the d.school event to learn about how they can shape social media design alongside peers, Stanford professors, and industry professionals.
From policy to practical action: what we created
At the event we led two workshops to help participants put the “act” in “action.”
WORKSHOP: DESIGN CODE
Laws and policies can be passed by federal and local government, but operationalizing them into design solutions and social media platforms is an entirely different challenge. Through this design exercise, participants start by brainstorming and reflecting on three different principles from the California Age Appropriate Design Code (ex. restrict data collection and profiling of children), debrief in groups to discuss the principles (and where they collectively stand around their values), and design new features in social media platforms to represent these principles.
We started by asking participants to think broadly about their stance on the value tensions relevant to child protection policy. For example, we prompted “At what age should advertisers be able to sell a child’s data to advertisers.” Participants aligned themselves and shared with the group. By rooting the conversations in personal belief, we thought people would be less likely to have policy speak for them and, instead, define their own viewpoint.
We then brought the module back to tangible policy by laying out the California Age Appropriate Design Act and where it stands from a values perspective.
With knowledge of values and policy restrictions, we prompted participants to go into groups and choose a social media app you have in common (note: our event hosted a range of ages). We asked them in groups to come up with one well-thought-out design change they would make to the platform that would better align it with the values discussed previously.
By starting our conversation macro and ending it with a single design change, we allowed participants to experience the process of encoding values in policy and design.
Want to run your own design session around the California Age Appropriate Design Code or another policy? Here are our resources that you can print and remix.
WORKSHOP: FUTURES WHEEL
The futures wheel is a method to visually imagine the consequences of a central trend event, be they first, second, third order consequences or beyond. We had students start with one of these three events:
- New law requires social media companies to send weekly reports to parents.
- Congress passes a law making it illegal for advertisers to sell children’s data.
- A new law makes social media use allowable at the age of 5.
They used the futures wheel to imagine the consequences of these laws. Some were obvious, some surprising.
Credits
Emma Tyree Charity and Helen Georgina Moore, with support from Ariam Mogos
LICENSE: CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL