Youth Wellbeing in a Technology Rich World

Edited by Carrie James and Mizuko Ito

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for all the contributors to the essays that make up this collection.  The insights and recommendations shared across these essays will add so much value to future research, design, and public conversations. Jenna Abrams at the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine was a crucial contributor to this volume. We’re so thankful for her expert editorial work, thoughtful correspondence with authors, and coordination of all of the details. We thank Susan Crown Exchange for their support for this project.  

The open review period for this collection closes on Monday, September 30, 2024.

The relationship between youth wellbeing and technology use is a growing arena of concern - and contention. The adolescent mental health crisis has amplified the debate to a fever pitch. While beguiling in its simplicity,  the relationship between technology use and wellbeing can’t be reduced to the question of whether social media is good or bad. The stressors that youth face span online and offline contexts and include poverty, schooling pressures, climate anxiety, the opioid epidemic, harassment, and political polarization. Specific forms of digital content and online engagement can amplify these stressors as well as mitigate them. Recognizing the diversity of youth experience and identifying how varied technologies are taken up in specific activities and contexts are crucial starting points for asking more better informed questions and devising effective solutions. This essay collection offers essential research insights, critical perspectives, and design frameworks to inform a more evidence-based, grounded, and productive public debate.  

This volume came together as part of an effort to shift the conversation about youth, tech, and wellbeing in productive directions, to move beyond the tired, unproductive finger-pointing at tech and fixation on sweeping, one-size-fits-all solutions that often do more harm than good. Our hope is that the collection will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars, designers, educators and other practitioners, and policy makers concerned about youth wellbeing in a technology-rich world. The essays are grounded in literature and evidence, but the authors have strived for a writing style and tone that is accessible to non specialists in contributors’ fields of expertise. 

Our invitation and request: We are posting this collection as a work-in-progress in order to invite public review and comments from colleagues and stakeholders who are invested in youth wellbeing as they grow up with smartphones, social media, gaming spaces, and other digital technologies. These are issues that are top of mind for many young people, caregivers, educators, policy makers, journalists, clinicians, and researchers, and we welcome a diversity of perspectives and expertise in response to this work. 

We invite you to read and share reactions and feedback to the collection in its draft form before Monday, September 30, 2024. As you do so, we request that you engage in authentic, respectful, and constructive ways. We particularly welcome actionable, concrete, and candid feedback for the editors and authors to strengthen individual essays and the overall collection.