Inspired by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James’ book Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing), exploring the intersection of contemporary technologies with the social, emotional, and civic lives of adolescents and emerging adults, I led a four-day design sprint exploring the question:
I defined ambitious research goals to better understanding how adolescents are socializing on and offline, what methods adolescent development specialists use to teach communication skills to teens, and how tech can be used to support healthy social emotional development.
I coordinated materials and scheduled interviews with teens, adolescent development experts, and product experts in adolescent and emerging adult mental health.
I led workshops to ideate research questions, identify opportunity areas, synthesize findings, and generate solutions.
I created wireframes and a preliminary prototype for our chosen solution, ran testing sessions, and presented our pitch to the larger fellowship community.
Slights on social media, getting kicked out of a group chat with friends, online gossip pages, and beyond impact young people’s lives beyond the screen. These interactions are particularly impactful at this age, where, developmentally, teens are extra sensitive to peer validation and rejection.
There is a misconception among many adults that young people are less social because of the time spent on their devices. However, teens today are more hyperconnected than any generation prior. Often, when adults pick up on what is happening in their children’s social lives, it is too late. Digital conversations become real-life fights, sometimes with no context to the adults in their lives.
On Monday, I organized articles on adolescent mental health, social and emotional skill building, and digital literacy to guide a conversation on healthy communication for teens in a hybrid world.
I coordinated activities with the sprint team to ideate questions and group them into the following themes and scheduled interviews with three groups:
To explore the evolving landscape of teenage social interactions, both online and offline, and delve into the dynamics of their relationships, communication during difficulties, and overarching challenges faced by teens in the contemporary world.
To understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the social-emotional development of young individuals, the involvement of social workers in supporting teen mental health, the overarching challenges faced by teens today, and the potential integration of technology to enhance or expand the reach of existing social work interventions.
To understand the process of creating, validating, and responsibly implementing technology solutions for mental health specifically tailored for individuals under the age of 18. These conversations encompassed considerations such as research validation, ethical data collection and storage, and methodologies for measuring the impact of such solutions.
On Wednesday, we synthesized our research by first affinity mapping key insights from our collective interviews. We then collaborated with another sprint team exploring teen mental health and combined our research findings. The biggest insight from our mutual research was:
We discussed the various reasons teens weren't communicating with adults in their lives. Below are the top three we uncovered:
Developmentally teens are in the process of developing their adult identities and asserting independence. They want to solve their problems on their own.
Teens are still learning how to identify and communicate their emotions and needs. Sometimes, they just don't have the words.
Cultural and age differences cause communication barriers between adolescents and well-meaning adults. Teens often go to friends for advice on social interactions.
Self-Guided Emotional Assessment Tools
Preventative Tools
Tools Facilitating Peer-to-Peer Connection
Who are you talking to?
What are you talking to them about?
How are you feeling?
What do you need?
Where should you communicate this need?
Resources to support the child to communicate their needs effectively including: A call with a coach, conversational scripts, and a collection of virtual resources related to their scenario.
Due to the condensed nature of the sprint, we had little time to test. However, we were able to share the screens with a few interview participants on Thursday. The idea received the following positive feedback as interviewees shared potential use cases with our team.
“When you’re dealing with a conflict you have a lot of thoughts running through your mind of what do I say, what do I do? [This app would] help me format my thoughts and figure out the best thing to do. I’m very indecisive.” - Rising 8th grader
A social worker emphasized the need for a tool like this due to the rapid deterioration of social interactions in schools. She shared an anecdote where kids, initially seeming to get along well in school, had an argument that escalated in a group chat outside school hours. When the kids returned to school, a physical fight immediately broke out.
With smartphones facilitating various modes of communication, challenging conversations often escalate in virtual spaces, hindering timely adult interventions. Providing real-time support can empower young people to develop healthier communication skills in their daily lives.
Studies on the impact of multimedia communicative technologies on adolescents are as emergent as the technologies themselves. There is exciting research happening in the space. Due to the newness and ethereal nature of online communication mediums, there is ample opportunity for interdisciplinary teams of child development specialists and technologists to work together to build products that help young people navigate fast-paced hybrid worlds.
Common Sense Media's K–12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum provides resources for adults supporting young people engage online in healthier ways. The more that this learning can be personalized to the diverse experiences of young people, the more impactful it can be.
Additionally, in the last day of our sprint, the JED Foundation published the report “Can The Metaverse Be Good For Youth Mental Health?” highlighting online spaces’ complex impact on youth. The more that we learn about both the positive and negative impacts "the Metaverse" has on youth, the more we can build products that amplify the positives and reduce harm.
Building an autonomous B2C startup centering on teen mental health is challenging from a funding perspective. Due to the difficulty of measuring success, proving impact is difficult. Conversations centering on the need for impact metrics for mental health digital products mimic the debates on the efficacy of social-emotional education on a school level. “Is this worth our time/money?” “How can you prove that this intervention directly improved outcomes?”
Platforms that are based in clinical research have more likelihood of success, adding a level of credibility and making them trustworthy to potential buyers.
While designing the product, we negotiated options around best ways to share communication tools and techniques with teens. Should we use pre-written scripts created by mental health professionals? Should we connect teens with a live trained adult to role play scenarios in their lives? Should we use AI to generate scripts for teens based on their unique situations?
We decided that the first two were worth pursuing because it was important to us that our platform was culturally responsive. When Sarita asked ChatGPT to generate a story like her Indian dad, it came back riddled with stereotypes and biases. AI hasn't yet evolved to understand the nuances of different cultural groups and the context intergenerational communication breakdowns.
Since AI hasn't yet evolved to understand the nuances of different cultural groups and the context influencing intergenerational communication breakdowns, we decided to keep that part of our tech-enabled solution, human. A former Blue Ridge Labs venture, OkaySo, has an inspiring model that we believed could solve our problem. A former Blue Ridge Labs venture, OkaySo, has an inspiring model that we believed could solve our problem.
In a future iteration of Oof! we discussed connecting teens with a team of trusted, trained adults, who can role-play conversations in a safe environment to help teens practice identifying and communicating their needs, resulting in healthier relationships.
Additionally, the app would provide resources to help teens identify which medium of communication (text, phone, in-person, etc.) is best for the type of conversation they are trying to have.