In this episode of Into the Digital Future, Dr. Sameer Hinduja, Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, joins hosts Laura Higgins and Jordan Shapiro to explore the complexities of youth behavior in digital spaces, including the concept of digital self-harm. Dr. Hinduja shares his insights on building empathy, resilience, and the role of social media in fostering connection and support. This thought-provoking discussion offers valuable perspectives for parents, educators, and policymakers navigating the challenges of the digital age.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the season. 

 

 

Sameer Hinduja: Hello everyone, I’m Sameer Hinduja, Professor of Criminology at Florida Atlantic University and Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. I also serve as Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University, and I spend my life thinking about youth and technology and how we can promote positive behaviors while also reducing the prevalence of problematic ones. 

Jordan Shapiro: Hi Sameer, so glad to have you here. The thing I really want to talk about—you do this research around digital self-harm. The only place I’ve ever heard anything about it is in your work. I really want to focus on this. And from what I understand, there are times where kids are often their own cyberbullies. They’re bullying themselves. And if I understand it, it’s sometimes as many as 10 percent of teenagers have engaged in this at some point. I’m wondering if, just to get started, can you explain to our listeners, what is digital self-harm? Why are kids doing it? Or why do you think kids are doing it? What do we know about it? Fill us all in.

Sameer Hinduja: Sure. Thanks, Jordan. Thinking about parents, thinking about guardians, obviously there’s a lot of concerns on our minds related to youth technology use.

And we often do think about cyberbullying and maybe inappropriate images. We might think of online predators, etc., digital dating abuse. One of the topics which I feel is very underexplored, even though we’ve had many cases that have made the news and really this should be a priority point for all youth serving adults, whether they’re in government or education or in communities.

And that topic is digital self-harm. And when you think of those words, “digital self-harm,” you understand that digital obviously implies that it’s occurring online, perhaps through messaging, or through social media. The self-harm component might be a little bit complex and interesting because you think about self-harm largely in the traditional sense.

We think about youth who might struggle with certain mental health difficulties and to cope with what they’re going through, they might engage in cutting or burning or one or hitting oneself, and that’s a big part of self-harm. When we move that to the online realm, self-harm actually has to do with the anonymous online posting or sending or sharing of hurtful content about oneself.

Now the key there is it’s anonymous. And so peers, all of your friends on your favorite social media platform, or in your messaging app, they think that you’re being attacked, that you’re being harassed. That you’re being just inundated with hurtful comments by many others, or a select group of others, but actually, it is you.

It is you who is doing it through the use of another screen name or through some sort of anonymous means. And so you might ask, Jordan, why in the world, why in the world would a youth possibly do this? 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah. It sounds like we’re in a teen movie. It sounds like a screwball teenage comedy.

Sameer Hinduja: Yeah. It’s very puzzling, but to be sure whenever we’re thinking about youth and the behaviors that they engage in, we must always approach it with graciousness and patience and a desire to understand because, our youth, they have good hearts and they have good intentions, but they struggle.

I struggled when I was growing up. We all struggled often very deeply as an adolescent with so many pressures and stresses and concerns. And many times, those took on a life of their own. As we look at the research…conducted across thousands and thousands of youth, we find that youth might engage in digital self-harm, or said another way, they might self-cyberbully, or online-harass themselves, as, for example, a call for attention, and so they’re looking to see whether any of their peers might pipe up and defend them, might rally to their aid in that specific moment because ostensibly they’re being targeted. They’re being harassed or being bullied online, so they want to see who perhaps is their true friend and who are going to passively condone it, who might even encourage it and pile on. 

So that could be one reason. Another reason is it’s a cry for help. And without a doubt, Jordan, you’ll agree with me when I say that it’s quite dysfunctional. And we would much rather have youth drum up the courage and try to be brave and find an adult that they can talk to one-on-one and express what they’re dealing with, what they’re struggling with that might manifest in targeting themselves, engaging in digital self-harm. But again, a call for attention or a cry for help tend to be two of the dominant reasons. Other reasons that are less prevalent include, honestly, they just wanted to joke around and see what the result would be. Some kids are just bored.

Some kids are just doing it for the lolz, as they say, just to try to get some sort of effect or add a little bit of spice to their day. But bottom line, the majority of youth when they do it, it definitely betrays some sort of problems, which we should try to get to the root of. 

Laura Higgins: Just thinking about that, and as you said, when we throw ourselves back to when we were growing up in teenagers, one of the things that comes out time after time on our podcast is it was hard enough being a teenager when we were growing up, but now with the whole online world, as much as we’re really pro-online, it brings so much positivity, but we try to understand, but it is a totally different world that our young people are growing up in.

One thing is, a lot of people, if you were struggling back in the eighties, nineties, you would have diaries. You would still write down those thoughts. And even sometimes, you might reflect and go, oh, I didn’t like myself at that point. But of course, at this time, even those people that might be writing it in a sort of a diarizing journal type way, it is still going out public. And it’s essentially forever. And, as well as the deeper reasons of wanting that affirmation, but even just as a way of expressing it’s a really huge thing. Jordan and I, both parents, we talk about our kids a lot. Sameer, I hope it’s okay to share, I know you’re also a parent.

How are we as grownups meant to respond to this? It’s hard enough sometimes to know if our kids have been bullied. How would we ever understand if they were engaging in this type of behavior? I know we’ve; you’ve talked previously about dimensions of parenting the negative stuff and how we can maybe mitigate bullying.

Are there any factors that we could use or implement and advise our audience that they could use in this particular instance? 

Sameer Hinduja: Absolutely Laura, that’s such a good question. First, before I answer that, I do want to underscore the gravity of this phenomenon because as I described it and as you described it, perhaps it’s a way of expressing oneself or coping with heavy emotions.

I do want to point out that the research is very clear that digital self-harm is strongly associated with traditional self-harm. So said another way, those youth who are targeting themselves online with cruel or hateful comments about themselves, again anonymously, are also much more likely to engage in those traditional forms of self-harm that I mentioned earlier, such as cutting.

And so that’s very concerning. And again, we, on this program, we never ever want to stir up any panic and freak out adults, but we just want to make sure that we truly understand that, okay, this is a reality. Our youth in this day and age with all of these complexities that they face there’s severe outcomes, there’s significant consequences.

So not only is digital self-harm tied to traditional self-harm, but it’s also unfortunately strongly tied to suicidal ideation or thoughts and attempts. And looking at my research here, we found that digital self-harm was tied to a 5- to 7- times increase in suicidal thoughts and a 9- to 15- times increase in suicidal attempts.

So again, we want to take a huge step back and take a deep breath. But digital self-harm needs to be brought up in the same breath as when we’re talking about cyberbullying and sextortion and some of these other major online worries that all parents and guardians have in terms of responding. We always talk about communication.

And so, it’s being in the loop as to what our children are feeling and doing. And of course, that’s tricky because as a professional adult —and you all understand, we’re pulled in so many directions, and it’s extremely hard to carve out the quality time to be able to pick up on what might be considered a warning sign, or a red flag related to isolation or distress.

And oftentimes we do trivialize it— not trivialize it— but we do dismiss it to a degree by saying that they’re an adolescent, this is how it is when they’re adolescents. But being able to press in a little deeper as it relates to their online participation, as it relates to their online expressions, I think can go a long way.

And even just bringing it up, letting them know that you’re familiar with the fact that This is a phenomenon that has made the news. There are major case studies that even pediatricians and school nurses and other healthcare professionals are wanting to devise screening instruments related to this, much like they might design screening instruments related to the proclivity or the potential to engage in self-harm.

This is a massive topic, and it’s affecting a major proportion of youth, not the majority, but again, a meaningful proportion of youth. And so, for that reason let’s have a conversation. Hey, do you know of any of your peers who might have engaged in this behavior? Have you heard about it happening in our community or in our city or in our region?

Why do you think youth do that? Just dialoguing with them about reasons that they might come up with. And then of course, countering them with more healthy, more positive coping mechanisms rather than, again, engaging in digital self-harm. 

Laura Higgins: And one thing I really picked up on is, you said, every child’s different.

We can’t just say, oh, it’s because they’re a teenager, they’re an adolescent. I think one of the things we know. From generally talking about bullying or if you spot a real change in the behavior of your child, we know our own kids. There are quite often signals, which unfortunately we might not pick up on.

But afterwards we reflect and we go, Oh yeah, no, they did. Whether it be, distancing themselves or being grumpier than normal. I think if it is that if we notice that change in behavior, maybe that’s the time to just start paying a bit more attention, having those conversations. 

Sameer Hinduja: And broach the topic, you might feel a little bit uncomfortable using the proper technological jargon.

And by the way, that keeps so many of these conversations from even unfolding in the first place, what we need as a call to action is for parents and guardians to take that first step, and it could be on the way to school when, during drop off, it could be, when you’re taking them to the grocery store, and they’re just walking around the aisles with you, whenever you have the opportunity.

To just chat about something that’s culturally relevant, that is, something that’s very current in teen society today. It’s worth bringing up just to see their familiarity, just to see if they smile or they smirk or they look at you very puzzled, and then that will prompt your next steps.

Laura Higgins: And definitely if there’s a, one of these, most horrific stories that happens, it’s a really tough thing, but hopefully I’m sure that the families and those involved would want everyone to learn from the experience that they’ve had too.

Jordan Shapiro: One thing I want to unpack—what I find interesting about this is that there’s an inherent tension here because I feel like the popular narrative is this idea that social media. Has created this kind of pressure cooker of like normal adolescent social all the teen movie stuff, right the bullying, the mean girls, right?

It’s like the narrative is that social media has made it such a more intense, more amplified pressure cooker.  You know when I think about what you just said about this correlation between suicide, suicidal thoughts, suicide ideation, even attempts and self-bullying. It makes me wonder to what degree, to what degree is that popular media narrative of the pressure cooker real?

And to what degree is that not, is that not real? And it’s actually way more complex than most of us are thinking about it. 

Sameer Hinduja: I agree. It is complex. And of course, we never want to lean too far in one direction or the other when it comes to extreme perspectives. I think it’s important to articulate that many youth who are struggling, they’re able to gravitate online and what they’re finding as they struggle with heavy emotions is that they’re not alone, that many youth have struggled with the same emotions, are struggling with the same emotions. We think about some of our favorite social media platforms and how so many adolescents are posting about mindfulness, about or de-stigmatizing seeking mental health or going to therapy. Figuring out other pro-social and positive ways to cope with those struggles and those heavy emotions. And so again, social media is providing an avenue for that where before, it wasn’t wasn’t possible. And I think the worst thing when you’re an adolescent about struggling is feeling alone. But if you know that others are struggling, maybe they’re in the same boat and they have overcome. 

I think that gives you a little bit of hope and confidence that you can as well. And ideally, if you’re pointed towards those positive coping mechanisms, maybe even some resiliency skills, then perhaps you won’t move in the direction of, again, these dysfunctional methods of coping, such as digital self-harm.

Laura Higgins: On Jordan’s point, I’m thinking about how we grew up in a time when being an adolescent was tough. I can certainly remember some young people that are not here now from when I was growing up because of the pressures and the bullying.

I think it’s a really interesting of the causality and the amplification. Obviously, I work for an online platform, I work for Roblox. We know that tech platforms sometimes are not necessarily the cause of these things, but we have not necessarily always been helpful. Some platforms have been very helpful in trying to help people access help and support when they need them and build those communities that you just mentioned.

What would you say to us as tech platforms? What can we do better? Where should we really be thinking about our approach to cyberbullying? Because. For me, we’re not seeing a huge change. And as much as people, different companies are like, we have this initiative, we have that initiative. I’m not feeling like we’re really moving the needle.

What more can we do? 

Sameer Hinduja: I appreciate the question, Laura. It just demonstrates that you constantly are seeking ways to improve and level up when it comes to what you’re able to offer in terms of products and services to the user base. And I think that humility is, number one, we have to stay completely humble and continue to learn from our user base.

When it comes to digital self-harm, I’m confident that if I have concerns about my child and I reached out to you, you would be able to identify whether the hateful or hurtful posts that they’re receiving are coming from their own IP address. And then maybe we would have a conversation about, you know what, Sameer, this is actually your son, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of why they’re struggling to such a degree that they feel like they need to target themselves. Is it a call for help? Is it some sort of desire for attention? Are they just doing it because They’re bored, and they’re trying to entertain themselves in a very twisted way.

Let’s figure that out, and maybe even some educational resources can be created towards that end in order to assist them. And then big picture when it comes to cyberbullying, whether it’s self-cyberbullying, digital self-harm, or whether you’re being cyberbullied or a person or a user is being cyberbullied.

By somebody else by a peer, obviously, you have various sorts of, filters and blocks in place when it comes to changing problematic words to hashtags and disallowing users to go ahead and send certain messages to go through. You’re also continuing to enhance the offerings with regard to AI being able to proactively prevent problematic content from being shared and unfortunately hurting other people.

Cool. So, I just want those developments to continue. I want more and more resources in terms of automatic and manual content moderation to be devoted in that direction, because otherwise we’re going to have these targets. And especially if they’re young, maybe they don’t know what to do. Maybe they’ve never thought through an action plan.

They might say to you that, yeah, I absolutely know what to do if I’m targeted, but in the moment, they freeze and they get stuck if they’ve never really worked through. So those are two things that come to mind. And then the last one, which I know is top of mind. For many platforms and Laura, maybe you can speak to this specific to Roblox has to do with the feedback loop that users get when they report if it’s extended, if you don’t hear back from a platform within a few days or in a taking a week or longer than the cycle of violence is continuing, you’re continuing to be victimized.

Maybe your best friends are being victimized and that aggressor is never really receiving any sort of deterrence. They’re never really being sanctioned. They’re never really reminded that, okay, what you did will immediately followed a sanction, a consequence. And so, you need to tie them together and not engage in that problematic behavior in the first place.

So that feedback loop has got to be prompt, it’s got to be quick, and the consequences have to be proportionate to the offence. I just need platforms to emphasize it. 

Laura Higgins: I agree 100 percent, and there are so many challenges. I’m so lucky to have you as a friend and a confidant. Sameer, you challenged me in the best ways. And I work for a platform that is an all-ages platform. There are particular complications that happen, particularly in the U.S.- based platforms where once a user is 13, they have all the rights. So, when a parent has concerns, they could contact a platform, but the platform is not legally allowed to share information and how helpful would it be to your point of, could you tell me who they were talking to?

I’m seeing these signals. It would just be classed as it’s a report. Yes. So, I hope that platforms would take it seriously and review. But when it comes to that sharing of information, it’s so limiting, unfortunately, and hopefully we’re not going too depressing on this whole episode, but it is really important to talk about, I am friends, personal friends with bereaved parents whose children have been harmed in one way or another by online platform or the element of that. And what I hear from them is, their perception is that the platforms don’t want to, I have been privileged to be able to help them with their healing of, yeah, there’s the good and bad everywhere, of course.

But actually, sometimes it’s the regulation and policies and stuff out of our control that make it difficult where we’re moving to and I’m starting to see some real positive movement, I think, is that connection and working collaboratively with the policy makers. With the data protection people and also the families and users who need the best.

It should be all about them and their safety, but managing the privacy side as well. That was super serious. I’m going to throw it back to you now, Jordan. 

Jordan Shapiro: Thanks. I guess I want to move into a more general question for you. Sameer. Thinking big picture, I’ll ask the question that I pretty much ask in all of our conversations on some level, which is, how do we understand the difference between what’s a what’s a digital issue?

What’s an issue of digital technology and what’s and what’s just a technological manifestation of normal adolescence, right? And by normal, I don’t mean good, right? We know there’s serious mental health concerns in normal. Adolescents I guess that’s we, some might call that aberrant or what pathology, whatever, the language isn’t important.

You understand the question I’m getting at here, which is, are, are we talking here about issues that are screen ager issues or issues of the adolescent brain with access to technology? The screens, I guess that’s the way to put it. And how should we think about that in a kind of big picture way when we consider all of this and it, as we’ve said many times in this conversation there’s so much in the media that, that, that is fear, that is scary, that is telling.

So, I’m always trying to, for parents’ sake, to help them disentangle that, to understand where the tools. Do need all the things that Laura was just talking about in terms of to create the guardrails in the same way that we have traffic lights on streets to make sure people don’t get hit by cars or where is their actual digital causes or real problems with the digital technology world.

So curious how you think about that and unpacking that. 

Sameer Hinduja: Sure. I’m thinking about an answer. I’m always approaching it with the or through the lens of, okay, how can I serve parents? How can I serve guardians? And they want to be encouraged. They want to be empowered, and they want to be equipped.

Their wheelhouse has to do with raising a child really, and they really don’t have control over what tech companies can do. So, I would rather tech companies continue to focus in on that. They’re going to do so hopefully of their own volition, but also because it’s being mandated by. The federal government.

And so, I, like Laura said, expect to see a lot more progress in recent months and years as we move forward, when it comes to parents, and as they’re thinking about trying to raise a decent human being, I don’t want them to get overwhelmed by, all of the different devices and apps and ways to communicate.

I just want them to focus on empathy. I want them to focus on resilience. I want them to focus on how I can create a moral compass in my child so that they know that there’s a right and that there’s a wrong. Even if they might say there’s a ton of gray area, I bet when they thought about that behavior, they had a piece about it or they had a lack of peace about it.

And how could they become more sensitive to that? Whether it’s their conscience or the ethics that we’ve tried, the ethical code that we’ve tried to build in them or our family values, or Whatever we’re using in our home to direct them along the trajectory that’s healthy and positive, that’s what I think parents are already good at.

That’s what they want to focus in on. So that’s what I try to help them level up in. 

Laura Higgins: And that’s, that’s the best advice, isn’t it? It’s a good person. That’s what we’re trying to build. Resilient and strong and kind and yeah, a good citizen of the world whether it’s online or offline.

I’m going to throw in a careful question that we’ve had this conversation with many of our guests is recently we’ve seen this call of like cell phone bans both in school but also banning kids from social media until they’re a certain age. Where would your stance be on that? Thanks. 

Sameer Hinduja: I feel very strongly about this, so I will try not to get on my soapbox for too long, but I’ll say big picture, we have to be realistic about what is enforceable and what are our youth going to need as they move forward into an information age deeper and deeper, obviously, because our economy and society is built on data. It’s built on information, and they’re going to require certain skills in order to compete in this global workforce.

So, if we have bands and if we have all of this sort of poo-pooing on technology. Unfortunately, I’m concerned that we’re going to fall behind other countries. I’m gonna be concerned about them falling behind other peers who do have access. And I also feel like it’s a very reactive, very punitive measure with which youth are going to very willingly circumvent because it is meeting their social needs.

It is meeting their, educational needs. It is being their communication needs and it’s being their entertainment needs and it’s here to stay. The cat is out of the bag and I’m sure you agree that it’s much better for us to come alongside of them and convey them that it is a tool that if they know how to use responsibly can really help optimize their personal and professional success.

But if they use it irresponsibly, without wisdom, without discretion, without heeding the lessons we’re trying to teach them through so many teachable moments. Then, unfortunately, it’s not going to work out well for them. Yeah, I could go on forever about the topic and let me also quickly say that I do I do feel, I do care so much about the parents and the guardians who are proposing these bills.

I do care about the politicians who do want to see positive change and do want to safeguard youth when it comes to what they deal with and also, of course, enhance their well-being. I just want us to approach it with. a careful look at the science and a careful look at, the realistic possibilities with regard to what we can accomplish amongst this population who are already so deeply embedded in it.

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah, I think we’re all in agreement. And I also just want people to like, look at history books, like bands never work. Whether they’re for adults or whether they’re for kids, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s technology, whether it’s pornography, it’s never worked. Thank you so much. And it’s got better.

Thanks so much. This is a great conversation. I really appreciate your time. 

Sameer Hinduja: Always a pleasure. Appreciate it as well, Jordan and Laura. 

In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins delve deeper into the intersection of mental health, diversity, and technology with Dr. Erlanger Turner, founder and executive director of Therapy for Black Kids and author of Raising Resilient Black Kids. Dr. Turner,discusses the unique challenges faced by Black teenagers and the ways in which digital platforms can serve both as sources of support and stress. Highlights include the benefits and drawbacks of social media for marginalized communities, strategies for parents to maintain healthy social media use for their teens, and practical advice for creating inclusive and safe online spaces.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the season. 

 

Earl Turner: I’m Dr. Erlanger Turner, also known as Dr. Earl. I’m a licensed psychologist, author, professor, and media contributor. And I’m also the founder and executive director of Therapy for Black Kids, which is an organization focused on promoting resilience and healthy development among black youth. 

Jordan Shapiro: Really glad to have you here, Dr Earl.

We do so much talking here about kids’ well-being, usually in relation to the digital world. We’ve had so many different experts who are experts on child development, experts on teenagers and emotion, experts on adolescence, and one thing that really is missing is that we talk about all teenagers as if they’re like one, one giant group of people that are all the same. And of course, we talk about small gender differences here and there, but we really don’t talk about specific populations.

So, I’m really interested if you could tell us a bit about your work. What fascinates me about it is obviously there are real distinct concerns for black teenagers and adolescents in terms of mental health, and I obviously don’t know that much about it.

So hopefully you could tell us a bit about what that work that you do, why you do it, and what people should know about it. 

Earl Turner: Yeah. I think the point about mental health among all youth is definitely important and there are a lot of similarities in terms of the challenges that you’ve experienced.

That’s just sort of part of normal development. But I do think that for youth of color, and particularly my work centers mostly around African American and Black youth,  there are some unique experiences that they may have that are very different from their counterparts, in particular white teens.

And a lot of my work has really started primarily focusing on understanding attitudes and perceptions around mental health service use within the black community. And we know that for black youth, they oftentimes are less likely to receive care compared to other communities. And so really trying to understand what I can do in my role from a public education perspective and from my own research is, how can we improve those attitudes and reduce some of that stigma to make sure that these youth are getting access to services.

Because we know that some of those challenges that they may experience definitely impact them differently in terms of their mental health and one common or issue that we see happening consistently over time is the ways that they experience hate or racial discrimination and that does have a huge impact on their mental health. That discrimination happens in multiple spaces, whether it’s within the school environment in their communities, and even in the digital space in terms of social media, so those are some really important issues that we have to talk about. 

Jordan Shapiro: I wonder if you could say a bit, if you had to just say to people who really haven’t thought about this at all, like what would some of the less obvious challenges be? Like discrimination, of course, I think everybody can wrap their head around that idea really but what about the sort of subtle discrimination, the subtle effects of code switching, things like that that people are dealing with, that I imagine many of our listeners, they don’t even consider.

Earl Turner: Yeah, that’s a really important point. So, I think another piece to that angle for me is also understanding intersectionality and different aspects of someone’s identity. So yes, being black in America comes with its own sort of challenges, but we know that, girls, black girls tend to be overly sexualized. Even when they’re not trying to be, they’re perceived in that type of way by adults, and we see boys that are oftentimes being perceived as being overly aggressive. And so that impacts them in terms of risk for increased likelihood of suspension within the school environment. We also see some of the challenges around LGBTQI as well. And so those are issues that, oftentimes are not even talked about when it comes to the experiences of LGBT youth and the amounts of hate homophobia that they experience not only outside of their community, but sometimes even their homes are not safe. And I think those are also some really important conversations to talk about.

Yes, LGBT youth have very different experiences. Some have really positive experiences within their homes, but we also know that there are also sometimes, hateful comments. Sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding within communities. And I think, another challenge that comes up for me is that I think sometimes for Black parents, when they have a child that does come out as being, LGBTQ, is that they are concerned about the child’s safety.

And so those are some of the things that make them a little bit more protective around their child actually, disclosing their sexuality. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah, absolutely. That really resonates with me as you can probably hear I’m based in the UK, not in the US and just reflecting on what that experience, for friends of mine and people that I’ve worked with over my career.

We have very similar issues, but they’re also really distinctly different. And whilst there’s belonging and the discriminatory stuff, we actually have some focus on young black people’s experience of the health service here in the UK. Our health is very different than it is in North America in terms of, we have our national health service but actually the success rate opportunity for maternity is really poor, particularly within the black community.

And access to good education here. We do have this situation where the kids just, you know, generally, don’t get the opportunity to attend the so-called good schools. And so right from the offset, that sort of happens here, but I do understand it’s a very different cultural experience that is happening in the U S. It’s really interesting to hear.

Yeah, you have a new book out. So Raising Resilient Black Kids: A Parent’s Guide to Helping Children Cope with Racial Stress, Manage Emotions and Thrive. I love that title. One of the things we really focus on in my work at Roblox is about helping people thrive in online spaces and beyond. Tell us a little bit about the book, but really what does thriving look like for you?

Earl Turner: Yeah, thank you for that. It’s actually a really interesting process of coming up with a title for a book. I learned a lot about that process. But for me, thriving is really having this sense of well-being in the midst of dealing with challenges or negativity. And I think for many people, and particularly youth, that it’s really hard to thrive when you’re constantly dealing with all of these things that are going on in society and in our communities.

How can we have the tools to be able to manage some of our stressors that we’re experiencing in society and be able to live some of this sense of well-being? Not to say that you won’t have those difficult days, but that in the midst of those, that those days are not going to really disrupt your life in ways that are really challenging for you to ever even navigate.

Laura Higgins: I’ve got the quote, the rose that grows through concrete in my head right now. 

Jordan Shapiro: On this podcast we focus on digital media. We focus on social media. We focus on video games and the metaverse and I guess I’d be curious to know what your what’s your take on it? As you work with teens, as you interact with adolescents, as you interact with the youth you know what do you see? We all see, we all hear all the media against it. And some of that’s comes from a good place , and some of that comes from a moral panic. I’d be curious to know what you can tell us about what you actually see outside of the headlines and the buzzwords…

Earl Turner: That’s a really good question. I think one of the things that we have to realize about social media and technology is that oftentimes it is a replication of what we see in real life.

One of my colleagues has used the term digital neighborhood, so that’s not something that belongs to me, but I like that term because I think it really does mimic what we see in real life and that we have to recognize that. Kids are not in this vacuum when they’re on social media platforms. These are also things that are happening in society and communities in our schools and so I think we have to understand how they are navigating this digital space.

It’s also important to how they’re navigating things within real life. And we want to make sure that they have the awareness to really understand, information that they’re consuming on those platforms and that parents are also involved in some of those conversations. I think one of the really important things that I talk about is, when you send your kid out in the community, you don’t just say, okay, I’ll see you when you get back home, right?

You give them some type of advice or suggestions about what places not to do an encounter, who to not talk to engage with. And so, I think when we come to the digital neighborhood that we sometimes get lost in that, oh, my teen is on this phone on this platform. I don’t know what they’re doing, I don’t know how to talk with them about this. It’s like, how can you also engage in some digital literacy yourself so that you understand what’s going on and that you prepare your child to also navigate that space. 

Laura Higgins: Thank you. That’s my whole job so that makes me really happy. And it’s a huge challenge and particularly getting in front of.

People all over the world of all different demographics. We always talk about the fact that there’s digital literacy, there’s people all over the world whose parents are not even literate, so getting those messages across, they’re not, they’re going to read a website to go and download a resource and learn these things.

We have to be really creative about how we get those important messages across. I think you’ve answered this, but we’ve seen, over the last years. A huge amount of focus, really quite negative focus on teens and adolescents and the correlation or not of poor mental health based on social media, scrolling, deep scrolling, all that stuff.

And we’ve seen fairly recently calls for out and out bans on social media or banning cell phones and things. What’s your take on that? It feels like maybe you’re not in favor, but yeah, interesting topic. I’d love to get your view. 

Earl Turner: Yeah, it is a really interesting topic. I think, if it comes to a ban that it’s going to be challenging to enforce that.

I think I’m a realis.  I think when we come up with all of these policies or rules, it’s who’s going to enforce this outside of just having this law about not having access to the platform. For me, it really is recognizing both the pros and cons of social media and technology in the lives of teens. And as I mentioned before that, oftentimes it is a replication of what is happening in real life. If you’re thinking that social media is “ruining,” the child’s life, what are these things that happen in our society? Are we addressing those things that are also, you know, impacting, teens’ lives as well. For me, it really is recognizing the good and the bad of social media. I wrote a blog a couple of years ago in Psychology Today. And one of the things that I noted was some research from the Pew Research Center around some of the ways that teens see benefits in social media.

The majority of teens find that social media is actually helpful for them. I’m looking at my notes here that I wrote down —68 percent of teens say that social media actually has helped them to feel supported through tough times. Imagine that we take this away from those teens, how are they going to feel supported now, and that goes back to my earlier point that I mentioned around let’s say LGBT youth, for example, is that in a lot of times they don’t have that support or that, sense of community or connection. Social media provides that way for them to actually stay connected as well. And then another piece that is important is, teens also find it difficult to give up social media.

I know that part of the conversation comes in around teens being “addicted,” for example. But I think outside of that, over half of teens also report that they would find it very hard to give that up. And I know in a lot of states in the US right now, schools are actually banning access to phones or social media throughout the school day.

And I definitely understand the need to do that. I grew up in a time frame where we didn’t have phones in school. I think that’s important because you want to focus on the learning, but also, I think you’re potentially creating some additional problems because now teens are going to be thinking about these phones and are still being distracted.

What do we do to really make sure that we’re addressing the meat of the problem?

Laura Higgins: And I would just say just for reference, Jordan and I grew up in a time where they weren’t cell phones. Period.

Jordan Shapiro: I didn’t like that comment, Laura. But it’s true. But I love what you’ve said, and my view on this is well-promoted. And while I’m not going to deny that there have been lots of kids who have ended up with really poor mental health outcomes because of their relationship with social media and their experience on social media, we also know that there are enormous amounts of positive experiences. People have been able to find affinity groups, whether those are identity-based affinity groups or hobby affinity groups or eating disorder groups, right? We know how many people are being helped by that. Where do you see the ways in which we could be using the potential of not just social media, but all online interactions— what are we not doing yet?

It seems to me there really is the potential for so much incredible social justice work, activism, that could happen through social media. And some of it is, of course, but where do you think we’re missing? Where do you think we’re still missing the target? 

Earl Turner: Yeah, that’s a really important question. Before I answer that, I want to go back to your point about the ways that a lot of conversations have talked about how social media is negative and creative and have problems and, increasing, risk of eating disorders, for example. And I understand those connections, but also as a scientist and researcher, I know that most of that research and data is not correlational, so we’re understanding these relationships. We don’t know if the eating disorder, the mental problem, came first, and that is driving them to spending more time on social media, which some of the research speaks to in that manner. I think we have to really do a better job as researchers with really understanding like what comes first, in terms of, is it that, kids are spending this much time on social media, they’re getting disconnected, they’re getting concerned with misinformation or inappropriate information and so that’s leading to some of these problems. And that can help us better answer that connection between social media and these mental health challenges.

But I think one of the things that is really important that we may be missing in terms of how we can use social media for good is, when it comes to the algorithm and I know this comes up a lot in conversations —and I don’t understand the algorithm, even though I’ve done some consultation work with some tech companies.

But I do think that what information is pushed out that, there can be much more intention placed on that in particular, when we have experts in the fields of pediatrics, mental health that are pushing out content or creating content around some ways to help people understand themselves from a health and mental health perspective, and that information may not get disseminated or shared.

As often as things that may be talking about things that may be traumatizing or potentially triggering. I think those are some of the ways that you know some of these companies could do a better job about how they leverage that expertise of those professionals and making sure that content is shared, even with just their audience, because I know sometimes, I will post content, and I see like I get 100 views or something like that.

It’s okay, this is not going anywhere. How can that content be sent out to the public more so that way they can have the tools to really understand some of these things and even misuse of terminology that I think, in the general public, one of the things that is very important I don’t want to say triggering, but problematic for me is this misuse and overuse of “trauma.” Everything is trauma. And that’s not the case in terms of how we think about it in terms of mental health. 

Laura Higgins: I love that. And hopefully I can make you happy just to reassure you there is some really good stuff happening behind closed doors. We’re part of a group, which is a multi-agency, multi-stakeholder, all lots of tech companies involved as well as NGOs and not for profits.

It’s led by the United Nations, and it’s called Protection Through Online Participation, and it is really focused on young people’s voice and finding out where they seek support in online spaces about real world issues. So real world violence, domestic abuse, self-injury and suicidal concerns.

Those are not normal topics that somebody might look on Roblox or TikTok for but we know that they are. There is a piece of work and specifically looking at how we can use those algorithms to best effect to raise up those support services to make sure that young people get that in the moment support that they need.

There really is work happening, but I agree with you. It’s a little too late. And we have a lot more to do. On that point, how do we make sure you know from a tech, I work in the tech industry, how do we make sure us and other stakeholders, the policy makers and law enforcement and everyone else, educators, we’re looking at you too, but how do we make sure that we build these really inclusive, safe, welcoming spaces and just being mindful about all demographics.

All different cultures and the people that come in our platform, like for us, we appreciate that on roadblocks, we have a group of young people with neurodivergence who are creating experiences. So, we’ve started working with autism groups in the U S and the UK to get a better understanding of how we support those families.

That’s one example. What else can we do? What do we need to do to be better? 

Earl Turner: Yeah, first, thanks for sharing that. I think that’s really great work. And I think that there are a lot of tech companies that are trying to do some things to help address this sort of issue and challenge that we’re dealing with in society.

In my own work I’ve worked, with some companies as well and I won’t. Through the sort of promotion of those companies, but I will say that there are some tech companies that are providing sort of resources and guides for parents to understand some of these pieces, how to have healthy conversations, with their teams about this.

And I think one of the things that I talk about a lot is, how do you maintain that line of communication with your team? Around why they’re using social media. I think a lot of times it is that you’re telling a kid. You don’t need to be on this phone. You don’t need to] be on this application, etc.

But we don’t try to explain why they wanted to be on those things. I think that’s an important piece of that conversation. But going back to your question, I think that one of the things that can be helpful is trying to engage stakeholders as much as possible. And I realized that is a.

A resource, you know that it requires a lot of resources to be able to do that. But I think that’s important to the success of these platforms is trying to make sure that the stakeholders are involved in those conversations and so whether it is the professionals that are doing this work, I have this sort of expertise or knowledge, but also getting information from teens and parents around what are some of the challenges that they’re seeing? And what are some of the ways that they’ve been able to navigate those and help the way? And can you create some ways to do that also in some of these applications?

Because I do think that for some parents, they’ve been able to figure out ways about how you manage or help your teen rather than manage their time on social media. And, are you doing those things? I think a big piece for me is making sure that as parents, you model healthy engagement with social media and technology.

Sometimes as adults, I think we don’t do that either. But then we expect our teens to be able to set some boundaries around it. I think a big piece of it is modeling that as well. I think those can be other ways around how these tech companies and platforms work with parents to give them some tools because I think for a lot of parents it’s like they don’t understand or know, and sometimes they don’t care to know.

But I do think that when you are parenting a teen, that it requires some sort of different role for you. And I realize you know that as parents, I say this all the time parents don’t come with a manual, right? You have to figure things out as you go. There is some learning that’s required for you along the way as well to engage in healthy parenting. Those are some ways that I think tech companies can really support parents along this journey. 

Laura Higgins: Amazing. Thank you. 

Jordan Shapiro: I couldn’t agree more that parenting is really difficult, especially because you don’t have a manual.

I recently had to have a long talk with my teenager, one of my teenage sons. And I said, it’s really a terrible thing. You get no practice, and the stakes are so high, and you make mistakes and if you have more than one kid, they’re different people, so it’s not like the practice helped, right?

It’s hard and it’s a lot, even someone like me that’s a parenting expert, like it’s constantly difficult, right? It’s constantly difficult. It’s constantly painful. I have lots of nights with lots of tears and lots of anxiety for myself. Which leads me to our final question, which is we’ve seen that you say protect your peace -this is something you say. So, what do you do to protect your peace? 

Earl Turner: I think protecting your peace is really important in the digital space. For me personally, that means that I sometimes have to be really intentional about disengaging. I know that for some people, and particularly for teens, that it could be really difficult to log off or to uninstall an app on your phone because you feel like you’re missing out on something.

I remind myself that if I don’t see it because I’m not there for days or weeks, it’s still there on the internet, so it will come back to you. And oftentimes they will see posts that pop up and it was like, oh, this was in 2000 and 22. I think just remind yourself that if you do decide to take a social media break for however amount of time, that the content is still going to be there so you’re not really missing out on anything you may not miss you may not get it, at that sort of timely moment as breaking news per se, but it’s still going to be there and so I think that’s one way to help me for protect my piece is being able to disengage.

I also think about how you engage with content? Even if you decide not to physically not log on to the platform, there can be ways that you don’t engage with content. If you see a video that says it’s sensitive content, read the caption, decide to keep scrolling as opposed to clicking on it and then, oh, you read it or you see it and I probably shouldn’t have watched this.

I think that’s another way that you protect your peace as well. A really important thing I think that is helpful is, how do you do some evaluation of the content that you are following? I think there may be time periods where I follow a lot of news pages. So it may be that with the election season, for example, that I might unfollow those news platforms because I don’t want to get any news at that moment until I decide to look it up and I can always put in their name, and I can find that content. I think that’s another strategy that could be helpful to protect your peace — are there platforms or are there creators or organizations that produce certain types of content that in general is helpful for you? But at this particular moment in your life, you decide that I’m not going to engage with that content. And I can always come back to it later. So that would be another suggestion that I would think about in terms of protecting your piece. 

Laura Higgins: Such helpful advice. I’m just thinking about what I see on my own platforms because I do try to manage it.

But because my area of focus and Jordan this will probably resonate with you as well. It’s like I was on LinkedIn yesterday, and every other post was about mental health or being and actually made me feel more anxious because it’s like, wow, everybody’s having such a bad time we need to give top tips for managing your well-being.

And I was like, okay, I really need to get a grip on what’s happening and there’s the algorithms, but it’s what I’ve asked. There’s a really good example of how I need to protect my peace a bit more. 

Earl Turner: Absolutely. 

Jordan Shapiro: Thank you so much, Dr. Earl. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you. Is there anything else you want to say that we haven’t asked you about? 

Earl Turner: I would just go back to the idea about making sure that you’re engaging in healthy social media use. And obviously whatever that means in terms of “healthy” is something that you define for yourself.

But I think making sure the amount of time that you spend on platforms, who are you following, who are you engaging with? And it really having a conversation with your teens around some of that as well, in terms of, are there things that they find to be distressing for them? And so maybe that’s a point of conversation for you as a parent to say, maybe you want to take a break from following this page for a little while. I would say it’s all about moderation. We talk a lot about moderation, a lot of aspects of our lives. I think for healthy social media usage, you also want to think about it in that way.

In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Laura Higgins and Jordan Shapiro speak with psychologist and best-selling author Dr. Lisa Damour  about the complex emotional lives of teenagers and their digital habits. They explore how some digital habits can serve as a form of self-care,  the impact of algorithms on social media experiences, and strategies for parents to support their teenagers’ mental health. Dr. Damour emphasizes the importance of understanding each child’s unique needs and provides practical advice for managing risks and encouraging positive digital habits. The conversation covers both the potential harms and benefits of technology, advocating for balanced and informed approaches to adolescent digital interactions.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the season. 

 

Lisa Damour: I’m Dr. Lisa Damour. I’m a psychologist who cares for children and teenagers and their families. And I do that in all sorts of ways. I write books. I write articles. I have a podcast called Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting. And I also get to do wonderful collaborations with groups like the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.

Jordan Shapiro: And Inside Out 2. 

Lisa Damour: And Inside Out 2. Yes, that was a really fun one. 

Jordan Shapiro: I know your work well. I read the books on girls when I was writing Father Figure and I actually started reading The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, forgetting that you were coming on our podcast about two weeks ago because I was just trying to figure out how to manage my own teenagers and I thought, hey, let me read some about it. So, I’m very excited to talk to you about it. I’ve got a lot of questions. I live with four teenagers… 

Lisa Damour: Wonderful. Lucky you. That is a good thing. Yes. 

Jordan Shapiro: What I really appreciated about the book is this whole concept of the way that the wellness industry has really made us just think that happiness equals mental health and that everyone’s supposed to be happy all the time. And I don’t, I don’t know. I mean, I think as you say, the teen years are supposed to be turbulent, right? It’s an emotional, up and down, rollercoaster.

I mean, tell us more about that perspective and why it’s so centered in the book. 

Lisa Damour: So, the good news is. I’ve done this a long time now. Um, I got my PhD in 1997, so I’m pushing 24 years, where I’ve had my full credentials, you know, but obviously I was caring for kids and teenagers before that and in my practice as I was in my training. 

And so, I’m really enjoying bringing to this point in my career, the sort of long view of how we’ve thought and talked about teenagers from a clinical perspective. I mean, not just my own experience, but how I’ve worked with them as a psychologist. And I can tell you, we are in a moment that is unlike anything I have ever seen where, as you said, Jordan.

There’s a lot of anxiety about what it means to be mentally healthy and a lot of misunderstanding, in terms of that, with people thinking you’re mentally healthy when you feel good. And if you’re working with that definition, you’re going to be anxious a lot because the natural aspect of being a human being, much less a teenage human being, is that you don’t feel good all the time.

And I’m also caring for parents who are more anxious than any parents I’ve ever cared for.  I think all of the negative headlines about teenagers, all of the worrisome headlines about teenagers, all of the, I would say collapsed or simplified, headlines about social media have rendered parents incredibly anxious and frightened.

I can tell you, I have never seen high anxiety or fear improve people’s parenting. So that’s where we are right now. Here’s what I can tell you about adolescence forever and always, and then we can look at it in this moment. So, the forever and always is that change equals stress. That is a cardinal rule in psychology.

Okay. You take a 10-year-old, which is the onset of adolescence, 10 or 11, put that kid next to an 18- or 19-year-old. You are looking at people who are hardly from the same planet. I mean, they could not be more different. There is so much change in development compressed into eight years, nine years, right?

I’m almost 54. Me eight years ago, I’m wearing the same clothes, I’m cooking the same meals. I haven’t changed a whole lot. I have a 13-year-old, I have a 20-year-old. My 13-year-old in eight years will be a different creature altogether, right? Just a different person in so many ways. If you compress all of that change into a limited period of time, it’s inherently stressful. It’s stressful for the kid who’s going through it and it’s stressful for the people all around that kid. So that’s the baseline. And then we have complexities like social media, having weathered a pandemic, wild social disruption all around us, the adults are feeling more unsure of where all of this is headed than we have ever felt before. So, it’s a lot. There are timeless aspects of being a teenager that are hard and there are timely aspects that are hard. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah, absolutely. I think that really resonates, you know, I’m also the parent of an older teenager. I have so much fun with him now where he is in this stage in his life, you know, he’s very much a young adult.

We go out to dinner, we drink cocktails, and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do together. But yeah, the thought of when he was 11, very much is like, oh, who was that person? I don’t recognize them now. So much happens. But one of the things we know is all about, you know, the risk taking, experimenting, maybe taking a few bad decisions and playing with bad behaviors, bad decisions and sort of working out who they are.

I think it’s very reassuring for everyone to go, Hey, it’s just a stage. They’re going to be different. They’re going to get through it. How do we find the right balance? Do you think? 

Lisa Damour: I have a lot of empathy for how anxious parents of teenagers are. I think it’s worse now than I’ve ever seen it.

But it’s not like it was ever easy. And Laura, you brought up the thing that I think is the one we want to focus on, which is that teenagers do take risks, and they are built to do so. It is natural for them to do so. Sometimes they take risks that are really scary and sometimes teenagers do things that cannot be undone.

And what I can tell you, from my time in of caring for parents of adolescents, this has always been the irreducible, most frightening aspect of raising a teenager, that you cannot lock them in the house. They are going to go out and do stuff, and they’re sometimes going to go out and do dumb stuff. 

And it’s just painful. I remember a point in my career where I got to where I could say to families, I cannot guarantee your kid’s safety. And that is really hard to live with. That is like, it just is irreducible, okay, but there is a lot we can do to help teens make good choices.

And I think that that’s where we have to spend our time and energy. One thing I will tell you is that I can measure the safety of a teenager in terms of their proximity to adults. Teenagers who have at least one good, working, trusting relationship with an adult are, I think, safe. The more they have, the better.

However, teenagers who do not have good, working, trusting relationships with adults are not safe. Now, what’s really cool is that we— you know, I’m using my hands to make big space, less space—we can change how much distance we have from teenagers by our conversations about risk itself.

So when, as happened in my home, my older daughter, when she was in the eighth grade, she came home and she’s like, you know what, there are kids who are using weed gummies, right? That is not what you want to hear as a parent, much less of an eighth grader, right? Okay. The answer that creates a great deal of distances: “Oh, what’s wrong with those kids? And oh my gosh, if you do that, you’re going to military school!” Right? Like a whole lot just got communicated in that, but a whole lot of distance was created. The answer where you say, “Whoa, what do you think of that?” Or “Gosh, that makes me really worried about those kids’ safety. Like what’s going on for them and who could help them?” Now you’ve brought yourself closer. So, kids are going to bring up risk, we’re going to want to talk with our kids about risk, and it’s the topic itself. I mean, I think this is sort of a magical thing that can bring us together and make it clear. I am here as your partner in safety.

Your safety means more to me than anything in the whole wide world. Blame all your good behavior on me. Call me if anything goes wrong. Or can put us at a great distance of what’s the matter with those rotten kids? And if you do something like that, don’t let me catch you because you’re going to be really sorry, right? Those are two different stances that get two very different outcomes in terms, I think, of how safe that kid’s going to be. 

Laura Higgins: Thank you, Lisa. I’m going to remember that when my son goes out on his motorbike later.

Lisa Damour: It’s hard not to lose sleep when you have a teen. 

Jordan Shapiro: I’ve definitely aimed to do that with all of my kids and to let them talk first and, that while there is, while there are boundaries, certainly I’m I’m first here to be your support system.

Of course, there are times where they go, why can’t you just be normal, like all the other parents. So, you’re up against a lot of social pressure in problematic ways. But I I want to shift gears to social media, video games, technology. That’s what we’re supposed to be talking about. One of the things I really loved in The Emotional Lives of Teenagers was the way you talked about seeing this as escapism, which it certainly is. And that some escapism is actually, we all need it. We all do it. I certainly have the nights where I’m binge-watching Netflix because I just need to veg out. It’s been a hard day. And I think if I understood your position correctly, as long as that’s not out of proportion, that’s nothing to worry about. As long as it’s not the only form of escapism, as long as they’re not escaping all the time. How can parents know when we’ve sort of veered into this problematic territory versus just a healthy, you know, the same as any toy, book, anything?

Lisa Damour: So you are capturing something that’s important in my book, that I think is not actually so much circulating in the culture. The book is about helping kids manage emotions. And I bring across in the book something that’s very well established on the academic and research side, which is that when psychologists talk about how we manage emotions, we actually think in two categories.

Sometimes you manage by expressing feelings. Getting them out, as teens would say. And sometimes you manage by taming feelings, quieting them— as my mother would say, pulling yourself together, you know? I think we’ve kind of come to a place in the culture where we privilege too much expressing, right? That you can manage a feeling because you can just talk it to death. That doesn’t always help people. It can help. But it’s not the only answer. So, I really deliberately put on equal footing and gave equal weight to expressing and taming, because that’s what we know is part of overall health.

And one of the ways we tame emotions is by using distractions. And psychologists are okay with that. And I think that that has really not gotten the airtime it deserves. So, for any approach to managing emotions, you want it to bring relief and do no harm. Whether it’s an expressing approach or a taming approach.

So, if we then narrow down to distractions—brings relief, does no harm. So, if a kid’s had a hard day and they want to come home and just hop on their video game for a little bit and not think about it, and it helps them bring that feeling down to size and they feel better and they don’t then spend three hours on the video game and fail to do their homework, that’s a good outcome.

If you’ve had a terrible day, maybe you got into something with a colleague and it feels really lousy and you can’t quite fix it and you need to just actually step back from it and you can lose yourself in Netflix to just, you know, get some distance on it, get some perspective, come back to it, see it in a fresh light because you haven’t been ruminating on it for two hours straight, that is a good use of distraction. So, if it brings relief and if it does no harm, it’s okay. Kids can use digital technologies to bring relief without harm or bring relief with harm. So, the with harm is, you know, if they’re hopping on social media and they’re being jerks about it. If they are hopping on social media and looking at stuff that’s distracting, but also bad for them, and they shouldn’t be spending time there.

If they are playing video games to the exclusion of all the other stuff they’re supposed to be doing in their lives, then you’re into harm. So, it’s really just a question of moderation in terms of time spent. And then there’s the content question, and I think there’s actually a lot to say about the content kids are exposed to, especially on social media and wanting to really put some nice guardrails around that, you know, as well as I know the research on video games, and, you know, it’s really a very varied set of responses, right?

Video games build all sorts of cognitive capacities. Violent video games are problematic. Um, they’re not bluntly as problematic as I wish they were, right? I mean, when we look at the data on violent video games, they don’t say what I want them to say, which is like, this is going to turn your kid into a violent kid.

We know that it makes kids a bit more violent than they were, which is not okay, but it’s a murkier picture. So, I think the content piece is important in its own right. 

Laura Higgins: I think so too. And, you know, Roblox is a very social space, you know, we saw particularly through the pandemic, it was a place where young people and their families who weren’t connected in the real world would go and hang out.

But with evolution of all of these spaces, whether it’s social media, video games, or wherever teenagers are hanging out together. You know, I’m quite intrigued by what’s different between this and when they used to go and hang out in the skate park or youth club or wherever they were spending time together, you know, are we seeing different issues and problematic behaviors?

And, you know, to the point of the content, a lot of that is either user-generated or it’s bullying, or it’s, you know, people feeling inadequate because of body image and all of those sorts of pressures. Are they exactly the same as they were in the in the so-called real world, or are we seeing different sorts of issues emerging? I think there’s different ones. 

Lisa Damour: I think there’s, you know, some overlap. What it means to be human gets carried out every across these different domains, but I think there’s some differences. I’ll start by saying there’s a lot of pleasure and joy in this.

And I have watched my older daughter, who’s now 20—she got social media later in her adolescence and has a wonderful group of friends and they are incredibly kind to each other in real life and they’re incredibly supportive of one another online and for her I can say, and I know not every kid has this experience.

And I think part of it was waiting until she was a bit older. Social media has been a very pleasant, supportive environment for her with very little nonsense and I think it’s critical that we share that a lot of what we know about the data is that social media tends to reflect what’s happening in real life.

So kids who enjoy, you know, good social landscape tend to enjoy that online and kids who are struggling socially, that also happens online. It’s unfortunate from a developmental psychologist perspective because we’re like, oh man, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. It amplifies whatever’s happening.

I think the piece that is unique to social media is the social comparison piece. And when we see data that I think are legitimately concerning and have an impact, also concerning and distressing kids, but also have an impact on behavior, the social comparison piece is very real, you know, where kids are looking online and feel less than in any variety of ways.

But my number one concern — what is it that social media can do that real-life interactions don’t do? The algorithms make me very anxious, and I don’t get anxious easily. I will tell you, I am very slow to blame social media for things. I go very cautiously into that space. I was working through the pandemic, practicing through the pandemic and called my editor at the New York Times.

And I’m like, this eating disorder stuff is out of control. We are going to see a ton of kids with eating disorders in the pandemic and after the pandemic. And I was watching this happen in my clinical practice. I was talking to other clinicians, kids were home, bored, lots of energy. needing to, wanting to better themselves in some way.

So of course they start searching for fitness, health, well-being content, and suddenly their feed is flooded. And this is where the algorithm kicks in and makes me anxious, flooded with imagery of ultra fit, ultra-thin. That can’t happen in the real world. And the challenge, especially for teens, is that they are vulnerable to norms, more than kids are, more than adults are. If you are looking at a thousand images a day of ultra-thin, ultra-fit bodies, the chances for a teen that that’s going to change your behavior are not small. So while there’s a lot of overlap between what happens in real life and what happens online, the algorithms take us to a totally different place in terms of flooding kids with a very specific kind of content.

And if that content is not good for that kid, that’s a problem. 

Laura Higgins: I absolutely agree, Lisa. In my previous work, I ran helplines that were safeguarding children in digital spaces and dealing with online harms. And 2014, ‘15, ‘16, we were seeing hashtags like “thinspiration, thinspo.” This was all being talked about and, you know, we’re having more and more regulation because platforms weren’t taking action. And we’ve seen awful outcomes around the world.

So, you know, just thank you again for raising that. And, you know, on behalf of the tech industry, we are really trying to get better, but everybody needs to get better on that point. 

Jordan Shapiro: Well said. It’s been shown again and again, the degree to which adolescents are influenced by social rewards, right? Not just peer pressure, like, like hard, measurable neuroscience that can, that can prove that. And I guess as we’re having this conversation, I’m sort of curious about the way that having a phone, having 24-hour access to your social group—are we seeing an increase in risk-taking even when they’re not in groups of friends because they always have access to friends? Even this question about phones in school— I feel like this is all mixed up in this question of this ability to have a social connection to be public. 

Lisa Damour: I actually think when we look at the data on risk taking in the real world, it’s going down. Like we’re raising the safest generation of teenagers on record and some of it is, they don’t leave the house, you know. When I was a teenager, we were running around town to see our friends. We had to go out. They’re having way less sex than our generation did, they’re driving less, so in physical/material terms, they’re actually safer than teenagers have been in a long, long time.

I don’t know that that gets any traction in the discourse. But the 24/7 aspect of being able to socialize, now that is very real and very problematic. I am all in on taking phones out of the school day, a hundred percent. I will, in the name of full disclosure, share that my husband is a high school teacher. He is a gifted and career educator. And I think some very large degree of my conviction about why this is so important has just come from our conversations in the home. And he thinks so deeply and so carefully about what a profound distraction it is to be in to have access to a phone during the day.

And the reality is, if you’re doing school right, it’s hard. And if you’re doing school right, you have to grapple and get frustrated. And there is no class that can compete with how much fun it is to hang out with your friends or go on TikTok. So that tension existing all day through the school day is so hard on kids, and frankly so hard on the adults who are really wanting to give them what they got.

I’m talking to more and more people in schools, more and more superintendents, more and more principals. It’s not easy to walk this back, but I think it would be worth it to walk it back because it’s a great time for kids to be away from their phones. They are surrounded by adults.

If you need to be in touch with them, you can be in touch with them. They’re losing so much in terms of social interaction and learning when the phones are in those spaces. And then they can have their phones on either side of that. 

When I talk to teenagers about, phones going away during the school day what I hear from them is, we’re okay with it if it is totally universal, but if one kid has their phone and I don’t, okay, fine. For kids who are privileged enough to get to go to sleep away camps, where it’s a universal rule, they will be the first to tell you it’s the best two weeks of their year.

As we think about things like learning and emotion regulation, and focusing and tolerating frustration, Jordan, to your question, let’s take six of those hours, seven of those hours out of the 24 and let kids really build those muscles. 

Laura Higgins: I love that. And it sounds like there’s a real balance. We know there’s been some really high-profile discussion about banning social media and mobile phones for youth.

And I think that’s a little bit too extreme. Um, as you say, we can’t totally wind it back. We are where we are, but I think trying to get that balance, isn’t it? Is really vital. 

You’ve been fantastic and talked a little bit about the potential risk or less risk now, but also some of the things that kind of worry you about digital spaces and kids being online.

What are you excited about? What makes you happy? Where’s the kind of optimism side for you?  

Lisa Damour: So, teenagers— and it’s really fun for me to have kids on either end of adolescence. What I love, love, love— I mean, first of all, we have so much fun texting and so much fun on a family text. And it’s a way to be in touch with my kids that actually works really, really well through adolescence and really well with my college student, you know, in a way that, you know, trying to get on the phone for long conversations makes zero sense at all, but we have a blast over text. And same with my younger daughter. And the sophistication and speed of the humor in teenagers, you know, the muscle they have built with how they play with one another, the use of memes, the creation of memes. I mean, I look at the stuff that my 13-year-old is putting out or working with, and I’m like, that is so much more sophisticated than things I was doing at 16, 17— I mean, like, it’s really cool. And I did a piece years ago for the Times about teens and social protest. One of the things I was really interested to learn is how much they learned how to do social protest and have very, very complex conversations by doing it online.

So someone makes a statement, somebody critiques the statement, someone responds to the critique, and they are watching, at a pace that they can follow, arguments get made, refashioned, challenged, reworked, and again, are at a level of sophistication that I know we did not have as teenagers, and if you are raising a teenager, you know this is true because they are on your case all day and they’re right and they’re faster and better at this than we are.

Laura Higgins: Painfully true, Lisa. 

Lisa Damour: It’s true. And I am a better person for it, and I know it, but sometimes it’s a little exhausting. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah, I’m a better person for it because of it, not during it. Yes, exactly. 

Lisa Damour: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. 

Jordan Shapiro: One last question for you before we wrap up— a kind of vision question. What do you think needs to change in our screenager discourse? Whether that’s from parents or educators or researchers or policy makers or tech, you know, any, any, any stakeholder, what, how does our screen age or discourse need to change or what, or what would make it better? 

Lisa Damour: I’m a fan not of telling parents how to parent, but telling parents how to think about parenting challenges because kids are really different.

I have in my practice made different recommendations for children in the same family. I’m like, that kid cannot have social media, that kid, okay. I think there’s a lot of variables, but you can give people ways to think about it. I wrote a piece for the Cooney Center about how to onboard kids onto social technologies, and I got up to as far as saying I think that social media should wait until kids are at least 14—that there’s a neurological watershed at that point that allows them to be much more critical of what’s put in front of them. Then, you know, of course, since it was for the Cooney Center, I wrapped it up at age 14, but like to take it a step further, if we’re going to say, well, if you get them to at least 14, how do you think about what comes next? So, one thing I’ve been playing with is this idea of thinking about social media being like a high school party. Kids want to be there, their friends are there, and things can go wrong.

And those are familiar risks. We all went to high school parties. Okay, who belongs at a high school party? Not middle schoolers, right? So, kids under the age of 14. And then, what 14-year-olds? The really level-headed ones who will let you know if something is wrong. Those are kids you can probably feel more confident putting on social media.

There are also 17-year-olds who will go find the darkest, creepiest corner of anything. They do not belong in high school parties, and they probably don’t belong on social media. So, I think encouraging parents and caregivers to look at the kid in front of them, trust their assessment of who they are working with, and then make decisions with some hopefully useful parameters for working with that information, as opposed to handing down prescriptive guidance. It’s very hard for one size to fit all 

Laura Higgins: That’s fantastic advice.

Thank you, Lisa. I think I’ve got a few takeaways and Jordan, I’m sure you have too, the conversations we’ve had in the last few days. This is really good stuff. 

Lisa Damour: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah. Anything you want to add that we didn’t ask about? 

Lisa Damour: I love the work you do. It is such an honor to get to think together with you. And I was thinking the other day, like I had the best job in the world because. I adore kids and teenagers and then my professional life puts me in the path of other adults who adore kids and teenagers and so I have such a fun time at work because what I do brings people who have the shared interest in my way, and they happen to be my favorite kind of people.

In this episode of Into the Digital Future, Shuli Gilutz speaks with Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins about the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) initiative, led by The LEGO Group and UNICEF and funded by the LEGO Foundation. They discuss the RITEC-8 framework, developed through research conducted with over 750 children in 18 countries. Shuli discusses the release of the RITEC Design Toolbox, which has been created as a set of tools for design teams to support their integration of these ideas in their work designing digital play. Tune in to learn how well-designed digital play experiences can help foster children’s well-being.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the season. 

Shuli Gilutz: It’s great to be here. Hi everyone. My name is Shuli Gilutz. I work for the UNICEF child rights and business team headquartered in Geneva, currently located in Tel Aviv, in Israel. And my role is actually working with business on behalf of UNICEF to help promote and protect children’s rights.

So our team develops tools and engages with industry to help promote children’s rights in practice. 

Jordan Shapiro: We have tons of questions about children’s rights coming up, but the first thing I want to know about is, so you have this really interesting background. It’s both education, psychology and user experience design, right? UX design. Tell me about that. Tell me about your inspiration, your motivation. How do you think about design from an educational perspective? 

Shuli Gilutz: Thanks. That’s a great question. Cause I’ve been in UNICEF only for a short while, so a little over a year and actually prior to that, for the past 20 plus years, I’ve been more in the children’s design and tech industry, thinking about how to design best for children, child-centered design, age-appropriate design, and I’ve been both in academia and industry, and that’s been something that’s been driving my work throughout all these years was, really, what’s the best for kids technologies out there. Obviously, it can afford so many things for everybody. And it is whether we like it or not.

So how do we design it? That’s this kids’ developmental stage, but also their interests and their passions and their growth and their thriving. And also protect them, of course even though there’s been a lot of work on that side. So yeah, on the academic side, I was at Stanford’s Learning Design and Technology program and later got my PhD at Columbia in psychology, really understanding how children understand interfaces or novel interfaces in cognitive psychology and educational psychology.

And then I taught for many years in academia, both in the U.S. and Israel looking at children’s HCI, so human computer interaction, which is later in industry, translated into UX, which is very cool to see these academic methods that take months in understanding the users and how people interact with technology.

In companies, they’re like, you have five days to think of the study, do the study, analyze the study, give us the findings and yo, what should we design? So that’s UX. 

Jordan Shapiro: And what’s the coolest example of that you could give us? 

Shuli Gilutz: I think the biggest challenge is navigation. When we had to look at different navigational systems for children and design teams and product teams always assume it’s like adults. Or it’s something that they have this myth about children. It has to have all these childlike things, which is obviously neither. So children can use systems designed for adults pretty easily, if they’re designed well. So it’s not about being designed for adults, it’s about good design. But sometimes their motivation is different. Their context is different. What they’re interested in is different. So they’re not going to have the same kind of user journey as adults.

And when you talk to design teams or product teams, they don’t listen. They’re like, “Oh, but so and so at this huge company does it, and it works.” I’m like, how do you know it works? Have you seen children do that? “No, but they’re selling.” I’m like, how do you know? So until you have them sit with children of that specific age group of that context, because that obviously matters as well, and see that they don’t get it until that moment, it’s just “Oh, come on, Shuli, we know you have a PhD, but who cares? This is business and blah, blah, blah.” So all these years, it was always like, how do you get the foot in the door to have all the stakeholders? Because once you have that experience, they’re like, “Oh, how do we get more of this?” Because everybody wants to understand what children are experiencing to make it better for them.

I think that was my kind of professional route.. When this opportunity for this project came up, I’m like, wow, thinking about child rights and well-being and actually serving that to companies and how to work with that. That’s amazing. That’s what I would have needed. as a practitioner to help me get those buy-ins from executives and to understand how children think.

I’ve also been involved in Designing for Children’s Rights for many years. It’s a non-profit organization, like a grassroots organization with designers from all over the world, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do. We took the child rights framework and basically used it to create design guidelines based on that to help us with that kind of in-house convincing of everybody of how to design best for kids just using this kind of vetted, global, accepted framework rather than just saying, oh, but I know from my experience working with kids, which, usually it doesn’t. It doesn’t work. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah. Okay, that’s a perfect segue then. Let’s talk about the RITEC project. Tell us about the goals in advancing child rights in digital environments. 

Shuli Gilutz: Okay. The RITEC project is a really cool project, which I joined only in the last part. So it’s been around four years, and this is the last, um, bright tech means responsible innovation and technology for children.

And it’s a collaboration, a partnership between the LEGO Group and UNICEF, which is also rare. And it’s sponsored by the LEGO Foundation, which has been supporting this whole process. And the goal was really to undergo research and studies to understand what well-being means for children in digital play.

So this started around COVID. Everybody saw children at home with screens playing. It was clear that there’s value in this. It’s very important. And at the same time, all these ideas for legislation and for ideas of taking screen time and all this discussion of screen time, which It’s a whole other discussion, but it’s a very problematic term, as I know you guys agree.

So how do you explain what’s going on? We see that there’s value, but we also see that people are worried. So the idea was to actually go and do our own research. We wanted to talk to children all over the world, which is a big emphasis for UNICEF, to understand from children, what do they think? What’s good for them? When do they feel it’s good for them? When do they not feel comfortable? That it isn’t supporting their well-being, and try to derive a framework for that which we can then serve to industry and say, here, if you want to design for children’s well-being, these are principles you should follow.

So that was how it started. The first phase was creating the framework and then it was validating, empirically validating the framework. Each one of these first two research stages were conducted with Academics from all over the world that did an amazing job. And they’re also working on publishing their papers and current conferences.

Jordan Shapiro: I think I read there was 34, 000 kids or something that is something ridiculously high number, 

Shuli Gilutz: Not 34, 000, but we had more than 700 children in both studies that we actually talked to. We did base it on some more UNICEF Innocenti Office of Research and Innovation.

They are doing another global survey. With tens of thousands of children, we use that information as well, but for this project, we actually talked to more than 700 children from 13 countries. 

Jordan Shapiro: Do you mind if we go through the eight dimensions of the framework? Can we read each one off for you and you tell us what the recommendations are for each one? 

Shuli Gilutz: Oh, for sure. 

Jordan Shapiro: All right. I’ll start. So Identity and self expression. 

Shuli Gilutz: Okay. So identity and self expression, the idea here is that it’s part of a developmental process for children to engage in identity.

So we have that many play patterns. Not digital that we know, there’s dress up play and makeup and you play with a dollhouse and all these, even if you’re running around playing different roles and you’re chasing one another, you’re trying out different identities.

And this play pattern can be also found obviously in digital play. And that has been found to be very supportive of children’s well-being. That’s that. And also we see that also a big, in relationship to the DEI factor because when you’re trying out different identities, so let’s say now you’re playing a mom and taking care of the kids or a dad and taking care of the kids and now you’re playing a sibling and now you’re playing a warrior and now you’re playing a caregiver and now you’re playing a computer scientist or whatever.

You can try different ethnicities, different genders, and different ages. And children get to try these out, and it’s very important for their development, and they love it. 

Jordan Shapiro: Next one’s emotions. 

Shuli Gilutz: Emotions is a great one, because it’s not only what we think of as emotions. So we found that in digital play, children have an opportunity to experience a range of emotions. They can get excited and motivated, but they can also get angry and upset and lose. And that’s fine. But then you have the opportunity to learn how to regulate emotions, to learn how to play, to learn how to play in a team. What do you do when your teammate doesn’t play? And Minecraft ruins everything for you.

So how do you deal with that? But also of course, just to enjoy. So it’s a great opportunity for children to experience all that and learn from it. 

Jordan Shapiro: How about creativity and imagination? 

Shuli Gilutz: I think that’s the obvious one, especially to anybody who played any sandbox or open ended, a gaming environment, children can create endlessly. So it’s really endless in terms of just the time and the way you have to do the tools you have for creation. If it’s art, if it’s science, if it’s building and construction, endless. 

Laura Higgins: I love this next one. I think it really speaks to the kind of Maslow theory, but the sense of competence and achievement. Tell us about that. 

Shuli Gilutz: Yes, this is, I love it too. It’s also perceived competence. It’s competence because in a lot of games you learn real skills. It could be. educational technology. It could be things that you learn elsewhere. There’s even research that you become better at. You can be better surgeons if you play video games.

So these are real skills you learned, but it’s also a perceived sense of competence, meaning that you get better. You start something, you fail, and then you get better. And the opportunity to fail is something that we don’t have a lot in life, especially kids today. So perceived competence is amazing.

Jordan Shapiro: Relationships? 

Shuli Gilutz: So relationships is another one that’s tricky, because it’s about relationships with people around you and also with yourself. So what do we mean by that? The idea is that a lot of digital technology affords you the opportunity, and I said we started this during COVID, to actually play with your friends.

You can play side by side if you’re both playing together. One person’s playing, the other’s watching. You can play multiplayer. You could play with your cousin who lives in another town, or your grandparent who lives somewhere else, or if you’re, parents, divorced parents, and so forth. So you can have all these opportunities to play, but also you can play on your own, and we found that’s very important for children.

And for adults, to have that time sometimes to tune out, like they’ve been at school, they’ve been interacting with everybody, now they just need time to be in flow with themselves. And that’s also very important. So we put that also into relationships because it’s a spectrum. 

Laura Higgins: I love that. As a person who really finds a lot of therapeutic time playing LEGO, that really speaks to me: Autonomy and control. 

Shuli Gilutz: Yes. So this is another one that’s super important for child development and that children today, unfortunately, lack in many areas. especially in the many developed countries in the way they’re limited in their life. So the ability to take control of what you’re doing and just be independent without people telling you what to do all the time, have free play.

And you have that in many open-ended environments. You can do whatever you want. You will have consequences, but you learn and you have full control of whatever you want. And I think it’s just, we know from developmental research how important it is for children. And if you don’t have it, you become an adult and you didn’t experience that.

There are effects that are very negative, but also it’s just joyful and what children want when they’re growing up, 

Jordan Shapiro: Next one is diversity. 

Shuli Gilutz: So diversity, equity, and inclusion, of course it’s critical and they’re actually two dimensions that we call them basic dimensions. It’s things that we have to have. Not all dimensions must be in all games, and I’ll get to that later. But this one, DEI, is so important, for two reasons that we’ve seen when we’re talking to children. One, representation. Children wanted to see themselves in the game. Children wanted to see what they could be and that they’re part of this.

They’re not excluded. And this means all kinds of diversity. Gender, ethnicity, age, ability. All these things, but also this is important for accessibility. So to include children, and especially in UNICEF, we talk about at the most vulnerable kids. So a lot of children told us that they couldn’t play the game because it was very heavy on internet use and it was expensive.

So they had to log out or, of course, in-app purchases is a big problem for children who don’t have those funds or access to those funds. So if you’re thinking about accessibility, it’s both for people that have challenges with interfaces, but also financial and having Wi-Fi the whole, all the time and all these things that many children talked about in different countries.

Laura Higgins: The digital divide is still very real around the world, isn’t it? The final one is really my bread and butter, which is the safety and security angle. 

Shuli Gilutz: I have to talk to you about that later. But yes, this is, of course, the number one. So we can’t have the others. And this actually came from children, which we were happy to hear, they said they want to play in an environment.

They feel safe and nobody wants to be bullied. Nobody wants to feel like this is not somebody is using their data. Somebody can approach them. They want to feel safe in the same way they feel safe to play at home, the same way they feel safe if they do to play in a playground. They know that it was designed for them, that the people around are protecting them.

They don’t have to worry about that. They want to assume the same thing for their digital environment. So this is a must while the others are more like nice to have, depending on the audience, depending on the experience you want to design. This is not an optional thing. This is the basic thing for well-being for your players.

Jordan Shapiro: I love that. I love all eight of these dimensions. I feel like it’s the same as what you have to do in a classroom, what you do have to do at a play date. Like anytime it’s involves kids, all these things are equally important, but what does it look like?

So how do you put them all together in a digital space? Although I’m imagining most of our listeners can already imagine, but maybe you have a few more words to say about it. 

Shuli Gilutz: That’s a great question. First of all, to comment on your comment, I think children view it the same.

They don’t think there’s a difference between the classroom or the outside place for them, it’s the same thing. So it’s only us. We’re stuck in this divide of digital and the rest of the world. But that’s just, I agree. 

Jordan Shapiro: I agree. 

Shuli Gilutz: But how do we design for it? So we don’t design everything all at once.

There’s no one game that has everything that solves all the problems for all the kids all the time. There’s no such thing. Because children are different and even if a child in the same day can at some point want to play FIFA with their friends and you know be all excited and then play on their own and just go into flow and zone out and both will be really good for their well-being.

So it’s not that there’s one thing you should always include. So there are different dimensions of it and they line up for children with different needs. and different interests and different passions and different abilities. So really the first thing to do is in any child-centered design process, understand your audience, understand the experience you want to design, and then which mechanics will support that in terms of their well-being.

Always add safety, try to always add diversity, equity, and inclusion, but then you may only need one dimension or a few dimensions to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah. It completely makes sense. And of course, at least the way I’m thinking about this is, when people are designing for kids, what are the criteria that they’re aiming for?

Is it money? Is it attention? Is it stickiness? Is it, and this is really saying, how do you, I want to make sure that the whole audience gets this, right? This is really saying, how do you put well-being right at the center as a goal? And what are the things, what are the criteria?

It’s almost like a checklist, right? You can go, how well are we doing this? 

Shuli Gilutz: It’s not a checklist. And actually in our FAQs, we have that question. Is it a checklist? Because many designers ask me, is this a checklist? I don’t want designers to think, Oh, I need to add something for autonomy. I need to add something for, you know, DI well for DIS, but not for the other ones.

Because it’s not a checklist. You have to understand your audience and you have to understand what you’re designing for and then design for it. However. The two basic ones. So the two kind of foundational dimensions, the one of safety and security and the one for diversity, equity, and inclusion should always be inclusive because they create the basis for well-being, but the rest, it’s really about what you’re trying to create.

If you’re creating this world of creativity that you’re on your own or you’re creating, it could be a casual game. You’re playing with friends. That’s a whole totally different thing. And they can both be great for children’s well-being, but you really have to know what you’re designing for. 

Jordan Shapiro: I love it.

I think it’s such a concise, clearly defined framework. And I encourage our listeners to read about it in more detail, even though we’ve just described it in a lot of detail. But still we’ll have the links below so that people can read about it, but I do want to switch gears for a second and just to ask you, in your opinion, how has children’s interaction with digital technology changed over the past, I don’t know, decade, two decades, the long haul.

And what do you see as where we are going? How do you think AI is going to change things? I know a lot of people are wondering if AI is going to change things, how it’s going to change things. In many ways we’ve talked about on this podcast, how it’s already changed lots of things, but it’s only going to do it more, would be my guess, I don’t know. Let me ask you, are you worried? 

Shuli Gilutz: So I don’t know. I do think I agree with you a hundred percent. It’s a game changer. It’s definitely a game changer and we’re not even understanding how big of a game changer it is yet because that takes time just to see where it’s going.

So for sure, but I think what’s interesting is when we look at children, and we see that through other kinds of, events that happened over the years, right? If it was the internet themselves and we had mobile phones and the iPad and all these things changed the way childhood happened and even changed the way we what we knew about child development.

We didn’t know children could navigate on their own in a virtual environment age two and a half because when we study developmental psychology and PSA said they weren’t, they were in concrete thinking and then children on iPads were like, going on YouTube and looking for things at age two, and we’re like, wait a second.

What’s going on? So there are all these things that we learn. It’s not that children are affected by it. Children are the same. But we’re just giving them new opportunities and new environments that they can act. And so if you talk to children today, they know about AI. And they’re not too impressed. They’re like, okay, cool.

Yeah, I created that song, it did this rap thing for me. Let’s ask AI, can I try to do my homework on it. Whatever. They don’t see what we see, which is like, Oh my God, our jobs are gone. The world is doomed. Nobody will know what’s true and what’s not because they’re growing up with it.

I think, again, the focus is always about content, context and specific children in different environments, but in a lot of AI literacy. So the fact that there’s discussion about it and discussion of where the children are, so they’re aware, will really help them be smart at it. And of course, regulation.

That’s a slow process. AI is so fast. So we have to work internally as designers and design teams and product teams that are developing environments for children. To have our own moral compass, because it will be a while until regulation catches up, because AI keeps changing. It’s a moving target.

And we also have to talk to our audience and have children be aware, but we can’t put the responsibility on them, because that’s, We can’t. That’s not fair. And of course, that won’t work. And we also can’t put it on parents because parents are obviously busy. They don’t have time to get updated on AI and stuff.

But also, some children don’t have the luxury of having parents that can support them on this. Either parents are working or they just don’t have parents at home. And those are the most vulnerable children that we want to look out for. The responsibility is on us. And on us, I mean us UNICEF, but also us industry and anybody who’s designing these environments for kids to make sure that we’re looking at this because this is very fast.

So I don’t think it’s the end of the world. I think it’s going to be interesting. But we should be aware all the time because it’s a higher level of alert than we had before. And it’s so much faster. 

Laura Higgins: I love that framing, Shuli, I think, let’s bring it back down to earth a little bit.

I think we get very caught up in some of these as you say, Oh, it’s really scary. Where’s it going to end? But I’m also looking forward to us having a conversation in a year’s time. And seeing what we have learned and whether actually any of those fears came to reality. I, the work that we do at Roblox we very much are all around collaborating with organizations such as UNICEF and working with other tech industry friends, to, for the greater good.

But what are we still missing? If there was just one thing where you really wanted to see us working on children’s digital rights and well-being, what would it be? 

Shuli Gilutz: That’s a great question. I think transparency, and I think it’s a tough one for companies, especially big companies like Roblox, because you have many moving parts and many departments and not everybody’s always aligned.

But I think it’s I think from a children’s side, I remember I did a study years ago when the voice assistant started coming out and everybody thought this was the next big thing and we were talking to children about it and they’re like, wait a second. So they can hear when I’m coming home from school, they come to hear when I’m going back.

Their jokes, I was like, I’m too funny, like they, so once you start asking the questions and being transparent and then they didn’t care, they’re like, okay, fine. So they know my favorite color is blue and my favorite food is sushi and whatever. And they don’t care. So they have my data in that sense, but I don’t want them having my data when I come back from school.

So they have their ideas, but this is a conversation to be had. So I do think that it’s not showing a weakness, being transparent about everything that’s going on. I think it actually empowers. the users and it creates trust in the company. And that’s also relating to something you said earlier, Jordan about, costs and, getting users coming back and so forth.

I think that these ideas, the right tech ideas and the right tech design toolbox that we develop for people to apply it actually help you make better products and gain trust with your audience. And it’s actually good for business. This is not bad for business. This is Better for business because if you have a game that’s great to play, promotes well-being for children, you’re happier as a customer.

Parents are happier. You’re trustworthy because you’re making it safe. So it’s definitely good for business. But I think that’s a shift that a lot of leaders in this area have to understand that this will actually make them on the front lines and create the golden standard in the industry rather than, Oh no, we have to put money into, user acquisition and getting, do this, have amazing products and you’ll have the business.

Jordan Shapiro: I just have one more question for you as we wrap up, which is how do we get kids to read more books? 

Shuli Gilutz: You have to write good books for that. So I think, you know what, that’s an amazing question because it’s almost like the screen time question, right? So when people talk about screen time and we say, no, it’s not about the screen time.

It’s about the content, the context and the specific child here. It’s also about the book. So when Harry Potter came out, kids were already on screens. But they left the screens instead of reading these 500-page books. All night in the middle of dinner because it was amazing. And there were other books like that.

So it’s not the only series. So once you have great content and it doesn’t matter which medium it is, You’re gonna get the people. They’re very sophisticated kids today. You have to have good stuff and I think actually we’ve seen all these really cool things where The different media promote each other. So if you have a tick tock about a book and they’re talking about it Then they’re referring to it on YouTube and there’s a game.

And That’s all connected, I think that really helps because that’s how children today view their world. It’s all interconnected between the different media. And children are reading books, but yeah, I’d like my kids to read more books. 

Laura Higgins: I think that was a brilliant example. And it threw me right back to when I was a kid.

And actually that kind of cross-pollination across all different media, that’s not new. Because I used to love the kind of choose your own adventure books. And particularly like the E. Livingstone Real Fantasy. I know Ian, I’ve met him through his work with the games industry and games workshop. He is an amazing storyteller.

He’s very much involved in video games, the whole Dungeons and Dragons world and tabletop games. But it all started with books, and so that, that is, that’s not a new thing, but yeah, I’d love to see much more of that as well. 

Jordan Shapiro: Thank you so much. It’s been such a fascinating conversation. Is there anything we should have asked you about that we haven’t yet? 

Shuli Gilutz: The only thing is I’d like to share that we are soon going to launch our RITEC Design Toolbox. So the framework we discussed, we’ve actually developed tools for design teams to apply them easier. Because we’ve heard from designers that they don’t want to read the 60-page report, which is too bad because it’s an amazing report, and it’s beautiful. But we hear you and we worked with designers to develop this toolbox of how you could use it in the design process without reading the report. So that’s gonna come out on November 18th. We’re gonna have a global online launch for it and I’ll share more, but yeah, I hope that’s going to be useful for many out there who want to really apply this in their work. 

Laura Higgins: Wonderful. We’ll make sure to share the links with our listeners as well. Thank you so much, Shuli.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Roblox are thrilled to announce the third season of Into the Digital Future, our podcast that explores the complexities of parenting in the digital age. This season, hosts Jordan Shapiro (Cooney Center Senior Fellow and author of Father Figure: How to be a Feminist Dad and The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World) and Laura Higgins (Senior Director of Community Safety & Digital Civility at Roblox) dig into the complexities of well-being for young people in a world that is increasingly digital.

This season, Jordan and Laura acknowledge the many concerns that adults have about screen time and children’s well-being. They speak with experts who really understand child development and understand the nuances of kids’ digital lives, including researchers, health professionals, and technology experts; please tune in as they dig deep into the topics that are top of mind for so many parents and caregivers. Together, they move beyond a discourse of shame, guilt, and restriction and offer parents and caregivers a more nuanced view of technology’s role in our children’s lives.

We hope you will enjoy this series of fun, thought-provoking conversations about kids, social media, and the role of technology in our lives — and how our thinking about “screen time” can no longer be an all-or-nothing approach. We kick things off with UNICEF’s Dr. Shuli Gilutz for a thought-provoking discussion about children’s rights in the digital space and how UNICEF is developing tools and engaging with the tech industry and designers to protect these rights. In the com ing weeks, we’ll hear from Dr. Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist and the author of several best-selling books about adolescents including The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, who assures us that when used well, technology can help kids tame their emotions. Dr. Earl Turner, Founder and Executive Director of  Therapy for Black Kids, talks about some of the unique challenges faced by marginalized youth in the digital age and the importance of inclusive digital spaces. Sameer Hinduja, Professor of Criminology at Florida Atlantic University and Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center, opens our eyes to digital self-harm and the role that social media can play in fostering a sense of connection and support for young people. Lucy Thomas, co-founder of Project Rocket, talks about why it’s so important to include young people in shaping the digital landscape. And Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician, researcher, and author of The Mediatrician’s Guide: A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen Saturated World, assures us that the kids are alright–especially if the adults in their lives model positive behavior with screens themselves.

Please join us for this exciting new season –  and please share with friends and colleagues!

You can find us on your favorite podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and YouTube.

 

Here at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, we talk to a lot of folks who design digital products for children. One topic that comes up consistently is the challenge of applying quality academic research to everyday design practice.

We are very proud to be a part of the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project because a key goal has always been to generate research-based insights from children’s perspectives that are easy for designers to use.

After more than three years of research with over 750 children in 18 countries followed by interviews, consultations, and workshops with 40 online gaming design teams from around the world who shared what would most help them to design with children’s well-being in mind, we couldn’t be more thrilled that the RITEC Design Toolbox is ready to use!

A few weeks ago, we got a sneak peak of the Toolbox, first at the Games & SDG Summit, where Shuli Gilutz from UNICEF shared an overview on a panel on child rights in the digital age. Afterwards, attendees were able to participate in a breakout session to map out how to get the toolbox into more designers’ hands.

 

The following day, we gathered a group of creators and researchers who have already been engaged in applying the RITEC-8 well-being dimensions to their work, to test out the Toolbox with a design problem that they have faced.

The group dug in and explored the resources, which they said helped facilitate deep conversations about the various components of well-being and how they can be experienced by children. They also noted that the Toolbox got them thinking about design approaches that can leverage different aspects of the RITEC-8 framework to achieve positive well-being outcomes.

We can’t wait to see how designers of kids’ digital play get inspired by the RITEC Design Toolbox, and we look forward to supporting their efforts. Please share your experience and feedback with us here!

 

 

 

 

In the last five years, there has been mounting public interest in the relationship between digital technology use and children’s wellbeing. New policies and legislation aimed at promoting children’s rights and/or safety online are being proposed across North America and around the world at an unprecedented rate. Despite their popularity among children of all ages, however, digital games are often left out of the conversation. As is children’s vast knowledge, insights, and willingness to discuss the positives and negatives that digital gaming brings to their lives. Gaming has long been a core digital activity for children worldwide, associated with a range of important benefits and opportunities for children’s play, learning and wellbeing. But it also introduces numerous risks that need to be addressed.

The Child Appropriate Game Design Project aims to fill these gaps by exploring what policymakers, game developers, and children themselves think is “age appropriate” in digital games. We’ve focused on “age appropriateness” because it’s a term found in a lot of the new legislation addressing children and digital technology (e.g., California’s Age Appropriate Design Code Act). But it’s also something that many kids and parents consider when they make decisions about what games to play (content) and how to play them (devices, platforms).

Led by professors Sara Grimes (McGill University), Darshana Jayemanne (Abertay University) and Seth Giddings (University of Southampton), our team has spent the past three years conducting research, including a comparative policy analysis, critical design analysis, interviews, and yearly play-based focus groups with the same 34 kids aged 6-to-12 years. Our analysis of all this data is still underway, but we have some fascinating preliminary findings to share from our first round of focus groups with kids. Here’s a sneak peek of what they told us so far, which you can read in full in our Year One Report.

One size does not fit all when it comes to “age appropriate”

While our child participants did see age as a relevant factor in determining whether (or not) a game is “appropriate,” they said that other factors such as personal preferences and aversions, realism, and maturity are equally or even more important. Some kids said that the presence of “violence” makes a game inappropriate for them. Others told us that the presence of bad words was a sign that a game was inappropriate. Yet other kids said that games with gory graphics or (some) violence could still be appropriate for them and other kids their age who could “handle” those types of things. A common thread across the children’s varied responses was the sense that even kids of the same numeric age could have very different needs, preferences, and definitions of appropriateness.

Many of the kids in our study have trouble finding games they find appropriate for them. Across several focus group discussions (13 to date), it became clear that most of the children wanted more flexibility and customization options in the games they play so that their exposure to content and other players can be better tailored to their individual preferences, concerns, and maturity levels. This is relevant because it suggests that children’s needs are not currently being met by common content management systems like age-based ratings and parental controls.

Some kids like scary things

The idea that “scary” content is a crucial part of the discussion came up in every group we spoke with. The kids often described “scary” and “horror” content as prime examples of the type of “inappropriate” content children might encounter in games. We discovered that some kids like scary games and other kids strongly dislike them, but that most kids fall somewhere in between. In addition to talking about scary games, kids told us about scary in-game ads and their concerns about interacting with scary people in multiplayer games. One thing we heard repeatedly is that kids would like clearer and more detailed content warnings so that they can make informed decisions about which games are right for them. For example, 9-year-old Cat Gamer told us about an experience where they were not properly informed about a game’s frightening storyline: “I was playing a game [that was]…really fun and it was like about this cute little fox, and it had really good animation. But then I got to a section it started getting like really scary. I stopped playing it, but like, it’s kind of deceptive.” Anecdotes like this are common amongst kids and showcase some of the difficulties they face when trying to select which games to play.

This finding is noteworthy because it goes against popular assumptions about the developmental readiness of children at different ages and stages for “grey area” subject matter like spooky themes.  At the same time, it supports previous research on children and “dark play” that shows how some scary games and media can have an important or even positive role in children’s lives. Determining what is “too” scary for children is a nuanced endeavour that varies from child to child. Because of this, using age alone as the metric for deciding what is an appropriate level of scary is much more complicated and challenging than it appears. Providing clear and detailed content warnings on games could help kids (and parents) to make more informed choices. This would also align well with the United Nations’ General Comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, which supports children’s agency and encourages giving kids access to important decision-making information.

 

YouTube is part of kids’ gaming culture

In our focus groups, many of the children told us they get news and information about games from YouTubers. Kids seek information from YouTubers to trouble-shoot in-game issues, to learn new strategies for improving their gameplay, to find out about upcoming games, and to acquire “insider” knowledge (i.e., gaming capital). This confirms previous research on children’s gaming cultures showing that many children use YouTube to develop expertise on games and build social capital. In our own study, 8-year-old Zoey explained the significance of YouTube for social inclusion when she said: “[We] need actually a way of socializing with other people. Because when other people say one thing, you don’t understand it (…) For example, a game. You might want to search it up or something so that if you know that game you can be friends with them.”

This finding is relevant because it shows the continued importance of taking a multi-modal (i.e., transmedia) and holistic approach when trying to understand kids’ digital experiences. If YouTube serves as a key influence that shapes and informs many children’s gaming practices, then it should be included in discussions and studies of children’s gaming cultures. This also means that guidelines and policies related to children’s gaming should be contextualized across digital environments. We need to consider the cross-platformization of children’s play in the development of policies created in their best interests. This is particularly important because children don’t just rely on YouTube to learn how to play games – it also provides vital cultural references that allow them to participate more fully in their peer networks and in the broader information society.

 

Parental controls are confusing

Parental controls are becoming a staple in the effort to make kids’ digital interactions safer and/or age appropriate. Increasingly, however, parental controls (e.g. content filters, purchase limitations, screen time restrictions, etc.) are configured “behind the scenes” through a separate parent or family account. This can make it easier for parents to access but it also means kids might be getting fewer opportunities to see what parental controls look like or to be involved in decisions about safety and content settings. In our focus groups, the kids had widely varying knowledge and ideas about parental controls. Some kids were confused as to what parental controls did. Others believed their parents didn’t know about parental controls. For example, 9-year-old Fortnite said: “I have parental controls, but my parents don’t know there is parent controls.” Some children weren’t even aware parental controls existed and later in the discussion even suggested that game companies should include some.

We compared the kids’ responses to the answers their parents gave us in the screening survey questions about their use of parental controls. We found that while many parent-child pairs were on the same page about parental controls, many others were not. There were multiple discrepancies and contradictions within parent-child pairs, indicating a lack of communication between some parents and children when it comes to how and why parental controls used. This suggests to us that there is a potential disconnect between parents’ use and assessment of parental controls and children’s understanding of how and why parents are using them (or opting not to). Which can have negative consequences for children’s digital literacy, resiliency, and safety, as seen in previous research showing the vital importance of parent-child communication for reducing exposure to risk online and helping kids develop effective strategies for dealing with risk when it happens. Our study indicates that children need to receive clear communication about parental controls so that they understand their purpose, limitations, and how they fit within family dynamics and household rules.

 

Conclusion

Children have important insights to share with us about gaming and age-appropriateness, to which many grownups are not privy. This makes it critical that we involve children directly in discussions about age-appropriate design and related policies and incorporate their insights into our work and decisions. The CAGD is helping to fill this gap by connecting children’s insights, developer insights, design analysis and policy analysis to get a big picture of how and why age-appropriateness is being taken up in the gaming ecosystem, and what best practices in this space might look like moving forward. If you are interested in learning more about the project, please check out our website: https://kidsplaytech.com/ where you can read our full Year 1 report and stay up-to-date with our work as we complete our study and share more of our results in the coming months.

 

 

 

Bronwyn Swerdfager (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), Riley McNair (Faculty of Information), and Alan Bui (Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) are core members of the Child Appropriate Game Design Project research team and doctoral students at the University of Toronto.