Why Teen Perspectives are Crucial for Shaping Online Safety Policies
By Ozioma “Ozzie” Oguine, CDT Intern
As digital natives, teenagers are among the most active users of online platforms. According to recent statistics, approximately 95% of teenagers and 40% of children between the ages of eight and twelve engage with social media in the U.S. While social media platforms offer opportunities for connection, learning, support-seeking, and entertainment – all necessary for teens’ development – they also expose young users to risks, such as cyberbullying, online harassment, discrimination, and even child sexual exploitation. Accordingly, recent efforts by the Biden-Harris Administration underscore the need for and commitment to addressing negative experiences kids encounter online, as highlighted in the recently released Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force Report. In this report, the task force outlined various strategies to promote youth safety, including best practices for parents and caregivers, recommendations for industry, and a detailed agenda for researchers. One crucial strategy highlighted by the report is the necessity of engaging youth to promote their voices through active participation in intervention strategies and policymaking.
Why Do Teen Perspectives Matter?
Teenagers are devoted users of social media and other digital platforms, making their insights invaluable. They experience firsthand both benefits and pitfalls of social media, and can provide nuanced feedback that adults may overlook. Teens can shed light on current trends, emerging threats, and the types of interactions that genuinely impact their well-being. Previous research has highlighted the benefit of kids’ feedback in ensuring the effectiveness of proposed guidelines and interventions that attempt to address their online experiences.
Further, when teenagers feel heard and see their and their peers’ input reflected in policies, they are more likely to engage positively with safety measures; if teens participate in making changes to online platforms to reflect their safety needs, they are more likely to accept and engage with these new changes and features. Their empowerment fosters a sense of ownership and resilience, enabling them to take responsibility for their online experiences and to promote the protection of their mental health, safety, and privacy.
Recognizing the importance of this sense of agency, researchers, civil society groups, and other organizations have made significant strides in promoting adolescent participation in research about their online experiences and safety. Still, despite the literature, gaps remain in integrating findings into policy discussions, often sidelining teen voices in online safety policy conversations. Given the rapidly evolving digital landscape, it is imperative to ask: How can we bring this body of research into policy conversations? How can we ensure that teen perspectives are given due consideration in policymaking? What are the roles of youth-facing organizations in fostering dialogue between teens, researchers, and policymakers?
CDT’s Commitment to Youth Inclusion in Online Safety
CDT has long advocated for including youth in research and in conversations about their own safety. In our prior research on child safety, we collaborated with young people to learn about their experiences and desires for managing unwanted content and interactions online. Continuing this approach, in an upcoming CDT research study we are seeking to explore the perspectives of parents and teens on a range of proposed online safety strategies. These include considering how youth join and make use of social media platforms and features, and how they interact with content and with other users. The study aims to facilitate meaningful conversations about these topics to understand perceptions of youth and their parents on possible policy implementations. By reviewing possible policy implementations, the project aims to bridge the gap between research and policy and gather insights that could inform policy discussions and proposals based on real-world experiences. Using human-centered research, we aim to uncover nuanced perspectives that can inform more effective and practical policy designs, and ensure that the voices of those directly impacted by these policies are considered.
