Executive Summary

The Unseen Teen: Amanda Lenhart The Challenges of Building Healthy Tech for Young People Kellie Owens READ FULL REPORT SUMMARY At social media and gaming companies, the user is Instead, companies and regulators must the constant focus—at least in theory. [...] How to get recognize that the impacts of social platform them to use this platform more? To stay longer? To use vary for different subgroups of adoles- come back tomorrow? Attention and resources are cents. [...] Averages miss the ! Many tech company workers tell us their full range of user experiences on social plat- companies treat adolescents’ use of their forms, and can hide major impacts of those products as an afterthought. [...] Instead, explicitly designing prod- Designing products with adolescents’ health ucts to mitigate negative impacts for smaller and well-being in mind will both address their subgroups of users, like adolescents, will make particular developmental needs and improve the that product better for everyone. [...] In addition to harming user well-being, " Regulators and Civil Society this can lead to companies facing strings of • Judiciously applied outside pres- negative publicity and threats of regulation once sure—from civil society and the media, harms to adolescents become public.