Designing for Digital Well-Being
By Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Vice-President at The LEGO Foundation
In a time where a series of technology disruptions are sweeping the education space, and families and young people are concerned about digital privacy and well-being, we have a unique opportunity to design for digital well-being. We often tend to separate health and well-being from the learning and education, — in reality, these are deeply integrated principles and young people are well aware of their relationships.
To discuss these topics, I invited a group of young people to share their thoughts about technologies, education and well-being at the Economist Metaverse conference in San Jose. At many of the conferences I attend, we discuss the opportunities of edtech, try new applications, and assess the right fit for curriculum and outcomes. We also hear the perspectives from developers, policy-makers, educators and principals, but rarely invite perspectives from young people, who are the real customers and potential co-creators of educational experiences.
At the Economist conference, I invited three young people between 12–18 years old to share what they envisioned as important for digital technologies, and we discussed how the industry could incentivize a different set of digital behaviors.
Contrary to traditional beliefs about how young people might use technology, they provided a very nuanced perspective on how they use technologies in real life. For instance, they shared that not only can technologies be boring and addictive, it can also be physically and socially disconnecting to be caught up in the metaverse; a lot of content is also not safe with an inappropriate use of language, a lot of advertising and speaking down to children and young people.
They asked practical questions about the lack of more creative forms of technologies which incentivize people to help each other, doing good, and solving real problems. Many of the current experiences are either traditional games or learning apps to teach narrow concepts or principles.
They also asked why companies can’t be more transparent on what data they collect. If they asked young people about what data they would like to collect, everyone might even learn more about each other and the value of the experiences.
A recent report on responsible innovation in technology for digital well-being from UNICEF and partners, elaborates on this perspective and aims to create practical tools for business and governments to put children at the centre. What the children shared at the conference coincide well with these insights, which came from interviews and a global survey with children from more than 30 countries.
The insights revealed that supporting social connections are key, and there is a need to use technologies and media to shape a sense of belonging, peer relationships and confidence in working together.
Creativity should be integral to new technologies, by enabling expression, co-creation of ideas, and engaging young people in the development and testing of those ideas. The inclusion of young people in the design of technologies will not only enhance the quality of the applications and strengthen digital well-being, but it will also expand how we design for diversity.
In order to design for well-being, we have now developed tools which support digital well-being, development and learning through playful experiences. The tools follow specific principles like social connection, agency, guidance, creation and playfulness, which are an integral part of some of the existing platforms as illustrated in the overview on learning through digital play.
It means that when we design for digital well-being, we need to ask questions such as: What level of choice do the participants have? What is the depth of social interactions? What is the level of guidance, creativity and playfulness? There are very legitimate and practical ways to design technologies for well-being, and we have good tools to start engaging children and young people.
Next time you are designing technologies for children and young people, consider these tools and invite the perspectives of young people; the features they might request the most might also have the greatest value for their well-being, development and learning.
Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen is the Vice-President and Chair of Learning through Play in the LEGO Foundation. The function of the Chair is to be the expert at the highest level to the executive leadership on how children and adults learn through play, and providing consultation at the bilateral, regional and multilateral levels to international partners, leaders and advocacy.
This article was originally published in the X Report — an IMPACTX2050 newsletter providing thematic coverage of 3 tech-led industries experiencing unprecedented inflows of impact investments: Education, Health and Food.
