Centering youth voices in age appropriate design

You get a youth council, everyone gets a youth council! What’s next?

This year, it’s been gratifying to see companies publicly recognise the need to centre young people in their decision-making, a key requirement of age appropriate design principles. Snapchat was the first to the races this year and opened applications for its pilot Council for Digital Well-Being back in January, with applications closing a few weeks ago. In February, Discord announced that it would co-create a teen rights charter with teens in mind, and in March, TikTok announced its new Youth Council’s priorities for 2024 and some of the initial topics for discussion. In parallel, youth advocates in the responsible tech movement are increasingly asking for their perspectives to not just be included, but prioritised in conversations around designing for them. All Tech Is Human has a great Responsible Tech Org List that highlights many of the groups engaged in these conversations.

How can youth councils avoid the trap of performative engagement? 

As conceptually promising as they are, youth advisory groups in the past have often turned out to be largely symbolic. In my conversations with youth leaders and participants from previous advisory councils, they share frustrations about how the progressive dialogue within the sessions doesn’t seem to translate into tangible changes within the companies. This disconnect fosters a culture of scepticism and disappointment, as youth see their contributions as futile in the shadow of corporate agendas that prioritise new features over necessary restrictions or modifications of existing ones. 

Despite companies’ best intentions with forming these youth advisory councils, how can they avoid the trap of performative engagement? To truly centre youth voices in a meaningful way, companies need to (1) secure cross-functional leadership support for incorporating these insights, (2) integrate this form of external engagement into their existing development processes, and (3) structure the council engagements in a way that values youth contributions. 

First, secure cross-functional leadership support

Youth feedback is only one input into a much more complex process of product and policy development that needs to account for (among others) technical feasibility, impact on growth and engagement, regulatory requirements, technical bandwidth, and compressed product launch timelines. To manage expectations around how these insights will be incorporated, here are a few pieces to put in place before you start up a youth advisory council:

Secure buy in from cross-functional leadership: Socialise and secure buy in from leaders across different groups like product, engineering, research, legal, policy, and communications, who will be invested in meaningfully centering youth feedback on their teams. Consider jointly planning the youth advisory councils with partners in other parts of the company, such as sales, product marketing, or engineering. 

Mix up your research methods: Advisory councils are great but are limited in how much insight they can deliver. Supplement their insights with other forms of youth engagement such as quantitative research, large-scale quantitative surveys, and consulting with youth development experts who are closely tracking changes in the needs of young people. This approach ensures that youth council members aren’t stuck with the herculean task of speaking for All The Youth.

Jointly determine your goals: Before you even start recruiting, lay down crystal-clear objectives for the council, keeping a meticulous record of what you do and what results can be seen. This isn’t just good housekeeping—it’s an important demonstration of transparency for everyone watching, even the youth who will later consider joining your council.

Next, integrate this form of external engagement into your existing development processes

If we agree that youth engagement isn’t just about ticking compliance boxes or making products “age-appropriate” on the surface, we need to ground the entire product lifecycle in their perspectives. This is a more abstract version of a recent analysis we did on integrating youth perspectives into the product and policy life cycle. We grounded this analysis in the UNCRC’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, and this great report from 5Rights about how to determine the best interests of the child in a digital environment.

Finally, structure the council engagements in a way that values youth contributions

I have kept this section at the end because there are several excellent academics who have already written extensively about how to engage with young people - if you are interested in digging in further, this recent paper from Kucirkova, Livingstone, and Radesky outlines responsive methods to study their experiences in a very quickly changing technological environment. 

But we should still cover this because how you engage is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Companies need to evolve beyond the performative aspects of youth engagement to ensure that members of their youth councils not only feel heard, but also see the impact of their contributions. In conversations with current and former members of youth councils, we hear a wide range of suggestions, and am sharing these as anecdotes, not rigorous peer-reviewed data.

Firstly, these councils should include a mix of individuals who are both deeply informed and those less familiar with tech issues, as well as extreme users and casual users. This diversity can provide a broad range of insights into how different youth engage with and are impacted by digital platforms. These youth members should also have some say in the agenda for the meetings, ensuring that companies are holding space for the issues that matter the most to them. This helps reduce the perception that they are just being used for a company’s compliance-checking measures.  

Next, these meetings should support authentic relationships and unmoderated discussions. Comfort and trust among members encourage open communication and more honest feedback, which is crucial for meaningful dialogue. That is not likely to happen from the very first minute, so council facilitators should build formats that encourage this mutual trust. For example, allowing youth some time to discuss among themselves without a corporate moderator could lead to more organic and potentially more productive conversations.

Finally, companies should consider building accountability mechanisms that let council members know that their perspectives truly matter. This could range from committing to update council members on the outcomes of concerns they raised, letting them engage with early prototypes of policies or products and commit to addressing their concerns, or structure confidentiality agreements that still allow council members to express their concerns publicly without jeopardizing their membership or putting them at legal risk. 

Somewhat easy, very important

We are likely to see many more youth engagement initiatives this year. But to foster an environment where young people not only feel heard but also see the impact of their contributions, companies and policymakers must evolve beyond the performative aspects of youth engagement. This is also key to demonstrating that they are truly centering youth in their development, threading youth feedback through each phase of the product development life cycle. This doesn’t necessarily mean that youth feedback will trump the complex range of considerations companies need to factor in, but when the process is built right, it makes children's best interests a cornerstone of digital innovation​​.

What (else) I’m reading

ECPAT International published this thoughtful report on child safety in online gaming that builds on roundtables they have been holding. I was particularly struck by how gender-agnostic our current range of gaming interventions are, when in reality young people are bringing the social implications of their gender identities with them into gaming environments. 

The potential US TikTok ban reminded me of this important piece from 2021 about the impact of TikTok’s ban in India. Instagram swooped in and has now largely replaced TikTok in India, but the article highlights how many working-class, economically downtrodden, marginalized caste creators got erased in the process. In the US, I cannot help but think of the millions of youth users who will now be left scrambling to learn another platform’s ways.

This report from Children & Screens powerfully highlights how the Age Appropriate Design Code in the UK has (to date) resulted in 91 changes being made to youth design across leading social media and digital platforms. There’s no denying that regulation impacts companies’ design decisions. I wish it had come out before the last issue of Quire, where we discussed the role of government in securing children’s rights. 

Staying on the theme of regulation, I wrote a piece for Tech Policy Press on why the Kids Online Safety Act in the US is so popular and what it means for the future of child safety regulation. To be clear, I am not an advocate (or opponent) of regulation, but as an observer who guides companies on how to respond to regulation, this is an important discussion.

I loved this op-ed in Newsweek about the benefits of technology for neurodivergent children that risk being lost amidst the current moral panic. It highlights that young people have a wide range of mental health needs, some of which are enormously helped by access to technology.

This isn’t specific to youth, but a great paper from several smart folks at Integrity Institute, Pinterest, LinkedIn, UC Berkeley, USC, and Cornell Tech, on how platforms can rank content using signals other than engagement, such as content quality. These kinds of ranking changes can improve user perception of safety and wellbeing, and can be an important tool to address user harms. 

One final note: This month, we are opening up Quire to everyone! I’m excited to finally share this work with the broader community - if you know someone who would be interested in a handy resource on debates happening in youth tech policy, please share this with them. I’m looking forward to more conversations about how we can build safer, more private, and healthier online experiences for young people.