+

How Does Social Media Affect Youth Development?Opportunities for Design & Research

June AhnUniversity of Maryland, College ParkiSchool & College of Education

+Why Teens? Why Social Media?

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robhardingii/2787936139/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Some statistics from the Pew Internet & American Life Project

93% of Teenagers are Online

73% of wired teens use social network sites

75% of teens own a cell phone

62% of teens consume online news and current events online

+Social Network Sites (SNSs)Controversies & Opportunities

What do youth do in SNSs?

Does it affect their:• Relationships?• Psychological Well Being?• Learning?

+SNSs are Identity Developing Platforms

Pictures

Friends

Relationships

Interactions Info

+Relationships: The Good and the Bad

http://www.flickr.com/photos/winning-information/2314383724/sizes/m/in/photostream

http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

Online social networks can be used to build social capital, but also enhance negative behaviors.

+What Do We Know?

Receiving messages in, related to higher bridging social capital (Burke, Kraut, Marlow, 2011)

Positive supportive interactions related to higher bonding social capital (Ahn, under review)

Design Challenges: How do we motivate positive

interaction?

+Psychological Well-Being

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelogon/324259281/sizes/l/in/photostream/

The early Internet was isolating

For Young PeopleThe Internet is now: social, connecting, sharing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3088582622/sizes/l/in/photostream

+What Do We Know?

Positive interactions in SNSs related to More Happiness, Self-Esteem (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009)

Cyberbullying significantly related to lower self esteem (Patchin & Hinduja, 2010)

Design Challenges: How do we design for more social

support?How do we design to mitigate

bullying?

+A Big Question: Learning?

Using SNSs alone is not likely related to academic achievement!Pasek, J., more, e., & Hargittai, E. (2009). Facebook and academic per- formance: Reconciling a media sensation with data. First Monday, 14(5), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/ 2498/218.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amboo213/4020584983/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Big Design Challenge of the Future:How do we leverage affordances of social media for collaborative learning?

+Learning from Social Media: The Challenges

http://fold.it/portal/site_files/theme/science/competition.png

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2009/05/wikipedia-logo-en-big.png

http://www.pixelpeople.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/khan_academy.jpg

+Technology: The Big Design Challenges

Need to understand ways to motivate more interaction between users of social media.

Find new ways to motivate social support.

Design to mitigate negative behavior It’s easy to organize to bully someone Can we make it easy to organize toCounter-organize? Report? Support?

+Big Social Design Challenges

Need to make online communities viable for youth and adults to coexist Identity Management Tools

Need to understand youth who opt out Under represented populations (Ahn, under review)

+Thank You!

Email: juneahn@umd.eduAhn, J. (2011). The effect of social network sites on adolescents’ social and academic development: Current theories and controversies.Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. DOI: 10.1002/asi.21540.