Bay Area Resources: GoodForMEdia

In May of 2023, GoodForMEdia hosted a teen mental health event focused around social media. The event was hosted at the d.School at Stanford University. Although teens were the focus, adults (mainly parents and adults working in related industries) were allowed to attend. I and a coworker attended as observers.

GoodForMEdia is a youth-led peer mentoring campaign to tackle the positive and negative aspects of social media and to promote healthy social media engagement while recognizing harm that can be experienced while on social media platforms.

The goals of the event in May were to:

• Uplift youth voice when discussing social media’s impacts on their lived experiences,  
• Create a collaborative space to envision web-based platforms that center positive mental health, and 
• Strategize around social media re-design policies that include youth user experience.

The event started with a Q&A session between two young adults and two industry adults. The discussion left us with these takeaways:

• Teens have a lot of feelings about how social media impacts their mental health.
  • Teen and new adult panelists pointed to the following items that have negative effects on teens: self-diagnosis, lack of sleep due to usage, self-image, and craving attention from likes/interactions. 
• Teens feel the following issues perpetuate social media/mental health issues:
  • Algorithms will just perpetuate issues by creating a cycle. 
  • Parents are unable to talk/coach/educate their children because they themselves are uneducated/unprepared with regards to social media. 
• Teens, Platforms, and Researches don’t know who should regulate social media platforms to make access safe and equitable.
  • Adult panelists (from Instagram & Researcher) felt an outside regulator (3rd party) should be responsible for verifying user’s age and providing a way to prove that to social media platforms (ie. Virtual passport). 
• Youth want their mental health priorities over free speech and profit of the platform. 
• Youth are concerned about misinformation and feel information coming from trusted sources should be prioritized/pushed on social media platforms (especially after COVID vaccine misinformation during the pandemic).
  • Noted: what information would be inaccessible on a platform knowing the viewer’s age? 
• Youth question the original intent of collecting user information for advertising. 
• Teens want a say and have agency in changes made to social media. They feel they should be allowed to collaborate with adults to identify and make changes to social media platforms. 
• All groups recognized the difference in social media experience globally. 

After the Q&A session, we attended Tinker Stations, where each station had its own focus. At the first station, we were asked to write a number on a post-it note in response to questions on whiteboards around the room. All questions related to teen social media use, mental health, and privacy. After a few minutes, we were asked to group up and asked to respond to these questions:

• If you could make one change to a social media platform, what would it be and what would it look like? How would it change your experience? 

After a little discussion, we were given a large sheet of paper with three phone shapes drawn on it. We were then asked to show the change we would make, what it would look like, and how it would change our experience. Although my coworker and I grouped up with two other adults, we had a very interesting discussion about features we dislike about many social media platforms and how some features had changed our habits.

The second station was called Futures Thinking, where we were introduced to the concept of a a Futures Wheel. Futures Wheel are used to identify consequences of a specific change to society and individuals. We were then asked to take a prompt, relating to social media, youth, privacy, and mental health, and create a Futures Wheel for it, then share our groups responses.

Overall, the experience was great as an adult and my coworker and I could tell the teens who attended were engaged and interested in the topic, presentation of ideas, and Tinker Stations. Based on my experience I would recommend checking out GoodForMEdia if you want to assist your teens and new adults with social media awareness and effects on mental health and privacy. GoodForMEdia offers Curriculum and Guides that can be used with teens and new adults, ages 13-24. 

More information can be found on their website: https://www.goodformedia.org/

Jessica Lundin, San Jose Public Library