1. + How Does Social Media Affect Youth Development? Opportunities for Design & Research June Ahn University of Maryland, College Park iSchool & College of Education

2. + 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

3. + Social Network Sites (SNSs) Controversies & Opportunities What do youth do in SNSs? Does it affect their: Relationships? Psychological Well Being? Learning?

4. + SNSs are Identity Developing Platforms Pictures Friends Relationships Interactions Info

5. + 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.

6. + 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?

7. + Psychological Well-Being http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelogon/324259281/sizes/l/in/photostream/ The early Internet was isolating For Young People The Internet is now: social, connecting, sharing http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3088582622/sizes/l/in/photostream

8. + 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?

9. + 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/amboo213/4020 584983/sizes/o/in/photostream/ Big Design Challenge of the Future: How do we leverage affordances of social media for collaborative learning?

10. + Learning from Social Media: The Challenges http://fold.it/portal/site_files/theme/science/competi tion.png http://www.wired.com/images_blog s/epicenter/2009/05/wikipedia- logo-en-big.png http://www.pixelpeople.co.za/wp- content/uploads/2011/04/khan_academy.jpg

11. + 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 to Counter-organize? Report? Support?

12. + 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)

13. + Thank You! Email: juneahn@umd.edu Ahn, 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.