It’s hard to believe we launched the Inspired Internet Pledge only a year ago! Our 34 current Signatories and Advisors have been hard at work conducting research, creating resources, organizing convenings, and releasing innovative new tools and tech innovations, all in pursuit of a healthier digital ecosystem for everyone, and especially young people.
Check out some of the highlights from our Signatories’ and Advisors’ individual and collaborative efforts this year below and on their individual pages. (Don’t see your company’s or organization’s updates here? Email it to us so we can get it added!)
Research
- It is widely known that optimizing purely for user engagement can surface low-quality or even harmful content. This research paper and blog post from Signatory Pinterest explores non-engagement signals, a critical component in avoiding optimization for “the car crash we can’t look away from.
- Signatory Modulate published a case study outlining the positive impacts that their ToxMod voice moderation technology had on the Call of Duty gaming community, including reducing toxicity exposure and helping moderators to take meaningful action about toxic behaviors. They also launched a Resource Library to make their research and resources more accessible.
- To offer insight into how teens and young adults are faring online, Signatory Snap launched research into Generation Z’s online psychological wellbeing in 2022. They recently released their second Digital Well-Being Index, compiled from surveys of teens, young adults, and parents of teens across six countries.
- Advisor FOSI (Family Online Safety Institute) has just kicked off a research project gathering parent and teen perspectives about how the digital world affects their individual and familial wellbeing. The results of the research will be released and discussed at the 2024 FOSI Annual Conference on December 9, 2024
Resources
- The California Partners Project, a Pledge Advisor, released a new resource providing concrete best practices for parents and families to establish healthy and balanced relationships with technology. In late summer, they will launch a free, bilingual parenting series with resources and tools to help parents/caregivers as they navigate a digital world with young people. Each report/guide will focus on the impact – positive, negative, neutral – of digital media/technology on a specific aspect of child well-being: social-emotional health, exercise and outdoor access, nutrition, and sleep.
- Advisor Scroll by Choice produced a webinar for parents focused on habit changes for digital wellbeing. Parents can also sign up for an automated 10-day email series that deep dives into one tech tip a day.
- Modulate was a founding sponsor for the launch of Ctrl+Alt+Speech, a new podcast covering news and trends in the world of online speech. They also collaborated with Take This, Keywords Studios, ActiveFence, and a number of industry experts to produce a white paper that lays out a comprehensive roadmap for creating trustworthy, inclusive digital spaces.
- Parent ProTech, a Pledge Advisor, is in the final stages of designing a full ISTE-aligned K-12 curriculum on digital citizenship designed to give students a strong foundation in responsible tech use, built on the platforms and online environments that are most relevant to students today.
Innovations
- Pledge Advisor USC Neely Center’s Design Code for Social Media provides specific content agnostic design solutions to empower users and improve the societal impact of social media platforms, including a focus on enabling greater explicit user control, protecting children through better defaults, improving incentives, and preventing small groups of users from manipulating and harming others. Provisions from it have been adopted by policy makers (e.g. Minnesota and the UK) and within numerous technology companies (e.g. alternatives to engagement optimization).
- The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop recently released a paper titled Understanding Well-Being in Digital Spaces that breaks down some of the components of wellbeing from the RITEC framework for developers.
- Snap launched a new suite of tools that includes expanded in-app warnings, enhanced friending protections, simplified location-sharing, and blocking improvements — all designed to reinforce authentic friend relationships.
- Discord launched a Teen Charter, co-created with teens, to serve as a living set of principles that allows teens to create a fun and comfortable space to play and chill. It also keeps Discord accountable to help teens thrive online. The companion Guardian’s Guide is an in-depth guide created to help trusted adults better understand how their teen might use and spend time on Discord.
Convenings
- Founding Signatory Pinterest sponsored and co-hosted two hybrid convenings in December 2023 and May 2024. The first, hosted by the Digital Wellness Lab and detailed in a white paper, focused on conducting a deep-dive into the skills and knowledge young people need at each age and stage of development, from birth through young adulthood, to become healthy and safe independent actors online. The second, co-hosted with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, consisted of a discussion focused on healthy outcomes for youth in a digitally saturated world.
- Pledge Advisor Sync held the hybrid Sync Digital Wellbeing Summit 2024 in collaboration with 14 partners including the Digital Wellness Lab. The summit, which featured the Inspired Internet Pledge in a closing session, welcomed more than 80 speakers, more than 13,000 in-person attendees from 28 countries, had nearly 30,000 live stream views, and more than 400 million social media impressions for the summit campaigns. Sync also supported the introduction of the Inspired Internet Pledge at the United Nations’ AI for Good conference in May, 2024, to increase visibility of this initiative to AI developers.
- Modulate hosted panel discussions at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest game industry conference in the world, on child safety in video games and relevant online safety regulations; hosted a webinar with The Tech Coalition about voice chat safety for children and regulatory requirements for platforms; and shared best practices and sparked new discussions around international laws and their impact on online safety through the first annual All Things in Moderation virtual conference.
- In May 2024, the California Partners Project hosted the 2024 Youth Mental Health Roundtable in Los Angeles. Featuring youth leaders, state and local policymakers, and mental health experts, this roundtable identified challenges youth face with social media and proposed solutions that account for teens’ developmental needs. The roundtable preceded a public-facing Youth Mental Health Town Hall moderated by Lisa Ling and was co-hosted in partnership with CalHHS, Child Mind Institute, and LAUSD.
Collaborations
- Modulate created the Gaming Safety Coalition, an alliance of safety-focused organizations in the gaming industry dedicated to connecting trust & safety professionals and practitioners in the gaming space. The Coalition has released best practices and a white paper detailing the strengths, risks, and suggested approach to integrating AI tools into online safety and content moderation. The company also joined the US Department Of Commerce Consortium Dedicated To AI Safety as a founding organization.
- The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, with support from Pinterest and Foundry10, invited 10 professionals who design kids’ tech to join together for the inaugural Well-Being by Design Fellowship, which met regularly as a learning community, workshopping ideas informed by well-being and child development frameworks and applying them to the fellows’ digital products for kids. The group learned how companies like Scratch and LEGO are applying frameworks such as RITEC and Playful by Design, considered how to measure well-being and make the business case for designing for positive outcomes, and explored how to include children and families in the design process to create inclusive and accessible products.
- The California Partners Project is gearing up to launch the inaugural cohort of a statewide Youth Advisory Committee in September 2024 with a mission to elevate California youth voices, invest in them as co-creators of change, and influence the discourse on critical social issues of our time. This 12-member Committee will inform and support key initiatives including the Governor’s Advisory Council on Physical Fitness and Mental Well-Being.
Coming Soon!
August
Scroll by Choice Webinar — Parent Special: Modeling Positive Digital Habits
August 14, 2024, 1:00 – 1:30 pm ET
Actions speak louder than words in raising responsible children. In this short webinar, Scroll by Choice will explore the latest data on how parents’ and caregivers’ digital habits influence kids’ screen time, and also discuss effective strategies for managing your own screen time beyond short-lived digital detoxes. Learn more and register here.
September
FOSI Webinar — Screens and Wellbeing: Tech’s Role in Back-to-School Mental Health
September 4, 2024, 12:00 – 1:30 pm ET
Back-to-school season marks a huge transition for many children and teens, including the introduction of new technologies both at school and at home. As we continue to navigate the youth mental health crisis, a new school year can seem more stressful than ever. What role does tech play in youth mental health? As schools become more integrated with digital devices, will young peoples’ mental health be affected? What role can tech play in strengthening your child’s mental health? What online safety measures can we take to make sure young people have a safe, successful and mentally healthy school year? Join FOSI as we attempt to answer these questions and more with moderator Alanna Powers, mental health/tech professionals Dr. Shairi Turner, Patricia Noel, Nicole Owings-Fonner and Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, and teens directly affected by these issues. Learn more and register here.
October
NAMLE Media Literacy Resource Showcase (virtual)
October 5, 2024, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm ET
A day of short, rapid-fire showcases featuring resources from NAMLE members, partners, and sponsors that you can bring into your classroom. All showcases will offer practical information from educators on how to incorporate the resource into your classroom and curriculum. Resources for STEM education will be featured in the morning showcase, and resources for ELA and humanities will be featured in the afternoon. Showcases will run continuously throughout each window, so feel free to pop in at your convenience! Learn more about the showcase and how to submit a resource here.
U.S. Media Literacy Week hosted by NAMLE (nationwide)
October 21 – 25, 2024
Inspired by Canada’s Media Literacy Week, the mission of the annual U.S. Media Literacy Week is to highlight the power of media literacy education and its essential role in education all across the country. U.S. Media Literacy Week calls attention to media literacy education by bringing together hundreds of partners for events and activities around the country. Learn more and register as a participant here.
CME Course — Identifying and Addressing Problematic Interactive Media Use hosted by The Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders and the Digital Wellness Lab (virtual)
October 24, 2024, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm ET
Clinicians and other front-line practitioners are being called upon in ever-greater numbers to address young people’s unhealthy use of media and technology. When young people’s behaviors with interactive technology contribute to physical and mental health challenges and academic and social impairment, we call it Problematic Interactive Media Use, or PIMU, a syndrome marked by the overuse of a necessary resource (media and technology). This credit-bearing course is designed to enhance understanding of PIMU, including its various presentations and co-existing conditions, as well as how to prevent, identify, and address it in a clinical setting. Learn more and register here.
December
FOSI Annual Conference, Washington, DC
December 9, 2024, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm ET
The Annual FOSI Conference convenes some of the best thought leaders and experts from around the world for high-level discussion and debate on the most pressing online safety topics of the year. The title of this year’s conference is “From Protection to Empowerment”. Learn more and register here.