In June 2023, the Digital Wellness Lab’s founder and director, Dr. Michael Rich, joined CEO Bill Ready and CMO Andréa Mallard of founding Pledge Signatory, Pinterest, on stage at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to launch the Inspired Internet Pledge with a singular goal: to unite all who work in the digital ecosystem to make the internet a safer and healthier place for everyone, especially young people.
Instead of empty promises and platitudes, we were aiming for something different: to encourage meaningful, contextually relevant, and ongoing, commitments for change across industry and geographic boundaries.
Together, we spent the year delivering on our three Pledge Principles: to tune for wellbeing, to listen to and act on insights from people who have experienced harm online, and to share lessons collaboratively.
2023-24 Accomplishments
Signed 34 Signatories and Advisors to the Pledge
We are proud of the breadth of signatories who have signed on to the Pledge, ranging from large technology companies to smaller startups, nascent social media platforms, and solution providers. The work of our advisors has been instrumental in bringing the youth voice to the table, and in using data and experience to push on the changes and resources they know to be the most promising and effective.
Signatories include major tech, entertainment, and social media companies. Advisors include influential nonprofit organizations from around the world.
Signatories
Advisors
Hosted Three Convenings with Signatories, Advisors and Other Key Stakeholders
- December 2023 (Washington, DC; sponsored by Pinterest and hosted by the Digital Wellness Lab): Identified the skills and knowledge young people need at each age and stage from birth to age 24 to be healthy, safe members of the digital world.
- March 2024 (virtual event): Shared opportunities for collaboration and heard from researchers at Pinterest about a cross-industry collaborative effort to understand how to use non-engagement signals in content ranking.
- May 2024 (Washington, DC; sponsored by Pinterest and hosted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop): Ideated a future in which the internet and digital tools are successfully designed to be healthy and safe
Published Resources to Further the Impact of Our Collective Work
- White Paper: Designing a Roadmap for a Healthier Digital Ecosystem In this report, the result of a convening of over 60 experts, we dive into what is needed to ensure young people can build and maintain digital wellbeing.
- White Paper: The Future of Content Moderation in Gaming: A unified approach with AI and human touch This paper, born from the collaborative efforts of Take This, Modulate, Keywords Studios, and ActiveFence — as well as research from industry experts — lays out a comprehensive roadmap for creating trustworthy, inclusive digital spaces.
- Research Paper: What We Know About Using Non-Engagement Signals in Content Ranking This paper is the result of a workshop with experts from seven social media platforms organized by Pinterest — it includes 19 specific, actionable insights for creating a safer, healthier internet.
- Blog Post: The Field Guide to Non-Engagement Signals It is widely known that optimizing purely for user engagement can surface low-quality or even harmful content. This blog post explores Non-Engagement Signals, a critical component in avoiding optimization for “the car crash we can’t look away from.”
- Research Brief: The Inspired Internet Pledge Principles The Pledge was designed to be impactful based on our current understanding of research on young people’s digital wellness. This research brief provides a summary of some of the literature underpinning the Pledge principles.
Shared the Pledge Around the World
- June 2023 (Pledge Launch): With founding Pledge Signatory Pinterest at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France
- January 2024: During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
- May 2024: With Pledge Advisor Sync Ithra at the Sync Digital Wellness Summit in Saudi Arabia
- May 2024: During the AI for Good conference in Geneva, Switzerland
For a more detailed look at the individual and collective efforts of Pledge Signatories and Advisors, check out this blog post or visit individual Signatory and Advisor pages.
Looking Ahead
We Seek to Welcome Even More Signatories and Advisors to the Pledge
- Major advertisers, as these corporations provide the lifeblood of interactive media, develop and disseminate much of the visual media that drives our culture, and boost content on social media sites; their role in building a healthier internet is powerful.
- Education and early childhood advisors, to ensure that the perspectives and experiences of these groups of professionals are brought to the discussions about building a healthier internet.
- Artificial Intelligence developers, to boost our collective ability to inform the design of new and emerging technologies with knowledge about young people’s developmental needs for long-term social, emotional, and mental health.
We Aim to Connect the Dots Between Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing to Tech and Media in Actionable Ways
Over the coming year, we will:
- Release the inaugural Inspired Internet Pledge Annual Report covering our first full project year (through December, 2024)
- Continue conversations with tech and media companies, corporations, and advertisers about how they can be a meaningful part of the work of building a healthier internet in collaboration with others
- Collaborate with Advisors and Signatories to host virtual and in-person convenings to discuss key topics, and develop and disseminate actionable strategies for building a healthier internet.
- Engage in bi-directionally meaningful ways with Pledge Advisors and Signatories, amplifying one another’s work and accelerating the pace of change in building a healthy internet
- Share outcomes on Signatories’ commitments, to show the world the opportunities to do good by being creative, ambitious, and collaborative
All of us at the Digital Wellness Lab could not have hoped for a better outcome for our first year, and look forward to continuing to build on our collective pledge to create a healthier, safer internet in support of the mental, social, and emotional health of our children. Learn more about how you can get involved at InspiredInternetPledge.org