Narrowing our focus
to deepen our impact

Recently, I was able to reconnect with a long distance colleague at a conference. Where once we would have exchanged handshakes and polite conversation, we ran into open-armed hugs, shared photos, and spoke excitedly about our personal and professional lives. We had sorely missed face-to-face human connection, but something new occurred while we were physically distanced, connecting only by video conferencing. Our collective vulnerability dissolved superficiality and formality as we invited each other into our homes via the digital ecosystem. Prioritizing our relationship in the face of challenge had broken down walls and enabled a more authentic and meaningful connectedness to emerge.

I think about this often when I consider the effects of the pandemic on children, adolescents, and young adults around the world. I saw in my own clinic how technology served as a lifeline to family and friends during lockdowns and have witnessed how those digitally enabled connections have continued at high levels even after in-person life has resumed. I also saw in my patients how their efforts to use technology to be seen and heard and to build relationships sometimes went awry, increasing their anxiety and sadness.

This is why the work of the Digital Wellness Lab is so timely and important. Even as the national conversation about young people’s digital connectivity and technology use becomes more and more adversarial, we are finding in our research that teens are savvier than we think, finding innovative ways to turn potentially dangerous digital power tools into instruments of connection, balance, and belonging.

The Digital Wellness Lab believes we can build a future where young people can grow up healthy, smart, and kind in our increasingly immersive digital environment. We are thinking differently and playing the long game, using the immense power of our digital ecosystem to reach the hearts and minds of its young users, and harnessing their optimism and energy to help build the world they want to live in and lead. As new paths are blazed in the emerging metaverse, we have the opportunity to recognize mistakes made in Web 1.0 and 2.0, to reconceive systemic problems from the ground up, and to build a physical-digital ecosystem that capitalizes on young people’s strengths, optimizes mental health, and, instead of blame and shame, offers guidance and support.

We believe that technology and media corporations can do well while doing good. We will continue to leverage our independent, rigorous science to push our colleagues to make hard but beneficial decisions on behalf of young people and the future they will create. Digital wellness will always be a work in progress and we will never get it perfect, but if we keep perfecting, tinkering and iterating together, using research evidence and young people’s voices as our guide, we know that we can build a healthier, more positive digital ecosystem for everyone. As we enter a new year, filled with promise and the unknown, we are grateful to be engaging with all of you in this adventure.

Be well,

Michael Rich, MD, MPH, FAAP
Director, Founder, Pediatrician

In mid-2021, after two decades as the Center for Media and Child Health (CMCH), the Center relaunched as the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, with a mandate to engage key stakeholders in a dialogue grounded in actionable research to initiate root level change in order to foster young people’s digital wellness. It was a difficult year to launch a new endeavor, but the Lab achieved great progress, building impactful relationships, presenting to audiences globally, and producing evidence-based, actionable guidance for caregivers, educators, and industry professionals.

While we built, however, we knew we needed to define how the change we are seeking would happen. We engaged in a series of conversations with key stakeholders — including tech industry leaders, healthcare professionals, and digital wellness advocates — to better understand our strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Our leadership team came together in person for several daylong sessions to discuss the feedback, assess our position, and debate possible paths forward. The result of this work became the basis of our new strategic plan, which centers our work on the following key questions:

• What are the negative and positive effects of technology and interactive media on young people? What constitutes a healthy experience? What behaviors and design choices result in healthy and unhealthy experiences?
• How can we leverage our research to help the tech industry create a healthy digital ecosystem? What do companies need to know to make responsible decisions around how they design, deliver, and market their products for young people?
• How can we enable the pediatric healthcare community to routinely address media use with children and their families in the same way they currently address topics like nutrition?

As we enter 2023, we are doing so with a more refined mandate. In our effort to narrow our focus and deepen our impact, we will leave parent, educator, and youth-focused education efforts to colleagues around the world. This will enable us to fully commit ourselves to our work with our industry supporters and the healthcare community, with a goal of creating a more respectful and empathic world for our children.

Thank you for joining us on this journey — we look forward to the year ahead!

All my best,

Cori Stott, MBA, Ed.M.
Administrative Director