{"id":9082,"date":"2026-04-18T13:49:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T18:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ic4ml.org\/?post_type=journal-article&p=9082"},"modified":"2026-04-20T10:24:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:24:47","slug":"designing-for-digital-wellbeing-with-teens-participatory-co-design-workshops-to-explore-youth-centered-platform-concepts","status":"publish","type":"journal-article","link":"https:\/\/ic4ml.org\/es\/journal-article\/designing-for-digital-wellbeing-with-teens-participatory-co-design-workshops-to-explore-youth-centered-platform-concepts\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing for Digital Wellbeing with Teens: Participatory Co-Design Workshops to Explore Youth-Centered Platform Concepts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Abstract<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Digital well-being is increasingly recognized not only as a matter of individual self-control but also as a structural condition shaped by the design of digital platforms. This paper presents findings from participatory co-design workshops with Hungarian high school students (n<\/em> = 89), in which inquiry-based and design-thinking methodologies were mobilized to critically interrogate and reimagine digital environments. Across four workshops, participants engaged in empathy exercises, collaborative ideation, and low-fidelity prototyping, producing 25 fictional platform concepts that addressed stressors such as information overload, fear of missing out, and acceptance anxiety. This approach reflects a McLuhanian perspective highlighting how platform architectures themselves shape patterns of attention, well-being, and social interaction. By enabling youth to pose critical questions about how digital systems configure their experiences\u2014 and to envision alternatives \u2014 students are positioned not only as critical consumers but also as co-creators of equitable and well-being-supportive digital cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keywords <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Digital Well-Being, Media Literacy, Participatory Co-Design, Media Ecology, Platform Redesign<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Introduction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although digital well-being is inherently experienced on a subjective level, it is only partly a consequence of the activities and competencies of the individual; it is instead largely the result of how online spaces and platforms are designed (Cecchinato et al., 2019, Stark, 2022). Consequently, digital well-being is increasingly recognized not only as a matter of individual self-control but also as a structural condition shaped by the design of digital platforms (B\u00fcchi, 2021). Within this context, users’ emotional responses to digital interactions are significant factors that inform their well-being. Understanding the emotional and cognitive impacts of digital media consumption is vital for developing effective media literacy initiatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McLuhan’s assertion that “the medium is the message” posits that the form of communication inherently shapes how meaning is constructed and understood, and, by extension, how users experience well-being through these platforms. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan concludes that the main goal of media education is \u201cto emancipate ourselves from the subliminal operation of our own technologies\u201d (McLuhan, 1962, 294). Education therefore plays a crucial role in helping individuals become aware of the effects of media (McLuhan & Logan, 1977). People are better able to preserve a sense of agency in how they engage with the media when it is made visible. Rather than viewing technology as either neutral or deterministic, it is more accurate to understand it as existing along a continuum, and our position on this continuum at any given moment is shaped by how aware we are of the many overlapping relationships that influence us (Lewis, 2021). By extension, this shaping also influences how we experience well-being through these platforms.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper presents the method and findings from participatory co-design workshops with Hungarian high school students (n = 89), in which inquiry-based and design-thinking methodologies were mobilized to critically interrogate and reimagine digital environments. Across four workshops, students engaged in empathy exercises, collaborative ideation, and low-fidelity prototyping, ultimately producing 25 fictional platform concepts that addressed stressors such as information overload, fear of missing out, and acceptance anxiety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educational strategies to address digital well-being often focus on awareness or screen time reduction. However, such interventions rarely empower young people to think critically about platform infrastructures or to reimagine them through creative design. In this study, we present a participatory workshop model that enables high school students to reflect on their digital habits, articulate sources of stress and anxiety, and co-design fictional platforms that could promote healthier relationships with technology. In addition, the study investigates the potential of co-design as an educational tool that enhances critical digital literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theoretical background: Media ecology, awareness and infrastructural perspectives on digital well-being<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Media literacy and well-being are closely linked and have received growing attention in recent years as media platforms expand and increasingly affect people\u2019s mental health and overall well-being (Rasi et al., 2019). Moreover, activities and practices related to digital media can affect our well-being even in situations where active digital media use is not taking place (B\u00fcchi, 2021). Within this context, Feerrar (2022) considers digital well-being a concept that can renew approaches to digital media literacy. In her opinion, digital well-being as a concept is well-suited to a powerful reframing of concepts related to digital citizenship, such as online presence, privacy, participation and critical evaluation of information. Thus, the full potential of media literacy for impacting positive development and well-being can be realized when all core competency dimensions are present (Gordon et al., 2025). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand these effects more fully, this study draws on media ecology. Media ecology views each medium as an environment \u2014 a distinctive, atmospheric background of effects created by a specific technology. Every medium, or lived technology, is inherently ecological: it expands and contracts, permeates and reshapes human perception, action, and cognition, with profound and far-reaching consequences for our personal, social, cultural, and political spheres (Adams & Thompson, 2016). Media literacy plays a crucial role in raising awareness of the everyday media technologies that surround us. It also supports understanding of their profound influences on both individuals and society (Lewis, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key idea in media ecology is that media shape experience even when we do not notice them. In a saturated media environment, media tend to disappear into the background of our awareness. They become part of the environment in which we live. McLuhan (McLuhan & Logan, 1977) explains that people typically focus on the figure (media content), while ignoring the ground (the medium). However, it is the medium itself that exerts a significant influence on the creation of the messages, the messages themselves, and the receivers of those messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dynamic is especially visible in contemporary digital platforms. The McLuhanian claim that \u201cthe user is the content,\u201d as further interpreted by Logan (Logan, 2024), becomes literal rather than metaphorical in the contemporary platformized media environment. According to Logan, the term \u201cuser\u201d refers to both the sender and the receiver of the message. In this view, the user determines the content by using the technology in a specific way (e.g. how to drive a car). In the platformized, personalized, datafied media environment – especially social media – the user\u2019s feed is closely connected to how the user uses it. This connection is shaped through the interpretation of user behaviour by algorithms that construct the feed. In social media and other datafied platforms, content is no longer limited to explicitly produced messages but increasingly consists of behavioral data generated through use. In this sense, the user does not merely consume or create content but becomes the primary material from which content is extracted, organized, and redistributed (Segundo et al., 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These conditions highlight the role of platform design in shaping digital well-being. Design approaches for digital well-being aim to balance the benefits of digital technology with the need to protect users\u2019 mental, emotional, and physical health. The fundamental goal of design is to satisfy human needs, both functional and emotional. Victor Papanek (1985) emphasized that design must serve real human needs, and reinforced the moral responsibility of designers to create products that contribute to improving quality of life. This approach is the basis for future research linking digital well-being and user-centred design, emphasizing the social dimensions and impact of design. As technologies become more deeply embedded in everyday life, the challenge lies in creating digital experiences that promote positive interactions and personal flourishing without reinforcing technology addiction or attention capture (Peters et al., 2018, Riva et al., 2012). The development of digital well-being should therefore not be based solely on individual self-regulation or restriction, but on education – not only for users, but also for designers and practitioners (Roffarello et al., 2023). In this sense, the focus shifts from individual behaviour toward platform design and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Methodology<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To explore how young people conceptualize and articulate digital well-being through design, we developed and implemented a series of participatory workshops in secondary schools. The study involved 89 students aged 17\u201319 from four secondary schools in Budapest, Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Participatory research encompasses research designs, methods and frameworks that use systematic research in direct collaboration with stakeholders connected to the issue being examined, with the aim of action or change. It is an umbrella term for research plans, methods and frameworks that apply systematic research through direct collaboration with stakeholders on the issue under investigation. The process of involving people at every step of the research process involves tools, tasks, and structured activities that promote participation, collaborative decision-making, and mutual learning (Vaughn & Jacquez, 2020). In this context, the participatory design workshop for secondary school students thus also serves an educational purpose: it makes participants aware that digital platforms are not just passive intermediaries, but active, performative systems that shape the production, distribution and consumption of media content. This (media) ecological approach treats platforms as complex, multidimensional entities in which technological infrastructure, algorithms, user interactions, and social regulations all play a role (Nichols & LeBlanc, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this approach in mind, the idea of a participatory workshop was developed to teach participants by encouraging them to self-reflect and process their own media experiences (Potter, 2015). It also uses a design approach drawing on user experience research methods and co-design practices to explore the functioning mechanisms of platforms.  The toolkit of design thinking provides a basis for applying this design approach for educational purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

User-experience research emerged within the fields of technology, marketing and design, and primarily uses qualitative methods that specifically look at the user experience of a technology, product or service. Specifically, it focuses on how the user interacts with a given product or service, offering a number of opportunities for academic and scientific research (Cirucci & Pruchniewska, 2022). To map the feelings of users, a number of innovative methods have been developed in connection with user experience research (Martin & Hanington, 2012). One such method is the “love and breakup letter method”.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The participatory co-design approach presented here aligns with empowerment-oriented media education while remaining attentive to the realities of harm and vulnerability in platformized media environments. Drawing on McLuhan\u2019s media ecological perspective, the workshops do not simply encourage students to regulate their own media use, but to become aware of the environmental effects of media technologies themselves. By shifting attention from content to medium\u2014from individual messages to platform infrastructures\u2014students are invited to perceive how digital environments structure attention, emotion, and social relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, this approach avoids framing empowerment as unrestricted choice or individual responsibility. Instead, empowerment is understood as infrastructural literacy<\/em>: the capacity to recognize affordances, constraints, and hidden design mechanisms that condition agency in datafied and algorithmically curated systems. Through reflective exercises and speculative platform design, students move beyond protectionist narratives toward a critical, design-oriented understanding of digital well-being, positioning them not only as users to be protected, but as actors capable of imagining and shaping alternative digital futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each 90-minute workshop followed a structured design-thinking process adapted from the Stanford Design School model (Micheli et al., 2019), including empathy exercises, collaborative ideation, and low-fidelity prototyping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table 1: The workshop\u2019s structure<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Time<\/th>Phase<\/th>Description<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
5 min<\/td>Introduction<\/td>Short introduction to the aims of the workshop<\/td><\/tr>
15 min<\/td>Empathize<\/td>Students wrote a \u201clove letter\u201d or \u201cbreakup letter\u201d to a digital platform they use frequently.<\/td><\/tr>
5 min<\/td>Define<\/td>Each group selected three anxiety-related issues from a set of pre-defined \u201cconcept cards\u201d (e.g., FOMO, information overload, acceptance anxiety).<\/td><\/tr>
45 min<\/td>Ideate and prototype<\/td>Students collaboratively designed a fictional platform that addresses their selected issues. They created two posters: one presenting the concept and another with low-fidelity wireframes.<\/td><\/tr>
20 min<\/td>Test and discuss<\/td>Groups presented their designs, followed by peer discussion.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The “love and breakup letter method” can be used in the exploratory phase of research (empathy) (K\u00f6ppen & Meinel, 2015). While the use-demand satisfaction model – widely used in media research to assess user motivations – assumes that media consumption and content selection are conscious activities (Bhatiasevi, 2024), this method is particularly suited to exploring ambivalent feelings and accessing the frustrations behind the primary pleasure factor (not often clear to users themselves). As a creative writing exercise, the method also served as a tool for self-reflection in the context of social media use and everyday practice. Following McLuhan et al. ‘s (1978) insight that removing a technology reveals its hidden ground of effects, the \u201clove letter\u201d or \u201cbreakup letter\u201d exercise functioned as a figure\/ground observation and self-reflection tool. By personifying a familiar platform, students temporarily detached from daily immersion, spotlighting the emotional and psychological effects of digital platforms such as FOMO, information overload, and acceptance anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the next phase (define) participants received a set of 12 concept cards related to online technologies and perceived feelings. Working in groups of 3-5, they selected three concepts based on self-reflection. The concepts then served as the basis for the co-design phase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table 2: List of concepts for concept cards<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Concept<\/th>Description<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
information crisis<\/td>If we do not trust any online information due to the spread of fake news, turn away from news, or accept extreme or baseless explanations and \u201calternative\u201d facts.<\/td><\/tr>
artificial intelligence anxiety<\/td>Anxiety related to unpredictable, unknown technology, for example, fear that it will come to life and take our jobs.<\/td><\/tr>
digital emotional contagion<\/td>The ratio of positive to negative topics appearing in our news feed influences our mood and determines whether we post happily or sadly.<\/td><\/tr>
availability stress<\/td>The constant need to be available, the expectations we place on ourselves, which we experience as an external demand.<\/td><\/tr>
online vigilance<\/td>The special importance of stimuli is accessible through online technology; the individual\u2019s mind is always on online events and happenings and reacts to them immediately.<\/td><\/tr>
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)<\/td>Fear of missing out refers to anxiety about not seeing online content and others\u2019 interactions in time and not being able to respond to them promptly.<\/td><\/tr>
acceptance anxiety<\/td>The heightened need for self-representation on social media can create insecurity about how others will react, how much they will accept us, and what kind of feedback we will receive.<\/td><\/tr>
social media fatigue<\/td>Psychological exhaustion caused by information overload from social media (too much information).<\/td><\/tr>
security reluctance<\/td>Even though we know what settings and passwords we should use and how to protect our privacy, in reality we often do not invest energy in our own online security.<\/td><\/tr>
digital distraction<\/td>A situation where a technological device interrupts an individual\u2019s other activities, which can lead to continuous loss of attention and decreased concentration.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The workshop process resulted in 25 fictional platform concepts designed by students in response to specific digital stressors. Based on their work, groups presented and discussed their ideas and concepts with their peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student groups had two tasks: <\/p>\n\n\n\n