Designing for Digital Wellbeing with Teens: Participatory Co-Design Workshops to Explore Youth-Centered Platform Concepts

Abstract

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 = 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— and to envision alternatives — students are positioned not only as critical consumers but also as co-creators of equitable and well-being-supportive digital cultures.

Keywords

Digital Well-Being, Media Literacy, Participatory Co-Design, Media Ecology, Platform Redesign

Introduction

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 (Büchi, 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. 

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 “to emancipate ourselves from the subliminal operation of our own technologies” (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.  

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. 

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.

Theoretical background: Media ecology, awareness and infrastructural perspectives on digital well-being

Media literacy and well-being are closely linked and have received growing attention in recent years as media platforms expand and increasingly affect people’s 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 (Büchi, 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). 

To understand these effects more fully, this study draws on media ecology. Media ecology views each medium as an environment — 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).

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.

This dynamic is especially visible in contemporary digital platforms. The McLuhanian claim that “the user is the content,” as further interpreted by Logan (Logan, 2024), becomes literal rather than metaphorical in the contemporary platformized media environment. According to Logan, the term “user” 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’s 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).

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’ 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.

Methodology

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 17–19 from four secondary schools in Budapest, Hungary.

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).

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.

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”.  

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’s 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—from individual messages to platform infrastructures—students are invited to perceive how digital environments structure attention, emotion, and social relations.

Importantly, this approach avoids framing empowerment as unrestricted choice or individual responsibility. Instead, empowerment is understood as infrastructural literacy: 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.

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.

Table 1: The workshop’s structure

The “love and breakup letter method” can be used in the exploratory phase of research (empathy) (Köppen & 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 “love letter” or “breakup letter” 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.

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. 

Table 2: List of concepts for concept cards

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.

Student groups had two tasks: 

• making a concept map (name and logo of the imagined platform, main affordances, how the platform tackles the chosen concepts)
• making a low fidelity wireframe composed of three frames to explain how the platform would work

Images 1-4: Example wireframes 

1. social media without algorithmic feed

2. app for relaxation to observe cows through a webcam

3. Pinterest-like collections with no usernames and evaluation, only chat

4. Social media platform without algorithmic and infinite feed with more opportunities to personalize content

Findings

In addition to the development of the educational workshop, a thematic analysis was conducted based on the results (posters and oral presentation). The analysis revealed recurring themes in both the identified problems and the proposed design solutions. 

Needs, motivations and stressors: Students consistently emphasized the importance of autonomy, meaningful social connection, and control over content exposure. Many expressed a desire for reduced algorithmic manipulation, limited notifications, and the ability to shape their digital environment according to personal preferences. The most frequently identified sources of stress were information overload, fear of missing out, acceptance anxiety, and availability pressure. In response, students sought solutions that promoted control, calm, and emotional safety, indicating a nuanced awareness of how design features can contribute to stress and well-being.

Platform design patterns: Several platform concepts followed recognizable design logics:

1. Niche and hobby-based platforms that support focused communities (e.g., pets, creative writing, schoolwork exchange)
2. Offline-oriented apps that use digital means to facilitate real-world connections or personal activities
3. Non-algorithmic content feeds and finite browsing experiences that intentionally limit engagement time
4. “Slow tech” interfaces that favor quality over quantity and emphasize intention over impulsivity

Nudging and redesign strategies: Nudging refers to subtly influencing users’ decisions through conscious design choices in offline or digital environments. Redesign refers to the intentional reconfiguration of platform infrastructures, affordances, and interaction patterns to support digital well-being. Although explicit nudges were relatively rare in the workshop outputs, a few key patterns emerged:

1. Friction-based interventions were more common than feedback or default nudges. These included time limits, blackout screens, or reduced scrolling options designed to slow down use and encourage intentionality
2. Gamification elements (e.g., collecting virtual rewards to hydrate or complete daily goals) appeared in three concepts
3. Several designs included content-visibility controls, such as limiting the number of visible posts, suppressing algorithmic feeds, or removing like counts – interventions aligned with redesign-based well-being strategies
4. Concepts such as “freedom mode,” “learning blackout,” or platform darkening after extended use mirrored existing features that aim to disrupt infinite scroll and platform stickiness

Platform style archetypes: Rather than proposing isolated features or incremental interface changes, the student-generated concepts reflected broader attempts to rethink platform logics in response to experienced digital stressors. These concepts can be understood as speculative redesign strategies that reconfigure how platforms structure attention, engagement, and social interaction. From a broader perspective, four distinct platform styles emerged:

1. Offline-first platforms: where digital tools enable or enhance real-world activities (e.g., hobby-sharing, meeting planning)
2. Niche apps: tightly focused on specific themes or communities (e.g., cow-watching webcam, astrology planner)
3. Minimal-content platforms: limit the quantity or flow of content to avoid overconsumption (e.g., non-infinite feeds)
4. Slow-consumption environments: promote depth over speed and reward meaningful engagement (e.g., no likes, topic subscriptions)

Conclusion

This study demonstrates the value of participatory design as a method for exploring digital well-being with teenagers. Addressing digital well-being therefore requires not only new habits but also new infrastructures. 

In this context, enabling youth to pose critical questions about how digital systems configure their experiences—and to envision alternatives—positions students not only as critical consumers but also as co-creators of equitable and well-being-supportive digital cultures. Beyond its empirical contributions, this study thus positions participatory co-design as an alternative to predominantly protectionist approaches to digital well-being education. Rather than framing young people primarily as subjects of regulation or self-control, the workshops foregrounded empowerment through critical engagement with platform and design logics.

By encouraging students to examine digital platforms as environments—shaping attention, emotion, and social relations—this approach aligns with ecological orientations to media literacy that move beyond content analysis or individual skill acquisition (Nichols & LeBlanc,2021; Lewis, 2021). In this sense, digital well-being emerges not as a purely personal responsibility, but as a shared, socio-technical concern that can be addressed through education, design, and collective imagination. Positioning youth as co-designers holds potential not only for improving individual well-being, but also for fostering more equitable and well-being-supportive digital cultures. 

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