Publication of the Digital Wellbeing for Teens, Designing Educational Systems special issue

In an age where digital technologies profoundly shape how young people interact, learn, and grow, promoting digital wellbeing has become a central concern across education, design, and technology research. While personal devices and online platforms offer rich opportunities for exploration and connection, their persuasive and sometimes manipulative design strategies can undermine users’ autonomy, particularly among teenagers and children, whose cognitive and emotional development is still unfolding.

Recently, researchers have been exploring the unexpected issues arising from the excessive use of personal devices and social media apps, particularly as companies adopt attention-capture tactics, like guilty-pleasure recommendations and automatic content playback. These strategies exploit users’ psychological vulnerabilities to increase advertising revenue, resulting in significant impacts on users’ perceived agency and often leading to a sense of losing control over their technology use. This has led to the emergence of a new focus on digital wellbeing, studied in fields such as Human-Computer Interaction and psychology. Traditional approaches by practitioners and researchers to tackle these issues involve developing Digital Self-Control Tools (DSCTs), such as mobile apps and browser extensions, that help users track their usage patterns and implement interventions like timers and lock-out mechanisms to regulate device use. However, both researchers and users are beginning to emphasize that achieving digital wellbeing requires more than just self-monitoring strategies; it is a journey of personal growth that necessitates education.

The focus section published in the issue 66 of the International Journal on Interaction Design & Architecture(s) - IxD&A brings together interdisciplinary contributions that explore how educational systems, participatory design methods, and creative technologies can be reimagined to support digital wellbeing among youth. Rather than treating digital wellbeing as a matter of self-regulation alone, the included works emphasize collaboration, critical reflection, inclusion, and playful engagement as pathways toward more meaningful and sustainable digital experiences.

The selected papers examine diverse contexts, from collaborative learning environments enhanced through Human-Centered Design and Self-Determination Theory, to gamified platforms tackling sensitive issues, like gender-based violence and online grooming; from creative coding projects that challenge assumptions about digital efficiency, to inclusive co-design activities involving neurodiverse children and their peers. Across these contributions, the authors highlight how digital wellbeing can be fostered not only through individual tools but also through educational processes that empower young people to understand, question, and shape the technologies in their lives.

The entire issue is now available as a free download!