Inclusive Digital Future for Young People (INDIFU)

The project will address challenging designs and mechanisms inherent in today’s platform ecosystems, which may hinder young people’s inclusion and effective participation in the digital society. The research questions we ask are:

• How can future competencies be tailored to a deep-digital and accelerating age?
• How can platform design avoid exploiting age, gender, socio-economic vulnerability?
• How can young people help develop child-friendly, pro-social and inclusive designs?
• How can data visualization strengthen young users’ relationship to their own data and avoid negative “datafication” effects?
• In what way can young people participate in shaping a more inclusive “AI society”?

These research questions will be explored through a holistic analysis of existing problematic digital platform mechanisms and attention-/surveillance-based business models. 

Guided by young people’s user participation the project will explore future competencies for a deep-digital, accelerating age; experiment with non-exploitative platform design across age/ gender/ SES; engage youth in co-creation of child-friendly, pro-social and inclusive designs; test data visualization methods to strengthen young people’s control over their data; and explore how young people can play a role in shaping an inclusive AI society. 

The project will use focus groups, workshop methods, conceptual redesign and experiments to test open, user-driven alternatives that can counter manipulative design and power asymmetries. In this way young people can develop a closer “ownership” to their own future.

The project outcome will be relevant for the future development of society, and for how young people can become more informed, engaged and active citizens through active participation in co-constructing and visualizing a more open, pro-social, privacy-friendly, and less algorithm-driven platform future. Such knowledge may impact competence-building measures, platform design as well as policy and regulation. The project will prepare for a larger future study.

This project is part of the strategic research area Inclusion of more children and young people.