Trust-Enabled Privacy: Social Media Designs to Support Adolescent User Boundary Regulation
Proceedings of the 21st Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2025).
Project Description
Social media has developed a bad reputation for being addictive and harmful to young people. The User Empowerment Lab investigates the design features of social media platforms that contribute to these problems, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and algorithmic content recommendations. We conduct experiments to assess the harms caused by specific design features and we design and test alternative patterns that respect users’ attention and can help them thrive. What we find in studying this space is that spending time together with other people online and sharing content with friends enriches people’s lives in many ways, including the lives of young people. The User Empowerment Lab works to design social spaces that encourage users of all ages and young people in particular to spend time with the people they love, have reflective conversations where disagreements are made in good faith and lead to reconciliation, and build communities they trust to protect their privacy.
Publications
Using Screenshot Data to Examine the Phone Use People Regret
Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025). Acceptance rate: 25%.
Privacy as Social Norm: Systematically Empowering Teen Privacy Management on Social Media
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), 9(2):CSCW151, 2025.
You Go Through So Many Emotions Scrolling Through Instagram: How Teens Use Instagram to Regulate Their Emotions
Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025). Acceptance rate: 25%.
A Temporal Model for Supporting Hard Conversations Online Through Design
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), 8(CSCW2):1-22, 2024.
'I Just Don’t Care Enough To Be Interested': Teens’ Moment-By-Moment Experiences on Instagram
In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC 2024). Acceptance rate: 29%.
Tuning into the World: Designing Community Safety Technologies to Reduce Dysfunctional Fear of Crime
In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 2024). Acceptance rate: 27%.
Sharing, Not Showing Off: How BeReal Approaches Authentic Self-Presentation on Social Media Through Its Design
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), 8(CSCW2):1-32, 2024.
Shame on Who? Experimentally Reducing Shame During Political Arguments on Twitter
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6(CSCW2):1-18, 2022.
'I Don’t Even Remember What I Read': How Design Influences Dissociation on Social Media
Proceedings of the 2022 ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI 2022). Acceptance rate: 24.7%.
Monitoring Screen Time or Redesigning It? Two Approaches to Supporting Intentional Social Media Use
Proceedings of the 2022 ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI 2022). Acceptance rate: 24.7%.
Someone is Wrong on the Internet: Having Hard Conversations in Online Spaces
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW1):1-22, 2021.
What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless?
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2(1):1-26, 2018.
Sponsor
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