A path for UX professionals to better serve this marginalized population
Photo: A child points to a tablet that displays a map. Image by Kelly Sikkema
What if you realized that there were millions of people using your product all the time, who your team had barely thought about?
What if you actually learned they were having not only bad user experiences but also even experiencing outright harm?
Chances are, this is happening right now. Whether we realize it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, the products we’re working on are in the small hands of children. And their experiences are our responsibility.
Inclusivity is the call of our times, and it's the obligation of tech leadership, product designers, and UX researchers to answer it. The imperative for inclusive recruiting and experience gap research to better serve our BIPOC and LGBTQ+ users is finally becoming more firmly rooted in our field. The case for making our products accessible to those with low vision, low hearing, or situational challenges is clear and something AnswerLab and our clients have been working on for years. We’re ready to face an exciting and complex new frontier for inclusivity: youth.
“The way we raise and educate our young is the most powerful means we have to choose consciously to evolve through and beyond our current crisis.” - David Marshak
Including youth in digital experiences doesn’t mean indiscriminately putting apps into young hands and opening the floodgates to this audience. It means opening the right gates at the right times with discernment, care, and education. Here’s how:
Top principles product teams must ingrain for youth tech UX
Multi-method age assurance. Simply put, it's the product team's responsibility to know if a child is using their product. Consider which methods you'll use to develop age estimations and how you’ll protect the data they generate. The 5Rights Foundation has provided some valuable resources on responsible age assurance strategies.
Differentiated experiences. Once you know one of your end users is a child, a whole new world opens up.Your team will need to devise bundles of features, along with product education, that fit with each developmental stage, with more granularity than your team has likely considered before.
Developmentally appropriate sign up, registration, and onboarding. Inclusive youth tech products introduce their product to young people using well-researched UX principles that work for kids. You'll need to provide terms of service, rules, explanations, instructions, and education using age-appropriate language that children can actually understand. And you’ll need to consider the role of parents and caregivers in these experiences.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) embedded into content and design. The way people use digital products, especially platforms that have a social component, impacts the fabric of society. Anchor your youth tech content strategy in a set of principles that teach and reinforce emotional intelligence and civic awareness.
Default removal of features that may cause harm. For the youngest age bands, product bundles should by default disable features that children do not yet have the skills to use or interpret, such as private messaging, social metrics, infinite scrolls, and targeted advertising. You'll also need to switch off features that publicize data that could be used by others to harm children, such as geolocation data.
Approval process for third-party and unconnected content. After receiving appropriate education, older youth may choose to have experiences that include some third-party and unconnected content, but this content must meet explicit criteria for developmental appropriateness.
Research and investment into features that meet youth needs. Net-new work needs to be done so products serve their child users. Don't simply restrict them to a subset of features that were made for adults. What you need to build will depend on your context. The sky is the limit — and foundational research can help you create your youth roadmap.
Minimum viable data collection. For products used by children, no data should be collected for the purpose of targeting. Usage data that provides insight into how well the product is meeting its defined goals with regards to youth may be collected but should be anonymized.
A direct line for addressing harms. Youth tech offerings must provide a direct pathway for support, providing prompt and effective remedies when a child has been harmed. The child or their parent needs to be able to get responsive, trained user support and problems must be addressed in a timely and thorough way. Reports must be leveraged to improve the system overall.
Super simple avenues for account cancellation. Children should have the agency to cancel their account with just a few clicks, without help from others, triggering their personal data to be deleted.
A call to action: What product teams must do
It is a momentous time to be in youth research. Big changes are underway and there is a call for much more investment in this important work. Last year, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child published General Comment #14, calling all member states to higher standards of supporting the rights of children in the digital environment. Although the US is not a signatory of the Convention, there is a historic opportunity for tech companies to go beyond mere compliance and regulation and instead pioneer building a world that works for kids. To do so, we must begin by employing great strategic research. May we rise to the occasion, on behalf of all our children.
“It is evident that society should lavish upon children the greatest care so that it may in turn receive from the child new energies and potentialities.” - Maria Montessori
Here are four things you can do today:
Learn, learn, learn. When seeking to serve any marginalized group, we need an open mind, an open heart, and an open will. Consider where you feel drawn, where you can make a difference, and start exploring the literature and learning from child experts. I encourage starting with early childhood development — Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child and the Erikson Institute have wonderful resources.
Start a conversation. Reach out to someone at your workplace who cares about inclusivity, or who is a parent or caregiver, to discuss what’s important to you and the gap between where your org is and where you’d like to be. Conversations plant seeds.
Follow an organization who’s working on creating a safe and inclusive online world for youth, such as Center for Humane Technology, All Tech is Human, 5Rights Foundation, or countless others who focus on children’s media, privacy, and safety.
Share content about this topic to build awareness. Help build the rising tide that will lead to change.