What Young People’s Technology Use Tells Us

Join the Tech Impact and Policy Center on October 13th from 12PM–1PM Pacific for a seminar with Anthony Chen.

Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 11:40 AM for lunch, prior to the seminar.  The Fall Seminar Series continues through December; see our Fall Seminar Series page for speakers and topics. Sign up for our newsletter for announcements. 

About the Seminar:

Policy on young people and technology has been gaining momentum, on the assumption that what adolescents do online is the problem to be removed. This talk starts from the opposite premise: young people turn to technology to meet the developmental needs that define adolescence, their identity, relationships, and mental health. Drawing on existing and ongoing empirical work, Anthony Chen argues that technology use is better read as information about what young people need than as the reason they are struggling. These findings may change what schools, families, and regulators think they should do as young people navigate the technology world.

About the Speaker:

Anthony Chen is a postdoctoral scholar at the Tech Impact and Policy Center. His research examines how social media and emerging technologies shape identity, relationships, and well-being, with a particular focus on adolescents and young adults. His work has been supported by Hopelab, the Jacobs Foundation, and the National Communication Association, and has appeared in leading communication and interdisciplinary journals. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Communication Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Irvine.