Social Understanding, Placeness, and Identity Alignment: A Design Framework for Friendship-Supportive Youth Social Media
TLDR
This paper introduces a design framework for youth social media, focusing on social understanding, placeness, and identity alignment to foster friendships.
Key contributions
- Developed a design framework for youth social media based on 5 empirical studies with 331 participants.
- Identifies three pillars: Social Understanding, Sense of Place, and Identity Alignment for friendship support.
- Maps nine specific design spaces for platforms to foster youth friendship formation and maintenance.
Why it matters
This framework provides a critical guide for designers and researchers to create youth social media platforms that genuinely support friendships. It offers a structured approach to understanding and addressing the complex social needs of young users.
Original Abstract
We present a design framework for friendship-supportive youth social media, derived from a synthesis of five empirical studies with 331 youth participants (ages 13--25) using interviews, co-design, surveys, diary studies, and a field deployment. Iterative analysis of 209 design-relevant data points identified three pillars: \textit{Sense of Social Understanding} (interaction norms, interaction cues and scaffolding, social accountability and governance), \textit{Sense of Place} (third place and community, boundaries and personal spaces, shared presence), and \textit{Sense of Identity Alignment} (identity currency, identity plurality, relational identity signals). The framework maps nine design spaces through which platforms can support the conditions under which youth friendships form, deepen, and are maintained. It offers a shared vocabulary for locating contributions, comparing design interventions, and identifying under-explored areas for future work.
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