Mapping the Design Space for Youth Social Media: A Framework Centered on Friendship Building
2026-06-15 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors created a set of design ideas to help social media better support friendships among young people. They studied their past work with teens in the US and Korea and identified three main ideas: making social rules clear, creating a sense of place online, and helping users express their real, changing identities. They based their framework on social and developmental theories but focused on how to design actual social media tools. To test some of their ideas, they built and used a platform called WhoamI Today with nearly 100 youths. Their future work will continue testing and improving this framework.
youth social mediafriendship-supportive designqualitative meta-analysissocial understandingplacenessidentity alignmentinterpersonal theorydevelopmental theorysociotechnical theoryco-design
Authors
JaeWon Kim
Abstract
This dissertation develops a design framework for friendship-supportive youth social media. I conducted a qualitative meta-analysis across my formative, case-study, and co-design work with teens and young adults, synthesizing recurring design themes into three pillars: social understanding (legible norms, intentions, trust, reciprocity, and accountability), placeness (spatial and embodied affordances that make online interaction feel inhabitable), and identity alignment (authentic expression that remains current, plural, and interpretable). The framework is grounded in interpersonal, developmental, and sociotechnical theory, but its contribution is design-oriented: it translates broader accounts of friendship and social development into the specific ways social media platforms can shape youth friendship building. I initially validate parts of this framework through WhoamI Today (WIT), a platform deployed with 99 youth across the United States and Korea. My proposed work extends this validation through a follow-up deployment while refining the framework as a roadmap for cumulative design research on youth social media.