Poster Session
| 1 | Growing Up Connected, Feeling Alone? Digital Everyday Worlds and Loneliness Among Adolescents in Germany |
| 2 | Growing Up in a Post-Truth World: A Scoping Review on Young People and False Information |
| 3 | Sourcing in Algorithmic Environments |
| 4 | How Digital Media Shapes Youth Political Mindsets in Democratic Societies: A Scoping Review |
| 5 | Beyond the Ballot: TikTok Virality and Political Engagement in Nepal’s 2022 Elections |
| 6 | Phone Use, Digital Literacy and Mental Wellbeing Outcomes in UK Children and Adolescents |
| 7 | Sexting Among Adolescents in Germany: A Two-Wave Latent Profile and Latent Transition Analysis |
| 8 | Between Appreciation and Resistance: Young People’s Algorithmic Literacy on TikTok |
| 9 | How Children Understand Generative AI: Conceptions and Interaction Strategies |
| 10 | Effects of Social Media Refrain on Youth: Even Short-Term Reductions Can Have a Beneficial Impact |
| 11 | Schools as Contexts of Equitable Digital Participation: A Trend-Based ICILS Perspective on Germany |
| 12 | Understanding Roblox Through Children’s Eyes: Risks, Benefits, and Opportunities |
| 13 | The Influence of Social Media Affordances on Empathy Avoidance |
| 14 | Decomposing Migration-Related Differences in Digital Literacy of Adolescents in European Countries. |
| 15 | Digital Capitalism and Youth Engagement With Social Media Influencers: Implications for Aspirations, Consumption, and Identity Formation |
| 16 | How AI-Companions Shape Moral Decision-Making and Interpersonal Social Support Among Youth |
| 17 | Prototyping Social Media Platforms to Address Risks |
| 18 | Tangible Flowcharts of Social Media Practices: Supporting Computational Thinking in More-Than-Digital Contexts |
| 19 | From Memes to Protests and Propaganda: How Roblox’s Virtual Worlds Embed Political Expression |
Growing Up Connected, Feeling Alone? Digital Everyday Worlds and Loneliness Among Adolescents in Germany
Lisa Hasenbein, Anne Berngruber, Christine Steiner
"Digital media have become central to adolescents’ social relationships, leisure activities, and societal participation. At the same time, concerns about loneliness among young people have intensified in recent years. While digital environments may foster connectedness and participation, they may also reinforce social isolation and expose adolescents to exclusion and cyberbullying. Against this background, the poster examines how adolescents’ digital everyday activities and online experiences are associated with feelings of loneliness. The contribution draws on data from the 2023 wave of the DJI survey AID:A – Growing Up in Germany: Everyday Worlds (“Aufwachsen in Deutschland: Alltagswelten”). Analyses focus on a nationwide representative sample of approximately 2,000 adolescents aged 12–17 years. Subjective loneliness was measured using the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Drawing on the broad range of information collected in the survey on social background, social embeddedness, leisure activities, online practices, and parental media use, the contribution analyses associations between loneliness and different dimensions of digitally mediated everyday life, including adolescents‘ media usage times, online leisure activities, and experiences of cyberbullying. Particular attention is paid to social inequalities and patterns related to gender identity, migration background, and material deprivation. By linking loneliness research with multiple dimensions of adolescents’ digital everyday worlds, the poster highlights the analytical potential of representative survey data for understanding social connectedness, participation, and vulnerability in digital societies. Final results will be available at the time of the conference."
Growing Up in a Post-Truth World: A Scoping Review on Young People and False Information
Maxime Kops, Catherine Schittenhelm, Sebastian Wachs
"Although misinformation is not a new phenomenon, it is increasingly perceived as a threat to democracy given its rapid spread via social media (Elsner et al., 2025). Since young people frequently use social media as their primary source of information (European Parliament, 2025) and are simultaneously in a formative phase of identity development (Kastorff et al., 2025), they represent a particularly interesting group. Nevertheless, there has been a lack of a systematic overview of existing research on fasle information and young people. This scoping review closes this research gap by analyzing 151 qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies on young people aged 5 to 25, focusing on reactions, influencing factors, consequences, and prevention and intervention approaches. The results showed that young people are sometimes able to detect false information (Riikonen et al., 2020) and usually react passively by ignoring it (Yesmin, 2024). False information also has severe consequences for young people. These range from negative emotional reactions such as anxiety (Rocha et al., 2021) to political alienation and withdrawal from public discourse (Borah et al., 2022). The review further highlights that prevention and intervention measures employ a variety of different approaches, such as gamification (Axelsson et al., 2024). However, existing programs have primarily focused on detection (Chang et al., 2020) and have not demonstrated long-term effects (Orosz et al., 2024). Future research should therefore go beyond detection and address constructive ways of dealing with misinformation. In addition, there is a need to raise awareness of one’s own vulnerability and to conduct longitudinal evaluations of programs."
Sourcing in Algorithmic Environments
Eva Thomm & Johannes Bauer
"The Internet is a primary information source for adolescents, where algorithmic recommender systems curate content based on users’ online behavior. Evaluating online information therefore requires not only assessing source trustworthiness but also understanding how algorithmic curation shapes information availability. However, adolescents rarely evaluate sources spontaneously and seldom cross-check recommended information, despite having a basic understanding of algorithmic recommendation. This study investigated how adolescents evaluate sources in algorithmically curated environments. We examined whether adolescents (1) attend to source characteristics and cues of algorithmic recommendation, (2) understand algorithmic recommendation, and (3) can be supported in their evaluations through reflection prompts. Adolescents (N = 172) participated in a 3 × 3 × 2 mixed-design experiment. Participants first received either a prompt to reflect on source characteristics, a prompt to reflect on algorithmic recommendation, or no prompt. They then rated social media posts varying in source trustworthiness (low, moderate, high) and algorithmic recommendation intensity (low, high) regarding agreement with the content, perceived source trustworthiness, and willingness to recommend the posts. Understanding of algorithmic recommendation was additionally assessed through a scenario-based task. Adolescents distinguished between highly and less trustworthy sources but still assigned moderate trust to less trustworthy ones. Algorithmic recommendation cues shaped evaluations, reducing endorsement of less trustworthy sources while reinforcing willingness to recommend highly trustworthy ones. Reflection prompts about source characteristics increased sensitivity to algorithmic recommendation when evaluating sources, whereas prompts about algorithmic recommendation did not improve algorithmic understanding. Overall, adolescents’ evaluations reflected the combined influence of source trustworthiness and algorithmic recommendation cues."
How Digital Media Shapes Youth Political Mindsets in Democratic Societies: A Scoping Review
Lea Frentzel-Beyme
"Today's media landscape is characterised by rapid technological innovation, algorithmic curation and permanent connectivity. For young people, digital and social media have become important platforms for communication, learning and participation. These environments can broaden access to political content and participation, but they also expose young people to misinformation, polarised communication and increasingly AI-generated content that may appear credible even though it is false or misleading. This can affect what young people believe to be true, how they evaluate political issues, and whether they decide to participate in democratic processes. Although many studies address aspects of these developments, research across different disciplines and media types is fragmented. Therefore, this scoping literature review aims to synthesise international, cross disciplinary empirical findings on the relationship between new media (e.g., social networks, messaging apps, video platforms, podcasts, AI-based media) and the political mindset of adolescents in democratic societies. Using both deductive and inductive content analysis, the study examines (1) the status quo of research on digital media and its relation to young people’s political mindset focussing on political knowledge, orientation, and participation, (2) what differences can be found between different media types, (3) the role of media literacy and educational interventions, and (4) which contextual or individual factors moderate these effects. By mapping current evidence and identifying conceptual and methodological gaps, this review aims to inform civic education, media literacy programs, and future research on young people’s political mindset in increasingly developing media environments."
Beyond the Ballot: TikTok Virality and Political Engagement in Nepal’s 2022 Elections
Nima Thing
"Despite TikTok’s growing influence, little research has systematically examined how political content gains visibility on the platform, particularly in low-income, multilingual democracies such as Nepal. Understanding virality in this context is methodologically innovative—leveraging multimodal machine learning on audio, image, and text data—and substantively important for explaining how digital platforms reshape electoral dynamics. This study analyzes 2,964 political TikTok videos accessed via TikTok’s Research API, applying machine learning and regression-based association analysis to examine patterns of engagement. A leakage-safe virality prediction pipeline shows that political virality is moderately predictable from observable sender, content, and platform metadata in the collected dataset, but that sender characteristics dominate performance. For content-level analysis, regression results show that videos associated with independent political actors achieve higher engagement on average than general election-themed or legacy-party content, even after adjusting for follower reach. Propensity-score overlap diagnostics and the observed concentration of certain styles within specific actor categories indicate that styles such as Charisma/Leadership are highly endogenous to political context, limiting causal interpretation and suggesting that styles operate as structural signals rather than transferable tactics. Taken together, the findings are most consistent with a framework in which political virality on TikTok reflects sender capacity first, actor-linked content signaling second, and platform affordances only indirectly through observable metadata. The study contributes to an open-source multimodal analysis pipeline, an explicit discussion of operationalization tradeoffs, and a clearer framework for studying political virality on short-video platforms without overstating causal claims."
Phone Use, Digital Literacy and Mental Wellbeing Outcomes in UK Children and Adolescents
Jacquelynn Ennis, Miranda Palan, Paul Patterson, Amie Randhawa, Colin Palmer, Victoria Goodyear
“As smartphones become increasingly embedded in children and adolescents’ everyday lives, it is imperative to understand the link between phone use and mental wellbeing. While some stakeholders advocate delaying smartphone ownership or promoting no-internet phones, others emphasise digital literacy as a potential protective factor. Guided by Self-Determination Theory, digital literacy can be conceptualised as a set of competencies and behaviours that may support wellbeing through the fulfilment of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This study examined the relationship between phone ownership, digital literacy and mental wellbeing in UK children and adolescents. We conducted a cross-sectional study using survey data from the Birmingham Wellbeing Census. Mental wellbeing was measured using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale. Linear regression models with cluster-robust standard errors were used to examine associations between phone ownership, digital literacy dimensions, and mental wellbeing. Survey data were collected from 15,365 UK primary and secondary school pupils aged 8–18. Phone ownership was not associated with mental wellbeing in adjusted models. Digital self-regulation showed consistent positive associations with wellbeing across both primary (β = 1.55; 95% CI, 1.06–2.05) and secondary age groups (β = 1.24; 95% CI, 1.15–1.34), whereas technical skills, social connection, and creative expression demonstrated weaker or age-specific relationships. Findings suggest that how young people engage with digital technologies may be more relevant to wellbeing than phone ownership itself, highlighting digital self-regulation as a potentially important protective factor and a focus for future interventions and policy.”
Sexting Among Adolescents in Germany: A Two-Wave Latent Profile and Latent Transition Analysis
Sascha Hein & Isabell Schuster
"Theoretical background: Sexting, defined as the digital exchange of sexually explicit photos or videos, is a multidimensional behavior encompassing consensual (i.e., voluntary), pressured (i.e., due to external pressure), and non-consensual forms (i.e., distribution of content without the creator’s consent). Person-centered approaches can help identify distinct sexting subgroups, thereby capturing heterogeneity in sexting involvement.Research questions and objectives: This study longitudinally examines adolescents’ sexting involvement by identifying distinct sexting profiles at two measurement points one year apart (T1, T2) and analyzing transitions between profiles over time. Methods: At T1, a sample of N = 1,695 adolescents in Germany (67.8% female; Mage = 16.33 years) completed an online questionnaire. Self-reported past-year involvement in consensual, pressured, and non-consensual sexting was assessed. Latent profile analysis (LPA) will be conducted separately for T1 and T2 using the three sexting behaviors as continuous indicators, followed by a Latent Transition Analysis (LTA). Preliminary results: At T1, a three-profile solution was selected as the best-fitting model. The profiles reflected (1) no/low involvement (82.4%), (2) primarily consensual sexting (13.3%), and (3) high involvement in all three sexting forms (4.2%). Results for T2 and the LTA will be presented at the conference. Theoretical and practical implications: Preliminary findings underscore the value of person-centered approaches by revealing three heterogeneous sexting profiles. The subgroup of adolescents involved in all three sexting forms may be particularly relevant for targeted intervention efforts, whereas the profile characterized primarily by consensual sexting may reflect a developmentally functional pattern from a sex-positive perspective on sexting."
Between Appreciation and Resistance: Young People’s Algorithmic Literacy on TikTok
Sascha Hölig & Philipp Kessling
"On algorithmically curated social media platforms such as TikTok, young people are pre-sented with algorithmically compiled content that influences their platform experience and is, in turn, influenced by their behaviour. Drawing on the multidimensional concept of algorithmic literacy (Oeldorf-Hirsch & Neubaum, 2023), this study examines what young people know about TikTok’s algorithmic recommendation system (ARS) (FF1), how they interact with it (FF2) and what role emotions play in this (FF3). Results are based on six focus groups (n=31) with young people aged between 16 and 24, as well as follow-up individual interviews (n=12) combined with TikTok data donations from the participants. The results indicate an intuitive awareness of TikTok’s algorithmic system among all participants. Differences emerge in the level of knowledge regarding factors influencing the algorithm and ways of controlling it, particularly across age groups. In-teractions on TikTok, such as liking or sharing videos or using the search function, are considered relevant by all groups. An appreciation of the ARS and the feeling of benefit-ing from the algorithm are counterbalanced by negative emotions experienced when en-countering inappropriate content, when the algorithm overrides user preferences, and when one’s own usage time exceeds what was intended. Furthermore, we identified three types of interaction and engagement from individual interviews: emotionally driven, highly interactive users; rational, knowledgeable, low-interaction users; and low-reflective, frequent users. Implications for educational and journalistic practice are discussed."
How Children Understand Generative AI: Conceptions and Interaction Strategies
Stefan Aufenanger, Jasmin Bastian, Lily Dreismickenbecker
"Generative AI systems such as ChatGPT are increasingly becoming part of children’s everyday lives and educational environments. Previous studies have shown that children sometimes interpret AI anthropomorphically, that their conceptions are strongly shaped by everyday experiences, and that they often understand AI as a supportive tool. However, little is known so far about how primary school children conceptualize generative AI as a text-producing, dialogic, and seemingly “knowledgeable” system. This is where the present study begins. It investigates what conceptions children aged six to ten develop regarding the functioning, capabilities, and limitations of generative AI; which linguistic and visual metaphors they use to describe AI; how they deal with AI-generated responses in concrete interaction situations; and which criteria they draw on to assess their correctness, trustworthiness, and usefulness. The study follows a qualitative exploratory design. Based on a contrasting sample, approximately 20 problem-centred individual interviews with primary school children are being conducted. Differences in age, gender, and prior experience with AI are taken into account. The interviews combine narrative-generating questions, visual forms of expression, and short, age-appropriate interaction situations with generative AI. The data are analysed using qualitative content analysis, with a particular focus on interpretive patterns, metaphorical framings, and action-guiding evaluative criteria. Data collection is currently ongoing; initial findings will be available by the time of the poster presentation. The study is expected to provide empirically grounded insights into children’s mental models of generative AI as well as into early forms of AI-related media literacy and judgement competence. In doing so, it contributes to media-pedagogical childhood research and formulates implications for age-appropriate, rights-based, and participatory AI education in primary school."
Effects of Social Media Refrain on Youth: Even Short-Term Reductions Can Have a Beneficial Impact
Karina Schowalter, Patrik Reiter, Maria Agthe
"Evidence of social media effects on youth documents both negative consequences (e.g., negative affect) and benefits (e.g., reduced loneliness). The aim of the current study was to determine the prevalence and associated factors of (problematic) social media use among children and adolescents, and to investigate what positive or negative changes a short-term reduction in use leads to. A two-wave study included n = 662 at T1 and n = 430 children and adolescents (aged 10 to 19) two weeks later at T2 (online/paper-pencil). The two questionnaires (T1 and T2) included sociodemographics, (problematic) social media usage, sleep (quality and duration), depressive symptoms, self-worth, emotional regulation (reappraisal and suppression), affect (positive and negative), stress, resilience, and friendship. Participants were asked to either refrain from social media usage completely or at least as much as possible (experimental group) or use social media in the same way as before (control group). T1 and T2 data were matched using anonymized codes. First results show that at T1 almost 25% of children and adolescents showed problematic social media use; 6.3 % even met the criteria for a social media use disorder. At T1, SM duration and problematic use were both negatively correlated with resilience. Participants who reported lower SM use at T2, showed, relative to T1, significantly lower problematic use, longer sleep and lower stress. A short-term SM reduction is associated with beneficial changes in key outcomes and may be a sensible prevention and intervention for children and adolescents."
Schools as Contexts of Equitable Digital Participation: A Trend-Based ICILS Perspective on Germany
Erik Grützner, Franziska Baier-Mosch, Carolin Hahnel, Patrick Paschke, Frank Goldhammer
“Research on digital inequalities suggests that adolescents’ opportunities to acquire digital competencies are shaped by individual and educational factors. Accordingly, schools are major settings in which digital inequalities become visible and might be reduced, shaping adolescent’s opportunities to participate in a digital society. Based on the concept of school resilience, this study examines whether school contexts can be identified in which adolescents achieve high levels of computer and information literacy and digital self-efficacy despite adverse socioeconomic conditions. Using data from three ICILS cycles in Germany (2013, 2018, and 2023), the study examines whether school profiles representing resilience can be identified, how prevalent they are, and how their composition and prevalence have changed. School profiles will be identified using multigroup-latent-profile-analyses based on student-level indicators. ICILS cycles will be treated as known groups enabling trend analyses to examine the stability of and changes in profile prevalence and characteristics across cycles. Profiles will be validated using factors associated with school resilience, such as digital resources, teacher cooperation, and educational policies, which will be examined as predictors and outcomes of profile affiliation. We expect to identify school profiles that differ in their capacity to support adolescents’ digital competencies and self-efficacy despite adverse socioeconomic conditions. The findings will contribute to a better understanding of how school contexts shape equitable opportunities for digital participation. Implications for context-sensitive approaches to digital education, school development, and educational policy will be discussed. The study is currently being prepared for preregistration. Results will be available prior to the conference.”
Understanding Roblox Through Children’s Eyes: Risks, Benefits, and Opportunities
Cláudia Silva & Miguel Barreda-Ángeles
“Roblox, a user-generated virtual world platform and one of the world’s largest gaming companies, is used predominantly by minors, with most of its users estimated to be under 16. In Europe alone, the platform reports 48 million monthly users. Roblox has faced increasing scrutiny over risks to youth, including Nazi-themed games, grooming, gambling-like monetisation practices, and online radicalisation. These concerns have been documented in recent research and media reports, prompting lawsuits in the USA. Despite Roblox’s global reach, research on children’s experiences of Roblox remains limited. Inspired by children’s rights, this study adopts a child-centred approach to explore the question: What do children’s and teens’ perceptions of Roblox reveal about its risks, benefits, and opportunities? We conducted qualitative research with 40 pupils aged 10–16 from two schools: one private in Italy and one public in Portugal. Between March and May 2026, participants created hand-drawn cognitive maps of Roblox and took part in semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that children perceive Roblox as akin to social media, valuing it primarily as a space for social interaction with friends. However, these forms of socialisation also expose children to risks, including scamming, doubtful monetisation, and online dating. Current safeguarding measures, such as AI-driven age verification, were often ineffective, as children circumvented them by migrating to external platforms such as Discord and WhatsApp. These findings highlight the need for adaptive safeguarding strategies and carry important implications for children’s online safety and well-being, particularly as the boundaries between digital games and social media continue to blur.”
The Influence of Social Media Affordances on Empathy Avoidance
Georg Felix Reuth, Pia Spangenberger, Kevin Birkefeld, Steve Nebel
"Social media represent a new and unique social environment for adolescents due to digital affordances. Features such as quantifiability or bandwidth may shape experiences of social uncertainty and affect social cognition. Research suggests that empathy is not an automatic process, but often requires cognitive effort. Yet, little is known about how the affordances of digital social environments affect social behavior and cognition in young people. Building on affordances approaches of social media, this study examines to which extent the social media affordances quantifiability and bandwidth affect cognitive effort involved in empathising and empathy avoidance in secondary school students. We hypothesize that higher quantifiability and greater bandwidth will be associated with a greater willingness to engage in empathy-demanding tasks. Using an adapted version of the empathy selection task, an established behavioral paradigm for assessing empathy avoidance, we investigate the effects of different levels of quantifiability (visible likes and comments vs. no likes and comments) and bandwidth (photo vs. video content) in a Social Media Mockup in terms of their impact on participants' tendency to choose empathy-demanding versus non-empathy tasks. In a 2 x 2 experimental design, approximately 200 participants are exposed to social media content varying in quantifiability and bandwidth. Data collection is currently ongoing, and results are expected to be available by August 2026."
Decomposing Migration-Related Differences in Digital Literacy of Adolescents in European Countries
Frank Goldhammer, Erik Grützner, Carolin Hahnel
"Data from the three cycles (2013, 2018, and 2023) of the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) revealed substantial differences in digital literacy between adolescents with and without a migration background in many European countries. In some countries, such as Germany and Luxembourg, these differences remained significant, even when controlling for socioeconomic variables and/or language, while in other countries, potential explanatory factors of migration-related differences remain unclear. Additionally, little is known about which aspects of the socioeconomic background affect the digital literacy of adolescents with a migration background. Based on theoretical considerations and empirical findings on migration-related discrepancies in other educational outcomes, we consider characteristics at the student level (e.g., prior experience with and attitudes toward digital technologies), family level (e.g., digital and cultural resources at home), and school level (e.g., digital resources at school and average socioeconomic status of students) as potential explanatory variables. We perform an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition on the two aspects of digital literacy assessed in ICILS (computer and information literacy and computational thinking), using the aforementioned characteristics as predictor variables. Thus, we can estimate the extent to which intergroup differences in the means of these characteristics as well as intergroup differences in the effects of these characteristics contribute to the intergroup differences in digital literacy. We analyze data from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, and Luxembourg. The study is currently being prepared for preregistration. Results will be available prior to the conference."
Digital Capitalism and Youth Engagement With Social Media Influencers: Implications for Aspirations, Consumption, and Identity Formation
Judith Anne Lal, Kusum Lata, Anjana Nair, Nikita Jain, Aneesh KA
"Youth are the most frequent users of social media platforms, according to numerous national and international research. The phenomenon of rapid expansion of the social media influencer economy is closely linked to the rise of digital capitalism where social media platforms function as profit-driven ecosystems that monetize attention, visibility, and user engagement. Within these platform economies, social media influencers act as key intermediaries, connecting audiences, platforms, and brands through the continuous production of digital content. Influencers transform everyday cultural practices such as lifestyle display, personal branding, and self-expression into monetizable content, making cultural performance a form of digital labour. Objective To examine the role of social media influencers in shaping youth culture - aspirations, consumption habits, and identity of youth. To study youth engagement with influencers based on their social positioning such as language, region, religion, class, gender, ethnicity and caste Methodology - A mixed-method approach to gather comprehensive data both qualitative and quantitative. The study was conducted with primary and secondary data sources. The qualitative methods included in-depth focused group discussion with a purposive sampling of youth from different disciplines in a private university in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. 40 youth participated in 4 FGDs to discuss shared experiences and opinions related to influencer culture. Quantitative Methods: A survey was administered to a larger sample of 2226 undergraduate students at Christ University Delhi NCR Campus. Implications Data driven study will lead to responsible media consumption by the Youth. Further impact Policy makers to introduce mechanisms to address negative influences of social media."
How AI-Companions Shape Moral Decision-Making and Interpersonal Social Support Among Youth
Bernadette Denk, Jennifer Meyer, Nia Nixon, Pedro Martins de Bastos, Jaeyoon Choi
"Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes how young people interact, deliberate, and seek social support. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from learning sciences, communication research, and psychology, we conceptualize AI as a social actor that participates in and shapes interpersonal interaction. We present a multimodal research framework applied in two experimental studies. The first study investigates collaborative moral decision-making among young adults working in either human-only or human–AI teams. The second study examines adolescents’ conversations with an AI about personal concerns and compares these interactions with peer-to-peer conversations. Across both studies, we combine analyses of discourse, interaction dynamics, and physiological measures (e.g., heart rate variability) to capture how coordination and socioemotional alignment unfold during interaction. Our research focuses on how AI participation shapes patterns of responsiveness, trust formation, idea negotiation, and the management of disagreement in socially and morally complex contexts. We hypothesized that AI systems are experienced not merely as tools, but as relational interaction partners that influence communication processes and perceptions of social connection. The data collection is not yet finished. Preliminary results suggest that including an AI team-mate may decrease moral decision-making and socioemotional and physiological alignment in groups. This work contributes to a broader understanding of how AI-mediated interaction may shape democratic participation, interpersonal trust, and young people’s experiences of connection in digital societies. The findings have implications for the design of responsible AI systems and digital media literacy interventions."
Prototyping Social Media Platforms to Address Risks
Santiago Hurtado & Anna Keune
"Social media platforms play a central role in young people’s social interactions and self-expression, yet they expose them to risks such as privacy loss, misinformation, and online harassment (Barlett et al., 2018; Boyd, 2014; Domenico et al.; Farina et al., 2025; Tandar et al., 2024). Despite increasing concern, research on empowering youth to critically address these risks remains limited. This study investigates how engaging young people in the design of social media features can foster understanding of online risks and the relations of risks and social media features. Grounded in constructionist learning theory (Holbert et al., 2020; Papert, 1980), this qualitative study involved 32 eighth-grade students in Germany participating in three workshops. The analysis focused on the final session, during which seven groups developed prototypes to address risks. The data sources were: (1) video recordings of seven groups (6.4 hours), (2) video-recorded semi-structured interviews (1.1 hours), and (3) 27 photographs of students’ designs. We analyzed the data iteratively and thematically to understand how the design of social media features would foster differentiated understanding about risks on social media and how they are linked to particular platform designs. The findings show that all groups created prototypes addressing specific risks they had experienced. The tangible act of prototyping facilitated discussions about how platform design can mitigate or exacerbate risks. This study suggests that learning environments where young people build and design solutions are powerful ways to raise awareness of social media risks and to help them navigate social media safely. Literature Barlett, C. P., DeWitt, C. C., Maronna, B., & Johnson, K. (2018). Social Media Use as a Tool to Facilitate or Reduce Cyberbullying Perpetration: A Review Focusing on Anonymous and Nonanonymous Social Media Platforms. Violence and Gender, 5(3), 147–152. doi.org/10.1089/vio.2017.0057 Boyd, D. (2014). It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press. Domenico, G. D., Sit, J., Ishizaka, A., & Nunan, D. (2021). Fake news, social media and marketing: A systematic review. Journal of Business Research, 124, 329–341. doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.11.037 Farina, M., Semmler, C., & Mitchell, L. (2025). Cambridge Analytica’s Capability for Influence: Is Manipulation Merely Big Data, Psychological Profiles and Personalised Ads? In M.-E. Dowling (Ed.), Digital (Dis)Information Operations: Fooling the Five Eyes. ROUTLEDGE. doi.org/10.4324/9781003457947 Holbert, N., Berland, M., & Kafai, Y. B. (Eds.). (2020). Designing constructionist futures: The art, theory, and practice of learning designs. The MIT Press. Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. BasicBooks. Tandar, C. E., Bajaj, S. S., & Stanford, F. C. (2024). Social Media and Artificial Intelligence—Understanding Medical Misinformation Through Snapchat’s New Artificial Intelligence Chatbot. Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health, 2(2), 252–254. doi.org/10.1016/j.mcpdig.2024.04.004"
Tangible Flowcharts of Social Media Practices: Supporting Computational Thinking in More-Than-Digital Contexts
Anna Keune & Santiago Hurtado
"Social media is a pervasive context in young people’s everyday lives, offering opportunities to explore computational thinking (CT) beyond traditional programming environments (Aichner et al., 2021; Kligler-Vilenchik & Literat, 2025). While essential in a technology-saturated society (Bocconi et al., 2022; Wing, 2006), CT is often taught in decontextualized or primarily digital settings (Horn & Bers, 2019). However, social media remains underexamined as a context for computer science learning. This study investigated how creating tangible flowcharts of social media practices enables young people to engage with computational concepts across digital and non-digital contexts. Grounded in constructionist and post-digital perspectives (Holbert et al., 2020; Papert, 1993), this qualitative study involved 32 students (aged 12–13) in Germany who participated in a workshop. Working in seven small groups, participants used craft materials to construct tangible flowcharts representing their social media content creation processes. Data sources included video observations of design processes (4.5 hours), 43 photographs of flowcharts, and semi-structured group interviews (49 minutes). Data were analyzed using a deductive, iterative coding approach based on the K–12 Computer Science Framework (2016), focusing on algorithms, variables, control structures, modularity, and troubleshooting. Findings indicate all groups successfully represented and performed computational concepts. The tangible design process helped participants recognize social media practices as algorithmic and connect digital actions (e.g., editing, posting) with non-digital practices (e.g., posing, staging photos). The findings suggest tangible, constructionist learning environments can make abstract computational concepts visible, experiential, and personally meaningful by situating CT within lived, more-than-digital practices of young people. References Aichner, T., Grünfelder, M., Maurer, O., & Jegeni, D. (2021). Twenty-Five Years of Social Media: A Review of Social Media Applications and Definitions from 1994 to 2019. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 24(4), 215–222. doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0134 Bocconi, S., Inamorato dos Santos, A., Chioccariello, A., Cachia, R., Kampylis, P., Giannoutsou, N., Dagienė, V., Punie, Y., Wastiau, P., Engelhardt, K., Earp, J., Horvath, M., Jasutė, E., Malagoli, C., Masiulionytė-Dagienė, V., & Stupurienė, G. (2022). Reviewing computational thinking in compulsory education – State of play and practices from computing education (A. Inamorato dos Santos, R. Cachia, N. Giannoutsou, & Y. Punie, Eds.). Publications Office of the European Union. doi.org/10.2760/126955 Holbert, N., Berland, M., & Kafai, Y. B. (Eds.). (2020). Designing constructionist futures: the art, theory, and practice of learning designs. The MIT Press. Horn, M., & Bers, M. (2019). Tangible Computing. In S. Fincher, The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research (1st ed, pp. 663–678). Cambridge University Press. K-12 Computer Science Framework. (2016). Association for Computing Machinery. Kligler-Vilenchik, N., & Literat, I. (2025). Expressive citizenship: Youth, social media, and democracy. Journal of Children and Media, 19(1), 46–52. doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2024.2438680 Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: rethinking school in the age of the computer. BasicBooks. Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–35. doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215"
From Memes to Protests and Propaganda: How Roblox’s Virtual Worlds Embed Political Expression
Cláudia Silva & Miguel Barreda-Ángeles
"This study explores political expression in immersive virtual worlds, focusing on Roblox, a user-generated gaming platform with over 132 million daily active users, predominantly children and adolescents. While prior research has examined political engagement on social media and in digital games, virtual worlds introduce distinct spatial and embodied affordances that differentiate them from other digital environments. Grounded in political communication literature, this study employs a digital ethnographic approach, compiling a dataset of 283 politically themed Roblox games collected iteratively between May and November 2025. Data analysis combines inductive thematic open coding (supported by peer debriefing with radicalisation experts) and the deductive application of two theoretical frameworks: (1) PRICE (Participation, Representation, Ideology, Conflict, Education) by Soto de la Cruz et al., (2025) and (2) affordance theory. So far, we have categorised the games in our dataset into seven categories: (1) Simulating Government or Elections, (2) Democratic Values and Citizenship, (3) Propaganda, (4) Mocking/Humorous/Joke/Meme-Driven Content, (5) Current Political Affairs, (6) Protest/Activism, and (7) Peacemaking (related to current conflicts and wars). This categorisation suggests that the platform’s user-generated, spatialised, and social nature allows political expression to manifest through embodied protests, memetic humour, and ideological roleplay. Despite Roblox’s explicit ban on political content, user-creators circumvent restrictions by embedding political references within games. This paradox raises ethical concerns regarding platform governance failures and children’s and teenagers’ exposure to harmful content (e.g., hate speech). This research contributes to political communication scholarship by demonstrating how virtual worlds may reconfigure political engagement in ways that demand further scrutiny."