A Case for Partnering with Social Media Platforms to Protect Adolescents Online

Abstract

Social Media platforms collect data about their users, including basic demographic information (name, age, gender) as well as their interactions with other users. This rich multi-modal data could potentially be leveraged to identify trends that can be used to support the safety and well-being of adolescents. However, researchers who try to access such data are faced with a number of challenges getting access to such social media data. In this paper we present some the challenges we faced when creating a data set for our NSF funded project to improve adolescents’ online safety by developing human-centered algorithms for online risk detection, which led us to our position: Social media platforms should work alongside researchers to promote ethical and responsible research that benefits youth and works to prevent the risks they encounter online. Our goal in attending this workshop is to co-create best practices for facilitating ways for academics to work with social media companies to reduce the barriers posed when using social media as a research
site.

Keywords: HCI, Social Media, Privacy, Online risk detection, Adolescent Online Safety