In order to build economies that are inclusive and just for communities of LGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, and Latino youth, we have to research in a way that is accessible, representative, and just. Headstream has been redefining how we conduct research at our parent company SecondMuse, and our initiative, Digital Delta, is breaking new ground. Digital Delta uses the wisdom of the crowd to guide our understanding of digital youth well-being. By crowdsourcing our insights from hundreds of perspectives, with an emphasis on the voices of young people, we have democratized our research. Currently, 36% of Digital Delta’s insights have been sourced from young people.
We need to hear your voice as well! Our questionnaire will take less than 5 minutes to complete, and we want your insights so that it is representative of the way you experience and understand digital spaces for young people.
So, what is Digital Delta?
Digital Delta is a public crowdsourced tool that will allow all of us to interactively identify the leverage points in the adolescent digital well-being work that we are all leading. We know that the digital places and experiences we currently have weren’t designed with youth in mind, and certainly weren’t created with or by youth.
We want to see digital places and experiences that support the well-being of young people. It’s a daunting and complex challenge, right? We know! We chose to use crowdsourcing to make this research more equitable, inclusive, and to bring together all the diversity and wisdom of the crowd at large. In the classic example of crowdsourcing, Francis Galton asked people to estimate the weight of a cow. He asked a lot of people a simple question to get a single number. The trick is that while no one person could be expected to know the exact answer, together they did (and do).
In our case, we’re asking a lot of people a series of simple questions to arrive at an answer to a more complex question: how do we identify the strongest opportunities to impact the well-being of youth as they grow up, make connections, learn, face challenges, and mature in digital places and experiences? While no single person can be expected to know what the strongest opportunities are, together we know.
The result of this will be an open-source public guide that everyone can see and use to learn how to build digital places and experiences that actively support youth well-being. We want to empower your voice in the process of making digital places and experiences a more beautiful place to be for youth.
