From Ethical to Equitable Social Media Technologies: Amplifying Underrepresented Youth Voices in Digital Technology Design

ABSTRACT

Although youth of color, youth from lower socioeconomic brackets, and young women are among the heaviest users of social media technologies, their voices are almost entirely absent from current conversations about ethical design. Based on a close analysis of youth-produced technological autoethnographies, this article examines underrepresented youths’ perspectives on their own social media use, as a way to inform more ethical and equitable design of digital platforms. By surfacing the ways in which socioeconomic status, race and gender shape the social media experiences of youth from underrepresented groups, our research thus advocates for the centering of difference, not universality, in digital technology design.