Erikson Institute’s Alexis Lauricella, PhD launched a two-year pilot research and development project that empowers adolescent youth in Evanston, IL to help each other use digital technology in healthy and productive ways.

First, a group of junior and senior students designed, conducted, and analyzed a national survey to understand and document the positive and negative ways in which their youth use, experience, and understand digital technology.

From these research results, the team of students and researchers developed a research-informed text message intervention program to build connections between parents and tweens around healthy technology use.

Highlighted in this resource are a few of the activities and discussion prompts that you can use to start a conversation in your classroom, after-school program or at home.