Designing Tomorrow

Announcing our 2024 Psychology of Technology Dissertation Award Winners

We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2024 Psychology of Technology Dissertation Award. As part of the Psychology of Technology Institute’s (PTI) continued efforts to build capacity for understanding and improving the human-tech relationship, we have awarded promising graduating scholars awards for outstanding dissertations for the past 5 years…

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How negative experiences on social media changed in the last 12 months

To what extent do people report having experiences on social media platforms that negatively affect them personally, and have their experiences changed over the past year? A year ago, we found that Nextdoor, X (Twitter), and Facebook had the highest rates of

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The Fear Factor: Better Understanding Online Discussions About Crime and Safety

This article was also recently featured in Tech Policy Press. Something that is qualitatively apparent to those who use different platforms is that social media is not a monolith. Platforms have different designs, values, userbases, network structures and governance approaches, which all come together to produce wide ranging experiences.

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What on social media is bad for the world?

Last year, we found that US adults who used X (Twitter) and Facebook were 2-3x more likely to see content on those platforms that they considered bad for the world. Since then, many real-world events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine have persisted, and new tragic events like the Hamas attack on Israel and the humanitarian crisis that emerged followi…

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How Have Social Media Experiences Changed from 2023-2024

Social media and technology companies had an eventful 2023 and beginning of 2024. Together, these companies laid off tens of thousands of employees, a disproportionate number of whom specialized in combating abusive behaviors and harmful experiences on these platforms. This may have created a digital environment where harmful content might surge. For ex…

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Alone together? How social technology is influencing human connection and loneliness

How people connect and bond with each other is constantly evolving. Perhaps the most important shift in the modern age is the movement away from organized in-person communal activities and toward more online social activities. Over the past several decades, this shift has drastically changed the structure of social interaction–with potentially drastic c…

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A Concise Social Media Design Election Advocacy Guide for 2024

Over 60 countries representing more than 4 billion people will hold elections in 2024, such that some are calling it the biggest election year in history. As communications increasingly move online, technology platforms will again play a central role in global democratic processes.

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Tracking Chat-Based AI Tool Adoption, Uses, and Experiences

Artificial intelligence has been playing a growing part in everyday life for years, but its popularity has skyrocketed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of this is due to improving technology that is now capable of running computationally intensive math on ever-smaller devices and in more places. Another part, though, is the first publi…

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Tracking Mixed Reality Adoption and Attitudes

Mixed reality is a combination of real-world and computer-generated environments, and has long been featured in science fiction books and movies. Technological capabilities, though, lagged behind our creative imaginations and only offered limited immersion into this mixed reality world by way of

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How Have Social Media Experiences Changed from March-September 2023

Between corporate takeovers, massive layoffs and restructuring, and the passage of extensive regulatory policies, 2023 is notable for the seismic events shaking the technology sector’s tectonic plates. Corporate takeovers may lead to dramatic changes in company mission statements, values, and how their app functions (or whether their app functions at al…

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