Adolescence is the transitional stage of human development between childhood and adulthood, generally spanning ages 10 to 19 years, during which individuals experience rapid biological, psychological, cognitive, and social changes. Digital platforms such as social media, gaming communities, GenAI applications and chatbots, learning technologies, and virtual reality applications are deeply embedded in adolescents’ everyday lives. For example, recent estimates suggest more than 90% of adolescents regularly engage with social media platforms, often in intensive and habitual ways (European Parliament, 2025; Marino et al., 2025; Pew Research Center, 2025). Against this backdrop, a central and increasingly urgent question has emerged in research and public policy discourse: how does engagement with digital platforms shape adolescent developmental experiences across cognitive (thinking, learning, decision-making), emotional (feelings and emotion regulation), psychological (mental health, self-esteem, and identity), social (relationships and social interactions), and physical domains (sleep, activity levels, and physical health), and their overall well-being?
Investigating the impact of digital platforms on adolescent developmental experiences is important for two reasons. Firstly, adolescents today are being exposed to digital platforms at younger ages and in a more intense manner than previous generations. Today’s digital platforms are very different from and vastly more complex than those of the last decade (Kane et al., 2025). For example, algorithms now largely determine what content a user is exposed to rather than self-chosen connections. Similarly, AI underpins many of the apps adolescents use today, presiding over personalized feeds, automated interactions, and targeted advertising. These digital technologies do not merely support adolescents' everyday activities but actively influence the development of competencies such as privacy management, digital literacy, algorithmic awareness, trust in digital systems, cognitive engagement, social development, and patterns of technology appropriation. Indeed, adolescent formative experiences in school, at home with family members, and with social groups are shaped by their use of online platforms, which in turn can shape their use of these platforms as adults. While digital platforms offer significant opportunities, they also introduce significant risks. For instance, GenAI can provide personalized support for young students who are struggling academically, but this use also raises serious concerns over loss of privacy and critical thinking in the long-term (Mimbs Nyce, 2024). It is predicted that Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) will comprise one-third of the global workforce by 2030 (Deloitte, 2025). The digital experiences adolescents undergo today will likely shape their experiences and behaviours in adulthood, making them the traditional ‘IS users’ of tomorrow. Consequently, major international policy organizations agree that the rapid digitalization of adolescence is an immediate societal priority (OECD, 2025; U.S Surgeon General, 2026; WHO, 2024).
Secondly, legal and regulatory responses have accelerated rapidly, pointing towards a growing concern about the potential risks posed by digital platforms to young people. For example, a recent court ruling in Los Angeles found that Meta and Google had intentionally designed addictive platforms that harmed a young person’s life (Duffy, 2026). In another lawsuit, OpenAI is accused of failing to act upon warning signs evident in a teenager’s conversations with ChatGPT prior to the teenager’s suicide (Hirschfeld, 2026). In parallel, governments around the world are beginning to implement social media restrictions for young users. Australia, Brazil, and the UK are among the first countries to pass legislation banning social media for underage users. Likewise, in her recent State of the Union address, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed a combination of age-based restrictions and limits on specific platform features for young people using social media, online games, and chatbots.
Despite the global significance attached to the impact of digital platforms on adolescents, there is scarce research in the IS field on this important topic. Much prior IS research has investigated the digital platform and well-being relationship in both personal (Deng & Galliers, 2024; Tams et al., 2018; Turel & Bechara, 2024) and organizational (Tams et al., 2018; Tarafdar & Saunders, 2022) contexts; however, the distinctive context of adolescent users has not been examined. With their developing brains, susceptibility to both constructive and risky behaviors, and the importance attached to social standing, perceptions of self, and friendships, adolescents are especially prone to both the beneficial and detrimental impacts of digital platforms (Weinstein and James 2022). Furthermore, within the wider research literature, there is little consensus on the direction, magnitude, or mechanisms of digital technology’s effects on adolescent developmental experiences, particularly well-being and mental health (Ferguson et al., 2024; Mansfield et al., 2025). This lack of consensus suggests the influence of digital platform use on adolescent developmental experiences is neither straightforward nor uniform. As such, critical gaps in our knowledge remain.
We view digital platforms as complex IT artefacts, comprising algorithms, interface designs, recommendation systems, and attention-shaping mechanisms that structure user experiences in profound ways (Kane et al., 2014). In line with this journal’s articulation of important societal and policy implications of emerging IS (Beck et al., 2025; Grover & Tarafdar, 2026; Tarafdar, 2024), the overarching goal of this special issue is to theoretically and empirically examine the effect of digital platforms on adolescent developmental experiences. Beyond asking whether engagement with digital platforms is “good” or “bad” for young people, we seek contributions that investigate how, why, and when specific platform designs and affordances shape developmental experiences in both positive and negative ways. It is our belief that prior IS research - particularly streams focusing on IS Design (Zampou et al., 2022), IS Policy (Beck et al., 2025), affordances (Stendal et al., 2026), social-network based organizing (Wu et al., 2017), and digital regulation (Seidel et al., 2025) - can serve as valuable framings to shed light on the complexity of digital platforms and their associations with adolescent development.
Our goal with this special issue is to present a collection of papers that offers a balanced, integrated, and forward-looking understanding of how digital platforms shape adolescent experiences. We invite research that examines how digital platforms, as complex IT artefacts, shape both adaptive and maladaptive adolescent developmental experiences across emotional, cognitive, social, physical, and identity-related domains. We welcome research from across the full methodological and epistemological spectrum of IS research, including behavioral research, design science, interpretive and critical research, econometrics and analytical modelling, and mixed-method approaches.
Papers must be based on primary or secondary data sources. Theory development papers and literature reviews will not be considered. We are keen to represent the global diversity of adolescent development experiences and welcome studies based in all regions and populations of the world.
Given the paucity of research on the influence of GenAI on adolescent experiences, we particularly welcome thought-provoking studies which add insights to this particular topic of inquiry. We are interested in studies that theorize the materiality of digital platforms and empirically investigate how their underlying architectures influence adolescent developmental experiences.