Digital Media, AI and Youth Mental Health

In an increasingly digital world, young people are exposed to a wide range of online tools that can both support and pose challenges to their mental health. Interactive digital media can offer personalized mental health support, but presents risks related to manipulative design features. Between 2022 and 2024, the Knowledge Institute conducted a robust needs assessment through consultations with over 100 people and 60 agencies in Ontario’s Child and Youth Mental Health and Addictions (CYMHA) sector. Findings from this needs assessment highlighted an urgent need to support people in distinguishing between supportive digital mental health tools and attention-driven digital media through a balanced approach that recognizes the supports and harms of these platforms, apps, and now, AI agents. This needs assessment led to a scoping review of the current literature on AI and digital media’s impacts on youth mental health and substance use health. Key themes and trends emerged from the review, and were brought for consultation with 30 young people, families, and caregivers for further refinement. These themes include types of opportunities, considerations, and recommendations, and are presented in a series of evidence briefs synthesized for different audiences. The presentation will also highlight the partnership between the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Knowledge Institute on Child and Youth Mental Health and Addictions, which enabled the development of themes related to policy recommendations at the provincial, national, and international level.  Key findings that participants can learn from our evidence briefs are: 1.     The prevalence and impact of the commodification of young people’s attention and well-being through interactive digital media and conversational AI, with synthesized data points across provincial and national polling. 2. The positive value that interactive digital media and conversational AI bring to young people’s social and emotional life, synthesized across numerous participatory studies.  3. The status and considerations for common evaluation, standardization, and regulatory frameworks for interactive digital media and conversational AI that incorporate young people’s voices and equity-based principles, synthesizing provincial, national, and internal trends in legislation.