What do young people really think about growing up in an unregulated digital world?

Photo credit: Hot Chocolate Trust

Webinar delivered on 21 August 2026 

Recently, people have had a lot of things to say about young people and digital technology. Whether the discussion is about online safety or healthy screen time, digital privacy or the role of digital tech in education, there is no shortage of opinion. Yet what young people think about digital tech is missing from the debates.

The current generation of young people grew up navigating an unregulated online world. With the introduction of the Online Safety Act as the first step in a series of potentially radical regulatory changes that will directly impact young people, there is an urgent need to understand what young people think about their online lives. Because for any regulation to truly prioritise young people’s safety and to avoid unintended consequences that may increase harm, we first need to understand how young people experience and navigate their online worlds.

The Young Digital Lives peer research sought to do exactly that. Commissioned by the Ada Lovelace Institute and Nuffield Foundation, the research aimed to create the space for young people to explore and share their experiences of growing up digital. The research consisted of two parallel enquiries: peer research with young people 14-24 years old and creative interviews with young people 20-24 years old. Our final report ‘I love it, but I hate it’ was published in May.

Delivered in partnership with Hot Chocolate Trust, a leading youth organisation in Dundee, the peer research trained ten young people as researchers to co-design and facilitate a series of workshops with their peers in four locations across the UK. Ten young people also took part in a creative interview process, working collaboratively with a researcher to reflect on their experiences and co-produce a series of short films.

After an initial period of collaborative exploration, the peer researchers chose to focus the research on social media and AI as they identified these as directly impacting their current and future lives. Their conversations exploring their experiences reveal a complex and often contradictory digital landscape – and a landscape that young people have had to learn to navigate alone. To centre their voices, this blog will build a narrative around a selection of the co-produced films, using each one to introduce and reflect on a key aspect of the research.

Young people are navigating a contradictory digital landscape. A landscape that builds community and connection but that also has the potential to isolate. A landscape that young people use to build global friendships while also exposing them to graphic violence and sexual harms. A landscape where the integration of the smartphone into everyday life forces young people to depend on technology while simultaneously being told to get off their phones. And a landscape where young people are trying to regain control over their phone use while using platforms designed to keep you scrolling.

Young people are acutely aware of these contradictions. They see the power of big tech and see the way online platforms are designed to prioritise profit over the wellbeing of their users. And they are unequivocal in their call for this to change.

Young people describe the sharing of explicit images as normalised. Young women and trans participants describe regularly receiving unwanted explicit images from both their peers and strangers, and young men describe the sharing of nude photos as an everyday occurrence. Older young people also describe only realising that this is a form of sexual assault far later – often as they enter adulthood – and see this as a failure of the systems that are meant to keep them safe. Instead, young women and trans people describe the ways they have taken responsibility for their own protection by changing their online behaviours, primarily through learning to block users and limit their exposure to unknown contacts.

But young people also describe going one step further – that they are actively trying to protect their younger peers and siblings from the same experiences. While this generation of young people have grown up in a world where the sharing of sexually explicit images and exposure to graphic and violent digital content is a normalised part of the growing up journey, they are clear that they do not want their younger peers to have the same experience.

The dialogues also reveal a timeline of harm. Young people spoke about the rise in hateful language online and their concerns about the impact of early exposure to discriminatory views on the values and beliefs of their younger peers. And while young people also shared their concerns about the impact of constant exposure to graphic violence on themselves, identifying this as having desensitised them to human suffering, they also identified a new issue: delayed harm. Older young people were clear that their understanding of the psychological and emotional impact of their early exposure to extreme content has emerged over time. These participants spoke about how they have only really begun to emotionally connect to the things they have seen as their worldviews and moral frameworks have matured. For some young people reflecting back on their early exposures, they identify these as a form of ongoing harm that continues to affect their mental health into adulthood.

Moving forward: rethinking safeguarding for a digital world

But above all, young people spoke about navigating this complexity alone. Despite the sharing of explicit images being commonplace, no young person spoke about action taken to address the behaviour. Young women told us about inaction within schools to address the sharing of nude photos by their classmates, with others recalling police inaction after reporting online harassment. Consistently young people shared that they have learnt how to keep themselves safe online – but that they learnt to do this on their own without adult support. These narratives point to a failure of the safeguarding systems to address the issue of digital harm. Young Digital Lives has clear implications for practice. We need to work collectively to rethink safeguarding in a digital world and rebuild trust in the systems designed to keep young people safe. But while this research provides evidence to argue that current support and safeguarding systems need to be redesigned for a digital world, exactly how we do this remains an open question.