CAREER: Resilience in the Age of AI: Helping Adolescents Manage Generative AI and Personalization

Personalized social media feeds and emerging AI chatbot technologies influence what adolescents see, how they receive social feedback, and how they interpret themselves and others. While these systems can provide information, entertainment, and connection, they also shape attention and can gradually steer interests, preferences, and how adolescents see themselves. This project examines how adolescents experience algorithmic influence and explores how attention can be reclaimed as a resource for agency and self-understanding in highly personalized digital environments. By helping adolescents recognize and reflect on algorithmic influence and strengthen attentional autonomy, the project develops new ways to support healthy development and emotional well-being in increasingly automated media environments. Tools developed in this project can be used independently by adolescents and implemented in schools, libraries, and youth organizations to help mitigate the negative impacts of AI personalization. This project advances the "Resilience Framework," a sociotechnical model that explains how adolescents maintain a sense of self that is coherent and self-directed in environments that utilize algorithmic personalization. The research integrates qualitative, quantitative, and participatory design methods. In the foundational phase, interviews, diary studies, and other situated qualitative activities will examine how adolescents interpret and respond to recommender systems and generative artificial intelligence chatbots, including their perceived influence on self concept, emotional experiences, and resistance strategies. Survey research will measure relationships linking algorithmic shaping, attention disruption, emotional regulation, and self-concept clarity. In the second phase, participatory co-design activities will develop a paper-based intervention, the "Algorithmic Self Defense Toolkit," designed to help adolescents reflect on algorithmic influence through structured exercises focused on attention, self reflection, and emotional distancing. The third phase is a twelve-week longitudinal study that investigates whether the intervention strengthens adolescents' self-concept clarity, the primary outcome and a proxy for resilience. Additional analyses will examine how reflective disengagement and emotional regulation shape self-concept development over time. The project will produce new theory, validated measurement instruments, and design tools and guidance for technologies and educational interventions that support youth development in algorithmically mediated environments. Through educational activities, including undergraduate curriculum and a youth summer institute, this project embeds self-concept resilience as a core developmental concept throughout its educational and mentoring activities. It aims to cultivate a generation of students and youth collaborators who can critically engage with the psychosocial consequences of algorithmic environments and to design interventions that support adolescent agency, coherence, and well-being. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2537125 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002930DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Nora McDonald | Institution: George Mason University, FAIRFAX, VA | Award Amount: $495,396 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2537125 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2537125.html