Shayli Jimenez: "There is a balance we need to strike between driving engagement and being mindful of teen's well-being."

"Hello everyone, Thanks so much for your attention to the Teen Fundamentals research I shared yesterday. This first phase of research was a foundational step towards getting our footing on what we know about this user group both in and out of the context of Instagram. As we await our teen age models to improve in accuracy, it is even more critical that we continue to pursue understanding teens, their relationship with the world, and our app through this multi-phased research approach." "Summary of discussion: 1. Discovery is a major lever for satisfying teens desire to entertain themselves and learn. We do well to consider how we can improve the discovery experiences on IG (as opposed to adding discovery features) since what we do for teens will likely benefit the whole ecosystem. 2. There is a balance we need to strike between driving engagement and being mindful of teen's well-being. This includes unpacking what 'reward' means to teens and considering how we could build a responsible reward system. How do we help people to progress towards something meaningful? We do not want to drive usage that is problematic to teens. 3. There is an opportunity to incorporate this framework (novelty, emotion, reward) into measurement in order to evaluate what parts of the app need work to enhance teens perception of IG. Adam cited Reels as an example - currently they are measuring value and how entertaining it is but, perhaps we should also measure how novel/new people perceive it." "Next steps: 1. I am working on a research study now in partnership with Eva Caiden from the IG Ambassadors program to understand teen trends. This will lead to a strategy for detecting and anticipating different types of trends. Teens are tastemakers and what we learn from this work can help us to take a proactive approach to evolving the app before competitive threats appear. 2. I am also currently developing a survey that is designed to measure usage and evaluate how different IG surfaces and features are meeting teens needs and expectations. I will also capture their perceptions of how parts of IG measure up in terms of sentiment on the dimensions of novelty, emotion and reward to assess the experience IG is delivering them. This should point us to the areas of the app we need to prioritize. I will also explore working with the Brand Marketing team to see if we can also capture these measurements at an app level within existing efforts such as the Brand Tracker Survey. 3. In terms of constructing a reward system that will engage teens, we will conduct more research to better understand what is truly 'rewarding' for teens and how rewards could contribute to healthy exploration on our platform. a. We have already started breaking ground on understanding how teens feel about the amount of time they spend on Instagram thanks to Kenzie Snyder's investment in our Household Ecosystem understanding. b. There are new solutions being explored to see what could be most beneficial to mitigate problematic usage. I will continue to work with these teams as thought partners and collaborators on this line of research."