Introducing Field Notes: Bridging the Gap Between Screen Time and Real Connection

A practical guide for parents and caregivers to turn Gen Z insights into everyday support.

Are you an experienced professional passionate about the intersection of AI and youth wellbeing? We are looking for mentors to provide strategic guidance and network access to nonprofit leaders in our “Oops AI Did It Again” cohort as they scale their impact. Learn more and see how you can help shape the next generation of digital wellbeing innovators!

Young Futures Community,

“You’re always so aware of how other people are perceiving you.”

That line, shared by a 17-year-old, captures something we hear again and again, and something many parents and caregivers are hungry to understand better. Trusted adults want to help. They just don’t always know how.

That’s where our YF Innovators come in. Working directly with preteens and teens every day, they’re uncovering what young people are actually going through and what genuinely helps. Field Notes exists to get those insights out of the field and into the hands of the people who need them most.

This is the very first edition of our new zine, a practical, parent-and-caregiver-friendly guide that translates insights from our YF Innovator community into tools trusted adults can actually use. We’re so glad you’re here for it.

In this edition, we’re sharing what we learned from our first two national funding challenges: Lonely Hearts Club (focused on belonging and social connection) and Under Pressure (focused on reducing the pressures young people face growing up in a tech-driven world).

The numbers tell a striking story. The number of teens who say they are online “almost constantly” has doubled since 2015. Roughly half of pre-teens and teens feel like they don’t belong at their school. And while teens most often name social connection as a way to cope during hard times, 81% report experiencing at least one major form of pressure.

So what can trusted adults do, especially when it feels like everything is moving fast?

Field Notes offers five grounded starting points. Model the behaviors you hope to see, affirm who young people are and what they care about, remember that connection can be quiet, talk early and often about the digital world and create real opportunities for connection and contribution.

Across our YF Innovator community, a few themes come through clearly. Teens do better when they’re trusted with real responsibility and reciprocity, when they have consistent and identity-affirming spaces, and when adults show up with humility, taking their experiences seriously and leading with openness rather than lecturing.

We’re here to help the helpers and to scale what works. Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, educator, or community leader, this one’s for you.

Warmly,
Katya Hancock
CEO, Young Futures

Young Futures in the News

Mar 13, SXSW Lightning Talk, YF’s CEO, Katya Hancock will speak at The Light House during South by Southwest in Austin as part of the Tech We Want programming. Her session explores what it means for today’s teens to grow up with AI that can “do their thinking,” and how schools, funders, and technologists can ensure these tools strengthen young people’s agency, wellbeing, and ability to tackle complex challenges. Register here!

Young Futures is hiring across three roles as we continue expanding our work to make the digital world a better place to grow up. We’re currently seeking a part-time Studio Fellow to support creative storytelling, a part-time Data Fellow to help translate impact into compelling insights, and a full-time Community & Events Associate to support grantmaking logistics, Academy programming, and community events. Fellowship applications are due March 13 at 5 p.m. PT, while applications for the Community & Events Associate role are being reviewed on a rolling basis.

Young Futures Innovators in the News

Call Me Maybe Cohort YF Innovator Jennifer Chace of The Source School is seeking students, teachers, and principals with firsthand experience navigating a bell-to-bell cell phone ban to join a student-teacher citizens’ assembly on cell phone policy implementation on March 19 in Bronx, NY. The assembly will explore what is working, what is not, and what schools wish they had known when helping students adjust to phone-free learning.

Lonely Hearts Cohort YF Innovator Alex Owens of BeLoud Studios was named a 2026 Stanley 1913 Creators Fund grantee, receiving unrestricted support to advance the organization’s work helping amplify youth confidence through radio and digital media production, creating opportunities for young people to build skills, share their voices, and strengthen their communities.

Here Comes the Fun Cohort YF Innovator Jake Stika of Next Gen Men warns in a new that “casino masculinity” is increasingly shaping the lives of young men, as sports betting, crypto, and gambling culture become normalized online and in everyday sports spaces. Drawing on new Canadian data and Next Gen Men’s broader work on masculinity, Jake argues that protecting boys requires more than policy change, it also means helping them see through the harmful messages being sold to them about risk, winning, and manhood.

Under Pressure Cohort YF Innovators Carolyn Gan of Cal Partners Project centered youth voice through Connor, a 10th grader from Granite Bay, CA, whose insights on social media’s impact on teen boys, along with his contributions to CPP’s research and public engagement, helped shape more relevant and effective tools for families navigating tech and wellbeing.

Under Pressure Cohort YF Innovator Anahita Dalmia of Agents of Influence (Alterea) is helping teens build critical thinking, media literacy, and online agency through a spy-themed game that equips students to navigate misinformation, echo chambers, and AI-generated deepfakes with confidence. Educators can join the mission by participating in a paid research study this spring, helping bring the game into classrooms while shaping evidence for its impact.

What We’re Reading (& Watching)

Schools are teaching AI — and making a massive mistake (The Washington Post, Mar 10)

Resist ‘dangerous and socially unacceptable’ age checks for social media, scientists warn (Politico, Mar 2)

The Great Shift: Education’s Evolution in the Era of Arrival Technology (EdTech Digest, Feb 24)

National Parent Teacher Association breaks ties with Meta amid child-safety trials (CNBC, Feb 20)

Did social media break a generation — or just change it? (NPR, Feb 20)

The People vs. AI (Time, Feb 19)

Parents are opting kids out of school laptops, returning them to pen and paper (NBC News, Feb 16)

Spotlight on Youth Voices

In The New York Times’ multimedia challenge, 35 student creators from around the world shared powerful reflections on what it means to grow up alongside AI, offering an unfiltered look at how this technology is shaping creativity, school, identity, and everyday teen life. Through essays, poems, videos, artwork, and more, their work captures both the promise and the pressure of coming of age in an AI-powered world, challenging adults to pay closer attention to how young people are actually experiencing this shift. Their message is clear: teens are not just inheriting the future of AI they are already living it, questioning it, and helping define what comes next. Check out the collection of work here!