What If Young People Could Design a Better Internet?

Creative Media Awardee Fix the Code helps youth reimagine digital technology where data extraction isn’t the status quo

(THE INTERNET | APRIL 6, 2023) -- What if digital technology could be rebuilt from the ground up, without extractive data practices at their core ? And what if the individuals most impacted by social media — teens — were the ones doing the rebuilding?

That’s the concept behind Under Your Internet, a new project by Mozilla Creative Media Awardee Fix The Code.

Under Your Internet is an interactive web experience for internet users between the ages of 13 and 17. Teens take a data personality quiz, learn about the current state of data collection online, and are introduced to alternative forms of data governance. Those alternatives — like data co-ops, data trusts, and open commons — are personified as creatures who teens can chat with. The alternatives are based on investigations by Mozilla’s Data Futures Lab and other researchers.

Says Allison Rowe, an Italy-based design strategist and co-creator of Under Your Internet: “Young people are disproportionately affected by the systems we are building today, yet they are largely underrepresented in decision-making and development. Our goal is to engage and encourage young people to share their opinions — to reorient technology for the care of future generations.”

In addition to meeting data alternatives, teens will also be introduced to the Data Monster — a grotesque personification of the internet’s status quo. The towering, tentacled creature represents much of what is wrong with the internet today: surveillance, centralization, and lack of consent.

Under Your Internet is created by Rowe alongside Fred Wordie, Meg Obata, and Tania de Sousa Dias. The project is part of a Creative Media Award cohort that uses art and activism to interrogate and reimagine data stewardship online; learn more here.

Press contacts: Kevin Zawacki | [email protected]