Spotlight on Responsible AI for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing

In early November, the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing brought together an incredible group of interdisciplinary experts, researchers, clinicians, policymakers, AI companies, and youth leaders for a one-day event to answer the question: How can we use generative AI responsibly to support, rather than harm, the mental health of young people? Focusing on multidisciplinary dialogue, policy guidance, industry transformation, and collaboration with young people themselves, this working session provided a platform for collective strategy-building, with the goals of seeding collaboration and producing a vision document to inform future research, policymaking, and industry practices.

The event was co-hosted and organized by Vicki Harrison, MSW, of the Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing and Caroline Figueroa, MD, PhD, a visiting Harkness Fellow and Assistant Professor in digital mental health. Nico Fischer, a high school student and youth leader who chairs the Santa Clara County Youth Task Force, joined the hosts as a co-emcee and panelist at the event. In attendance were Stanford faculty members from the Department of Pediatrics, the Cyber Policy Center, Department of Computer Science, the Graduate School of Education, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford AI for Mental Health Initiative, and the Stanford Mental Health and Technology Innovation Hub. They were joined by representatives from the California state assembly and several leading tech companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Character.AI, Google, and TikTok.

After a landscape overview by Dr. Figueroa, Ms. Harrison moderated a youth panel that kicked off with Cyra Alesha from the Center for Youth and AI showing examples of chatbot conversations with youth. The youth panelists discussed critical questions such as: What is the ideal mix of digital and human interventions for mental health support? What safeguards should AI companies put in place to protect users from harm? How can we strike the right balance between protecting young people and supporting their rights when it comes to AI access? 

Next came a panel of experts from the Family Online Safety Institute, Young People’s Alliance, the Rithm Project, UC Irvine, and Stanford’s Department of Computer Science. Later, an afternoon brainstorming session was capped off with reflections from youth leaders, including calls to action for policy makers and tech companies to involve youth at every stage of development. Youth leaders from Stanford’s GoodforMEdia peer mentoring program shared their new AI guide for teens and conducted a series of tiny mic interviews with many of the experts in the room, which will be featured on their  website and Instagram.

The organizers will be summarizing the main takeaways from the gathering and seeking additional input from experts who were not able to attend, in the hopes of establishing a baseline of responsible AI practices for mental health uses and inspiring future research, guidance documents, and collaborative steps.

More Information

For more information, contact Vicki Harrison at vickih@stanford.edu