Teencentered

Teencentered is an approach that places teenagers at the center of the design, evaluation, and governance processes that affect them. It emphasizes teen agency, input, and lived experience as essential sources of insight and aims to shift decision-making power toward young people.

The term emerged in professional discussions around participatory design, youth development, and adolescent research in the 2010s and 2020s. It is used across fields such as education technology, health services, civic participation, and urban planning to describe practices that involve teens as co-creators rather than passive users.

Core principles include respect for teen autonomy, ethical engagement, and inclusivity. Teencentered work uses co-design workshops, teen advisory boards, user testing with adolescents, and iterative feedback loops. It also prioritizes privacy, data protection, clear consent, and age-appropriate communication. Effective teencentered projects seek to represent diverse teen populations, including marginalized groups, and adapt methods to different developmental stages within the teenage years.

Common applications are in developing digital platforms for teens, shaping school or community programs, designing youth-oriented media campaigns, and informing policies that affect youth experiences. Advocates argue that teencentered approaches improve relevance, engagement, and uptake by aligning products and services with teen needs and aspirations.

Critics caution against tokenism, power imbalances, and overreliance on limited youth voices. Achieving meaningful impact requires guardrails, facilitation skills, resources for teen participation, and mechanisms to translate input into measurable changes. Teencentered remains a descriptive label for a family of participatory practices focused on adolescence.