Youth Digital Policy Repository
Last Update: July 2026 (click here to download)
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About
The Youth Digital Policy Repository (YDPR) is an ongoing, open-source repository of policies aimed at regulating digital media for minors. Created with the goal of strengthening the relationship between scientists and policymakers, it is our aim that the YDPR will increase researchers’ incorporation of public policy into their work, while also providing policymakers and invested stakeholders a direct line to relevant scientific evidence. The full article describing the repository and all of its purposes can be found here: [INSERT JOCAM COMMENTARY LINK].
Contact Us
Have a question? Notice a policy that is missing from the repository? We’d love to hear from you! You can contact our team at emailhere@placeholder.com.
Meet the Team
Samantha Vigil, MA
Samantha is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis. Her research examines the relationship between adolescent social media use and well-being. Informed by an ecological perspective, she investigates the ways that an adolescent’s environment, both within and outside the home, shapes their use of and response to media. Her research agenda further aims to examine and inform public policy on the topic of regulating digital media and technologies for children and adolescents. Samantha has worked with members of the California State Legislature, the Department of Public Health, and nonprofit organizations to promote the co-creation of evidence-based policy that is best positioned to support adolescent, family, and societal well-being and maintain a child’s rights-based approach.
Drew Cingel, PhD
Drew Cingel (PhD, Northwestern University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the Human Development Graduate Group. He studies the interaction between human development and media effects. He is particularly interested in understanding how facets of child and adolescent development influence media choice and the effects of exposure to media, including the areas of social media use on adolescent mental health and social-emotional development, children’s learning from media, including television and tablet computers, and the influence of media on child and adolescent moral development. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, New Media & Society, Media Psychology, and the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. He currently serves as Chair of the Children, Adolescents, and Media division of the International Communication Association. He has received funding from many industry and non-profit partners, including Netflix and Common Sense Media.
Sarah Coyne, PhD
Dr. Sarah M. Coyne is a professor of human development in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. She received her BSc degree in Psychology from Utah State University, and her PhD in Psychology from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, England. Her research interests involve media, aggression, gender, mental health, and child development. Dr. Coyne has over 200 publications on these and other topics. She regularly speaks to families and teenagers about using media in positive ways. She has five children and lives in Utah.
Sonia Livingstone, DPhil
Dr. Livingstone is a Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).She has published 23 books and many articles on children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy, mental health, child online safety, digital regulation and children’s rights in the digital environment. Since founding the EC-funded 33-country “EU Kids Online” research network, and the Global Kids Online network (with UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti), she has advised the UK government, Council of Europe, European Commission, European Parliament, OECD, International Telecommunications Union and UNICEF, among others, on children’s digital lives and needed policy actions. Dr. Livingstone currently leads the Digital Futures for Children centre at LSE with the 5Rights Foundation and is a member of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI.
Jane Shawroft, PhD
Dr. Shawcroft’s research focuses around better understanding how technology fits into the lives of children and their families. She is specifically focused on understanding the role of broader context, family-level processes, and individual differences in shaping family and child technology use. Combining perspectives from Human Development and Communication, she focuses on outcomes such as well-being, the development of executive functions, and children’s relationship with technology. To do this she uses primarily longitudinal methods, including shorter-term experience sampling methods and long-lag panel data.
Matthew Shawcroft, MS
Matthew is a cross disciplinary geographic researcher focused on developing greater insight into all areas of data science through the use of geographic methedologies. With work published on topics including landscape ecology, economics, and communication, his work touches on all aspects of human/environmental interactions.
Other Contributors
Below are the names of the contributors who generously gave their time to help build this
repository. As an open-source project, it simply wouldn't exist without the dedication and
collaboration of this community.
- Carly Klinger
- Astrea Schweikl
- Olivia Mione
- Sanjna Hedge
- Josefine Peinemann
- Joyce Lee
- Colina Harvey
- Megan Lee
- Diego Ruiz
- Lance Clemente