Independent public-interest project · Scientific framework under active development · Live public pilot
UXR Documentation
Social Platforms, Attention, and Human Agency
A research on-ramp for examining how social platforms, recommendation systems, engagement design, and automated mediation affect attention, relationships, understanding, and agency.
Social platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and future services mediate attention, relationships, news, identity, community, commerce, and public life.
They should fall within UXR's universal scope because human beings design, operate, regulate, fund, and profit from the systems that shape these experiences.
The Research Question Is Larger Than Satisfaction
A person may enjoy a platform while losing meaningful control over attention, privacy, information, or social relationships. Another person may dislike a protective limit while retaining or gaining agency.
UXR therefore would not treat engagement, time-on-platform, self-reported satisfaction, or growth as complete measures of benefit.
Possible UXR Dimensions
- clarity and control of recommendation systems;
- ability to understand why content appears;
- meaningful consent and privacy choices;
- ease of changing defaults and leaving engagement loops;
- effects on attention, sleep, work, learning, and relationships;
- age-appropriate protections and supported agency for teenagers;
- content moderation, correction, appeal, and account recovery;
- harassment, safety, and control over contact;
- advertising transparency and commercial influence;
- data portability, deletion, and practical exit;
- and distribution of benefits and burdens across users, families, creators, workers, and the public.
Scientific Rigor
These questions require careful evidence. Correlation between platform use and an outcome does not automatically prove causation. Effects may differ by age, intensity, content, social context, vulnerability, platform design, and individual objective.
UXR should distinguish:
- observed behavior and reported experience;
- measured outcomes;
- plausible mechanisms;
- causal evidence;
- individual variation;
- population effects;
- and moral or policy evaluation.
Future Blue Scores
Social platforms could eventually receive category scores for agency, attention stewardship, transparency, privacy, safety, accessibility, recovery, contestability, and verified reform. No such official UXR scores currently exist.
Invitation to Researchers and Readers
UXR welcomes people studying teenagers, adults, families, relationships, mental health, attention, misinformation, platform governance, recommender systems, labor, advertising, and online communities.
Share findings that strengthen or complicate these dimensions. Identify established measures UXR should adopt or avoid. Explain where the framework risks oversimplifying different platforms or populations. Help define what humane digital performance should mean without converting one political or moral preference into assumed scientific fact.
UXR for Researchers and Writers · UXR Taxonomy · Contributing to UXR