Young people today are caught in the crossfire of powerful societal forces driven by technology. Infusing their daily lives, its impact is complex – internet access offers many benefits in terms of access to vital information, services and opportunities, but it also brings a dizzying array of risks and dangers.

Young people spend hours each day online, and on smartphones. In the EU 97 percent of young people used the internet daily in 2023, compared to 86 percent of all people. Their usage of tech platforms, websites, communication channels and games is as varied as young people themselves, but the vast majority of these technologies is underpinned by advertising. Young people do not exist online in some neutral public space, they are immersed in the commercial reality of the internet. Treated as young consumers rather than young citizens, they see skewed images of life and youth, biased perspectives and misinformation presented as information and fact, and brands and products as aspirations.

The role that technology plays in youth mental health is complex and contested. Lack of access to the internet is correlated with negative outcomes in terms of education and access to opportunity. But technology can also play a negative role in young people’s mental health. A growing proportion of young people report they feel addicted to their smartphones,  contributing to anxiety, body image and low self-confidence.

But it isn’t just young people’s use of technology that determines its impact on their lives. Young people today grow up in economies shaped by the platform capitalism of the last two decades. A series of related shifts from local industries to globalisation, from the high street to Amazon, and from skilled work to automation mean that young people face ever more precarious and uncertain futures.

Shaping a successful career, getting onto the property ladder – these aims become aspirational rather than realistic for many young people. As Silicon Valley luminaries herald a new era of automation driven by the boom in generative AI, some suggest that whole industries will be replaced, and careers will disappear.

Youth has always been one of the major focus areas of philanthropy.  The old fundraising adage says that people give to children, cats and cancer. One might assume then that high levels of giving by both individuals and grant-making trusts and foundations would mean that the role of tech in young people’s lives would be well-explored and well-funded. So where are the funding programmes combatting the negative impacts of tech? Where are the initiatives building better futures for young people through technology? Who is working to bring the voice of young people on what they want from technology, and from the future, to bear on the tech industry?

I believe, based on my experience of UK and European philanthropy over the last two decades, and my background as a technology researcher before that, that philanthropy’s leaders have a blind spot around tech. Many of its leaders have backgrounds more in the humanities and arts than in engineering and science. Few foundations have explicit technology programmes – brief flirtations with funding tech over the last decade have been ‘mainstreamed’ and largely disappeared. My experience is that philanthropy’s leaders have seen tech as something ‘other’ – devolving responsibility for it to younger and more ‘tech savvy’ colleagues. This devolution of power has also brought a diminution of attention – philanthropy has ignored tech as one of the greatest driving forces of our age.

Philanthropy’s blindness to tech creates a broad misunderstanding of how tech is shaping the challenges and issues facing young people, as well as the potential solutions that tech might help build if we were to invest in it with care, attention and intentionality.

How do we encourage a greater understanding both of the causative role that tech plays in young people’s lives, and the constructive role it might play in solutions if we invest thoughtfully in it? I believe that the seismic shifts starting to happen in philanthropy around inclusion, voice and lived experience offer us some hope of philanthropy starting to pay more attention to tech.

If we listen to young people about their lives, their hopes, dreams and fears, we will hear about the role of technology. If we work with young people to imagine better futures, and to shape them collectively, we will see the role that technology can play.

Perhaps young people will work with us to imagine and shape alternatives to current social media and communications tools. Perhaps they’ll dream up new ways of combining the best of multiplayer online games with ways of connecting with each other around common purpose and driving social action and movements. Perhaps we’ll see new business models emerge around tech that reflects young people’s values and aspirations, rather than simply profit and shareholder interests. It can be practical and humble too – the work we’ve been doing with Nominet and our partners in the Signpost+ programme, to help young people find and access essential digital advice and support.

If this all sounds distant and abstract to those leading grant-making foundations, or those sitting on their boards, it is anything but that to young people. And to any that still say tech isn’t something for them, I’d ask them to check in with their investment managers about the tech stocks that are (almost certainly) playing a major role in their investment returns. Foundations are tech investors, whether consciously or not. It’s about time they start paying attention to the role of technology in young people’s lives.

Tris Lumely is Director of Innovation & Development at NPC