Practical support for schools and youth-serving organizations
Social media, smartphones, classroom technology, and AI shape how young people learn, connect, and create. These tools bring opportunities and questions about attention, relationships, safety, mental health, and learning.
As part of EDC's broader Healthy Digital Futures work, EDC Solutions helps schools, districts, out-of-school-time organizations, and community partners build practical, coordinated approaches to digital well-being.
Why EDC
EDC brings together expertise in child development, education, media and technology, youth mental health, implementation, and evaluation.
Our Center for Children & Technology has a long history of studying how children learn and interact with media and technology.
- Our Partnerships
EDC partners with school districts and schools, out-of-school-time (OST) organizations, youth-serving nonprofits, state and local agencies, families, and community and behavioral-health partners. Every partner brings different strengths to this work. We tailor our approach to each setting and help connect efforts across them.
- Experience in Action
EDC’s work includes resources for school communities, digital-wellbeing initiatives in OST and community-led efforts that bring young people, families, schools, and local partners together. Examples include digital-wellbeing resources being developed with the School District of Philadelphia, the CDC-funded CAHE-OST Digital Wellness Initiative, and the MetroWest Community-Led Digital Wellness Collaborative.
How EDC Solutions Can Help
EDC Solutions offers tailored training, consultation, tools, and technical assistance. Start with one need or build a coordinated plan across your organization or community.
- Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Digital Wellbeing
Build or strengthen a comprehensive approach that connects universal practices with additional supports for students who need them. EDC can help teams assess current policies and practices, identify gaps, set priorities, and align instruction, family engagement, professional learning, student support, and data use across MTSS tiers.
Universal strategies may include technology and device policies, digital and AI literacy, classroom and program practices, and family resources. Targeted and individualized approaches may include early identification, skill-building, responses to cyberbullying and other risky online experiences, and clear pathways to school-based and community behavioral-health support.
- Professional learning and coaching
Prepare administrators, educators, counselors, student-support staff, and OST professionals to put digital-wellbeing strategies into practice. Topics can include implementing technology-related policies; intentional use of instructional technology and AI; media, data, and AI literacy; digital wellbeing in teaching and youth programming; and recognizing concerns and following appropriate support and referral pathways. EDC’s workshops use interactive learning, reflection, and action planning.
Explore current Digital Wellbeing Professional Development topics
- Customized tools and resources
Create practical resources for educators, young people, and families, such as implementation guides, classroom and out of school time (OST) materials, family conversation tools, and digital well-being toolkits. Materials can be tailored to local priorities, developmental needs, and the communities they are intended to serve.
- Consultation, technical assistance, and evaluation
Get tailored support with needs assessment; youth, family, and community engagement; policy and practice review; strategic planning; cross-sector coordination; and effective instructional use of technology, including AI. EDC can also support state and local partners with implementation coaching, professional learning, and evaluation plans that track reach, implementation, and outcomes.
Why a Systems Approach Matters
- What is healthy digital wellbeing?
Healthy digital wellbeing is about supporting young people’s mental, physical, and social-emotional health through intentional, balanced engagement with technology and interactive media. Digital experiences can support learning, creativity, connection, identity development, and access to information; they can also involve distraction, conflict, cyberbullying, safety concerns, or distress. Effects vary across young people and contexts, so no single rule or lesson is likely to meet every need. Created through EDC's Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast & Islands project, the Using an MTSS Approach to Promote Students' Digital Wellbeing factsheet offers evidence-informed strategies for schools.
- What does a multi-tiered approach look like?
At Tier 1, schools and youth-serving organizations establish clear expectations, teach practical skills, prepare adults, and communicate with families. This can include policies for personal devices and classroom technology, digital citizenship and media literacy, AI literacy, healthy decision-making, and supportive adult practices.
At Tier 2, teams identify students who may need additional help and offer targeted supports, such as small-group skill-building, help navigating online conflict, or support for digital experiences affecting well-being. At Tier 3, organizations coordinate individualized responses and connect students with appropriate school-based or community services when concerns are significant. EDC helps partners define roles and referral pathways; clinical care remains with qualified providers.
- How do organizations address phones, classroom technology, and AI?
These questions are connected, but they are not identical. A school may need clear personal-device expectations while also making thoughtful decisions about instructional technology and AI. EDC helps partners consider the purpose, age and developmental fit, learning value, safety, and well-being implications of different tools; involve educators, students, and families; and connect policies with instruction, adult guidance, and support protocols. Strategies are tailored to local needs and adjusted as technology and evidence evolve.
- How do we take a systems approach with our partners?
Rather than create a separate initiative, we help organizations strengthen the systems already shaping young people’s experiences. This includes aligning policies and expectations, teaching and program practices, family engagement, professional learning, student supports, and data for continuous improvement within existing MTSS, mental health, instructional, and youth development structures.
Across EDC, we translate research and evolving evidence into practical guidance—and help partners assess needs, coordinate across sectors, strengthen implementation, and measure progress. Young people, families, educators, and communities all play a role in making digital wellbeing a shared responsibility, not a burden placed on youth alone.