The John Templeton Foundation is proud to announce nine new grants focused on youth thriving in the digital age. These projects, awarded through the Cultivating Character in the Digital Age funding call, promise to create tools and resources to support character development, advance our understanding of how youth use technology, and spark conversations on how technology can be used for good.
“Recent advances in technology are dramatically changing the way children around the world learn and grow. We appreciate the need to understand and protect against any potential harms associated with technology use. For this funding call, we were also interested in identifying the ways in which technology could be leveraged for good,” said Sarah Clement, Senior Director of the Character Virtue Development funding area.
“We were really encouraged by the strong response to the funding call. There is undoubtedly widespread interest in how we can best cultivate character in the digital age. We are grateful to everyone who applied, and we are excited to follow the progress of the awarded projects.”
The $8 million in awarded funding will support much-needed research and programmatic interventions that will help youth, and those who support youth, harness the benefits of recent advances in technology.
Four grants will focus specifically on artificial intelligence (AI), exploring how children, teens, and young adults use AI technologies; seeking to understand how AI use relates to character virtues such as purpose, curiosity, and integrity; and creating and sharing resources and tools for educators to foster virtuous use of AI.
An additional three grants will center on digital spaces and relationships, studying youth’s character development and well-being in digital social, gaming, and learning spaces and developing and testing interventions to enhance resilience, compassion, and gratitude.
The final two grants will leverage the power of convenings, bringing together diverse stakeholders to discuss character development and ethics in the digital age; creating resources for educators, religious communities, and the general public and inspiring new areas of research and conversation.
To learn more about each of the awarded projects, we invite you to follow the links below.
Finding Our Way With AI in Schools: Strengthening Character and Promoting Virtuous AI Use With High School Students
Victor Lee (Stanford University) & Denise Pope (Challenge Success)
$1,097,771
IMAGINE (Inspiring Moral AI Guidance In Education)
Emily Weinstein & Beck Tench (Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard University)
$1,034,494
How to Build AI Platforms That Promote Children’s Character Development
Celeste Kidd & Bill Thompson (University of California, Berkeley)
$930,662
Cultivating Intellectual Character in the AI Age
Shayan Doroudi & Duncan Pritchard (University of California, Irvine)
$470,442
Character Development Through Adolescent Brains, Peers, and Technology Use: A Longitudinal, Multimethod Investigation
Eva Telzer & Mitchell Prinstein (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
$2,060,941
Addressing Risks in Online Spaces with Character Development through Digital Micro-Interventions
Stephen Schueller (University of California, Irvine) & Eranda Jayawickreme (Wake Forest University)
$1,036,714
Coming of Age in a Digital World
Alexandra Rodman & Varun Mishra (Northeastern University)
$834,976
Jewish Thought and Jewish Education for the Digital Future
Geoffrey Mitelman & David Zvi-Kalman (Sinai and Synapses)
$671,879
Character Matters: Values and Resilience in the Digital Age
Kate Blocker & Kris Perry (Children and Screens)
$259,500
