Social Innovation & Social Well-Being: Lessons from Practice
LocationBartos Theatre, MIT Media Lab DescriptionDr. C. Otto Scharmer is a senior lecturer at MIT, the founding chair of the Presencing Ins…
Beyond Performance: A Mixed-Methods Study of Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts
Lecamwasam K, Bresle E, Martiny KM, et al. Beyond Performance: A Mixed-Methods Study of Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts. Health Promotion Practice. 2025;0(0). doi:10.1177/15248399251361095
It's Complicated: Teens' Social Media Practices
LocationSheraton Austin, Capitol ABCD, 701 E. 11th St. Description
FOSTERING WELL-BEING: Designing Technology to Improve the Psychological Well-being of Foster-Involved Youth
Kumar, I. K. (2023). FOSTERING WELL-BEING: Designing Technology to Improve the Psychological Well-being of Foster-Involved Youth (thesis).
Promoting the well-being of infants and caregivers through music: insights from the Lullaby Project’s international convening
Lecamwasam, K., Bartleet, B. L., Ortiz, T., & Koebner, I. (2025). Promoting the well-being of infants and caregivers through music: insights from the lullaby project’s international convening. Arts & Health, 1-11.
Remaking City by Community-based Social Innovation
The research on Community-based Social Innovation focuses on the reshaping of urban spaces by human social behavior, incorporating an analy…
AHA Seminar: Yutong Zhang | When AI Becomes a Companion: Understanding Their Relationship with Psychological Well-Being
Join us for our online seminar series event hosted by MIT Media Lab’s Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) research program! This event features …
Driving Social Innovation in Education
Dykes, G., Groff, J., Renfrew-Knight, H., & Sutch, D. (2010). Driving Social Innovation in Education. An HP white paper.
Design, Technology + Social Innovation Workshop 2020
Moon Dialogs Research Salon: Safety Zones in Practice and Lessons from Earth
The third salon in our series aimed at advancing interdisciplinary lunar policy thinking relevant to near term lunar activity.
Experiments in Socially Guided Exploration: Lessons Learned in Building Robots that Learn with and without Human Teachers
C. Breazeal, A. Thomaz
Sustaining the benefits of live music engagement: immediate and enduring influences of awe at Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts
Corona, R., Koebner, I. J., Stamkou, E., Lecamwasam, K., Bagorro, M., Johnson, S., … Keltner, D. (2026). Sustaining the benefits of live music engagement: immediate and enduring influences of awe at Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Concerts. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2026.2721618
Social Change through Community Innovation: Feminist + Participatory Design Approaches to Organize Inclusive, Equitable, & Joyful Hackathons
Hope, Alexis. (2021). Social Change through Community Innovation: Feminist and Participatory Design Approaches to Organizing Inclusive, Equitable, and Joyful Hackathons (Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA).
Social Machines
As of 2021, the MIT Media Lab's Social Machines group has merged with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication. The Laboratory fo…
Methodology for Establishing Well-Being Urban Indicators at the District Level to be Used on the CityScope Platform
Orii, L., Alonso, L. and Larson, K., 2020. Methodology for Establishing Well-Being Urban Indicators at the District Level to be Used on the CityScope Platform. Sustainability, 12(22), p.9458.
Early methods for studying affective use and emotional well-being in ChatGPT: An OpenAI and MIT Media Lab Research collaboration in the news
News coverage of a research collaboration with OpenAI investigating how chatbots affect users' social and emotional wellbeing
Health and Wellness Innovation 2013
LocationMIT Media Lab Description Host/Chair: (Unpublished) John Moore
Health and Wellness Innovation 2012
LocationMIT Media Lab Description Additional Featured Research By (Unpublished) New Media Medicine Host/Chair: (Unpublished) John Moore
OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being
We’re starting to get a better sense of how chatbots are affecting us—but there’s still a lot we don’t know.
Social Capital Accounting
T. Nishikata, T. Hardjono and A. Pentland, Social Capital Accounting, October 2018.
Collaborative Innovation: Best Practices from and for the City Science Network
Researchers from the City Science group collaborated with the Tiresia research group at the Politecnico di Milano to examine the impact, go…
Pharmamusicology: Exploring the Impact of Music on the Physiology and Psychology of Anxiety Disorders and Well-Being
Lecamwasam, K.H.M. (2023). Pharmamusicology: Exploring the Impact of Music on the Physiology and Psychology of Anxiety Disorders and Well-Being. Master's Thesis, MIT Media Lab.
Téo Xisto selected as 2026 Well-Being by Design Fellow
Téo Xisto of the Lifelong Kindergarten group is among the recipients of the 2026 Joan Ganz Cooney Center Well-Being by Design Fellowship
Media Lab @ Design, Technology + Social Innovation Workshop 2020
The following Media Lab students joined the MIT India Initiative in Mumbai for this workshop.
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: John Ratey
LocationMIT Media Lab, 3rd Floor Atrium DescriptionJohn Ratey will address the connection between exercise and the brain's performance and …
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: Martha Herbert
LocationMIT Media Lab, E14-633 DescriptionPhysical and biological needs of the brain must be met as a precondition for "higher" functions t…
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: Marko Ahtisaari
LocationMIT Media Lab, E14-633 DescriptionMarko Ahtisaari is a technology entrepreneur and designer. For the last four years he was executi…
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: Lori Melichar
LocationE15 Bartos Auditorium DescriptionWhy do we reach for a cookie when we know an apple is better for us, even if we’re trying to lose …
Collaborative Innovation: Best Practices from and for the City Science Network
Tuesday, April 1st 2025
Investigating the Influence of Conversational AI Use on Emotional and Social Wellbeing
Loneliness is a growing and global issue that affects approximately a third of individuals in industrialized countries. Given the…
Social Robots for Social Connection
Despite living in an increasingly connected world, loneliness and social isolation are prevalent issues today. While social robots have bee…
Positivity Resonates: Effects of face-to-face social connection on human wellbeing
Special lecture by psychologist Barbara FredricksonAre the moments of positive interpersonal connection we experience positive health behav…
Social Algorithms
In the Social Algorithms research group, we study how algorithmic systems in daily life shape access, agency, and opportunity—often in ways…
AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning and well-being
Pataranutaporn, P., Danry, V., Leong, J. et al. AI-generated characters for supporting personalized learning and well-being. Nat Mach Intell (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-021-00417-9
Interventions to Modify Psychological Well‑Being: Progress, Promises, and an Agenda for Future Research
Kubzansky LD, Kim ES, Boehm JK, Davidson RJ, Huffman JC, Loucks EB, Lyubomirsky S, Picard RW, Schueller SM, Trudel-Fitzgerald C, VanderWeele TJ, Warran K, Yeager DS, Yeh CS, Moskowitz JT. Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being: Progress, Promises, and an Agenda for Future Research. Affect Sci. 2023 Mar 3;4(1):174-184. doi: 10.1007/s42761-022-00167-w. PMID: 37064816; PMCID: PMC9982781.
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: Professor Natasha Dow Schüll
LocationMIT Media Lab, E14-633 DescriptionDigital self-tracking, sometimes called "life hacking" or "personal analytics," involves parsing …
Wearable Device-assisted Emotional Wellbeing Intervention with a Social Robot
Emotional wellbeing is an important indicator of overall health and poor emotional wellbeing can equally adversely affect one's overal…
Technology Will Help Us Learn About Emotions for Personal Well-Being
Computers that analyze people’s feelings and stress? Those days are already here. Dr. Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affectiv…
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone
LocationMIT Media Lab, E15-LL, Bartos Theater DescriptionThe human brain is made up of neurons, highly sophisticated and stable cellular st…
Social networks: Emotions on Twitter
MIT has developed an extension that allows knowing the emotional impact caused by the content that everyone creates and consumes on Twitter.
Optimizing Mental Health: Technology to Improve Well-Being and Combat Depression
LocationMIT Media Lab, E14-525 (Nagashima Conference Room) DescriptionPART 1: Investigating Well-being and Character in PsychologyPART 2: D…
Older Adults Living With Social Robots: Promoting Social Connectedness in Long-Term Communities
Ostrowski, A.K., DiPaola, D., Partridge E., Park, H.W., & Breazeal, C. (2019). Older Adults Living with Social Robots: Promoting Social Connectedness in Long-Term Communities. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. doi: 10.1109/MRA.2019.2905234
Tools for Well-Being Talk Series: Anmol Madan and Jukka-Pekka Onnela
DescriptionJP Onnela is an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is interested …
A HeARTfelt Robot: Social Robot-Driven Deep Emotional Art Reflection with Children
How AI Chatbots Affect Our Social and Emotional Wellbeing: New Research Findings
People use AI chatbots like ChatGPT in many ways—asking questions, sparking creativity, solving problems, and even for personal interaction…
Social robots as social catalysts: Collaborating with older adults as design research partners
When they’re valued as design research partners, older adults feel empowered to contribute to technology design.
Associations Between Circadian Sleep Alignment, Sleep Regularity, and Well-Being: Evidence from Wearable Data
*Senthil, S., *Fedor, S., Zhang, B., Nathan, V., Stickgold, R., Picard, R. W., Associations Between Circadian Sleep Alignment, Sleep Regularity, and Wellbeing: Evidence from Wearable Data, In *Proceedings of the IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI’25), Atlanta, GA, USA
Auditing design justice: The impact of social movements on design pedagogy at a technology institution
Das, M., Ostrowski, A.K., Ben-David, S., Roeder, G.J., Kimura, K., D’Ignazio, C., Breazeal, C., Yang, M, & Verma, A. Auditing design justice: The impact of social movements on design pedagogy at a technology institution. Design Studies.
Social Robots for Social-Emotional Learning for Arabic Speakers
This project aimed at enhancing the social-emotional and educational experiences of Arabic-speaking refugee children. The project leverages…
ESG+C | Environmental, Social & Governance + Community Metrics for CityScope
ESG+Community
Cultivating a Supportive Sphere: Digital tools for social support amongst current and former foster-involved youth
Over 600,000 youth in the United States experience abuse or neglect each year. Youth who are deemed to be at risk of significant harm in th…
Dava Newman
Former Director, MIT Media Lab; Apollo Professor of Astronautics
Simulating human well-being with large language models: Systematic validation and misestimation across 64,000 individuals from 64 countries
P. Pataranutaporn, N. Powdthavee, C. Archiwaranguprok, & P. Maes, Simulating human well-being with large language models: Systematic validation and misestimation across 64,000 individuals from 64 countries, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (48) e2519394122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2519394122 (2025).
Probabilistic Latent Variable Modeling for Assessing Behavioral Influences on Well-Being
Nosakhare, E., Picard, R. W. Probabilistic Latent Variable Modeling for Assessing Behavioral Influences on Well-Being," ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’19), August 4–8, 2019, Anchorage, AK, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292500.3330738
Recruiting Participants for Study on Social Robots for Social Connection
We are exploring how social robots can be used to improve connection to others and are looking for participants age 18+ located in the US
The future of social media is a lot less social
Former Media Lab Professor Ethan Zuckerman speaks with The New York Times about the future of social media.
Stop Letting AI Run Your Social Life
How AI Became a Third Party in Our Relationships, According to the MIT Media Lab’s Cyborg Psychology Group.
Enhancing well-being through low-frequency resonance: a parametric analysis of space geometry
Resonance at low frequencies strongly influences a room's perception of sound, which can enhance or deteriorate the acoustic experience. Pr…
Beyond the Sci-Fi Fear: MIT Media Lab Launches AI Nutrition Labels to Measure Human Well-Being
MIT Media Lab's AI Nutrition Labels use ImpactBench to track how tech affects human agency, critical thinking, and mental health.
Promoting Wellbeing with Sunny, a Chatbot that Facilitates Positive Messages between Members of Social Groups
Narain, J.*, Quach, T.*, Davey, M.*, Park, H., Braezeal, C., and Picard, R. "Promoting Wellbeing with Sunny, a Chatbot that Facilitates Positive Messages within Social Groups". Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Accepted. *Equal Contribution.
Simulating human well-being with large language models: Systematic validation and misestimation across 64,000 individuals from 64 countries
Can AI Predict Human Happiness? Researchers Simulate Well-Being for 64,000 Individuals WorldwideA new study reveals both promise and peril …
Social Robots as Social Proxies for Fostering Connection and Empathy Towards Humanity
Shen, J., Lee, A., Alghowinem, S., Adkins, R., Breazeal, C., & Park, H. W. (2025). Social robots as social proxies for fostering connection and empathy towards humanity. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2025), Melbourne, Australia. ACM.
Robert Morris on Crowdsourcing Mental Health and Emotional Well-Being
DescriptionThis talk is part of the Advancing Wellbeing seminar series at the MIT Media Lab. For information about future talks, please joi…