[Paper Review] From Efficiency to Meaning: Adolescents' Envisioned Role of AI in Health Management

Jamie Lee, Kyuha Jung+7 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Feb 27, 2026

Digital Mental Health Interventions0 citations

TL;DR

The paper uses design fiction and co-design with 23 adolescents to explore how AI could support health learning and management in the context of family celiac disease, revealing roles from understanding and autonomy to cognitive relief and family mediation.

ABSTRACT

While prior research has focused on providers, caregivers, and adult patients, little is known about adolescents' perceptions of AI in health learning and management. Utilizing design fiction and co-design methods, we conducted seven workshops with 23 adolescents (aged 14-17) to understand how they anticipate using health AI in the context of a family celiac diagnosis. Our findings reveal that adolescents have four main envisioned roles of health AI: enhancing health understanding and help-seeking, reducing cognitive burden, supporting family health management, and providing guidance while respecting their autonomy. We also identified nuanced trust and a divided view on emotional support from health AI. These findings suggest that adolescents perceive AI's value as a tool that moves them from efficiency to meaning-one that creates time for valued activities. We discuss opportunities for future health AI systems to be designed to encourage adolescent autonomy and reflection, while also supporting meaningful, dialectical activities.

Motivation & Objective

• Investigate how adolescents perceive AI's role in their own and their family's health management during a celiac diagnosis context.
• Identify the benefits adolescents anticipate from health AI in learning, symptom understanding, and discussions with trusted adults.
• Examine adolescents' concerns about trust and emotional support when interacting with health AI.
• Illuminate how AI could support adolescent autonomy while facilitating family collaboration in health tasks.

Proposed method

• Employ design fiction to create progressive health AI scenarios in the context of family health (celiac disease).
• Conduct seven workshops with 23 adolescents aged 14-17 to co-design AI-support concepts.
• Analyze workshop transcripts using inductive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke to derive themes about AI roles and concerns.
• Collaborate with medical doctors to ground scenarios in clinical relevance and ensure appropriate health contexts.
• Record sessions with consent and analyze 769 minutes of video data to extract qualitative insights.

Figure 1. Examples of initial questions raised by adolescents when confronted with mother’s celiac disease diagnosis

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 RQ1: How do adolescents envision the role of AI in supporting their individual and family health management?
• RQ2 RQ2: What concerns do adolescents perceive in the health AI systems they envision.

Key findings

• Adolescents expect health AI to enhance health understanding and help-seeking for both self and family members.
• AI is seen as reducing cognitive burden and aiding in symptom self-assessment and health monitoring.
• AI could mediate family health management and support collaborative health tasks without undermining autonomy.
• Participants view AI as a guide that respects adolescent independence and should not replace human-led care, signaling a shift from efficiency to meaningful engagement.
• Trust and emotional support from AI are context-dependent and vary with health stakes and task type.

Figure 2. Examples of co-designed health AI systems for mother’s celiac disease management (A: an AI app by Workshop 7 participants, B: an AI robot by Workshop 6 participants, C: an AI system with a robot and a smartwatch by Workshop 3 participants, and D: an AI food scale scanner by Workshop 4 part