Amanda Lenhart

Senior Fellow, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop

Amanda is a senior fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop and a long-time mixed methods researcher who has spent the bulk of her career studying how children and families use and think about networked technologies. She also serves as a Technology Policy Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and is an affiliate of Data & Society Research Institute. Previously, Amanda served as the Head of Research at Common Sense Media, where she led research on youth mental health and social media, and smartphones and generative AI in the lives of adolescents. She started her career at the Pew Research Center, helping to found the Internet team where she pioneered and led their research on teens and families for 16 years.

Amanda specializes in translating rigorous research for a broad national audience. Dedicated to public communication, she has testified before congressional subcommittees and the Federal Trade Commission. Amanda’s work has been featured in numerous national publications and broadcasts, including The New York Times, PBS Newshour and NPR’s All Things Considered.

Amanda serves as an advisor to the American Academy of Pediatrics Center on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, the Technology and Adolescent Mental Wellness initiative at the University of Wisconsin’s department of pediatrics, the Responsible Youth Tech Power Fund and to the Adolescent Health and Wellbeing Project at Stanford University.