Amanda Lenhart 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. Previously, Amanda served as the Head of Research at Common Sense Media, where she led research on youth mental health and social media, the role of smartphones and generative AI in the daily lives of adolescents. In her role as the Program Director for Health & Data at the Data & Society Research Institute, Amanda worked on topics including how social media company workers think about and enact digital well-being for kids in the product design process. 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 currently serves on the Technical Advisory Panel to the American Academy of Pediatrics Center on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, as an advisor to the Technology and Adolescent Mental Wellness initiative at the University of Wisconsin Department of Pediatrics, and as an advisor to the Adolescent Health Advisory Panel for the US Department of Health and Human Services. For the past 8 years, she has advised the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History on the development of Unseen Connections, an exhibit designed to help young people explore the natural and social history of the cell phone that launched in November 2023.