LAUSR

The period of transition for foster youth into independent adulthood is an important life stage, and one that has yet to be explored in HCI circles. We studied an online community centered on the experiences of former foster youth through the first year of its existence to better understand how online spaces are being used by this population. Our mixed-method study included the coding of all posts from the first year of the online community and offers a mix of quantitative and qualitative findings. These findings include alignments and gaps in an established descriptive framework from the field of social work as it relates to the online communication of former foster youth. It also includes how the domains from the framework co-occur, and some potential implications of these co-occurrences. Future research on this subject is warranted, particularly related to why former foster youth seek online platforms to engage in conversations on these topics and how effective community members perceive the platform to be in safely and securely facilitating their needs.