The 2021 Technology and Adolescent Mental Wellness (TAM) Colloquium brought together people from diverse backgrounds. The virtual colloquium was the third annual gathering of this community.
During the first day, TAM grant awardees presented updates on their year 1 and year 2 projects and discussed some of the key takeaways from their experiences.
In 2018, six projects were funded that answered the question: How can technology support adolescent mental wellness? During their second year they were answering the same question in the context of a global pandemic, political unrest, and heightened awareness of the long-standing racism in the United States.
While the awardees were presenting, the community engaged in discussion regarding the obstacles caused by bots in research. This was something that Dr. Yalda Uhls and her team encountered when recruiting for their year 2 study. The community came together to come up with some ideas on how to spot bots in data.
There was also an invigorating discussion about the ins-and-outs of getting IRB approval. Several of the awardees faced IRB challenges and the conversation led to the idea of possibly sharing the experiences and solutions from the group in a publication.
The second day of the colloquium was dedicated to engaging youth in improving adolescent health through research and practice. Youth from the TAM Youth Advisory Board (YAB) shared their perspectives and experiences throughout the day. A group of 15 teens from across the nation make up the TAM YAB. The youth are asked to share their expertise on how to successfully include teens in social media research, what they are observing with their own or their friends’ social media use, and what else they are looking for when working alongside researchers.
The Colloquium always includes presentations from other members of the Madison community and their experiences working with youth. This year the Wisconsin Partnership Program and PATCH presented. They shared their experiences engaging youth even in an online environment and creating safe spaces for youth to lead the way. Most of the youth driven conversations can lead to powerful topics such as mental health, the Black Lives Matter movement, and others. Speakers emphasized that it’s essential to create a safe space before diving into important topics.
A major highlight each year is the youth panel. This year’s panel included discussions about how their technology use has changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many youth found themselves setting their technology aside to spend time outdoors or reading. TikTok was interestingly not a huge part of the conversation, but Discord was a new crowd favorite.
Below, some of the TAM YAB members described what made them interested in getting involved with the program and what they think researchers should be asking about technology and adolescent mental wellness:
By Mina Aslan, Headstream Youth Program Coordinator
The era of convincing professionals to involve youth in their work is slowly coming to an end. People from all fields, from healthcare to education all the way to tech design, understand that in order to build for young people, youth must be involved in the design process. However, now that the “why” has been established, the “how” is a more critical piece. At Headstream, we have asked ourselves the same question for almost two years. Headstream is an initiative, powered by SecondMuse, that seeks to accelerate startups creating social technology designed to support youth wellbeing. As Headstream’s Youth Program Coordinator, my team and I had the joy of designing, launching, and executing the Youth 2 Innovator (Y2I) Program, a virtual experience for teenagers across the United States to work with a social impact startup around youth wellbeing on digital platforms while building out their own social technology project around teen wellbeing. From outreaching to young people all the way to building a strong community of empowered youth, Headstream’s key learnings when working with youth have now become the foundation for all of our youth programming. Join us in designing an amazing youth experience that will truly set your program apart!
Start with Socials
When kicking off outreach for our Youth 2 Innovator program, we reached out to about 100 youth organizations, several schools, and inserted ourselves into as many graduating high school Facebook and Slack groups as possible. It wasn’t until we took our outreach to Instagram & TikTok when application numbers skyrocketed to almost 100. I wanted to be able to show and explain the value of our program to youth directly and in the digital places they consume most. I started by directly messaging pages that had similar rhetoric as Headstream’s (youth, wellbeing, social tech, Gen Z, etc). I then started looking up youth platforms for queer youth, BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) & POC (People of Color, i.e. Asian, Middle Eastern, Latinx, etc). youth, and Gen Z girls. Before I knew it, I went down a rabbit hole of messaging 50+ Instagram pages that shared our opportunity on their stories (a feature that allows you to share content up to 24 hours). It all came from knowing where youth spend their time and meeting them where they’re at. Here are some quick tips on how to conduct social media outreach on Instagram for youth opportunities!
Search for keywords similar to your work.
For example, you want to find youth to participate in research around queer teen wellbeing. Look up keywords like “LGBTQ” “teens” “wellbeing” “mental health”
Read their bios and scan their page to see if their values align with yours.
Message that page a personalized blurb about your opportunity, why you want to share it specifically with them and their network, and ask for them to share it on their platform.
On their page, hit the downward arrow button under the followers button to find similar organizations to them.
Foundational Pillars
When commencing this program, there were certain truths about teen wellbeing and digital spaces that Headstream had to internalize. In the design of such digital spaces, Headstream has learned from both our entrepreneurs and our young people not only what they want to see on social technology, but what they truly need for the youth empowerment recipe for wellness:
Agency: Youth wellbeing is directly tied to young people’s agency to transform the societies in which they live, so in order to uplift youth wellness, digital spaces must also be a place for youth to creatively and proactively address the injustices impeding on their prosperity.
Action: Provide tasks/activities/projects of substance that allow them to contribute to the big picture.
Creativity: Youth are so creative and long for that creativity to be used for a greater purpose. Whether that is for empowerment, awareness, or just for the sake of their wellbeing, they need spaces where they can manifest that in whatever opportunity they embark on.
Action: Encourage and promote creativity within a given task or responsibility in order to benefit your overall work. Creative energy is derived when those insights will be used for a greater purpose.
Intersectionality: Youth come from different backgrounds and identities that require those who work with them to approach them with an intersectional framework. This starts with holding space to listen and learn from the experiences of youth and validating those experiences to be true and to inform collective learning.
Action: Listen to the realities of the youth you are working with. If you are working on a research project, ask how their gender identity, their sexuality, their racial identity, their ethinic background, and/or nationality influence their thinking. Speaking from an intersectional mindset also allows you to design experiences that include these different realities.
Connection & Community: Like most human beings, youth need other youth. But what makes a community within a program strong is a common anchor. For Headstream, our anchor that ties all of our members together is our dedication to transforming the way technology empowers youth wellness.
Action: Create hangout spaces! Youth need to develop a genuine personal connection with you and their peers in order for the programmatic environment to prosper.
Learning Skills: Youth crave for education that will propel them further in life. It is the core of empowerment. Youth need to have access to practical and emotional/social skills that can help them continue to build out their purpose.
Action: When you provide a task/project/community for a teen, be sure you can name the learnings that will come out of that endeavor. If the task is to lead research on mental health of queer youth, your teen can learn how to conduct a focus group, research methodologies, synthesizing and analyzing data, etc.
Support: There are two kinds of support that are critical for youth, emotional and practical. Emotionally, young people are going through a lot, especially during this time. They need consistency in their scheduling, in the expectations requested of them, even in the way they are spoken to. However, the truest form of support comes from genuine care expressed through 1:1 check ins and simple messaging. With many of our youth, we broke down traditional binaries around “professionalism” to simply ask how our teen was truly feeling.
Action: Provide consistent professional touch points and create spaces for personalized touch points.
Mentorship: A Two Way Street
Every opportunity that involves youth has the potential for mentorship and it is imperative to tap into this potential.. As a part of the Youth 2 Innovator Program, our cohort of teens were paired with an innovator to not only advise their innovation, but to be mentored by them. Youth Advisor Madison Ramos advised Headstream Innovation, Novelly, and shared through her experience working with Novelly the myriad of ways mentorship can be manifested and the profound impact it has on the wellbeing of youth.
“It’s unbelievably rewarding to be able to draw from your own experiences to help the development of a youth-targeted innovation.” Madison continues, “After working with the team, I really couldn’t be happier. Not only have I been able to learn so much about the inner-workings of growing startups, but I have watched as my feedback and insight inspires positive change. Moreover, I’ve realized that the relationships you form as an advisor are incredible. After meeting with Anna, Novelly’s founder, we discussed what excited me about Novelly and brainstormed how I could contribute to the team. From this meeting, I joined the team as a Content Intern, and I’m currently continuing in this role! I’ve been able to make my own contributions, and playing a part in the progression of such an amazing nonprofit has been truly exhilarating.”
Mentorship comes from truly believing in the capacity of the youth you work with by giving them the space to contribute to your work and applying it. The ability to build authentic and genuine spaces starts with entering those spaces as your authentic selves. It’s much simpler than people often lead on, but it truly starts with breaking down binaries around adults and youth.
Retention: Building Love & Loyalty through Accountability
Along with presenting your authentic self, discipline does go hand in hand. But here’s the thing: young people respect you more when you hold them accountable. In fact, they need accountability to become better individuals. What builds the love and loyalty in the tough disciplinarian moments is if you are holding them accountable because it benefits them, not you. The moment you see a lack of participation or consistent absences, reach out to the individual youth asking if they are okay. Show them that you care about them as a person and arrange a 1:1 meeting where you can learn more about the root causes behind their behavior. With a kind and genuine composure, lay out the responsibilities they have committed to and how it doesn’t need to be an added stressor, but that they have a support system available to them to help them complete the tasks before them.
I admit, as someone who has worked with youth for 7+ years, it isn’t easy to sustain a caring relationship with teenagers while also disciplining them. However, if accountability measures are framed out of a place of love and a desire to personally and professionally build the capacity of the youth you work with, they will be receptive to that. They will feel loyal because you will be an adult who doesn’t allow them to be complacent and facilitates their growth. And suddenly, they feel your love and loyalty as a mentor and pay it right back to you.
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If you are interested in learning more about Headstream’s Youth Programming and want to find out ways to get involved, please email Headstream’s Youth Program Coordinator, Mina Aslan, at m.aslan@secondmuse.com.
At the 2019 TAM colloquium, our attendees put their heads together to brainstorm the current hurdles in both understanding and addressing adolescent mental wellness in relation to technology.
The strategy session was lead by David Ryan Polgar, tech ethicist, TAM advisory board member, and founder of All Tech is Human.
First, we discussed what we had learned in Day 1 of the colloquium. For example, our youth panel told us that they prefer to learn about healthy tech use by doing, rather than be passively receiving advice, recommendations, or warnings.
We then outlined some of the current hurdles towards promoting health among adolescents when it comes to technology use. We noted that the more eye-catching headlines often contain misleading information about technology use, which inhibits a more accurate public dialogue. Further, perspectives do not align on what constitutes a “healthy” relationship between youth and technology.
Last, we discussed the way forward. How can we use technology to promote adolescent mental wellness? There is space to design business models in tech that hinge on doing good. We also noted the importance of designing solutions that are likely to be adopted and modeled between peers.
In short: We found that the hurdles are complex, but success is both visible and worth pursuing.
Feel free to use, reuse, and share the images above to promote discussion and debate in your own place of work or play, and don’t forget to share with us what you find!
On October 16th, 2019, members of the TAM Youth Advisory Board met with local news anchor Amber Noggle of WKOW-27 and media relations specialist Emily Kumlien of UW-Health to share their perspectives on youth technology use! Check out the news coverage and video clip here.
Session with Emily KumlienInterview with Amber Noggle
We kicked off the colloquium with goal setting. On Day 1, we focused on understanding the landscape of adolescent mental wellness and technology use. On Day 2, we emphasized the successful progression of funded projects and building a longer-term community around TAM.
Left to right – Ellen Selkie, Amanda Lenhart, Dani Arigo, Olufunmilola Abraham
Researcher Panels
Our researcher panels featured student researchers (not pictured) as well as later-career researchers (see left). Our panelists spoke to what they perceive as the most pressing issues in the field. For example, Dr. Arigo highlighted the importance of looking at the same individual over time. If Monday’s tech use looks different from Tuesday’s, what variables might account for that?
Vicky Rideout
Lightning Talk
Vicky Rideout of VJR Consulting spoke to the differences between adolescents that affect their relationship to social media. Adolescents with and without depression, for example, do not respond in the same way to Facebook. Why is that?
Left – right – Nusheen Ameenuddin, Johnna Georgia, Jennifer Schultz
Community Partners Panel
Our community partners included those in private practice, primary care, school settings, and nonprofit. As a group, we observed that our panelists’ experience “in the field” is different from the findings of researchers “at the bench” (or more precisely, at our computers). How can we combine these truths to paint a more comprehensive landscape?
Youth Advisory Board Panel
The youth advisory board panel was a highlight for many attendees. Our youth spoke (emphatically!) to the differences in technology use between youth, what’s hot (and not) across social media, and the need to learn moderate and healthy technology use through their own trial-and-error.
Banquet & Strategy Session
One of our advisory board members and founder of All Tech is Human, David Ryan Polgar, led us in a strategy session over dinner. We worked together to identify what we’ve learned, what barriers we’ve encountered, and next steps for promoting adolescent wellness through technology.
Friday 9/6/19
Funded Projects
On Friday, we focused time on hearing from the diverse array of six projects funded through TAM. Projects focused on the LatinX and Native youth populations, middle school curricula, peripartum youth seeking support online, and youth experiencing cyberbullying. PIs collaborated with colloquium attendees to maximize the reach and success of their projects.
We concluded the event by hearing from everyone. We worked to identify the most important features of an online TAM community, from gateways to collaboration to funding opportunities for much-needed research. Thanks to all attendees for their engagement, energy, and endless ideas!
