How to Help Young People Thrive On and Offline: Key Takeaways from our #SXSW2024 Panel

Puberty. First crushes. Braces. Bullying. Smelly armpits. Navigating any of those experiences as a teenager is hard. Now imagine doing it in a tech-driven, social-media-fueled world that can sometimes feel like a 24/7 middle school lunch table.

Today’s young people don’t have to imagine it; they’re living it. And if you’re a parent, you likely are, too. But teens want adults to better understand what it’s really like for them—and it may not be what you think.

At our #SXSW2024 panel “Teens, Screens, & Wellbeing: Youth in the Digital Age,” we convened our partners Kyra Kyles of YR Media , Katya Hancock of Young Futures Org , and Dr. Emily Weinstein of Center for Digital Thriving , as well as our very own Kelsey Noonan , to talk about the pressures young people face and the innovative solutions that are helping them thrive on and offline. Here were the key takeaways from our discussion:

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1)?? Young people are not a monolith. Adults often paint all young people as addicted to their screens, but that generalization overlooks the rich and diverse ways teens use tech and what they get out of it. Gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and more all influence the ways young people spend time online and what their digital experiences are like. As Dr. Emily Weinstein , the Director of the Center for Digital Thriving pointed out, “Technology is a both/and...it’s a source of connection and of isolation; it’s a source of inspiration and of toxic comparison.” One way the Center for Digital Thriving helps young people better understand what they want out of tech is by encouraging them to ask questions like, What are my values? or How do I want to live? and applying their answers to their tech habits. Learn more about the research and evidence-backed tools Emily and her team are using to help young people thrive: Center for Digital Thriving – Helping people thrive in a tech-filled world (harvard.edu)

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2)??? Young people crave social connection, but they don’t always get it. While adults assume teens are hyper-connected because they’re online, recent studies show that 50% of teens don’t feel like they belong at school, and 25% of teens feel lonely every day. This is an important issue to address, because as Young Futures Org Executive Director Katya Hancock noted during the panel: “Social connection is as essential to our survival as food or water.” In fact, social connection can be as much of a predictor of future health as whether someone smokes. Explore how Young Futures is championing solutions—including through their new Lonely Hearts Club funding challenge—to help young people find connection, belonging, and community on and offline: Young Futures

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3)??? Young people are coming up with their own innovative solutions, and it’s essential that we elevate their voices. Kyra Kyles , Executive Director of YR Media , talked about how important it is to carve out spaces for young people to tell us what they need and want. That’s why YR Media helps emerging content creators—the majority of whom are people of color—tell their own stories about the issues they care about and the solutions they want to see. According to Kyra, their leadership has had powerful ripple effects: “We’ve learned so much from young people about how to adopt a spirit of hope, creativity, and optimism around tech and the ways it can enhance young people’s wellbeing.” Discover the exciting ways YR Media is helping young people use their voices to change the world: YR Media

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4)??? Adults play an important role in supporting young people’s #digitalwellbeing. According to all of the panelists, there are immediate, effective ways adults can show up for the young people in their lives: Take time to listen to and learn from them, lead with empathy, look for nuance, resist the urge to tell them what to do (or not do) online, and remember that tech is not necessarily the source of their issues; it’s often a magnifier of them. YR Media 's Kyra Kyles hit the nail on the head when she said: “The best thing to do is work with teens, not against them.”

As Kelsey Noonan , Pivotal’s Program Strategy Director and the moderator of the panel concluded, “We believe in the incredible potential of the next generation, but we know that to support their wellbeing, we also need to build in supports for a healthier digital world, and we’re impatient to see those changes in action.”

Thank you to our partners for helping drive that change ??

Watch the full video of our panel here: