In this episode, Lucha Sotomayor, a representative from the UN’s Office of the Special Representative on Violence Against Children, discusses the importance of children’s participation in addressing and preventing violence. She shares insights into various forms of violence against children, including physical, psychological, and verbal violence, as well as harmful practices like child marriage and child labor. Lucha also highlights the need to create a world where children can live free from violence and emphasizes the ongoing challenges faced by parents in navigating their children’s online experiences. Tune in to gain a deeper understanding of the global scale of violence against children and the efforts being made to combat it.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the series.

Lucha Sotomayor:  I’m Lucha, I work for the UN, specifically for a mandate called the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Violence Against Children. I specifically work on children’s participation. How children are part of the solutions when it comes to preventing, addressing and responding to all forms of violence and on violence online. We all work on different forms of violence. That’s the one that I focus on. And I’m also the author of a couple of books. One of them is called Yo Digital, which is a book for our children to be the best version of themselves online.

Jordan: And do you have children of your own?

Lucha: I do. They’re 11 and 13, just like going into the online world, just starting their own adventures, which is very challenging as a parent.

Laura:  Yes, good luck to you. 

Lucha: Thank you. 

Laura: And we feel your pain. We’re both parents, too.

Jordan: So I have to say your job sounds really fascinating. But I’m kind of suspecting that most of the people listening don’t really think about what violence against children means on a global scale, UN kinda scale, I mean, at least not beyond like when we’re all doomed scrolling through our phones right? And we hear the sensational headlines— what are the major issues that you deal with in that office right now?

Lucha: So we are an advocacy-driven mandate. We work with Member States—that’s the UN language for countries that are members of the UN which is most countries. We work with states around improving and strengthening their response to violence and to all forms of violence. So the violence against children is huge, right? People tend to think about physical violence against children. So the act of basically harming a child, which is, of course, against children, and generally, you know, there’s a whole aspect of corporal punishment that we work on in schools at home, and how not to discipline children through force right? And also you have psychological violence, you have verbal violence, you have different forms of violence that people may not think are part of their policy against children, like child marriage, and harmful practices like child labor. So basically anything that goes against the conventions of The Right of the Child. And children, according to the convention, have the right to live in a world free from violence. Anything that is a bottleneck towards meeting that right is considered violence against children. Basically depending on the region of the world, the kinds of violence that are most urgent to address, right? So, for example, child marriage is huge in Africa. It’s always something that countries in the region are working around. Violence online is something that is cross-cutting throughout all regions, and unfortunately. things like sexual violence and domestic violence, they are too. Depending on countries, the violence experienced by children on the move, refugee children, migrant, and displaced children, so a lot, and unfortunately COVID set us back a few years towards meeting our goals. We had the goal of ending all forms of violence against children by 2030, right? So I guess you’re all familiar with the SDG, Sustainable Development Goals and 16.2 is stopping all forms of violence against children. So we were to meet that goal and it’s a lot of work, unfortunately.

Jordan: Yeah, it sounds like it. It sounds huge, but I’m really pleased that you mentioned the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Laura: And actually, I’m aware that recently there was also The Digital Rights of the Child, but being considered in that space as well. One of the ones that we’re really interested in is child participation and the right to participation. Can you explain a little bit more about what the convention is? And also this idea of child participation?

Lucha: Okay. So the convention is a Human Rights Treaty. It was the Human Rights Treaty that was approved the fastest in history. That means countries, adhering to it and saying, Yes, we’re going to. We’re going to take these recommendations forward, and participation is one of the core principles and guiding principles of the convention, and it means that different rights, the right to express yourself, the right to access information, the right to peacefully associate, for example, all going into the mixer, and what comes out is children’s right to participate and influence all matters affecting them, right? That is what we understand; that participation was kind of born with the Convention of the Rights of the Child which we’re going to refer to as the CRC because it’s shorter. I was kind of born with that a bit over 30 years ago, and the interesting aspect is, it has evolved a lot, right? So at the beginning, adults were the gatekeepers to participation. Children actually needed adults to open up spaces for them to speak up, and you know, say what they wanted. That has evolved so it’s not enough to speak up. You actually want to make sure that those voices are influencing decision-making, right? And also with social media and with children’s empowerment, because, you know, 30 years in, the children who have been born are educated around the CRC. I am 41. I was born, and it was not there. There was no CRC, right? And then, when I was an adolescent, probably nobody educated me on this CRC, when it was approved. So I was not empowered by my rights. Today, Children learn in school that they have the right to participate. They learn about this CRC. They learn about that right. So that empowerment, together with the fact that you know a lot of children, not all children in the world, (about a third don’t) have access to the online world and to certain channels that are in it, are enabling environments for them to take forward their rights. If you combine these two aspects, it means that adults are no longer the gatekeepers of participation anymore. And I don’t, children are taking those spaces. Let’s look at Greta. Let’s look at you know, child-led movements looking to influence change. Now adults are still the gatekeepers of programs and policies affecting children, right? So there’s still a need to bridge that gap. So what we do at the office that I work for is we work towards breaking that gap between children who are taking forward actions around violence and other issues, and they are looking to influence change and decision makers and world leaders, and those actually behind the programs and policy start affecting these children. How do we support the first group with knowledge and tools to influence change? And how do we support the adult world into channeling children’s participation towards effect and positive change for them and their communities?

Laura: Yeah, so actually, that sort of really reminded me of something. So recently, I joined a project that you are heading up, called the POP Project, and I think that this would be a really good opportunity to speak a little bit about that. Could you explain what the project is? and actually how that links with this idea of child participation as well? 

Lucha: Yes, I’d be happy to. So POP stands for Protection through Online Participation, and it’s about this whole aspect of children participating online. But we narrowed it down to participating towards being safer, right? So we always look at the online world as a place where children are at risk of different from violence, right? And they still are, and we still need to work towards making it safer, but there’s another side of the online world, and that is how, thanks to this, you know, digital access to the digital world, children are being able to be safer too. So just like they’re able to express themselves and access information, peacefully associate. They’re also able to work towards the right of being free from violence, right? The best example is during COVID, we saw how many children went into lockdown, and services were interrupted. When we say services, the services protecting children, right? So like school teachers, health professionals. So, children don’t report violence, violence is detected. There are trained professionals that are going to be working with a child engaging with a child, and they’re going to pick up on certain things that you know, maybe warnings about a child being a victim of violence. Children don’t report for a number of issues, being scared, being ashamed, not knowing that what they’re experiencing is called violence, and it’s wrong, and that’s why adults pick up on those things, and help children, and guide them towards reporting system services. With COVID, those are interrupted in over 100 countries in the world. And children were disconnected from services and domestic violence and sexual violence increased. So children were very often, you know, living with the perpetrators or violence and disconnected from the Protection services. The online world became a very critical entry point towards being safer, connecting to a helpline, right? Reaching out for help, connecting to the police. It was a channel that could help children be safe. And also children started to create their own solutions towards being safe. There’s this beautiful example about a girl in Poland. She created a website to report gender-based violence. It’s a fake cosmetics website depending on the type of product that you buy, the type of violence that you’re saying you know that you need to help around, and you could even talk to a sales assistant who was a protection officer who would guide you through. That was created by an adolescent girl to address violence and to support her peers. Children are owning the online world to access safety. Services are adapting their channels. Child Helpline International, for example, during COVID had to increase almost 20% their online staff and volunteers to address children’s requests for help online. Now POP is about better understanding how children are using the internet to be safer if we understand it well from the user’s perspective, from the service providers perspective, from a helpline’s perspective, if we understand it better, and we understand the challenges that both children and services are facing, we can make recommendations for improving. We’re implementing these services at the UN. We should be anticipating these trends and being able to provide relevant information for all countries to take these services forward.

Jordan: I love this. I love this project so much because you know, Laura and I talk about this all the time, right? How so much of the conversation around the online world and digital is about the danger or keeping it safer and at the best, sometimes it’s like, oh, there’s positive ways. You can learn spatial reasoning or critical thinking, or you know, learning games, those kinds of things. And for years we’ve been, you know, even when we do this podcast, we’re always talking about how there are so many powerful ways that young people are using online tools to connect with affinity groups to get help, to like, find the support that they need. And while researchers talk about this all the time, not, you know this is not in the mainstream conversation about the digital world at all. So like I love that you’re doing this project, that from my understanding, you’re not only identifying the examples you’re mapping them. You’re describing how they work. Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna ask you to talk about it.

Lucha: So to your first point, I completely agree. And I think the challenge is, how do we understand these systems and make sure that they’re also safe spaces for children to connect with, right? How do we make sure that it’s not always an entry point? It’s not just an entry point to safety, but it’s also a safe space to access, and we still need to be working towards making the Internet safer and more ethical and child friendlier, etc. So I think they add up right. It’s not like either or, but they should be combined and then how are we doing it? So we started off by bringing partners on board from other UN agencies. This is being co-led by our office and the International Telecommunications Union, which is the agency within the UN, but basically addresses telecommunication issues brought in by UNICEF, and other UN agencies. CSO, Save the Children, anyone you know, Save the Internet, organizations that are touching on online and children’s rights. At the same time, relevant industry players such as Roblox, such as Meta, the LEGO Group, they’re all involved in this initiative, with the goal of understanding how children are using the internet to be safer, and some academic partners and children themselves. And we first started to map. We, you know, outlined this form, asking for services. We matched services, official helplines, official hotlines, adult-led, or led by governments who are looking to provide protection to children through digital means, and where there’s a conversation that was one of the criteria we need to have. We need to map these places. There’s a conversation between two human beings, one of them a child looking for support, and we received information from almost 200 countries. And we’re currently going through all that information, from how many children do you engage with? through which technologies? Which are the challenges? Which are the benefits we’re good at? We’re starting to map now, child and youth-led solutions and asking children and young people how they’re using the online world to access safety. What platforms do they mostly interact with with the goal of looking for sake, you know?  And the question is, if you are feeling scared or unsafe, where do you go online right to look for help? And that’s what we call the second phase of the mapping. Then we’re going to be mapping the third phase— we’re going to be mapping all other platforms that are not necessarily a service or a child-led. And these were ambitious, that there’s going to be a lot of AI-driven systems and games and things around mental health. And we’re combining that with qualitative information, you know, doing running in-depth interviews with helplines who are supporting children online and asking them more in that “let’s talk about the process where you were born online”. Did you have to activate this channel? Why, when how many iterations have you gone through? Which do you think are the challenges for children? 

We’re going also interview children and young people who have been behind these solutions. We are going to be looking at children’s evaluations of these services, and interviewing industry players to understand what they have learned about children using their platforms to be safe. From our conversations with many of our industry partners, we’ve learned that it has been a challenge and that children, for example, during COVID with playing online games when on social media would be looking for support systems as well. And there is a big challenge on how to reach them, right? How do social media platforms? How do online gaming platforms for children engage? How do they bridge with protection beyond report? The account, right? How do you actually connect with protecting human beings, and not necessarily AI who are able to protect children? The Protection Community has always been focused on the offline aspect, for obvious reasons, because we detect violence right? So there are additional challenges in taking that to the online world. How do we address them because their children will continue to go online. They will increasingly look for help online. So we need to, you know, understand that. So we are up to speed, so we can provide the support that they’re asking for, and then we’re incorporating the lessons from the industry, doing some late reviews. So, throwing all of these different data inputs into a mixer and then looking at the evidence. So this is what the world is telling us, right? With all these partners, we’re hoping to get them together basically in person, just online, and work with this information to make recommendations for countries, right? So we’ll know the recommendations will be Country X. Have you implemented these services? No, we have been talking seriously. A set of recommendations, how you can. Oh, yes, we have. Okay, here’s just a recommendation on how you can make sure that it’s meeting the following standards, and it’s being effective.

Jordan: Now what’s next for you? Do you have a grand vision of the future that you’re working for like, what’s the dream of like what you’re gonna do next, your next big project, not just next week.

Lucha: POP is a big project, right? So I think that I’m gonna stick with that for a while. You know, even though we’re aiming to be able to publish recommendations next year, we want to socialize them with them, with states that we need to implement them. How do we take this forward? How do we do it? It’s not enough to make these recommendations on putting them forward. How do we make sure that children are being able to access safety and protection for online means. I think you know for me that’s a long term approach. I’m working on a couple of other books, one on LGBTQ. Actually, I also feel that we need to be like you know internet 2.0, kind of. We are very stuck on the risks online and protect yourself. But how do we empower children to own that world and make it more ethical and change it, right? So one of my key messages that I always transmit to parents and children is the fact that the Internet is not this magical thing, right? We never teach children that human beings created this,  that you know, you need to know that you need electricity and power, a great function. You need cables, basic cables that go under the ocean right that you cut them, you don’t have Wi-Fi, but they’re pouring into this world where access is available when they open their eyes and they’re online.

That connects magically, right? So there’s a sense of huge power over you, right? This is powerful, and it’s more powerful than you. How do we? How do we shift that? How do we change that power balance? and empower children to have power over the online world, and not just power on their own behavior, but on changing it and making it better? I mean, we have talked about how online is an entry point to being safer and how do we need to enhance that? and promote that? But also online is an entry point, to being very unsafe, right? Unfortunately, numbers are rising and rising and rising on childhood exportation and child trafficking on, on, on, on, on scams, on, and how do we help the future generations? That is something that they can change. I think for me that if there is a future, if there is a world tomorrow after the climate crisis. If there is a future, how do we empower these generations to make it better because we didn’t do a really good job? And we need to, you know, transmit to them that they can. I have another book called “Yo Activista”, and that is the message that it sends, anyone can be an activist. Anyone can help change the world, right? You don’t need to be this superhero right? Publicly voicing, speaking up. But you can do good from your own space, from your own personality. So yeah, how do we? How do we encourage them to? And you fix what we ruined?

Laura: You’re really speaking our language, our podcast is called “Into the Digital Future”. This is very much what we want to look at, what we want to focus on, so encouraging young people to have more ownership and control over it, I think, is a really positive thing.

Jordan:  So thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to have you here. You’ve got me thinking, so I’m sure you have all of our listeners. I was thinking about a lot of things, so thank you.

Lucha: Thank you for having me.

Laura: It was a wonderful conversation. Is there anything else that you think we’ve missed that you’d like to share?

Lucha: I think that mostly for parents to remember, when we, you know, engage with our children, we talk to our children, to remember that they are growing up in a different world than the one that we grew up with. And you know, parents, we tend to replicate how we were brought up, right? So before saying things like you won’t understand this because you’re too young, or it was different in my time, let’s try and understand the world that they’re living in. How can we help them navigate this world? Not necessarily compare it to how we grow up, and how we had to do certain things because this is a different world. So I think the huge challenge is for us to step out of our historical world that doesn’t exist anymore and try to adapt to our children’s world today, and try and connect with them around that, so we can help them navigate these, you know? I wouldn’t want to be, I wouldn’t want to have social media and the other list, and I think it is so much pressure, right? Yeah, so how do we try to be, you know, be more empathetic with the challenges that they’re facing and try and help them? and not try to replicate what we were doing at their age and offer them alternatives to the online world. When you tell them, stay off your phone. It’s to offer them something in which why don’t we go to the park? Why don’t we read together? Let’s look at something like we need to offer them outside. This is very true.

Laura: It’s been fantastic. That was a really really interesting conversation, Lucha, and we know we’re looking forward to seeing where the project goes, and you know maybe we’ll have you back next year. You can come and tell us about the progress that’s been made. It’s a great project. Thank you so much for coming on.

In this episode, Jordan and Laura sit down with Jaspal Sandhu, Executive Vice President at Hopelab, a social innovation lab dedicated to supporting the mental health and well-being of young people, with a focus on equity. Jaspal shares his unique journey from mechanical engineering to youth mental health advocacy, shedding light on the intersection of design, technology, and health. They discuss the Responsible Technology Youth Power initiative, emphasizing the importance of involving young leaders in shaping the responsible use of technology. Jaspal also highlights the impact of mentorship and the need for industry players to take proactive steps toward positive change. Tune in to gain insights into building a better future for youth in the digital age.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the series.

Jaspal Sandhu: I am Jaspal. I’m executive vice president at Hopelab. We are a social innovation lab and impact investor working to support the mental health and well-being of young people with a big focus on equity. That means that we’re focused on LGTQ youth and youth of color here in the United States. I should mention that I’m new to youth mental health. I’m going on just over a year at Hopelab. My own background is a mishmash of human-centered design, entrepreneurship, then health equity for the 12 years before coming to Hopelab as managing partner at a design firm that I co-founded. I did work in social impacts in Africa, Asia, and the United States. I’ve been teaching design and innovation courses at UC Berkeley School of Public Health for about that same period of time, and my roots are in (few people know this),  mechanical engineering. So I actually, if you go far enough back, I used to design welds, but I don’t do that anymore. 

Jordan: Like to get water from?

Jaspal: No, also good. I do know people who have designed those, but welds. I had some work where I was doing a kind of safety analysis of welds in nuclear reactor experiments. It sounds way fancier than it was. The experiment was fancy. My role was not fancy. 

Jordan: What an interesting background you have, really, really fascinating. And I guess, as we brought you to this point now, I’d like to dig in a little bit about what Hopelab is. Specifically, I believe it’s an initiative led by Cornell. Is that correct?

Jaspal: No, but that’s great. I love that we do interface with Cornell, though. So that’s okay. I love hearing Cornell’s name. So we’re now a 20-year-old organization. We’re a nonprofit that was founded by Pam Omidyar to really look at the positive possibility of technology for young people with a strong bend towards science and evidence. We’ve kind of gone through a few different phases of transformation over that time, but there’s some ingredients that have been there from the very beginning, that we still find very much in our DNA. I’m going to mix metaphors here a little bit. You know, one of those is a belief that technology is not neutral. and that as much as we can talk about harms. And we think a lot about the harms of technology that there is a broad set of positive possibilities around technology. So that’s one. Another is we need young people at the table. If we’re going to be something that you both believe in a lot, which is why I’m excited to be here with you. We need young people at the table, and what we’re starting to do at the Hopelab is bring young people to the table in different ways, but young people, as part of solution-making, have been part of that fabric. Now I’ve mixed 3 metaphors for your fabric ingredient and DNA. And you know the last is a firm belief in science. So you know whether that is rigorously testing the impact of products and interventions, or whether that’s actually generating new research for the field, or whether that’s actually relying on research in order to guide our strategy and what we do. Those are all things that have been common to Hopelab since the beginning. Now, the bits that are a little bit different today are that we’re squarely focused on youth, mental health, and well-being sort of in there from the beginning. But now it’s a lot more explicit for us.

Second, as I mentioned, at the top, we are very centered on equity, so, looking at youth of color and LGBTQ youth. It’s kind of our guiding star. We have a venture fund that invests in early-stage companies in the space that are doing work that we believe in, that has alignment with our equity mission. We have Hopelab Studio, and that is a little bit like my company from the before times, Gobee, except it’s internal to Hopelab and unlike Gobee, we don’t charge for services. So we are offering human-centered design, user experience. consulting in addition to equity consulting and research and impact modeling, consulting to organizations out there in the world that we think are doing good work, and we do it pro bono. And then we’ve got some activities in the research space to translate science from academia to the real world, so that all of that is really finding really good people out there who’ve already figured out a lot of this and finding ways that we can support them.

Jordan: I feel like you hinted at something we’re going to ask you about, which is, the Responsible Technology Youth Power. It seems like you were hinting at it. Can you tell us about it? Why does it matter? What does it mean?

Jaspal: Yeah. So this has been a lot of fun. It’s like I mentioned. I’ve been here at Hopelab for a year, and this was, I think, day four, I got introduced to a couple of colleagues from two organizations.

So Emma Leiken and Andrew Brennen from the Omidyar Network and Kevin Connors and the Susan Crown Exchange. So we’re three in this—Hopelab’s a funny beast because you look at us in different ways: We can look like an investor. We can sometimes look like a think tank. We can look like a product studio. But in this framework, we’re looking like a funder. And you know both these organizations have already come together to start to think about how we could support young leaders in the responsible technology movement. And yeah, how to define responsible technology. It’s tough. Because, you know, whenever we try to define the thing that ends up being like a two-page document. This is the way I see it is technology, again technology is not neutral, evolutions in technology, not just social media, but evolutions in technology over the last decade. I say, this is as much of a professional as I do as a father of an 11 year old, there are some risks, and there are some harms with it. And there’s work to be done, some work to be done in new technology platforms, perhaps some in the policy space, some in education. and responsible technology is a movement to do better, not just to reduce harms, but to really look at the positive possibilities of technology. 

Jordan: Can you be a little bit specific? Like, what are some of those harms? And how will we start to think positively about those positive uses?

Jaspal: Yeah, great question. So you know, we’re pretty recently on the heels of the Surgeon General’s advisory on social media and youth mental that I know you’re both really familiar with. That came a month after the American Psychological Association put out a similar report. You know, I think what we appreciated as hopefully about those reports was pointing out harms, but that also recognized that it’s not all doom and gloom. I mean, I’m gonna flip it back for a second. We’ll go back to harms. 

You know we’ve done a series of national surveys in partnership with Common Sense Media. And when we look again, we’ve got that really strong equity focus. When we looked at LGBTQ+ youth we found that they were using social media. I should have the number somewhere. It’s like something crazy like 98% of them were using it to seek out mental health support like they’re using it for the really positive and supportive, like in support of their own response and resilience to a pretty challenging political and social and cultural environment. In addition to being adolescents, it’s already hard enough to be an adolescent in this world. So I do want to emphasize that there is a lot of good. And there’s a lot of potential there. And that’s like, kind of as we think about responsible technology. There’s a big piece of it. That’s that. It’s like what’s working. And how can we do even more with that? You know, Harms are complex. I think both those reports pointed out something that we believe in, too, Is that there is—and I hate to say this because this is how every BBC article about research ends— that more research needs to be done. But it really is true. It really is true. That is kind of the point of research that you just keep doing. It is how you make your living, Jordan. It’s you know. I think it’s easy for us to take a look at. You can pick any chart. You can look at anxiety. You can look at depression, you can look at loneliness you can look at.

I’ll keep it there. We know that I can keep talking about statistics that are going to get way way more intense than those and they look like they map to the rise of social media and maybe smartphone penetration, but there’s other stuff that’s been happening in the world. Some of that is independent of social media, some perhaps not, right? And so things like climate stress, shifts in the economy, racism, injustice like anti-LGBTQ. Not just legislation. That’s really, I don’t know what I mean. It’s hate, right? So like all of these things. And there’s a longer list that has also been rising over that same period of time. And we’re just trying to be thoughtful about where we can actually attribute that to the technology and where we can’t and you know, I’m not trying to be an apologist for social media or big technology platforms. It’s really this that we’re trying to step into this with the kind of foundation that we have in science.

Laura: As you say, this is about young people having these safe places to go online where they can ask the questions that they might not be able to ask in the real world, or that they feel nervous talking about. Can you share a little bit about imi in particular?

Jaspal: Imi.guide is the website. This isn’t just at the tail end of our previous model, when I hope I was still building products. You know, we built them and we still didn’t build them alone. We built this, especially in partnership with the It Gets Better Project and CenterLink, which is the center of LGBTQ centers across the US. You know we have this seed of an idea that we wanted to provide a platform for LGBTQ. Young people, including questioning young people that could help to form their identities. Kind of like it’s more than one thing in a single package. But we recognize that there was an open space for there to be a resource like this that would actually serve a need. Kind of building off her mission, we had seen some interesting possibilities with chatbots and in the spirit of us having a human-centered design capability inside the group in a belief that young people should be partners in design, our team went out to all these different places. Not just California and New York, but we were working with centers in Kentucky and Alabama, and in Alaska. Alaska is interesting because we, our team, went up there and the Chatbot thing was panned. They said this is not it. This is not for us. This is not what we need, and it was not the only time that we received that feedback, but we heard it loud and clear and kind of shifted. The design of what it would be and what it has become is a platform that we still are in partnership again with CenterLink and It Gets Better are providing support for that safely and in a lightweight way.

Jordan: I want to ask a question. You’ve talked about technology not being neutral today. You keep using that word “design.” I know you had a design firm, and I know you’ve been involved in the design for health initiative, and I think it’s sort of helpful to understand it. Well, all the things we’re talking about like, what does it even mean to do something like design for help? I think it starts to get to the responsible technology question, too, like we don’t often think in terms of like, the mainstream way of thinking, at least, is not about an intersection between design and health. 

Jaspal: So great question, you know, I spent like 20 years in this space, and I think the longer I’m in it, the more I think it feels like us putting fancy labels on something that’s a very simple concept. And that is, if you’re going to build something. If you’re going to build a product, if you’re going to make a policy, if you are going to be creating some kind of service out in the world, whoever that’s for, you just got to engage them in the process. That’s what it’s like, if I had to write down what human-centered design is on the back of a postage stamp. That’s it. It sounds like common sense. It’s how most small-scale entrepreneurs across the world do their business, no matter what it is. You wouldn’t just post up at some random place and just hope that people would come to you like a good entrepreneur is going to sort of do a little bit of fact, finding they’re going to talk to potential customers. You’re going to test out the recipe with customers. They are everything related to marketing, branding, pricing like you’re going to be engaging with the community who is going to be driving. You group the revenue to you and come back to eat these things and be your best ambassadors to the world, but there’s something kind of magical that happens in organizations, and it’s not good magic. It’s when organizations get bigger. You know, we’ve worked before I came to Hopelab, I worked with a few medical device companies as an example it’s really easy to design a product for somebody, whether it’s a clinician or whether it’s at home use product and not talk to clinicians, not talk to the people that use the product. So actually talking to them, listening, testing things out with them. That’s all that human-centered design is. And so when we talk about the responsible Technology Youth Power Fund, for us it’s kind of handing over the keys to the young people. That’s really what it’s about. I mean, we set up this fund, you know, in partnership with the Omidyar Network and the Susan Crown Exchange, and we were able to bring in 11 other funders into this mix which is not always an easy thing to do. All of us do really quite different things. We’re showing up to this effort together for our own reasons, but we had this common interest in okay, well, we know that there’s lots happening in the technology space. We know that there is something that needs to be done, or many things that need to be done. Again, policy, education, new technology development, even one group that’s a publication for technologists, young technologists, but we all wanted to walk the walk a little bit more. We’ll talk about wanting to support young people. but to actually push funds to an organization that’s run by a 22-year-old or a 19-year-old is something that doesn’t happen that often. Yeah, And I go into the history of why that is. But I think you, I’m sure you’ve seen that as well. And so that’s what we’re trying to do, you know, not recklessly ourselves. We’re trying to. We know there are really great innovators out there.

Laura: And that leads me, unfortunately, to our last question. So this is going to be quite an interesting one, I think. I’m asking you to think about it. And again, it’s those sort of different stakeholders. So the big decision-makers, whether it be government policymakers or the tech industry. What three things would you ask them to think about? What’s your big, you know, if you could just go right, these guys, these are the three main priorities. What would they be?

Jaspal: You know, I think we talk a lot about policy. I’m gonna kind of have a U.S. focus here, but we see this actually in other places as well. When we talk about policy and technology platforms in the United States, it’s playing out two different ways, right? We’ve got sort of a Federal level policy and stuff may be happening there. And then you’ve got state-level policies like the California Age Appropriate Design Code, like the stuff that’s been happening around potential bans of TikTok in places like Montana. Without going into each of those policies. I think there is perhaps a missing piece, which is, we focus on big P, Policy and not enough on, I don’t know if it’s a little p, a different P policy. And that’s the power that technology platforms have themselves either as individual massive platforms or together as an industry or sub-industry to make changes. Of course, that’s being done, but I actually think that that is the place where there is such power and such potential impact. It’s, you know, if we take it to a different industry, it’s like, if Walmart makes small changes to some level of packaging in produce because of the scale that they operate at. That’s going to have a huge, you know, impact in some direction on use and waste. And in the same way platforms are touching so many young people and not just touching. I mean, this is like, when I think about young people I think, for us at Hopelab, that means roughly 13 to 25 year olds. So that’s one, sort of looking to industry for some of the answers we can offer our kind of council and support, you know, and we’d be happy to do that if it was welcome, but I think there’s actually, if we think about the impact and the change that’s going to happen. I think that’s one. perhaps, underappreciated space, and I’m excited to see what’s going to come and continue to come out of that. I think you know, not to disregard Federal and State legislation, that that will continue to happen, but that’s that’s an area. I’m excited about a second figuring out ways to put young people in real positions of power. If there’s not a video clip of that, Laura gave two thumbs up on the video part of this podcast. You know, we’ve got somebody. I apologize. I don’t remember her name, but somebody on our state Board of Education in California, who’s just turned 18, and when they announced her they announced all the members of the board, and they would say at the end, You know this person is a registered Republican. This is the registered independent under hers, and said, this person is not registered to vote I thought that was great. You know I think it’s the logical next step. It’s not happening enough. We co-hosted a meeting recently with the Arthur Blank Foundation, which also does a lot of work in mental health and well-being here in the US. In Montana, it was to bring together funders with young leaders in these mental health spaces, with the idea that we’re trying to make more of this happen, that we’re trying again to 250, not hand over the keys and walk away. They hand over the keys and jump into the back seat for the ride with these young people and this idea came up about changing the power structure like, what would it look like if young people, really young people? Adolescents were at the table making decisions about where tens or hundreds or millions, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are going to flow. I think that could have a major impact. What would it mean if we had? And under 18, on every single school board in America? I don’t know what those discussions would look like. But I do believe that we would have a better technology future.

Laura: I’m going to summarize what you said from you know, certainly what my takeaway is. We all need to do more. And that’s, I think the simplest way is we’re seeing these really positive steps. We’re seeing things starting to happen. But we need to do more. We need to keep pushing. We need to keep going. And whether that’s as you say, from government policy people through the tech industry, through the education system and just being good adults, good role models, good parents and encouraging that next generation.

Jaspal: Yeah, something else that’s been that came up in this meeting that I was just at in Montana, and I’ve heard it a couple of other times. Is this idea; first I heard it being called reverse mentorship, and now I’m hearing it be called co-mentorship, and this is new to me, but I love it. It’s just the idea that we do have a role to play as adults and as mentors. And that’s something that I’ve done, that I’m sure both of you have been doing for a long, long time, but to actually set up a relationship where that mentorship flows in both directions between me, a not young, a middle-aged person and a young person is something. That part of this goes back to the. you know, giving young people some more power, but some of it is just learning. and that’s actually something. This is not an ask of the listeners. I’ve got a couple of people on my list that I’ve been talking to, but I’m seeking out my co-mentor for the year. Hopefully, somebody that I can provide some help and support to, but something that I know I could clearly benefit in learning from.

Laura: Yeah, I’m seeing a real movement in that area, too. I took part in a project last year with the Headstream Group. And so they did the same thing where they kind of matched us with these amazing young people, and I’m still in touch with a couple of them, and they’ve been helping us with some of our Roblox kind of workshops, and projects that we’ve been working on. And there’s a similar movement within Unicef. There’s an amazing project which we’ve just launched called Game Changers, which is about getting young women into stem and steam subjects and ideally into the video games industry. And so they are going to be matching us with young movers and Shakers from all over the world, so that we can really get that mentorship and help to lead. We really need to listen to them and hear what they have to say, and they can show us the way, because ultimately they are going to be the future, and I will be retired.

 

Join us for a conversation with Melissa Mercado, a lead researcher at the CDC, where she addresses the challenges of digital harassment and online safety. Alongside Laura and Jordan, she delves into the world of online bullying, cyberbullying, and their impact on well-being. Melissa highlights the real-life consequences of online violence and emphasizes leveraging online spaces for positive connections and skill-building. Discover proactive steps to combat digital harassment and create a healthier online community.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the series.

Melissa Mercado: Hello, everybody! My name is Melissa Mercado. I serve as a lead behavioral sciences on the division of violence prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC.

Jordan Shapiro: Thanks. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do with the CDC? I mean? And specifically, I think we’re kind of curious for our listeners like, what’s the CDC have to do with digital media? like what? Explain that.

Melissa: Well, I am a researcher. I’m not on the communications, information, dissemination, health, education aspect of things. But that’s one way in which we work with media with digital media. But I have to say that right? But they are fantastic. I love my com’s team. But from my perspective, from the research perspective. I am a researcher on violence prevention. And we know that violence can happen online or offline. Therefore it is important to understand what is happening online to know that what happens online doesn’t always stay online, and it can have a real impact, especially talking about specifically violence prevention, which is my area. It can have an impact on people’s individual, emotional, psychological, and even physical health well-being. So we are looking into that, we are interested in understanding what is happening online, right? For example, cyberbullying, online harassment, stalking that happens online. We also want to understand the good stuff that is happening online all for the social benefits of online. And how can those be leveraged to prevent violence online and offline? And then also looking at online spaces as a platform, right as a tool for disseminating messages, for implementing intervention, for the prevention of violence, both virtually and in the physical world.

Jordan: So this, this whole, I mean it’s sort of a public health perspective. And that’s, I think that’s out of a lot of people’s purview like we don’t think a lot about this idea, you know, like we hear CDC, we think all you must be dealing with like invisible germs, right? But there’s a whole public health initiative that people don’t think about. Is that right? Am I understanding that correctly?

Melissa: Absolutely. And violence is a public health problem because of the consequences that it can have in physical and mental well-being and health. It affects our communities that are off to individuals. It affects lifespan. There’s a burden in terms of the injuries, right for life, expectancy for use for young adults and all of our communities. So it is important that we do consider violence as a public health problem. And that’s the approach that we’re taking. If you look at the public health model, we first need to understand what is happening. Who is affecting it? What is the risk and protective factor for it? How can we leverage it? Design interventions, rigorously test them, and if they work widespread dissemination. We want everybody to know about it.

Jordan: That’s great. So how do you define digital violence like, where’s the line between, like, you know, I’m in a game with my friends, and it involves shooting, and it involves a level of virtual violence. When does that become actual? The kind of violence that the CDC would be concerned with, or the public. But the kind of violence that we can be concerned with from a public health perspective.

Melissa: So I know what you’re talking about. You made me think of my husband. When I got married, I knew he was a gamer right? But if I was in another room and I didn’t know the context, and who he was playing with, I would think that they were getting at each other’s throat. Oh, my God! It would be concerning. But he was playing with his best bud, and they were very competitive and very friendly in nature. So where is that line? How do we distinguish that? Good point. We don’t know. It’s challenging. It is a big challenge. It’s something that we need to look at. But going back to your question of defining digital violence. That’s a challenge. Right now, in the literature, we have actually completed a recent literature review looking at different forms of violence in online spaces and in the same research literature, there’s no consistent definition, so that is something that must be addressed. But we do know that different forms of violence can have a manifestation and interpretation. It can appear through online spaces, or can be facilitated through online spaces, like cyberbullying, online sexual violence, harassment, intimate partner violence. We’ve also seen research coming out about how online spaces have been used to facilitate in-person violence from gangs and other types of community violence.

Laura Higgins: So I know, Melissa. We have met several times before and we’ve been involved in a few projects. And I know that you spoke at a huge conference. This year, the SXSW Conference. That’s an interesting place for the CDC to be. Obviously, I’m hearing the focus of your work, but what were you there speaking on specifically, what could you share about that?

Melissa: So it was amazing to be at SXSW because we were able to share that public health perspective and also listen in from the Gamers community and the communications, entertainment, and community perspective. It was wonderful and the study that you’re referring to Laura is a study that we are pending publication regarding gamers, online adults in the United States that play video games and their experiences that they have online specifically, cyber bullying experiences, their motivations and reasons for playing video games and social engagement that happens while they’re playing video games with others online. And the important reason why we’re doing this is because the findings will help us better understand what is happening when people are playing online video games and identify opportunities for them also by interviewing different subgroups. We can see if there are any differences and how we can tailor messaging and approaches for them. And we found it is consistent with what we’ve seen reported elsewhere, that nearly half of us adults report playing video games online with others. Interestingly, most of them are young adults. We know that, but that overlaps also with the population that has the heaviest burden for community violence. Yes, there is a connection. There’s an overlap and opportunities and therefore it could be a potential venue. also for intervention and for disseminating messages. Three out of five U.S. adults are estimated to play online with others, mostly people that they know, but yet two in the 10 of those U.S. adults that play video games choose not to self-identify as video game players.They wouldn’t say that they’re video team players. So that’s interesting. What about self identification? Do they feel part of the video gaming community or not? That has implications for our messaging. And how we engage in online gaming communities.

Laura: So what about you then, Melissa, you mentioned that your partner is a gamer. Do you consider yourself to be a gamer?

Melissa: Originally I didn’t. I was part of those 2 in 10 that said I didn’t. But I am a faithful Bejeweled player, and I will take you on Pac-Man.

Laura: Okay, game on. We love those challenges. Amazing. What really surprised you the most about the research? What was your kind of “a ha” moment when you really realized that, you know, something really stood out?

Melissa: It was very notable to me that a big proportion of us adults are estimated to endorse empathy towards fellow players, and that is very important, but a lower proportion endorses you know, doing something about it, or may not know what they need to do something about it. So that’s the challenge they might feel for what’s happening, what they see, and they will want to do something, but do they do it? do they not? What is the challenge? That we need to explore further and this study was focused on cyberbullying, right? But we also need to look at other forms of violence and there’s more in the works.

Laura: Just one follow-up question on that. So a lot of our audience out there are parents and caregivers, educators, policymakers. What would be your key takeaways? I know that the whole thing has not been shared yet, but what couple of top tips or takeaways would you give for those audiences?

Melissa: For parents. We found from our study that most are playing with people they know, mainly family members, so there’s an opportunity there right to engage to connect with children and families, but there’s also a proportion of users, of players, that are playing with people that they don’t know and that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. There could be very strong connections and communities that happens with that, there’s learning experiences, a skill building that happens online. So let’s leverage that in this new playground that our children are supposed to and try to understand that a little bit better. What they’re playing with them could be important, but also recognize the risks that are out there as well. There’sthe good and the bad, I think, with any type of interpersonal interaction, whether it’s virtual or in person. We need to be mindful of the challenges and the risk for children.

Jordan: Okay. So are the trends that you identified, or the or any of the findings you had about online violence? How do they match up with what you know, with what we already know about real world violence, cricket, and mortar violence? Is this a very different space, or is it sort of the same kind of patterns and perpetrators?

Melissa: We need more research. That’s my answer, Jordan. Because we’re learning more, this literature review that I mentioned that we just completed. We’ve seen that there’s been an increase in published scientific studies looking at online forms of violence in the past 10 years and there’s some form of violence that are specific to all online spaces. We’re learning more about bills as well and that’s very important. Increasing the research to better understand, so what is happening online and how to address it. That is something that has been emphasized. We’ve seen reports coming out calling for additional resources, and we are committed to doing our part in making that happen.

Jordan: Yeah, I want to ask you about something else. When I was prepping for this episode, I saw that your team has also done a lot of work around adolescent mental health and the impact of COVID. And I’m kind of curious like, you hear anecdotally about pandemic babies all the time? like, what do we actually know? So far, I hear from my colleagues at the University, you know, the pandemic made kids this way. I mean, I’m sure there’s an impact. But I don’t know what we know versus what is just sort of gossip.

Melissa: Yeah, we’re starting to know there are a couple of studies that have come out from CDC and from others looking at data from that specific pandemic time, looking at aces childhood experiences and their risk of exposure. We’ve seen some increases in some forms of Aces. There’s been publications about that, but we both have seen, and this one I can talk to you about because I was leading that research; parent’s concerns about children’s bullying during before the pandemic. And now overall, it kind of stays the same. But if you look at the parents that say that there is concern increase. It increased because they saw that they were tying into racism, or because they were concerned about the pandemic situation. and in terms of decreasing, one of the reasons that was mentioned was because they were not at school. We keep going out of school, and that is as a public health practitioner from, and a violence prevention researcher is concerning to me, because bullying is not always not only and not always limited to the 4 walls of the school or the school campus, right? Or the school location, and any ways it can happen online. So they were still at school. They were virtually a school. They were not physical in it. So do parents understand how cyberbullying can work through online spaces? More research that we need to look into.

Laura: Yeah. And of course, what we do know with online bullying is just how pervasive it is. You know that in the old days, if you got bullied at school you would go home, and if you were lucky you lived in a different place than the bullies, and you know you were kind of safe in your house, but as we know these days, it just follows you wherever you are. It’s in your pocket, on your phone. It’s, you know, and any platform you use whether it be a gaming platform or social media. So I think helping parents to really understand that in the light of what you’re saying is really really important. 

Melissa:You’re right, Laura, and for you, online spaces and physical faces are independent one from the other. For kids, sometimes the relationship that they have in person, then they continue their relationship and the interactions online. So I don’t know, sometimes we think that they’re too distinct worlds, not so much.

Jordan: Sometimes I see my kids sitting in the park, and they’re all just online together on their phones. 

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, I always try to put a positive spin on everything. And I think one of the good things to remember is that while these sorts of things can happen online and they can be really negative for young people, but equally that’s where they find their people. There is a huge amount of support for them both, whether it be, you know, finding access to services that they might want to speak to, or actually just their friends that are online. You know, we do see a lot of that kind of upstander behavior where people will step in. And you know, really try to support people who are having a bad time, but also step in and challenge those who are doing it. So there’s always the Ying and the Yang with anything to do with online spaces, I think. Well, this has been really, really fascinating, and I know that we’re really looking forward to seeing the research that we’ve talked about and what comes next. But what’s next for you in your role? And what’s next for the CDC? What projects have you got coming up that might be interesting to our audience?

Melissa: Well, there, I mentioned, this is a first of a couple of studies that we have in the works. regarding gaming communities to try to better understand gamer’s experience as well those playing into the connected video games. We have some work coming up regarding sexism and misogyny, another one taking a deeper dive into cyberbullying, and we continue to have internal and external collaborations for research, for translation and dissemination activities with the communications industry with academic partners. We want to fill that gap, help fill that gap on research that is needed in this space for our kids and for our communities as well.

Laura: Thanks, Melissa. So you know, as we said, we have a lot of policymakers and parents who listen in on this podcast. Where would they be able to find those bits of research? Where would they go to look if they wanted to read up on some of these things?

Melissa: Well, there’s some information on our website. The research specifically that I was talking about today is still pending publication. So that will be coming up. I’ll be happy to share with you afterwards. But I would stay tuned, there is more coming up.

Jordan: Anything that we should have asked that you want to make sure we cover?

Melissa:  One thing that I wanted to mention is, norms in online spaces. Maybe those may need to be re-examined. or look more deeply into we’re talking about, you know, the example of my husband right playing with his friend. And is that violence, or is it not violence? It could be a friendly competition. But I wonder if we all understand the consequences that those interactions can have online, so additional research is needed with that additional data to better understand it from the industry. It’s a survey, what we did for our study. So this is a self report, but definitely different sources of information and different approaches are needed. It’s not just on the parents, it’s not just on researchers, not just on T-shirts. It’s not just on policymakers. This needs to be concentrated, coordinated or maybe collaborative. Maybe that’s a better word; collaboration.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And I love this message that just more and more and more research is needed. Jordan:and I both geek out of this stuff all the time. And actually there has just been an announcement by the UK government, the department of culture, media, and sport literally a call to action on more research into the video games industry and the effects, positive and negative that it has on people. So this is obviously a global movement. Let’s see all this research coming. And hey, maybe we’ll get you on next year. You can come and tell us about the latest studies that you do, Melissa.

Melissa: Maybe, maybe we can. It’s been a pleasure, and I am always always happy to contribute and collaborate. We’re in this together, we have a single goal, which is the safety and health of our children and our families.

Jordan: What do you play when you’re not playing Pac-Man?

Melissa: Oh, what I’ve played! When I’m not playing Pac-Man, I’m playing Bejeweled. Anything that’s a puzzle.  Matching numbers, colors or shapes, I’m there. 

Jordan: That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure.