In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Laura Higgins and Jordan Shapiro welcome Lucy Thomas, co-founder and CEO of Project Rockit. Discover how Lucy and her team address bullying, hate, and prejudice, amplifying youth voices to create safer online spaces. Learn about Project Rockit’s unique approaches and the importance of involving young people in tech and social development. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or tech professional, this conversation offers invaluable insights into building a kind and inclusive digital future.

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 season. 

 

Lucy Thomas: My name’s Lucy Thomas and I’m Co-founder and CEO of Project Rockit, Australia’s youth-driven movement against bullying, hate, and prejudice. 

Laura Higgins: I’ve known you for quite some time because in my previous work before I came to Roblox, I work in anti-bullying. we’ve met on many occasions and even been on boards together. Even before I knew you, this has always been your life passion. So, before we get into what Project Rockit is, tell us about why getting into the anti-bullying stuff is so important to you. 

Lucy Thomas: It does take me back, Laura. There are some people in the industry who have known me since I was very young, and that’s quite vulnerable.

I’ve been working in this space since I finished school, and this has been my whole life, my whole career, and my purpose, and so much of my identity. growing up, my little sister and I were super close, we had very different school experiences, but a common link for both of us was observing the way that, bullying, and all of the umbrella of issues under that banner really impacted the lives of our peers.

It actually affects everyone, not just those who are bullied, but those who see it happen, those who perpetrate it. We know that the long-term negative outcomes are terrible for everyone involved, but it’s entirely preventable. The vast majority of young people care about the way that their peers are treated and care about values like kindness and respect.

Our experience was one of growing up in school, giving a damn, but not having access to support or skills or even the confidence to do something about it. Shortly after finishing school, we got talking about the state of the world and how much more hopeful it would be if we had these really critical learning in school and we emerged from school, not just with a great score to get into university, solid literacy skills, but self-literacy and literacy of diversity and literacy of how to build a positive online presence. All of these core skills and critical capabilities that we know are so essential for young people these days. And what was missing from the conversation at the time for us, was any consultation or involvement from young people. When I was in school, you’d have the police officer talk about cyber safety or, someone who’d overcome bullying to become an Olympic athlete.

Those are really inspiring stories, but there was nothin peer-based, nothing peer-to-peer that looked at the genuine risks involved in challenging hate, and the fears that we might have, as well as some tangible socially credible strategies for, challenging bullying instead of standing by watching.

And yeah, basically we just got started ourselves. It’s called Project Rockit because we didn’t really know what it was or where it was going. And so we just threw these two words together. After all, it was a community project and I guess, yeah, 18 years on. Here we are. Project Rockit’s grown.

We used a sustainable social enterprise model to become a youth employer and have positively impacted over 600,000 young Australians. 

Jordan Shapiro: A wild ride. It’s incredible. I want you to go into some detail about, how Project Rockit works. But actually before we even do that, why do you think there’s so much bullying? Why does it even exist? It seems like it’s everywhere, right? As you said, and it affects so many people. do you have any, guesses? Why is it so prevalent? 

Lucy Thomas: That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? We know that bullying is underpinned by a wrestling to have power, and that suggests to me, that, this is about wielding unfair power from one person over another, but also that there are people out there feeling powerless and thinking that the only way to gain that sense of empowerment is by dominating or subjugating another person, or in some cases, an entire identity or community. I think there’s something there, what is it about our white Western, reality, the dominant social hierarchy that we move within that is powerful. I think one of the things that excites me about this emerging generation is they’re actively dismantling those power structures. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. Of course, part of that is that idea that being different is somehow, the most obvious reason there’s something wrong with you.

it’s the easy passage to dominating another person, if they’re different to us. I think increasingly we’re seeing that our conversations are becoming more and more polarized, which is in fact only heightening that need for power and heightening that fear of those who are different to us, which is really disarming. I reckon the next gen is acutely aware of those dynamics and those politics as well. 

Laura Higgins: So as Jordan said, Project Rockit, it’s more than just bullying now, I know when we first started working together all those years ago, I knew, and I have to give a shout out to your sister. My question is, how do you two manage to work together for so long? I love both of you. Project Rockit went from this focus on bullying to these much bigger topics. what does it look like now? 

Lucy Thomas: Yeah, it is interesting when you start out as a grassroots community project, as a young person launching a project like ours, you’re not trying to build a career or, an organization. If we’d had that in mind, we probably both would have been too scared to get started. It was the smallness of the idea and how we could create community change one school at a time that really, gripped our attention and got us excited. But what started small has grown into a movement.

And we’ve done that in a number of ways. It was really important as we started to gain some distance from high school, that we continue to utilize that youth driven model. We couldn’t pass ourselves off as peers anymore. We started recruiting hiring and training young people who share the vision of a world where kindness and respect thrive over bullying, hate and prejudice.

We knew there are plenty of young people out there and increasingly, we now almost recruit. Directly from the school strike movement, because there are so many young people around the world mobilizing against these issues that affect their lives. we started hiring young people.

And one thing I will name is a lot of the young people that we hire, it’s really interesting to put a job out for a Project Rockit presenter role, because it’s not like there are prerequisites. Most of the young people who we hire might have had a job, they may have been the school drama captain, but they may not have had any other professional experience. What we do see is this great in-depth community involvement. They’re recognized as leaders in their faith communities or in their LGBTQIA student club or, in the social justice group at school. We’re hiring these young people, and we send them out into schools all over the country to deliver really wildly energetic, workshops that, tackle bullying, but through a very strength-based focus, this idea that we can build kind and inclusive communities at school and then online.

And I think that’s where Project Rockit becomes something much bigger than an anti-bullying project, because what does it look like to build a kind and respectful world online? I think that’s the question that a lot of us are grappling with and where, young people’s voices really need to be elevated into current conversations.

So that’s where we’ve come to play a really integral role to public policymakers. within Australia we work very closely with the East Safety Commissioner, who has also been a mentor of ours and of course with industry. working with, social media platforms, serving on their global safety advisories to elevate young people’s voices into the decision makers 

Laura Higgins: And just to say for all of our listeners, you may have guessed by Lisa’s accent, she is in Australia. We’re also really proud that we did have the e safety commissioner as a guest. On one of our previous episodes in a previous season. We do try to be as global as we can on this show. So yeah, more of that to come. Jordan, over to you. 

Jordan Shapiro: I want to know, as you talk about hiring all these, young people and really amplifying youth voices, what does that look like in a digital space? What do you train them to do? How does that manifest and impact other people? How would I be impacted if I were a young person? What would it look like? 

Lucy Thomas: For starters, I think young people inherently approach issues of online safety and participation through a different lens to adults.

We know that there’s a big gap. when adults talk about the top online issues that concern them, they often talk about quite severe, very risky, very significant, serious issues like, predators, child exploitation, major privacy breaches, this kind of thing. very significant issues.

However, young people, while they’re concerned about these issues, prioritize lower level but more, prevalent issues around respectful communication peer-based abuse navigating boundaries and understanding consent, all of these issues. Much more nuanced relational issues online.

And so, what does it look like? it means that the education you’re receiving is actually presented to you in language that you can understand and in terms that you actually care about. and I think, we’ve taken a step further acknowledging that our program presenters are aged 18 plus. We still think it’s really important that we’re actively centering school aged young people.

Early social media users, and that’s where we’ve convened a national youth collective of 12 to 19 year olds who guide my decision making as a CEO, they shape our program content, and they also co creating and co designing digital resources that we’re sharing into classrooms on a range of these issues in their own language, in their own terms and in their own way as well, which is super cool.

Jordan Shapiro: Tell me about some of them, what are some of the things that they present? how do they, obviously in general terms, I don’t want you to give away the farm. 

Lucy Thomas: Honestly, the nuance that they bring and that they’re brilliant. One example is, we as adults talk extensively about the dangers of meeting strangers online. they’ve done a whole series on the positives of meeting strangers online and navigating risk and building critical literacy. When I say meeting strangers, I’m talking about strangers, their own age, people that, they’ve met through mutual friends.

There’s one story of two of our creators who met and are now best friends through a WhatsApp group. some of these conversations right through to navigating intimate image sharing. We’ve had young men talking about what is intimacy anyway, and why is it that in this day and age it feels so much easier to share an image that reveals a lot of yourself physically when it’s so difficult to reveal yourself emotionally.

These are such fascinating kinds of issues. And, we’ve had, young women in the cohort also talking about how they didn’t realize they were sharing intimate content because, growing up as a young woman, when you’re raised femme, you don’t necessarily think about intimacy in the same way as young men might or people of other genders.

And yeah, really interesting context there. and it just continues. we’ve had, conversations that extend well beyond the online space into how we are learning at school, how we, deconstructing power in, classroom situations, knowing that this is a space where young people actually know more than adults and how we actually honoring that.

Yeah, but even speaking to the heart of, traditional classroom pedagogy is not just about online safety, it’s really cool. 

Jordan Shapiro: That’s really beautiful. And you seem to be hinting at something I’d like, I wonder if you could say a few words about it, which is that, that this, the dichotomy between sort of real life and virtual life when it comes to young people is not, it doesn’t really quite work to talk about them as separate, right?

Is there a difference or are we talking about bullying that crosses these realms, and is just part of the lived experience? 

Lucy Thomas: I think, that idea that we could hold apart these two worlds has long and truly dissolved, and really interesting in the context around the world, we’re currently seeing such heated discourse around, the intersection between youth mental health and technology, that’s one example where as adults we’ve got the conversation a little bit wrong in trying to separate and say, what are the forces online?

What is it about devices? What are the social media platforms need to do to create a healthier landscape when actually the global landscape that young people are inheriting is inherently distressful, distressing, and really challenging as well. So that’s a good example. yeah, I think that we’re seeing play out.

Laura Higgins: I 100 percent agree. As I mentioned earlier, Lucy and I go back years. In fact, just a small anecdote, my birthday probably, oh, I don’t know, seven years ago or something, Lucy Mariachi band to follow us around in a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco. 

That was a great day. Aside from that, I’m a huge fan of Project Rockit, Jordan mentioned that he’s a very successful author, one of his books is about being a feminist dad. you need to go read that book, it’s amazing.

But these things are so important to us. Back to the whole point of Project Rockit, you still have your mission and the work that you’re doing. I’m a big fan. I follow a lot of what your youth are doing and what happens next.

I’ve seen your young people being involved in campaigns much bigger and outside of Project Rockit. There was one of your previous youth people who is now like a TV presenter and speaking on really important political topics, the impact you guys are having is amazing.

So, I am bringing it back to tech, because I work for a tech company and our mission is about. Embracing youth and trying to get them involved. How do we do it in such a meaningful way that we can have that impact? I know having a youth voice is really important, but how do we actually embed that in how we do everything as a company?

How do we get them involved in actually changing things? 

Lucy Thomas: I think that’s a great question. One that I wish was being asked, in the public domain a lot more widely. the first thing I’d say, and it’s a what not to do, but I’m just seeing it, is not to draw inferences from evidence or from young people’s commentary, just because it suits our political or commercial agendas.

I think currently around the world, what I’m really saying that’s so frustrating is even where youth participation consultation is happening or research into young people’s experiences of technology. We’re cherry-picking findings that suit a hyperbolic narrative about their experiences online.

And we’re using that as the basis for policy that will define all of our existence and all of our experiences of technology, not just young people’s. And so that’s the first thing is to actually honor lived experience. honoring lived experience means going back to the source and asking if the conclusion that you’ve drawn is correct.

It means involving young people at every step of the way in the process. It means not speaking for them, not choosing a quote and taking it out of context to serve your own agenda. we young people’s voices are needed now more than ever. As I mentioned, we’re using our National Youth Collective as a vehicle for developing a participation model that can be scaled more widely. we’re developing participation principles, like some of the ones I’m naming on lived experience. We need to remunerate young people for their time.

We need to build their capacity to contribute. this isn’t about youth market research where we shove young people in a room for a single session and we mind them for their opinions on a product. This is about teaching them how the product works, teaching them the complexities of the landscape, giving them some co design skills and understanding the parameters of the market, understanding the limitations of the kind of maybe the external landscape so that they can meaningfully contribute, rather than just say, “these are fantastic ideas” when we’re fully aware that those ideas actually aren’t realistic and aren’t possible. So, we’re equipping them with the capability to meaningfully contribute. And these are some of the principles that I think will take youth consultation much further into youth leadership in online spaces.

Laura Higgins: I love that. And just, yeah, one thing I was involved in a few years ago is with Headstream, which is a youth organization in the US. And it was about. Tech people being given a youth mentor. So not the other way around. We were literally being told what to do by young people. I am still friends with my mentor.

She’s amazing. I learned more from those conversations with her. it wasn’t consultation, it was critical friendship, there was learning on both sides. As she’s now finished college and going into a career, that relationship is so valuable and I will always cherish that, to be able to scale that would be amazing.

Jordan Shapiro: I spend a lot of time. I have four teenagers of my own. I spend a lot of time in the undergraduate college classroom. And I want to go back to something you said earlier about how this current generation of young people seems to be actively doing what they can to dismantle the domineering, domination, hierarchy, the, really problematic, troublesome power, relationships that really seem committed to that.

But then on the other side, at the same time, we also have a lot that are, as the media puts it, end up down the rabbit hole into a kind of, radicalization as some, some, So some people would call it other people might probably those who are doing the radicalizing might not I know that I tried to make it even handed and got justice. Oh, I can’t hide where I stand.

But I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the generation as a whole, the current crop of young people, I think in some ways, I don’t know whether to read it as divided as all of the adults around the world seem to be right now,  Are we really seeing a surge of difference from young people? what’s your take? obviously we’re all just guessing on this. so just what’s your guess? 

Lucy Thomas: Yeah. I can speak to what [our presenters are] seeing in schools and working in schools all over Australia.

There are some pretty untouched pockets of our country. you see a divide between metropolitan and regional areas. there are some pretty remote areas, too. we’re hearing that there’s this, growing and glowing literacy around, yeah, dismantling power around world politics.

I heard, a wonderful researcher, at our Australian youth mental health organization in Mobile. She talked about the idea that social media is the window through which young people are seeing issues around the world and, actually the current conversations around social media bans and restrictions are merely akin to just drawing the blinds. So saying, do we want to draw the blinds on young people’s view of these very challenging issues that are really fracturing their sense of ideological justice and, all of that I think there is this friction tension and agitation.

Young people are expecting better and have access to more information. They have access to an explosion of diverse viewpoints. And they have a vehicle to organize and that’s technology. I think more than ever, there’s that sense that they are powerful. on the other hand, and we’re seeing this more and more in regional communities, we’re also seeing this kind of, yeah, rise of actually, I describe it as violence.

There’s a lot of isolation and exclusion and young people who are disenfranchised and, have been fed information online that says you are disenfranchised because of cultural minorities off the back of a couple of years of intense isolation through the pandemic, you can see how vulnerable.

Young people already were, this isn’t about any singular experience, your experience of technology as a young person depends on such a range of factors, your geographic location, not your age, not your gender, not your sexuality or culture, not your faith, but actually, All of those factors.

And that’s why I think we need to take an intersectional view of young people, that they’re not a homogenous group, but that, some people have been very vulnerable, and we’ve missed them. we failed to catch them and make sure that they’re held in our efforts, to bring them on a journey of, creating awesome digital world.

And yeah, I think there are actually those, I wouldn’t want to reduce it to two narratives, but I think there are actually two. Really simple contrasting narratives and of course, many others happening in this space. I think it’s a really good observation. 

Laura Higgins: Lucy, this is a question that comes up quite often with our guests. We’ve talked a little bit the whole space of tech, good, bad, ugly. You’ve shared a little bit of your feelings on it. There’s a lot of push at the moment about, banning mobile phones in schools and banning kids under certain ages from social media. What’s your take on that?

Lucy Thomas: Yeah, this conversation is very live at the moment. I think a lot of the conversations around trying to protect young people actually run the risk of violating young people’s participatory rights. I’m concerned that they could cause more harm than good.

Young people are using technology not just to compare themselves to others or develop an unhealthy self-view, but also actually, and more predominantly to form connection and creative expression and communities and all of that kind of thing. And 1 of the things that is really interesting and overlooked here is the experiences of young people who are already marginalized, who already might face difficult experiences offline.

And I know that over the past few years, the E Safety Commission has released a whole body of research looking into some of these groups. there was a paper on LGBTQIA young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, and one on young people with a disability as well, they found across all of those studies that these cohorts definitely experience higher rates of hate speech online.

Given the significant negative mental health impacts, it’s social media causing harm. these groups also experience more hate speech offline, what the studies have shown is that they’re using technology to seek emotional support, even when they experience hate speech, to make friends, to access vital health information.

Physical and sexual health information, mental health information as well. They’re discussing social and political issues online, and they’re much more likely to be connecting with people from different backgrounds online. when you think about the implications for these groups, we may actually be cutting them off from vital support that they have nowhere else to find.

And of course, that logic applies to young people more broadly. I’d love for us to start with the groups that we say we’re aiming to protect the most. If we’re presenting young people as vulnerable, let’s start with those vulnerabilities. I think we’ll find time and time again that they’re finding very innovative ways to navigate the risks and challenges that they experience online and find, all of the joy that they’re not able to find in their offline lives as well.

Laura Higgins: I hear that all the time at Roblox. I’ve talked about my work and how we are trying to support different diverse groups of Roblox users, neurodivergence and things like that. So, I 100 percent agree with you. we always say it takes a village. This is down to all of us and it’s all about the media literacy, it’s about empowering the families and the supporters.

But the large part of that for me is, I work for a tech company, and we still have more to do to enable those safe, positive spaces for young people to get help, to find their communities without the harm, or at least to help them to feel supported when they’re seeing those harms. But thank you, Lucy. That was amazing. 

Lucy Thomas: I know that some of our National Youth Collective will probably be hearing this and they probably will listen to it when they come out. I think before, Jordan, you were talking about how much you’ve learned from this emerging generation and the past nearly 20 years of my life has been a crash course in accountability to other people’s lived experience.

I just wanted to say thank you to them for educating me and for being the central, wealth of experience and expertise that we have at Project Rockit. they are the people that inspire me to keep kicking on in these spaces as well. Absolute legends.

Shout out to the National Youth Collective. 

Jordan Shapiro: You’ve given us a whole lot to think about. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come and talk to us. I there’s a lot of bullying, so you must be a very busy person. I’m grateful for the work that you do and the time you’ve spent with us.

Lucy Thomas: Thank you so much for having me. 

Laura Higgins: It was amazing, Lucy. Thank you so much. And thank you to all of the people that you’re bringing up through the organization. I do see the difference that they’re all making. So, thank you.

In this episode, Jordan Shapirio and Laura Higgins sit down with Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician, adolescent medicine specialist, and author of The Mediatrician’s Guide: A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen-Saturated World. Dr. Rich shares his insights on navigating the challenges and opportunities of parenting in the digital age, drawing from decades of research and clinical experience. They discuss the benefits and pitfalls of technology in family life, schools, and society at large, while exploring practical strategies like Dr. Rich’s “Five M’s” for fostering healthy relationships with screens. From rethinking “parental controls” to championing youth participation in designing the digital future, this conversation is full of actionable advice and thought-provoking ideas for parents, educators, and tech leaders alike. Tune in to learn how we can all collaborate to create a better, more balanced world for our kids—online and offline.

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 season. 

 

Michael Rich: I’m Michael Rich. In order of importance, I’m a parent. A pediatrician, a child health researcher, and recently an author. I’m an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and I practice adolescent medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital where we have both the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders, and the Digital Wellness Lab.

Laura Higgins: Welcome to the show, Michael, we’re so pleased to have you here. Little disclaimer that Jordan and I have both worked with you in many different guises over the years. So we’re really happy to have you join us. I’m going to start off with the first question. I’m really excited. You mentioned the fact that you’re fairly recently became an author.

So let’s talk about your book, which came out this year. The Mediatrician’s Guide, tell us all about it. 

Michael Rich: For starters, I’ll give the subtitle as well, which is, “A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen-Saturated World.” We have a lot of scare stories out there about how social media or smartphones are ruining a generation, causing mental health spike.

And what this book is about, I should show it to you is really that the kids are okay and they can be okay if we, Educate and empower them to lead into the future in ways that are consistent with what their desires are. Kids don’t want to go to dark places necessarily. Kids don’t want to be unhealthy.

But they are lured there. AWe in preparing this work at both of the Digital Wellness Lab and for this book it’s really about exactly what goes on with the child as she or he develops in a world with screens everywhere. And so the book is broken down into four parts. What. Which explores what the influence of screens are at every stage of development on development.

So what, where we talk about the risks, the things that people are worried about from their kid’s screen use. Now what, which is how to work our way into the future with generative AI and the metaverse, if it ever happens. And the final part is for those who are too busy or who can’t get to the whole book, it’s actually an ages and stages digital wellness primer.

So at each age and stage is saying, giving you the points to watch out for and what to do.  

Laura Higgins: I love that. 

Jordan Shapiro:  I want to ask you a bit let me start with a story if you don’t mind. I was just last night sitting at the dinner table, all four teenagers around me at the dinner table and I was telling them about how when I was their age, if I needed my father to pick me up somewhere, like I had to tell him it. 7 o’clock in the morning, and I had to be there at that time at 6 pm. And there was no way to call him, and if I called him, someone would be like, “I don’t know if we can disrupt him right now. Is it an emergency?” There was no texting. There was no, There was no there was no way to keep in contact in that ongoing way.

And in some ways, part of me is the dad going, “you all don’t know how good you have it.” And part of me is also thinking, “wow, it’s really amazing that my kids are able to keep in touch with me in a way that wouldn’t have worked in a way that’s not so disruptive all the time.”

All this is a long way to saying, as you just think about it, where are the things where grownups are being curmudgeonly about kids these days, and where are the things that we really should have concerns about?

Michael Rich: How much time do you have? I think one of the important things that you realize in that conversation with your kids is there are a lot of positive affordances of this. Technology that we don’t even think about, they probably looked at you going, Oh, my God, that’s ancient history, but the reality is that we have integrated this into our lives.

And one of the things that is both interesting and challenging as we move into more and more immersion with technology is really that we are Following three moving targets here, the first one being the developing human from infancy to toddlerhood to childhood to adolescence, the young adulthood and we know a little something about that.

We’ve been studying it for over 100 years, but we also have it happening in a constantly evolving, often rapidly evolving digital ecosystem that both. reflects and affects them. It reflects them because they’re posting all the time. It is, where they show themselves and represent themselves to the world, but it is also affecting them in a whole variety of ways, some of which can be harmful.

And the third moving target which you were alluding to, is the change in all of our behavior because we have these devices at our fingertips. And one of the things that kids will often say to me when I ask them after their parents have left the room, what could your parents do better? And almost always, the first thing out of their mouths is “pay more attention to me, be present.” I think we’ve lost that in many ways when we mindlessly pick up our phones and check for that all-important email after hours.

Laura Higgins: Yeah, I think that’s very true. And I’m probably guilty of that a little bit myself. So thank you for that great piece of advice there. One of the things that where we’ve worked very closely together from Roblox point of view is with the Digital Wellness Lab. So that launched a couple of years ago, I believe and is led by Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical, and Roblox was very proudly one of the kind of first members to join one of the founding members, along with some of our other friends in the tech space.

Tell me a little bit about the goals and aspirations of the lab and the sorts of work that you’re doing. 

Michael Rich: The lab is built on the foundation of the Center on Media and Child Health, which for 20 years was essentially a more traditional academic center of excellence placed at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Med School, where we did the research and we fed it back to the community.

Through more conventional ways, like writing journal articles, et cetera. And what we realized over time is 2 things. Number 1 is that kind of work is too slow to be really helpful to parents and teachers and anybody who interfaces with kids to be useful and. The second part of it is that after probably 10 years of our of being put on panels in meetings with someone from the tech space so they could watch us argue.

I called it intellectual cage fighting — two walk in, one walks out. 

Laura Higgins: Yep. 

Michael Rich: And. The stance I would take, interestingly, was not you’re doing terrible things to kids, but we’ve got to stop talking about internet safety. And they go what, what’s that about? I said, that’s because we can’t presume that the internet is unsafe.

This is a place that kids are going to need to live in, learn in, be productive in. We have to help them move toward Mastery not toward safety, right? And no kid wants to be controlled or overseen by their parents anyway. So I think words really matter. We talk about getting rid of the term parental controls because there’s no kid on the face of the earth who wants to be controlled by their parents.

Let’s talk about parental engagement tools. But after. A number of these meetings, I was talking with one of your colleagues in the tech industry who was saying, I wish you’d quit, beating us up over internet safety because it’s the one place where an industry, which is intensely competitive, intensely secretive and utterly convinced they are the smartest person in the room actually talk to each other because we have a shared risk.

And so I had a eureka moment and I said, why don’t we move beyond talking? Why don’t we actually work together? Let’s get a situation where we can put a pediatrician next to a software engineer, next to a neuroscientist, next to an educator, and see what comes of it, bringing our respective skill sets to bear on this issue.

And so that was the origin of the Digital Wellness Lab, where we do work that A, has fast turnaround, so it’s actually useful. And B, we’re feeding to both the industry and to consumers at the same time because we are cognizant of the fact that the industry will be the one who changes this ecosystem in the most effective way.

And that maybe legislation and litigation are not the right answers because we waste a lot of energy in conflict rather than working toward the better selves of us. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah, it’s so true and it really resonates with me because I’ve been working with you on some of this stuff and you know we have some really engaging conversations I’m seeing some really great collaboration amongst all of those different groups that you’ve talked about.

So a follow up for me. And this is my slightly cynical side coming out. As you said, this is a particular moment. In terms of scrutiny of platforms and algorithms and the sort of AI that we’re using, all of those sorts of things. It feels like there’s really big momentum of these platforms wanting to work with NGOs, not for profits what did child development experts, things like that.

For me, I’ve come from that background of charitable sector. And now work in the tech industry. So I’m really positive about it in one way, but the cynicism is like, how impactful do you think those conversations really are? Are we seeing, yes, they might turn up and sit at the table, but is it actually affecting change on the platforms?

Are they going away and doing what they say they’re going to do? 

Michael Rich: Some of them are, and I think the others are watching closely because the way we approach this is, tech is no longer the latest bright, shiny thing in our universe. They have to move from a concept of, grabbing that shiny thing to sustaining their business.

And when we have legislators. equating tech to big tobacco. We run the risk that we are going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. And in trying to block it off, which frankly doesn’t work COPPA 1. 0 didn’t work because nobody enforced it and many people didn’t even know about it.

But I think that if we work together, it will work. And, I, Harken back to Margaret Mead’s statement. Never doubt the possibility of two or three people making change happen because indeed nothing else has ever made change happen. 

Jordan Shapiro:  I certainly agree with all of that. I want to switch gears. I want to, get to the move away from the industry for a second. I think you started to hint at it when you were talking about the last section of the book, which is, I think you have a way of talking about this that you don’t, that I don’t hear from almost anyone else, which is as everyone else talks about age-appropriate, everyone else thinks about what’s the direct right cutoff age.

When should, what’s the age at which every person’s ready to have a cell phone. And and you’re, you really think about what that means at different ages for different people. And I wonder if you could elaborate on that, because I really don’t think that’s getting through yet to, to parents or educators or legislative or obviously legislators.

Michael Rich: Absolutely. Um, I have two issues with age appropriateness, which on a sidebar, the idea of moving toward age-appropriate design is absolutely on mark. The problems I have with age-appropriate design is “age” and “appropriate.” All children of the same age are not the same, have the same capabilities, the same vulnerabilities. You line up 13 13-year-olds, and they’re all going to be at a different stage. But parents know those kids better than anyone else, and it’s a matter of being an active parent in the digital space, a parent that observes with curiosity injects, creativity as opposed to reprimanding and scolding them.

The other word that I don’t like is appropriate because that’s a values-laden word. What’s appropriate in Massachusetts and what’s appropriate in Iowa or Texas are entirely different things. What we talk about is developmentally optimal. What is developmentally optimal for this child? And one of the reasons we say that is that the idea of age appropriateness, et cetera, is focused only on the so-called neurotypical kids. It excludes all the neurodiversity out there. I firmly believe from working with many kids, that we’re all neurodiverse, we’re all different in the ways we observe the world, synthesize the world, act on the world and in ways we should not be looking for what’s best for neurotypical, because frankly, that’s defined as someone like me, right?

“I am normal. The rest of the world is crazy.” So I think that we have to take a step back and really think about the way we talk about it. And e also have to talk about it as inevitable. In other words, we’re not going to get rid of smartphones until they’re superseded by something even better, more powerful, faster.

We’re not getting rid of social media. In fact, nobody can even define social media anymore. What we really need to do is look at the young person with curiosity and optimism and help them move toward their best selves, physically, mentally, and socially. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah I think everyone listening and you know that I agree with that. I want to ask a question in the opposite direction about this. You and I were having a conversation recently about the the research that shows how distracted kids can be in school by phones and how, whether it’s in their backpack, whether it’s anywhere in the building, they are thinking about what, where’s that notification.

And you said something I’ve been thinking about ever since, which was, what’s developmentally optimal, right? But to actually have the ability for the parent to constantly say, how did your quiz go? How did your test go? What’s going on in school is potentially problematic, right? Did I understand you, what you were saying? 

Michael Rich: Absolutely. And, again, under the rubric of words matter, I think we’ve got to stop talking about banning smartphones from schools for the simple reason that along with everyone else, when I hear the word ban, I push back against it.

Nobody bans anything from me, right? But we should be talking about how to best integrate these powerful tools in the task at hand at school. And there are two major tasks at hand. One is the didactic learning of math, science, literature, et cetera for which smartphones are largely a distraction, if not completely a distraction.

The second most important, and perhaps even more important, is what you just alluded to, is the social emotional learning of kids, that, school is the first place where young people get to be themselves, get to be an individual, not someone’s child, not someone’s relative, not someone’s student, but they get to define and invent themselves in this new society that they are building.

If mom is in their pocket asking how they did on that quiz and whether she should talk to the teacher or, they’re asking someone picking on you in the playground or whatever, they don’t get that opportunity. One of the most tragic things you’ll see is, go by an elementary or middle school or high school at break time, and they’re not talking to each other. They’re not playing with each other. They’re leaning against the wall, checking their phones. And I think we have to understand that these incredibly powerful tools can be used very effectively in schools, but the way they should be used in schools is to teach kids how to use them. And part of teaching them how to use them is knowing when it’s not the best tool for the job and putting it down. So I think we need to have a much more nuanced approach to this. A lot of people who want the absolutes are looking for a binary answer to a complex and nuanced question. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah, I think you raised some really good points. And actually, it’s quite sad to hear that kids aren’t sneaking off to the back of the bike sheds and planning and plotting in the corner of the field like they used to or 

Michael Rich: kissing under the bleachers.

Laura Higgins: Exactly. So I’m just thinking about, I know some of the stuff we’ve done together over the years has been about, support for parents and families, particularly. And you’ve raised a couple of really good points already, but then how do we manage that while respecting the rights of kids and teens, I think digital rights is so important now, there’s been a real change the UN rights the child now signed on by many countries around the world some still to follow.

But does respect this kind of, I know I’m not saying that but yeah, there’s just, access to technology and access to health advice online and all of those sorts of really important topics. So how do we juggle it? Where do we start and what kind of advice would you give that’s just this is how you could approach it as a parent.

Michael Rich: Well, a way that I synthesize it for the book and actually when I speak to people is to think of the five M’s. The first is to model the screen behavior you want to see in your kids because they listen to 1 percent of what we say, but 100 percent of what we do. So when you come home. Put the smartphone down and be present with them.

The second one is mentor. Mentor them with each new device, platform, application. Sit down next to them and play that game, no matter how much you hate that game or how stupid you think it is. What you’re doing then is you’re saying, I love you, I respect you, I want to see what engages you here. And then when you finally figure out all the moves it takes to steal a car in Grand Theft Auto, And you turn to your child and say, now, why would you want to practice this over and over again?

You’re coming from a very different place, a place of curiosity, a place of actually being their student in many ways. But this is a way of, moving into an open dialogue with them in the digital space, because parent is more importantly a verb than a noun, the third M and the one that gets pushed back against the most by both parents and the kids is be able to monitor them, have their usernames and passwords, the kid, the parents say, “Oh, my God, I don’t have the time. I can’t go everywhere she goes online.” And the kids say, “I want my privacy.” And we can respect their privacy, just as we respected their privacy in the written diary on the bedside stand. Because we can monitor their behavior and their actions online, they behave differently. It’s like random drug testing in the workplace, that they act in an environment where they know that you’re going to see it.

And I tell them to practice what I call the grandma rule, which is don’t post anything online you don’t want grandma to see, because she can. Now, the fourth and fifth M’s are the goodies we get. One is making memories. We don’t make memories of what we do online and what we do on a screen. We make memories of walks together of conversations with someone of playing ball with someone or making a mistake with someone, but doing that in real life and 1 on 1 or.

More as a group. These are the things that we make memories of and that we treasure into our later lives. And the final one is mastery of these tools. That is ultimately the goal. And mastery means knowing how these tools work, knowing what they work best for, how we can be our best selves on them, and how, when they’re not the best tool for the job, to put them down.

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah, it’s very concise. I like that. I agree with all of it. I might only say to the monitor point. I’ve always said, I don’t know why they should have privacy for me when they don’t have privacy from every single tech company. 

Michael Rich: You got it. Or the rest of the world. And to a 13-year-old– privacy means so mom and dad can’t see, but they’re completely oblivious to all those forces out there who are. Not as loving and caring and nurturing as their parents who are seeking to exploit them in ways large and small. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah, exactly. Let me ask you one final question and then we’ll wrap up, which is, where’s the frontier? What’s the question that that no one’s really put much work into yet. What are the questions we really still need to do work and think about start to collect data and research theorize. What’s there what is nobody asking yet that it’s, we’re all going to have to turn to at some point.

Michael Rich: No one is effectively asking the young people to lead us. And I think that’s where the future is. They know, they do know these devices to a certain degree. What they don’t have is the executive functions of impulse control, judgment, future thinking, and all of that. And that’s how we can interface with them and help them be there.

But we’re still, unfortunately, I think, in a mindset of we have to protect the poor, innocent kids. And They don’t like that paternalistic attitude. They don’t like to be, as I say, controlled. So I think that we need to shift our perspective a little bit and sit beside them both, literally when we’re introducing social media or a game or a device.

But also sit. Beside them figuratively in the sense of let’s work this together. Let’s not expend energy being fearful or guilty or all the things that seem to be happening now. A lot of energy is going into fighting with each other instead of recognizing we’re all in this together. Why can’t we bring?

All these skill sets to bear on how can we create a better world that is in fact a single digital physical environment that they move seamlessly between. 

Laura Higgins: I love that, Michael. And we did an amazing piece of work together last year where we brought together all these experts from academia, from health, from tech companies, regulators.

To hypothesize how we move the needle in making these safer, more civil online spaces. And we published a white paper, which I’m sure we can share the link on the transcript for this. But it was a really fascinating sort of deep dive into what technology we need, what policies we need and how we can help educate and raise awareness.

And the overarching thing that came out as the main thing that they really wanted tech companies and regulators to focus on was meaningful partition. Participation by youth, whether that be co creation, co design, youth boards, we need to get that voice in a proper, meaningful, embedded way to help us make the internet better and safer.

So hear more of that. 

Michael Rich: I will note for you that one of the two keynotes, one was the psychiatrist in chief at Boston Children’s Hospital and the other was an 18 year old patient of mine. Who were the keynote speakers that kicked off that event. And I think that’s the approach we need to bring.

We need to bring caring science to it, but we have to use these tools, which are great at giving kids voice. In fact their wonderful way to reach kids who historically were marginalized because they had disabilities, because they were LGBTQ whatever they were that they did not have. their people. They did not have their tribe in their immediate physical proximity, but online, they could find people who recognized them, who validated them, who cared for them, and frankly, who loved them.

And we don’t want to give that up. We shouldn’t give that up. These kids need this. But we also need to learn how to, be better, find the better angels of ourselves, as Abraham Lincoln said.

In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins discuss the transformative power of gaming with Susanna Pollock, president of Games for Change. Pollock explains how games are being used beyond entertainment to address critical societal issues such as mental health and climate anxiety. The conversation highlights various initiatives, including partnerships with UNESCO, the World Food Programme, and the Deepak Chopra Foundation. The episode also delves into the Games for Change Student Challenge, empowering young people to design games with social impact themes. Join the discussion to learn how gaming is evolving as a tool for positive change.

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 season. 

 

Susanna Pollack: I’m Susanna Pollock. I’m President of Games for Change. I’ve been part of this organization for ten years leading our work as a global advocate for the use of games as drivers for social good. But prior to working in the games industry, I had a long career in television working for the BBC where I was really inspired by the development of interactive entertainment towards the end of my career there. That led me into this world of games. I’m a firm believer that games are the storytelling platform for the 21st century and have been able to refocus my work in Building communities, getting projects off the ground and ensuring that content and stories and media can be used for social good.

Jordan Shapiro: Is that how you got to Games for Change? Was it this interest in the idea that they were a new form of storytelling? 

Susanna Pollack: Absolutely. So the BBC, as a public service network did a lot of R&D. They did a lot of really interesting experiments and telling stories on the web. And this is 20 years ago. Early, early 2010s and I just, I fell in love with it. I was working very hard at the time to get these new projects funded narrative branch narrative, on the internet, but it was all through the internet and game shows, like building robots and all this crazy stuff. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. And that’s what took me on this journey.

Jordan Shapiro: So tell us about Games for Change, and tell us about what it is, what it does, what it means all the things that people may not realize.

Susanna Pollack: So Games for Change is a not-for-profit— it’s a global organization now with chapters all over the world. And we have a firm mission and belief that games can have a power beyond entertainment. That games can be created to deliver outcomes that are positive impacts on society, whether they are games that are used in the classroom for education, games that are used to build awareness around critical issues, and more and more research are demonstrating that games can actually be good for our mental health.

Being and we as a convener have brought together different stakeholders to explore the potential of games. And that’s really what we did for the first 10 years of the organization. We’re 20 years old now and have grown alongside. The games industry talking about this, bringing new people into the conversation, whether they’re researchers or from academia, people from the social sectors from NGOs and foundations, government agencies, and really built this cross-sector.

Partnerships and collaboration. And then in the last decade, we’ve expanded our work to work with a lot of young people to work internationally with different types of organizations. And now we have reached into some of the most developing markets and countries helping others learn how to make games applying these skills for social benefit and social good and continue to bring in other industries and sectors, into the space so we can have as much impact as possible as an industry.

Jordan Shapiro: What have you learned about what it takes to raise good gamers? We hear so much about the “bad” gamers and cyberbullying. So what do we need to know? What do parents, educators, and caregivers need to know about raising good gamers? 

Susanna Pollack: Raising good gamers is a passion of ours. We have an initiative that we started a number of years ago with Katie Salen at University of California Irvine in their Connected Learning Lab. And now we’re working with Take This on the initiative. Laura, you are a meaningful advisor of our committee. And as part of that initiative the focus is less about creating new content or new games for impact, but recognizing that the players and people who play games have created a relationship and with games that have become a really meaningful part of their lives, and especially the youngest of gamers find themselves or can find themselves in situations that may not feel safe or they’re unsure of how to interact. There’s you know, there’s been conversations about toxicity and bullying in games, and our approach to addressing this, particularly with this younger population, is to invert it, and help equip young people with the skill sets so that they can so they can model good behavior in those environments that we hope will help raise a generation of people who are good gamers as they grow up in this ecosystem.

And so we have a number of great initiatives that have spanned from partnerships with the Cartoon Network that created resources and public service announcements for young people and their parents to help them converse together. Conversation and dialogue is a really big part of this when I think it comes to ensuring that children and kids and teens are equipped with managing those potential situations. But parents are aware of what’s going on and parents can help them in their journey. 

Laura Higgins: I love that, Susanna. Media literacy, civility, digital citizenship, these things are all totally my jam. This is my absolute passion in life. Helping young people and families just have that resilience to spot the signs, to know how to act and feel confident.

But one thing that we’ve really seen, and I know that, Raising Good Gamers and Games for Change as a whole is really involved in, which I’m so proud of. We roadblocks are also doing, but it’s really this youth participation. It’s not just about us telling or even, giving the advice, but it’s actually about getting young people involved in the process.

And whether it’s, co creation, as you said, just engaging youth in being that positive force for good. I know that you’ve been doing a lot of work around this. Could you tell us a bit about that, please? 

Susanna Pollack: In our mission to empower, we also think about young people and the next generation of game designers, and there are terrific advantages and benefits learning opportunities for kids as they learn the process of game design that benefits them as learners throughout their entire lives, not just about setting them on the path to become game designers, but all of that package is something that we wrapped up in a program we call the Games for Change Student Challenge, and this gives kids as young as 10 to 18 the ability to learn the game design process start applying that onto different platforms and tools that they’re ready to use rather it’s making games in Scratch or in Unity at the other end of the spectrum and anything in between. Kids are making games in Roblox and in Minecraft and using other tools. And we give them the ability to create games, but we ask them to create games about social issues.

So we connect this idea of civic engagement with creation. And this program is running for 10 years now. We’ve reached over 50,000 students in the U.S. We engage teachers to bring these classes in this curriculum into their classrooms, whether they are computer science teachers or English teachers or social studies teachers.

They all see the process of making games as a form of self-expression, of storytelling, and it’s a way in which youth can combine their passion, which is gaming, you know to something that they can bring themselves into. And so this program, which is now reaching international audiences, which is amazing.

It ends with a competition every year where students can submit their games about different social impact themes and and receive, recognition for their incredible work. And we’re receiving over 1000 games a year working with incredible partners. 

Jordan Shapiro: You’ve got to tell us about some of the really cool ones. Can you give us two of your favorite examples? 

Susanna Pollack: I’ll give you some, I’ll give you some things that I’m really excited about this year, because we have some great partners. We work with NGOs and other issue-oriented organizations to come up with these theme topics.

And something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, we are doing this year–it combines mental health concerns along with climate, and it brings into point a way for young people to explore what they may be feeling, but don’t have a word for. And what I’ve come to learn is eco-anxiety, which is defined as the fear of environmental doom, with all this messaging around the realities of what is happening with our climate and the risks that exist around us and young people in particular, are feeling this the crisis on their mental health and their concerns about the future, of the planet. One of the ways, similar to what we’re doing with Raising Good Gamers, to address this is by empowering young people to do something, and one of the ways they can do something to take care of their mental health is by connecting to nature.

And there’s research and whole pedagogy about how connecting to nature can elevate your state of mind and by creating an emotional bond and a love for nature, showing compassion and care for nature. Creating, like having even sensory, contact with the natural world helps, helps with managing this kind of stress. And so working with an organization called Earthwatch Europe, we are offering students and teachers resources to learn about how they can take care of themselves by connecting to nature. We are calling that particular challenge, Nurture Yourself Through Nature. Which kind of has a nice little thing to it and what we’re gonna be seeing over the next nine months, really, are ways in which Young people are learning about this issue, learning how they can take care of themselves and eventually expressing that through a game that they’re going to design. I just love that. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah, I absolutely love that, Susannah. Even when we’re treating just low-level anxiety, the five things, one of them is go outside, take some breaths, smell, hear the sounds. Literally touch the grass. So for us to be able to link that real-world feeling, but also in online and gaming environments, I think it’s beautiful.

Jordan Shapiro: I have a different appreciation. I appreciate that too. But what I like about it is there are so many reasons right now in the world for young people, teenagers, adolescents, to be feeling real anxiety, and real fear, and real worry about the state of the world. Climate change, of course, being one of those primary things. And I love that. What we hear on the news— it’s because of the phones, and the games, and the screens. That’s why they have the anxiety! So I love this. There are real things to have anxiety about, and there are these incredible tools that our kids don’t know how to use, in the best possible ways, in order to mediate their emotional states and this is helping them. And I love that…So tell us about some of the other initiatives that are helping with with teen mental health. 

Susanna Pollack: Yeah. So some of the other themes, have to do with just that, about managing and understanding environmental crises, natural disasters, and conflict, and how that can also affect how you engage with your communities.

And another thing that we’re working on with the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, and that was founded by Forrest Whitaker, the actor. He’s an amazing actor and obviously a very deep and well-meaning individual and he’s created this initiative. It’s called Peaceformers and that theme addresses the idea or explores the idea that having a peaceful society can be challenging when things that are happening around your world seem to be in conflict or out of your control, like natural disasters or political conflicts, and how one can create a peaceful environment.

By managing your reaction to those situations and many times helping address and contributing to fixing those situations and how those are inextricably linked. And to me that was just a really interesting connection, and one that opens allows teens and young people to explore a lot of different things, but at the same time understanding that your community and your own well-being is tied to peaceful interactions.

The last one, which we’re also really excited about this year, is with a global institution that I think most people are familiar with. It’s a UN agency called the World Food Program that is one of the biggest humanitarian UN agencies that deal with disaster relief by getting food to the most and aid to the most underserved areas and people in need. And they have a an education mission right now to work with young people to help them understand the challenges that people have around food scarcity and hunger.

And as part of our partnership with them they have helped us design this challenge for kids to think about those issues, breaking it down to things that, that we hope are relatable, because sometimes these, big global issues can be paralyzing, right? And feel so, out of their control, but we have adapted this particular theme to be thinking about personal nutrition about communities that maybe have are facing school facing food scarcity and how they can contribute to help solving these problems through things that they are experiencing at school, whether it’s cafeteria lunch or food banks locally. And it’s a way ito get young people to start caring about those in their communities that may not be as fortunate as them. 

Jordan Shapiro: And so what does it look like?

Susanna Pollack: Okay, so kids, so whether they’re kids invited into the program through a teacher, and we have teachers all over the country saying, this is a great unit for us to do in the classroom, right, or they want to explore this themselves. We have one, we have curriculum for kids to learn about game design. What is a game? What are the parts of a game? Things that have nothing to do with digital media whatsoever. But then we have toolkits on how to build a game in Scratch or in Minecraft or Roblox.

And then they can make a game themselves or with friends. Kids can partner up to four people and that’s what’s so great too about the collaborative nature of game-making. You don’t have to be someone who loves coding. You can be an artist or a storyteller, a musician, and collaborate together and creating a game that could be a narrative game where you literally are telling a story, or it could be a puzzle game, or it could be, a game that Is quiz like, there’s so many different formats to what the game could be and they learn about these different formats throughout this program.

And then they also have access to hear from professionals in the field. So we have a series called the Level Up series, which is virtual and free, where kids are learning from or hear from character art designers, or they’re learning from people who are experts in building in Minecraft or in Roblox, and they’re also learning and they have opportunities to hear about these issues from someone from the World Food Program or somebody from the Whittaker Peace and Development Initiative.

And then at the end of the program, they submit their game and we have professionals and subject matter experts reviewing it. Those games, we have over 300 people looking at these games. They are so fabulous. The games can be anything from the first level or a working prototype. We know the kids are just learning this and it’s less about the final output, it’s about how much the participants are embracing the themes, are able to tell, to share the messages that they want to share. Yes, and how fun the game is, right? And is it fun to play? And we have our prizes and our categories just separates middle school students. We have a junior version and a senior version, and you can get prizes for games for each of the themes, and we have a grand prize winner, Take Two Interactive, which is the parent company of Rockstar Games. They make NBA 2K25 and do great stuff, give scholarships to winners. You can win up to a $10,000 scholarship. It’s really amazing. 

Laura Higgins: It is great. Susanna, you and I were chatting recently, and, we work on several projects together, which is always a joy but we had this great conversation about a VR experience that you’d come across or have been involved in that was really all still on this theme of like mental health and the image and all of that stuff.

Can you tell us a little bit about that, please? 

Susanna Pollack: Sure. First, I’ll say that about seven, eight years ago, when virtual reality I’ll say mania started happening when, Oculus came out with their virtual reality headset, the VR headset and HTC and these other hardware manufacturers started developing these experiences.

We thought we saw for Games for Change an opportunity to help build a community of practice around virtual reality games and just experiences in general. So that we don’t just see first-person shooter games in this medium. And so we’ve been helping a number of creators. And then I’m going to programs so that these experiences can get out into the world for people that they can help.

It’s a lot different with games, right? Games. The hardware is distributed. Everyone has a phone with virtual reality. It’s it’s more challenging to get out. to get this into the hands of people, particularly if it’s an impact experience that you want to serve. So there, there was a series it started with one project, but now there are a series of virtual reality experiences that we’ve gotten involved in by a production company in the UK called Anagram.

And it uses virtual reality as a as a way in which to help reduce stigma around mental health and other brain health. Sentiments, right? And issues. And one of the really interesting thing about I think about virtual reality is the ability to help to allow one to experience what they said they lived experience of someone else because it’s a completely immersive experience.

And the different afforded affordances of the actual the technology. You could actually see the world through somebody else’s eyes. You can experience Symptoms and sounds and distorted visuals. And so they’ve created this, just two beautiful pieces. First one is called Goliath that centers around psychosis and a young man with schizophrenia.

And what’s so interesting about that piece is and experiencing it is. that they’ve designed it in a way that, you have, you can experience these symptoms, whether auditory or hallucinatory moments, but you also are able to go through an emotional journey through this young man.

And the connection really for us was that this young man who when Unfortunately, went in and out of mental institutions and health institutions through most part of his young life as he tried to balance with medication and other inputs to help him engage in and be able to live in in society.

And it wasn’t until he was able to engage. In online gaming and develop a a persona through gaming avatar that he found himself able to engage with others. Of course there was treatment involved and I don’t mean to negate all of that, but I’m saying, but he was able to. To develop new relationships through gaming and his profile was called is called Goliath.

And he became, and is well known as a gamer. And as you go through this experience, this virtual reality experience, they haven’t they’ve embedded a lot of gaming elements into it because it’s part of his story. And And it’s just really beautiful, beautifully made. So the piece went on to win awards at like festivals, the Venice film festival sun South by Southwest.

But what we want and is available on the meta, quest door, but what we want to do with it is and have started to develop partnerships is to use this virtual reality experience as a way to start conversations, help reduce stigma for others who are caregivers, who are friends who are loved ones of people with psychosis.

Yes. So that they can better understand what’s they’re going through. So we’ve developed material that can be used to help people understand what the experience is that they’re going to be having, and then facilitation and discussion guides about what they, about how they can talk about this now that they’ve had this experience.

And we’re, we are going to be bringing this to college campuses. There’s a version that will likely go to high schools as well. And then also in nursing schools and in veterans hospitals. And that’s just, which is really amazing about this this medium. And the next project that was just released is about ADHD called Impulse, and it tells a story of four different individuals who grew up with ADHD.

And again, the idea and the,

Laura Higgins: I’m just going to, I know we need to move on. That’s inspirational to hear and I’m seeing and hearing more use of, both virtual reality, but generally games, to help both empower for people to tell their story, but also that therapeutic piece. I believe I just met a wonderful woman called Sarah, who created a VR experience called Soul Paint.

I believe she won the Games for Change award this year, as well as the SXSW Award. But again, this is a very kind of really visceral experience where people learn how your emotions and feelings are actually physically things that you feel, whether it’s butterflies, whether it’s, the tingles that you get, or you’re getting goosebumps on your arms, and just having a possibility to literally paint the feelings that you’re having is, you can just see so many amazing opportunities.

So thank you for leaning into it. I’m really excited to see more of this stuff coming. I’m going to pass over to you, Jordan. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah, it’s very exciting. I can’t wait to see some of these examples that you just shared with us. But but we have to wind down cause we’re getting to the end of our time.

So I want to ask you a more general question. I already hinted at it. Like there, there’s so much in the media now about, about teens and mental health and blaming it on, on, on digital media. That’s not new. It’s this is a new manifestation of it currently, but it’s been going that technophobia has been there for at least as long as I’ve been in this field.

And certainly long before that, but I’m just curious, like this what do you think is that is the state of young people and media right now? Like, how do you, how do you think about it? This is your what, like, how do you feel? What’s the sense of.

Should we have this sort of kids these days, generational angst oh, this new generation should, shouldn’t we, where should we, where shouldn’t we? I don’t know. I’m sure you think about this all the time. So what are your general thoughts? 

Susanna Pollack: I will say as a blanket statement, I don’t think we give young people enough credit.

I don’t think we give them enough credit that they can learn and use the medium, the technology responsibly. I don’t think they I don’t necessarily know out of the gate what that means. But I think when it comes to, this argument about banning cell phones in schools right cell phones is a piece of technology, there’s content that comes through it.

Which can either be, inappropriate for a student can lead to distractions in schools. All of that is, is exists. It’s there. But I feel that the conversation is, um and many people are saying, the answer is to, ban cell phones from schools outright.

And I think we miss an opportunity there. And this same thing goes about games, right? About saying that games, are also a distraction and, lead to addiction. I think that we miss an opportunity to teach kids how to manage and use technology responsibly. Cell phones.

What is it? The Pew Research Center said that 95 percent of teens have access to a smartphone. It’s an integral part of their lives, right? So rather than avoiding the issue, I think and teach responsible phone usage like limiting screen time and and how to use apps or games for productivity.

But to participate in helping young people develop ballot, a balanced tech use right that helps with their mental health and the well being. So that’s number one and also acknowledging that these tools, smartphones or and games, they could be a powerful tool for learning.

And there’s great content out there and that great content can, wouldn’t be available if we just like, as I said, blanket Say you can’t use it. So there’s also the appreciation and recognizing that there’s positive things that are happening within these mediums. And again, bringing those attention to young people rather than assuming and basically distrusting kids that they don’t know how to self regulate.

And if and that has other consequences about, other developmental skills that we don’t Allow for Children, to develop if we are just removing what is the perceived issue in front of them.

Laura Higgins: I couldn’t put that better myself. Thank you so much. Susanna. Is there anything else that you wanted to raise? Anything that we may be haven’t touched on that you wanted to share with our listeners? 

Susanna Pollack: There is one initiative that we’re involved in that I think is worth mentioning in this, on this podcast, so thank you for that.

We’ve recently started a partnership with the Deepak Chopra Foundation and it’s around mental health. Another way in which we can contribute to addressing what is now and what Chopra Foundation has deemed like a global silent mental health crisis. And they have acknowledged that games could be a very important tool to help address this addressing this globally.

And we’re one small spoke on a wheel of different activations that are going to be taking place over the course of the next couple of years. But we are now leading a games and immersive working group that is working together to help identify different activations that we can do that leverages both the reach the games have to the 3 billion, players around the planet, the type of interactive experiences kids are and people are having within those games and how we can, it’s a way for us to better educate and inform the public parents, kids about about the relationship of mental health and being, through this technology. And so it’s a very exciting initiative. We’re just starting to work on mental health month is in the U. S is in May, and I think we’ll see a lot of activity.

Developing towards then, but games are a great tool. This is another example of how great games can be a great tool beyond entertainment. And it’s exciting to have, leading organizations like the Chopra Foundation say that this, understand that this medium is a great opportunity in which to help people live better lives.

I’ve recently read a few articles listing the pros, cons, and questions^{1 2 3} that come up when we think about the changes education will and is already experiencing with the introduction of AI into learning environments. It seems this topic of personalized learning powered by AI warrants a bit of digging from a fellow concerned adult who is curious about the changing landscape of educational technologies.

Going into this work, I wondered: What does personalized learning infused with AI capabilities actually look like, and is it as revolutionary as it’s been presented? What can parents, educators, and adults who care about young people’s future in an AI-infused world listen to and advocate for when we see these innovations integrated into schools and children’s devices? To gain more insight, we spoke with representatives from three companies: Dr. Klinton Bicknell, who leads Duolingo’s AI group; Dr. Kristen Dicerbo, Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy; Dr. Kristen Huff, Head of Measurement at Curriculum Associates and Dr. Amelia Kelly, CTO at SoapBox Labs, now part of Curriculum Associates. These experts and their respective companies are hard at work thinking about how they will integrate AI into learning environments and products for use in the classroom or other settings. Here’s what we learned from these conversations, and what we’ll be keeping in mind going forward:

Let’s start with some mythbusting: this is not the first time AI has been used in learning products. Curriculum Associates, for example, has already been “using the power of data and algorithms to adapt the assessment to each student and to understand where each student’s strengths are in math and reading, and where there are still gaps to close to get to grade level”, Dr. Huff explains. i-Ready, Curriculum Associate’s main product, is a digital curriculum and assessment for reading and math programs aimed at students K-8. The integration of SoapBox Labs’ technology will allow the product to use voice AI to help young kids learn to read in noisy environments like classrooms and improve reading comprehension.

The real innovation of the moment is AI’s ability to use natural language to engage with learners about content in new ways. For example, an AI-driven learning system might be able to better understand a student’s capabilities and deliver interventions based on their needs. That may mean making connections between what a system knows about a student’s capabilities and the interventions digital tutors can make to further their learning based on that information.

Duolingo, the popular language learning application, has also been integrating AI into many of their products. Dr. Bicknell explains:

“By taking the millions of points of data we have about each learner that uses the app, we create a detailed signal about what this person knows right now, what kinds of mistakes they’re making, and what they know well and over time. Then this gives us the whole picture of how people are learning across all our different courses…. AI then gives us a way of taking all that data and transforming it into ways of personalizing and optimizing the learning experience for everyone.”

More specifically, generative AI has been especially helpful for Duolingo as they are developing more nuanced features for conversation practice – a skill that’s necessary to learn how to speak a new language. Dr. Bicknell further explained:

“Historically, it was a big limitation of any kind of electronic learning tools that they weren’t very interactive. There are basically [only] right answers and wrong answers. And you can go to the next question. Without AI, you’re really limited in the kinds of ways that you can create things or give people feedback about things because it really has to be stuff that you hard code essentially. Duolingo is trying to build really high quality education and scale it, making it available to everyone. AI is really the only way of achieving both of those things at once.”

What are the potential benefits?

Across the three interviews, we heard several clear benefits of integrating AI capabilities into learning products and platforms.

First, companies believe that by integrating generative AI capabilities, we may be able to provide student assistance not available from already over-stretched teachers in the classroom. When using Khanmigo in a classroom setting, for example, Dr. Dicerbo explains that one main benefit is “the ability to provide the help to a student when they’re working on independent work, [since] a teacher in a classroom just can’t help 25 kids at the same time as they’re stuck. The teacher doesn’t have to keep helping the kids that are doing independent practice now because Khanmigo can.”

Similarly, when envisioning the use of iReady’s speech recognition capabilities in the classroom, Dr. Kelly describes how AI can be a useful tracking tool for a teacher and act as a data source to accelerate children’s learning: “Crucially, the teacher will now have time to do this, because they are not engaged in listening to hours and hours of children’s reading, and having to grade that reading by hand.”

Dr. Bicknell reflected on data showing many language instructors use Duolingo with their students to fill in downtime between in-class assignments, and found its personalized speed and manner helpful for managing different skill levels and learning speeds in one classroom, saying that teachers may choose to use Duolingo in different ways.

“Sometimes it’s: ‘If you finish the assignment early, do some exercises [on Duolingo]. Duolingo is like this personalized learning app and the assignment you just did is probably not personalized. And so this allows the teacher to go help the students who are struggling, and the students who are just doing great can go do more advanced stuff on their own, which is cool.”

Using personalized learning environments might also impact students’ engagement with the material alongside giving teachers signals about a student’s progress. Dr. Huff at Curriculum Associates explained that “Students are motivated to read aloud and be scored with AI-powered voice technology because of the immediate feedback loops for them as students as well as for their teachers.”

Using AI to create different learning contexts according to a learner’s unique interests also increases their engagement, especially for Duolingo, according to Dr. Bicknell:

“[We] found this very effective both in increasing the amount people learn and also in helping increase engagement as well. If you can make things really relevant for people, then they will both learn more and be more into it. Otherwise, [we risk showing] people things that they already know, and they’ll get bored and leave. Or if you show people things that are too hard for them, they’ll get frustrated and leave. So it’s a nice sweet spot that we’ve [achieved by using AI]”.

Perhaps one of the more interesting benefits AI can bring when it comes to personalized learning, especially for adults, is the very fact that it is not human – and thereby poses less of a risk of the learner feeling judged or hurting the learner’s self-esteem and confidence. For example, Dr. Bicknell reflects that Duolingo has “experimented with [practicing conversations] through human tutors who would connect with [learners] – but that never got [to] big scale. What we found is that a lot of people have a really hard time talking to a human in a language that they are not confident in. They’re very embarrassed and shy, and feel like this other person is judging them right when they make mistakes. And so one really cool thing about AI is that you don’t have that. It’s just a computer, it’s not judging you.”

Finally, many of the experts we talked to reflected that  integrating AI capabilities into personalized learning can have a positive effect on the type and timing of feedback, both important aspects that can affect learning trajectories and milestones throughout the learning process. With the integration of AI capabilities in Khanmigo, for example, Dr. Dicerbo spoke of “being able to get more of that immediate help, the scaffolding and the quick feedback that we see as kind of the biggest thing that we think is going to improve learning.” Inside Duolingo, using AI unlocked the app’s ability to “give people feedback on their answers. Obviously, we can’t exactly say whether this is right or wrong, but we can at least say something like, ‘Oh, here’s how to fix your grammar, or here’s how to say that better’.”

What are some of the challenges when integrating AI into learning environments?

Of course, it’s not entirely smooth sailing. As the experts described the benefits of generative AI, they voiced concerns about its impacts as well. Integrating AI into learning products is expensive; the high cost of this technology means it is not readily accessible to all children and learners. Dr. Bicknell reflected:

“It’s a feature we think is really helpful for learning, and we wish we could give to everyone, but for now we can’t [because of the high cost].That is a tension of using AI for education; there can be some inequity, considering who has access and who doesn’t. Now, all that said, prices are falling very fast, and so we are hopeful that it won’t be very long before more and more people can get access to this.”

Others raised concerns about the way this technology can be used in schools, looking at both the accuracy and how they provide guidance to students. Modeling educators, Dr. Dicerbo reflected that they don’t want their product Khanmigo to be “a tool that just answers questions. We want a tool that’s going to help students get to the answer themselves. And so we started learning how to prompt engineer to basically give instructions to the model of how to act like a tutor.” Moreover, sometimes an AI agent might provide wrong answers (though that can also happen with human educators). Students and teachers using the tools need to be aware of this potential.

The mistakes that AI tools make often show up in math curricula, for example. Dr. Dicerbo reflected that “It’s known that math accuracy is an issue. But it’s not just doing the calculation –  actually one of the bigger issues is evaluating the students’ responses and saying they’re right when they’re right or wrong when they’re wrong. And we found that the models have a positivity bias. So we’ve done a lot of work on how to make it more accurate on the evaluation side, and we also released an evaluation data set so that anyone who’s building a model can test it on how good it is at evaluating student work”. 

What should companies keep in mind as they develop AI-powered learning experiences?

An emphasis on maintaining human connection
The experts we spoke with emphasized the importance of creating a tool, rather than a replacement for the teacher – as “AI will keep getting better at being able to explain things and being able to personalize instruction…But it’s quite far from replacing that human connection, the critical part of what [a] teacher’s job actually is,” says Dr. Bicknell.

With that being said, products that guide students like Khanmigo are built in a way that emphasizes and prioritizes human connection. Dr. Dicerbo explains: “There are so many things that teachers do that AI is never going to do. We have a phrase that we use: human high fives beat computer confetti… it’s always going to be more motivating for someone to be like, ‘Hey, awesome job,’ as opposed to like Khanmigo showing virtual confetti.”

Echoing that sentiment, Dr. Kelly said: “We believe that AI, or really any computer assisted technology, is just a tool for the teacher. Teacher judgment, teacher expertise must be centered in the learning experience if it’s to be most effective for the student.”

Focusing on education-specific learning tools
One key point to keep in mind as we think about AI-powered tools aiding learning is the original purpose, and whether they were designed for learning in the first place. Dr. Dicerbo reminded us that something that might not be clear to educators and parents when thinking about personalized learning “is the difference between education specific [products] versus ChatGPT, for example. If you ask ChatGPT a question, it’s just going to give you the answer, leaving the students to their own devices. In contrast to not just Khan Academy, but any of these education apps which are designed to encourage students to work in them.”

The emphasis on learning mechanisms and user fit is reminiscent of age-appropriate design initiatives that have been grown in popularity in recent years. In essence, as Dr. Kelly explains:

“Taking ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) off the shelf and sticking a wrapper on it and giving it to children won’t work. They’re not looking at how a voice tutor, for example, would respond to children from different regions, or if it’s the child’s first language or second language. There’s no consideration put into how it’s built and what it can do. It’s not being deployed using data and using evidence-driven research.”

She went on to elaborate:

“It’s for that reason that I am very concerned about the types of technology that may make it into the school system; because at the end of the day, AI-powered technology is coming to the classroom. It’s coming everywhere, and we can either let it in without testing it, or we can test it and make sure it works. Make sure that it’s built with privacy by design. Make sure it’s built with transparency. Make sure it’s built with equity at the forefront. and if we can be totally upfront with that, show people how things are built, we can make a real difference.”

After having these conversations, I have become cautiously optimistic about the future of AI-powered personalized learning being integrated in classrooms and learning experiences in the coming years. Yes, there is still a lot to learn, and yes, we should keep questioning and reassessing the decisions we make with this technology and how it affects young people’s chances of success, equity, and teachers’ autonomy in the classroom. Nonetheless, thoughtful design decisions and ongoing conversations like the ones recorded above mean that we may yet avoid delving into a world where we use AI for AI’s sake, and consistently reiterate towards the goal of educating the next generation with empathy and attention to their uniqueness and potential.

 

¹https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/2024-the-dawn-of-the-ai-era_final-release-for-web.pdf

²https://www.the74million.org/article/is-ai-in-schools-disruptive-or-overhyped-potentially-both-new-reports-suggest/

³https://boldscience.org/how-can-educators-use-ai-to-support-their-students-learning

⁴https://www.the74million.org/article/ai-fueled-testing-from-the-mouths-of-babes/

⁵ https://childrightsbydesign.5rightsfoundation.com/

 

 

Rotem Landesman is a PhD student in the Information School at the University of Washington, co-advised by Dr. Katie Davis and Dr. Amy J Ko. Her research looks at developing metrics for well-being design in digital spaces, alongside fostering youth’s technological wisdom. She is currently a graduate intern at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.

When we look to the gold standards of research-practice integration in children’s media established by Sesame Workshop, we know that it is possible for research and practice to be harmoniously integrated to create content that kids and families love (See Joan Ganz Cooney’s The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education, originally produced in 1966 for the Carnegie Corporation).

But how widespread is the desire to integrate research into practice today? Is research equally valued among people who work in public (vs. private) media?

Between March and July 2024, I sought insight into these questions. I conducted a small purposive snowball sample of adults who work, or who have recently worked within the past five years, in the U.S. children’s media industry, including in television, films, gaming, online content, and more. Participants were recruited via my and others’ personal networks via email, LinkedIn, and company slacks (a big thank-you to everyone who helped with recruitment, including Catherine Jhee at the Cooney Center!).

Who was included in the sample?

In total, 65 people completed the survey, and the sample had some diversity. Among those who answered, 56.3% were female, 9.4% were male, 1.6% were genderqueer, and 1.6% were questioning their gender. In terms of ethnicity and race, 1.6% were Arab or Middle Eastern, 4.7% were Asian or Asian American, 4.7% were Black, 9.4% were Hispanic or Latine, 51.6% were white, and 3.1% had other ethnic-racial backgrounds. Overall, 37% held bachelor’s degree, 42.6% held master’s degrees, and 18.5% held doctorates.

The sample also had diversity in terms of years and experiences in the field: 63% had 4 years or less in the industry, and 59.3% reported having worked on content affiliated with public media within the past 5 years. Additionally, though the majority of the sample reported having kids’ television experience (78.1%), other media experience also emerged: 37.5% reported experience with games, 34.4% with kids’ online videos, 32.8% with podcasts, 28.1% with children’s books, 12.5% with movies or films, 6.3% with virtual reality,, 4.7% with AI, 1.6% with music, and 26.6% in other online spaces for kids.

People in this sample also held a variety of roles. I used a check-all box to allow participants to indicate all job titles that applied to their most recent work. Overall, 32.8% of respondents described research as at least part of their role, while 25% indicated curriculum, 18.7% indicated writing (including some head writers), and 18.7% indicated producer or executive producer positions. Additionally, the sample included those with recent experience as assistants, interns, and coordinators (14.2%), creators (12.5%), directors, supervisors, and managers (10.9%), voice over talent and directors (10.9%), executive leadership (e.g., CEOs, VPs or Senior VPs, network executives) (10.9%), and buyers (3.1%).

What did I find?

I asked this diverse pool of individuals a series of questions, including how important various research skills were to their work. Specifically, I asked them to rate how important it is for them to be able to interpret findings, translate research to practice or action, analyze data, talk about research findings, design studies, and conduct studies.

The sample reported high levels of valuing multiple research skills. On a 7-point scale, where 7 represented the highest level of perceived importance and 1 represented the lowest level, the specific breakdown of perceived importance is shown in the following chart:

 

I probed this data further, examining just the ratings of people who work outside of public media and found that the perceived value of these research skills was still strikingly high within the sample. The average ratings of perceived importance for having skills to translate research into practice, to talk about findings, to interpret findings, and to analyze data were all over 5.4 on the 7-point scale.

This all being said, the sample rated expertise around actually designing studies and conducting studies lower than they rated perceptions of the value of having expertise in these other research skills, though even these ratings were above the midpoint.

I also asked people to talk about their hopes for research related to the kind of work that they do. Specifically, I asked them if they could wave a magic wand and have any kind of research implemented to support their work, what that research would be, and what purpose it would serve.

Folks had a lot to say. Some of the most common themes that emerged were about desires for summative evaluation, including longitudinal research, and for formative evaluation.

For example, as one participant explained, they want to know “the effectiveness of the media we are making over time.” Another wrote that they had a desire to know “the impact of media (stories, characters, settings, cultural traditions, type of dialogue used, clothing, and every other detail) on children.”

In terms of formative evaluation, a participant reported the desire to have additional focus group research that allows for a “constant flow of kids’ reactions to content as it goes through the production pipeline.” This idea of having more of an ongoing stream of information is also highlighted in another participant’s comment: “I would love to be able to test stories on real kids before they hit the air, to see if they find the stories engaging and funny. This is something my company does during the development phase for new projects, but does not have the funding to do on a regular basis.”

Participants also underscored the need for research that could help us keep up with evolving technology and today’s children. For example, one participant said: “Research in this area needs to be timely and relevant to the technology and media that is being used and created at the moment (and in the future). Oftentimes, the conflict between academic publishing expectations (e.g., focus on theory) and timelines (forever!) means that the data is too old and too irrelevant of industry to use it in a practical way. From an industry perspective, large scale descriptive data is often very useful especially when it can probe at really specific situations/scenarios, but this is often difficult for academics to financially afford to do (plus that type of data is hard to publish academically).”

There were also multiple comments that reflected the need for more resources for research in industry. For example, one participant said: “I would love to see more shows taking on a full-time research team in order to reap the benefits I’ve seen my production gain from having so much great kid feedback and the child development experts and researchers to back that feedback up.” Another said: “I just wish we were better resourced to complete this work.”

What are some takeaways?

Although the sample in this small study is not representative, and we therefore cannot generalize the findings to all people who work in the U.S. children’s media industry, the findings nevertheless suggest an inspiring point that there may be widespread enthusiasm within the field when it comes to integrating research into children’s media. The findings suggest that current industry professionals with various roles in the industry, across both public and private media, consider it valuable to have research skills and are eager to leverage research to serve youth, their families, and their organizations.

What’s more, participants’ comments about having limited resources for research, and about the misalignment between academia and industry, underscore the point that there is still much more room for us to innovate, collaborate, and combine resources as we look to the future of children’s media.

To me as an academic, these findings highlight the importance of continuing to find ways to focus on the applied implications of our scholarship and of conducting work that is meaningful to those with the power to create content for kids. I am encouraged to continue to build practitioner and community partnerships, and to continue to prepare the next generation of children’s media leaders to excel at integrating research and practice.

 

AnneMarie McClain, PhD, M.A., Ed.M., M.S. (she/her) is a children’s media scholar at Boston University’s College of Communication. She has a particular focus on understanding how media – and conversations around media – can be used to promote positive outcomes for youth and families, especially marginalized youth and families.