Into the Digital Future: Online Safety Through the Eyes of Young People with Lucy Thomas

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.