A Gen Z Takeaway from Teaching Digital Wellness to Gen Alpha
I taught fellow young people in my community about digital safety and learned a few things along the way…
I can’t begin to describe the amount of joy, chaos, and meaning I’ve experienced from sitting with fellow youth, from elementary school to middle school, and discussing our perceptions of the digital world, all of which are grounded in our personal experiences.
Two years ago, I started Sustainable with Screens, a community-based initiative where I lead workshops with young people surrounding digital wellness and responsible tech use. At the heart of the project was my own 11-year-old self who felt her sense of agency and self-worth vanish after being exposed to social media content encouraging her to count calories.
Entering high school, I began talking about digital wellness and my experiences with other teens, recognizing I could create purposeful and sustainable change in the digital world. Yet, even as I immersed myself in incredible spaces like #HalfTheStory, where digital wellness conversations were front and center, I knew that we needed more voices to enter the discussion.
So, my mission was to both amplify youth perspectives on crafting healthy digital ecosystems while also providing my youth-centered advice on maintaining boundaries online.
Today, as a senior in high school, I’m cherishing how much I’ve learned from both teaching digital literacy and hearing the nuanced takes on digital spaces young people have.
For instance, I’ve discovered just how dedicated younger generations are to building comprehension of the digital spaces that shape them instead of mindlessly scrolling, contrary to what most adults may think. In a workshop I led with 7th-graders for their school’s wellness retreat, they were eager to understand the platforms that impact their lives and build boundaries with technology. One student, who developed games on Roblox and another who was an active user, discussed how they wanted the platform to implement stricter policies around young people so they could feel safe online and set limits to their use of the game. Other students voiced how they wanted less technology in the classroom and were actively trying to manage their screen time and that of their parents. So, young people don’t always gravitate towards technology and see it as their whole world. In fact, they are actively trying to change that narrative.
And, these conversations have taught me just how important it is to talk about the “what gets in the way.” Right before I led a workshop this year, one of my friends gave me Brene Brown’s book The Gifts of Imperfection. She wrote a sentence that I deeply resonated with “We don’t talk about what keeps us. . .busy beyond human scale, desperate to numb and take the edge off, and full of so much anxiety and self-doubt that we can’t act on what we know is best for us.” After re-reading those words, I acknowledged just how difficult it is for us to have conversations with peers and adults about the hard stuff, like the pressure to find belonging or keep up with trends, that drive us towards digital platforms we know deep down are not serving us. When I started talking about the unique pressures Gen Alpha faced, we all gained clarity around how we can address those challenges instead of talking generally about limiting screen use.
Lastly, these young people showed me that to provide our personal experiences is to give our expertise. In a culture that is trained to obsess over the credentials someone has to speak about a particular issue, this lesson was the most transformative for me.
During one workshop, I sat down in the middle of my presentation on how social media algorithms work and shared the harmful experiences that led me into this work. As I talked about my 7th-grade self who questioned her worth after spending hours on social media, I realized that the importance of my voice wasn’t just in the knowledge I had acquired from research, but the lessons that I learned from personally navigating digital spaces. It was in the way I reflected on each emotion I had felt as a 7th-grade girl that I saw how personal stories can bring a room together.
Being a young person in conversation with other young people, I’ve seen how the key to digital literacy is connection and vulnerability. It was my excitement about speaking from the heart, respecting the people I taught, and most importantly leading with “I see you, and here is my advice,” that brought individuals of all backgrounds and interests together.
As I’m nearing high school graduation, I’m excited to keep leading digital wellness workshops in every community I join, knowing that building bridges and amplifying each and every youth perspective will serve as the most meaningful part of my advocacy.