Advocating for Youth Mental Health with Susan Reynolds

Susan Reynolds has over 20 years of experience in digital wellbeing, youth leadership and mindfulness. In 2019 she co-founded LookUp to discover, empower, and mobilize youth leaders who are taking action to raise awareness and design a healthier, more inclusive, and responsible digital world. Susan leads workshops and facilitates panels to educate and empower Gen Z to find and implement their own solutions, and she’s spoken globally on the topic at conferences in Copenhagen, London, and most recently in Saudi Arabia.

In this conversation, we approach technology with a wide lens, exploring both the promise and the peril of the internet, as well as the ways that different age groups engage with it. Susan poses the idea that part of the teenage mental health crisis could also be viewed as somewhat of a spiritual crisis, the longing for true connection that they try to get from the interconnectedness of the internet, yet these avenues are falling short of helping people to feel deeply connected and fulfilled.

And the collective mental health status of our young people proves the power of the digital age—a conglomerate of apps that have captured and run away with their attention, self-awareness, confidence and peace.

Honestly, we don’t come to many conclusions here. We simply share perspectives, hers from the professional angle having had a long career in tech and education as well as a personal angle, with a deep spiritual sense that’s continuing to emerge and guide her more strongly in her work. She shares about the new book she’s working on, LookUp Live: The Book, a collection of stories about young advocates she partners with who are making a tangible difference in the lives of their peers and exploring what it means to be human in the 21st Century.

Bottom line: Young people are stepping up. Despite, and perhaps because of, the issues they’ve inherited, there has never been a generation with as strong an ethos of purpose and advocacy as Gen Z. They won’t stand for continuing to lose their friends to suicide and shootings. They won’t tolerate ignorance. They won’t accept policies that prioritize corporations over their own well being.

They are choosing to speak out, and that’s what Susan gets to witness every day in her role at LookUp, a perspective that allows space for the grief, anger of the situation yet an empowerment that leads to lasting change.

LookUp.Live

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