With discourse around social media and big tech still ignoring the opinions of those most impacted by its negative effects, we at Sociedad Latina believe that centering youth voices in this space is essential; we want to support youth in taking an active role in their digital experience so that they can keep themselves safe, learn how to be a responsible digital citizen, and discover how to achieve digital balance by maintaining wellness online. That’s why in our five-week summer program our Youth Leaders engaged in workshops focused on the well-being of technology usage and bringing awareness to current policies related to online safety and privacy. 

We began the summer showing our Youth Leaders the Screenagers documentary "Growing Up in The Digital Age” - an award-winning film that dives into the vulnerable corners of family life and depicts struggles over social media, video games and academics. They then reflected on their own usage of technology at schools, at home, and in their social lives by thinking about how social media can impact their relationships with those around them. In week two, they completed a survey that our Youth Wellness Committee co-developed with Tufts University Tisch College Community Research Center called "Exploring Social Media Usage and Youth Well-Being”, which was designed to better understand the impact of social media use on the wellbeing of teenagers ages 14-19, including time spent on social media platforms, which platforms are most used, and how social media affects wellness. In week three, Youth Leaders engaged in a workshop adapted from Screenagers called “Living Healthy Lives with Technology”. In this lesson, our youth identified their values based on their personal importance and strategized about how to live a more balanced life with technology, as well as developed strategies on how to compile resources and tools for effectively managing their own time with technology. Youth then explored their level of commitment to the effective strategies they want to incorporate into their lives to achieve a more balanced approach to using technology.

These experiences culminated in student-led discussions in weeks four and five about advocacy and deeper research into policies related to protecting teenagers who use social media from big tech companies. To showcase what they learned, our youth created advocacy videos to bring awareness to the legislation they researched and commitment videos focusing on tools they want to implement in balancing tech-use.