Beyond the Buzzword: Demystifying "The Algorithm" & Its Impact on Youth Mental Health

This session will provide participants with a radical safe space to discuss and learn about the impact of social media on youth mental health and dive into the nuances that we often neglect to pay attention to when talking about Gen z's relationship to social media. We will talk about the intersection between social media and the systematic and intentional equating of people with profit, capitalization upon vulnerability, and how to build solidarity, find community, and create change.

Audience members will leave the session with knowledge about:

• How social media serves as a site for communal care and safety-building for youth
• How big tech exploits youth vulnerability for profit, especially around mental health
• The connection between systemic injustices within other institutions, such as the American healthcare system, and systemic injustices on social media
• What kind of policies and regulations are needed to ensure social media is safe, equitable, and beneficial

Storytelling as Collective Healing

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the benefits of creative and culturally responsive storytelling practices such as spoken word poetry, journaling, narrative fiction, oral history recitation, and memoir writing in mental healthcare. Attendees will learn that expressing one’s lived mental health experiences through storytelling can promote healthy identity-exploration and affect systemic change, while learning how to craft their own lived experience narratives. This session also incorporates spoken word poetic elements in which Sophie shares her own story about how writing poetry while institutionalized saved her life and gave her purpose through advocacy to inspire audience members to engage in their own storytelling and change making practices.

Performance Poetry

Sophie performs spoken word poetry at events on topics ranging from suicide prevention to youth empowerment to political inaugurations.