Thriving Youth in a Digital World: Conference Introduction

Youth-Nex and Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE) hosted a national conference on October 8th and 9th, 2024 on "Thriving Youth in a Digital World: Understanding the Role of Digital Technology in Positive Youth Development."
This video introduces the conference topic and content focus.
Conference Description: When you picture a teenager in 2024, the chances are good that you picture them with a cell phone. From TikTok to text threads, we hear a lot about young people’s uses of digital technology. At the same time, we know that young people have been experiencing increasing rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles. Often these two trends are talked about collectively and assumed to be joined at the hip. Yet the research is more complicated than often presented. Social media, cell phones, and other emerging technologies are a context in which youth are developing. It is important for adults to understand how youth are engaging technologies in terms of not only technology’s impact but also its potential, both positive and negative. At this conference, attendees heard from youth, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers about how youth are using technology in their day-to-day lives, digital technologies’ potential role in youth mental health equity, and how policy makers are thinking about digital technology in relation to supporting healthy youth development.
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Conference website: youthnexdrive....
Youth-Nex homepage: education.virgi...
TYDE homepage: tyde.virginia....