SNF Dialogues: Social media and Social change

😀 or ☹️ or 🤮 or 😈 or 💩 or BTW CMO but 👍 not.

We now have thousands of ways to talk, to express ourselves, to participate, to reach one another, to communicate, to criticize, to spread news, to learn, and to share. We pick up our smartphones more than 80 times a day and stare at their screens for an average of 2.5 hours, reaching everywhere, talking to everyone, listening to anyone. Our relationships have taken on a digital dimension, and so have our emotions.

Ideally, social networks are an easy place to “meet,” to be entertained, to exchange views. But they can quickly turn into toxic environments of intimidation, misguidance, and misinformation, especially for the youngest and most vulnerable among us. There is, unfortunately, mounting evidence pointing to a link between social media use and depression. But how did social media go from being a technological marvel that would facilitate human connection to a threat to our mental health?

SNF Dialogues, as part of the 2022 SNF Nostos Conference on health, will talk with young people from around the globe about social media and the mental imprint it’s leaving on their generation, the so-called “Generation Social.”

The Dialogues discussion will take place on Friday, June 24 at 17:00 (EEST) on the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.

The SNF Dialogues are curated and moderated by Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou and are held through journalism nonprofit iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development).

*The opinions expressed by Dialogues participants, whether representing officially institutions and organizations or themselves, are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) or iMEdD. Speakers’ remarks are made freely, without prior guidance or intervention from the team.