Natasha Devon MBE is a writer & activist. She tours schools, colleges, universities and events throughout the world, delivering talks as well as conducting research on mental health, body image, gender and social equality. She campaigns both on and offline to make the world a fairer place. Her current projects are the Mental Health Media Charter and Where’s Your Head At? which aims to change the law to protect the mental health of British workers.
Voices
Preston Seraph
“He is glorifying shooting somebody who is part of LGBT which is gross in itself but then I looked at the comments… And to the people that think this is ok, we’re stronger than you. The more that you do this, the more that we stand in unity”
Watch the live chat with Preston and the film’s director Liz Smith in the run up to the United Nations Association Film Festival where Preston represented the film.
Noella
“Generation Z is the one who is so ready to fight against every injustice for the betterment of each other’s lives”
KYRIE MCDEVITT
“10 seconds after I took this video a police officer threw a mace bomb at my feet, but I have my safety goggles on, bitch. Ha!”
LUCY RYDELL
“Millennials may have invented social media, but Gen Z is the one who weaponised it!”
EVELYN MEYER
“This app has fucked my self esteem up so badly, because everytime I see a girl on here who looks like me, she always looks like but like the better version of me and it fucking dah!”
Alex Bartner
“I have this idea in my head, I’d love to be with someone and have our story be that we actually met in person. That’s something I hold close to my heart”
Alec Martin
“I don’t think people understand how powerful people who were born after 1995 are. They just don’t care about anything. Like if there was a Hunger Games, the gays and the girls would just get together and just sit there. Cops are throwing tear gas at people at protests – people are just picking it up and throwing it back or hitting back with a tennis racket”
LILY ROSENTHALL
“I’m completely aware of the fact that tiktok is responsible for 95% of my mental illness but I’m also completely aware of the fact That tiktok is the reason for 95% of my mental Stability. Because y’all are funny sometimes y’all put me in a good mood. Y’all like ha ha laugh funny – That’s what you guys are. But you guys are also turning tiktok into 2016 Tumblr, Which I do not like at all, so, stop!”
KENZIE CARTER
“I’m not going to lie, trying to date or talk to anybody in this generation or world in honestly worse than wearing a fucking wet sock”
KYRIE MCDEVITT
“10 seconds after I took this video a police officer threw a mace bomb at my feet, but I have my safety goggles on, bitch. Ha!”
LUCY APPLETON
“I’m a 1997 baby so people argue that I am a Gen Z, people argue that I am a millenial. I actually want to be part of the Gen Z movement. It’s about accepting everyone and I really do feel that that’s the way Gen Z is going.”
ANYA CIARNIELLO
“I am seeing highly competitive people with eating disorders not only broadcasting their eating disorders in way innapropriate ways in their videos but then continuing to compete with people about their eating disorders in the comments”
ANDREA ABELLO
“You can go down this rabbit hole. Suddenly its been 25 minutes and you’ve clicked on somebody’s profile and they’ve tagged somebody, they’ve tagged their boyfriend’s sister. I don’t know this person, they have no bearing on my happiness and suddenly I feel, you know, shitty”
ZACH
“One downside to Silicon Valley, all the technology, is that it makes it a lot easier to spread racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, xenophobic propaganda – things that are just really not good and we don’t want”
Tim Kendall
Former Director of Monetization at Facebook & Former President of Pinterest
“If technology knows me better than I know myself those questions about who has agency, the answers to those become really confusing.”
Tim is the former President of Pinterest. At various points, he led product development, engineering, marketing and sales. Prior to Pinterest, Tim was Facebook’s Director of Monetization, where he led the development of Facebook’s advertising business. Tim serves on the board of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, where he’s recently focused on their mental health strategy. He earned his engineering degree and MBA from Stanford University.
NATASHA DEVON MBE
MENTAL HEALTH ACTIVIST & RESEARCHER
“The one area other than body image of mental health where I think you can see an actual causal link is in the rise of perfectionism”
JAMIE BARTLETT
Journalist and Author of "The People v Tech"
“The power of Silicon Valley is far too big for one person to do anything about but it’s not too big for 10 million people to do anything about”.
Jamie Bartlett is a British author and journalist, primarily for The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph. He was a Senior Fellow at Demos and was the Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos until 2017.
In 2014, Bartlett released his first full-length book, “The Dark Net”. The book discusses the darknet and dark web in broad terms, describing a range of underground and emergent subcultures, including social media racists, cam girls, self harm communities, darknet drugmarkets, cryptoanarchists and transhumanists.
Bartlett has frequently written about online extremism and free speech, as well as social media trends in Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook. In 2017, he published his second book “Radicals Chasing Utopia”, which covered fringe political movements including transhumanism, psychedelic societies and anarcho-capitalism. He also presented the two part BBC Two series The Secrets of Silicon Valley.
Bartlett’s third book, “The People Vs Tech”, was released in 2018. It argued that “our fragile political system is being threatened by the digital revolution”.
In 2019 he co-wrote and presented the BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen, which investigated the disappearance of Dr Ruja Ignatova, founder of the fake cryptocurrency OneCoin. The podcast also examines how OneCoin operates, and its human and social cost.
DR PAUL MARSDEN
CHARTERED PSYCHOLOGIST
“The biggest digital disruption is the one that is actually happening in our heads, it is changing our expectations, it is changing our relationships and one of the biggest changes that we’ve seen is an expectation of instant gratification”
Paul is a consumer psychologist. He lectures on consumer trends and consumer psychology at the business school of the London College of Fashion, where he also researches the phenomenon of “enclothed cognition” – the psychological impact of our clothes on how we think.
He is a chartered psychologist, chartered by the British Psychological Society and his PhD focused on online psychological research techniques. He co-founded Brainjuicer PLC (now System1 Group), a research company that uses online psychological techniques to understand consumers.
CLIVE THOMPSON
TECH JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR OF "CODERS"
Clive Thompson is a long-time writer on how technology and science affect everyday life. He is a monthly columnist for Wired magazine , a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, and a columnist on the history of technology for Smithsonian. He is a former Knight Science Journalism Fellow, and can be reached online via his website or on Twitter.
Clive Thompson is author of “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better” and “Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World”.
PAUL M. BARRETT
Deputy Director, Center for Business and Human Rights. NYU STERN
Paul Barrett is the deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He joined the Center in September 2017 after working for more than three decades as a journalist and author focusing on the intersection of business, law, and society. Most recently, he worked for 12 years for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine, where he served at various times as the editor of an award-winning investigative team and a writer covering topics such as energy and the environment, military procurement, and the civilian firearm industry. From 1986 to 2005, he wrote for The Wall Street Journal, serving as the newspaper’s Supreme Court corespondent and later as the page one special projects editor.
Paul is the author of four critically acclaimed nonfiction books, the most recent of which are GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun, a New York Times Bestseller, and THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win. Both of those books were optioned for Hollywood movies.
At the Center for Business and Human Rights, Paul has focused primarily on researching and writing a series of reports on the role and obligations of the social media industry in a democracy. Specific topics have included the problems of foreign and domestic disinformation, the consequences of outsourced content moderation, and the debate over the liability of social media platforms for content posted by their users.
Since 2008, Paul has served as an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law. He co-
teaches a seminar called “Law, Economics, and Journalism,” in which students learn to analyse social issues with the tools of those three professions.
Paul has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. from Harvard College.
JONNY TOOZE
FOUNDER OF LAB, NEUROMARKETING DIGITAL AGENCY
“Automation, AI, these things are already with us. They’re only going to get better over time, which means there won’t be a need for a huge amount of the jobs that we have”
Jonny is a successful entrepreneur and public speaker, actively helping to shape and influence the digital industry in the UK.
Jonny founded his first digital business and was pitching to VCs when he was eighteen. In 2003, Jonny founded LAB, which has grown to be one of the UK’s leading independent digital agency groups, working with a range of household brands on their digital strategy and execution. LAB Group has offices in London, Kent, and Cape Town.
Jonny has been hooked on digital from the start of his career and has regularly won awards for his industry involvement, including BIMA 100 six years running and The Drum Digerati.
He is passionate about creativity, leadership, psychology and emerging technology.
He also runs an advisory service for agencies outside of LAB Group. You can get in touch with Jonny on twitter or catch up with Lab via the website or on twitter.
MARC ATHERTON
CHARTERED PSYCHOLOGIST AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENTIST
“That allows them to create a hugely effective behaviour change capability which you have virtually no defence against because it attacks you at a subconscious level”
Marc is a Chartered Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist who came to pyschology via an initial career working with young people in community settings.
His journey since then has traversed many areas of applying psychology and behavioural science in solving complex real-world challenges at the intersection of people and technology. Recent work has focussed on the intersection of people, cognitive technology and mental health & wellbeing.
He believes in the potential of the internet and other cognitive technologies to improve the lives of people and society in a profound way if employed within a positive and empowering philosophy. Marc chairs the Royal Aeronautical Society annual international Aircrew Mental Health conference as one way of raising the issue of psychological wellbeing as a core right of individuals in our fast paced, technological society.
Dr David Halpern
Associate Producer
“One of the key changes in the digital world is the ability to test and refine those techniques whether you know it or not, most consumers are continually being subject to experiments”
David Halpern is the Chief Executive of the Behavioural Insights Team. David has led the team since its inception in 2010. Prior to that, David was the first Research Director of the Institute for Government and between 2001 and 2007 was the Chief Analyst at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. David was also appointed as the What Works National Advisor in July 2013. He supports the What Works Network and leads efforts to improve the use of evidence across government.
Before entering government, David held tenure at Cambridge and posts at Oxford and Harvard. He has written several books and papers on areas relating to behavioural insights and well-being, including Social Capital (2005), the Hidden Wealth of Nations (2010), Online Harms and Manipulation (2019) and co-author of the MINDSPACE report. In 2015, David wrote a book about the team entitled Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference.
KATHY SHEEHAN
SVP Cassandra, research group studying young people
“Some of the rules haven’t been sorted out like understanding a relationship in this new world of social and digital media”
Kathy is the Senior Vice President at Cassandra, an insights and strategy consultancy that studies and anticipates youth-driven market shifts.
Dr Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
“If you look today at kid’s engagement with the crises of our day, if you look at gun violence, if you look at climate change, who is actually speaking up and screaming about it? It’s kids, it’s Gen Z, it’s millennials. It’s not us, we’ve messed it up”
Dr. Tracy A. Dennis-Tiwary, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at The City University of New York, where she conducts NIH-funded research on teen anxiety, suicide risk, and the impact of technology on well-being. She has served as an advisor for ABC and Universal Kids, has been featured in media outlets from the New York Times to The Today Show, and explores emotional risk and resilience in her Psychology Today blog More than a Feeling. She is Co-founder of Wise Therapeutics, which translates cutting-edge science into digital tools that democratize access to mental healthcare, and Co-Executive Director of the Center for Health Technology at Hunter College, where the mission is to bridge the healthcare gap and reduce health disparities in NYC and beyond. In her forthcoming book with Harper Wave, Future Tense: Making Anxiety Our Superpower, she argues for the radical idea that anxiety is not the enemy – it can be our ally.
DR JACK LEWIS
Neuroscientist
“Social cooling I think is one of the greatest threats to childhood happiness that the technology world has brought upon us.”
Jack is a neuroscientist, television personality and author. He received his doctorate in neuroscience in 2005 and his post-doctoral research was published in 2010 in the prestigious Journal of Neuroscience.
Jack has presented and consulted on numerous television series, sharing the very latest insights into how the brain works with audiences around the world.
Cutting edge and insightful, he applies academic thinking behind practical techniques to proactively improve brain function.
Professor Sir Simon Wessely
Professor of Psyhcological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry
“It’s in young women from about 16 to the age of 24 where there has been a true population increase in anxiety and depression rising from around 18% to 24%, which doesn’t sound very much but actually in population terms it is quite substantial and it’s definitely new.”
Simon is professor of psychological medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London and head of its department of psychological medicine, vice dean for academic psychiatry, teaching and training at the Institute of Psychiatry, as well as Director of the King’s Centre for Military Health Research. He is also honorary consultant psychiatrist at King’s College Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital, as well as civilian consultant advisor in psychiatry to the British Army. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to military healthcare and to psychological medicine. From 2014 to 2017, he was the elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
BARBARA TSAI NAVARRO
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST
“We can’t have a lifeguard at every pond and river and pool and spot of water so we have to teach our kids how to swim”
Barbara Tsai Navarro, OTR/L is a Mental Health Occupational Therapist in California and CEO & CoFounder at HAERT Program, an online prevention-based Mental Wellness curriculum for teens and young adults. She works with Silicon Valley adolescents and adults, teaching them the skills and strategies to manage anxiety, depression and substance dependency and to develop emotional resilience. Barbara also trains educators and Occupational Therapists to incorporate the curriculum into their own lessons and interventions.
Barbara has a B.A. in Psychology from University of California, Davis, a Master of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and an M.S. in Occupational Therapy from San Jose State University.
DR LESLIE CARR
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST
“To be able to carry out our dreams it requires, concentration, it requires follow through, it requires the ability to think deeply about things, none of those things are possible when we are constantly distracted”
Leslie is a clinical psychologist who’s an expert in human development and the impact of technology on the brain. She’s passionate about educating the public about issues related to mental health and mental illness.