Keegan Lee, author of “60 Days of Disconnect,” talks about the connection social media has on our collective sense of self-control.

Sam Micio questions why there is a significant decline in face to face socialization these days.

Vishnupriya, Apurba & Rainar offer some practical insight and steps to help keep your privacy a priority.

Hear about Susan’s Experience at the first Sync Digital Wellbeing Summit held in Saudi Arabia!

Introducing and Congratulating this Year’s LookUp Innovator Challenge Awardees!

How do we use social media as a tool? First, we have to understand our purpose for using social media. Is it to interact with friends? Is it to gain an audience? Is it to find an online space where you feel safe to express yourself? Whatever the reason may be, the first and most crucial step is to understand why.

Mark, if you’re reading this, let us at LookUp hold the megaphone to the young voices you should hear…

Some aspects of “the new internet” sound compelling: for instance, “teleportation,” “connection,” and “reducing my carbon footprint” - sign me up! But as recent history has shown us, a healthy human psyche, both of the individual and the collective, consistently plays out at odds with the corporate values that profit big tech - “move fast and break things.”

LookUp Announces a new Executive Director! We are thrilled to introduce you to Sam Carpenter, LookUp’s new Executive Director, our next gen leader who will bring her energy and enthusiasm for youth and LookUp’s mission to empower and amplify youth leaders who are creating a healthy, safe and responsible digital world..

CONCORD, MA– A youth-led movement is building to reimagine and redesign a digital world in which young people can genuinely thrive. Embracing the power of youth, two leading forces, LookUp, a nonprofit social venture, and the creators of the Netflix Docu-drama, The Social Dilemma, are teaming up to host the second annual Youth 4 Youth iSummit (Y4Y iSummit), October 14-17th, 2021.

I have a 13-year-old sister named Kohen. She’s always been mindful when it comes to balancing her screen time with her everyday tasks. She’s responsible, conscientious about how much time she interacts on social media, and observant of what’s truly important.

It was in mid-2020 when I realised something was not okay with me. I was unable to keep track of time. Most -nights, just before bed, I would find myself rubbing my head, thinking that one more day was wasted without anything productive happening.

Social media is growing an importance in people’s daily routine. According to a survey by Global Social Media research in August 2020, 3.96 billion people in the world are using social media in 2020. More than 85 percent of the total youth population, ages 15-29 years old, are using one or multiple social media platforms across the globe.

Slight levels of paranoia in societies have been proven to be an evolutionary benefit if properly prioritized and managed to alert a risk. We live under distributed and centralized data processors that are fed by the sacrifice of our autonomy, privacy and, to some extent, our individuality as algorithms are artifacted in order to have political and commercial power over our individual choices.

As I sit here with the thought of graduation looming over me, over a year later reflecting on my time spent in this dystopian and mundane pandemic world we were all forced into, I can’t help but acknowledge how fortunate I feel to have found a community such as LookUp.

How many times in a day have you found yourself looking at your mobile but not really sure why you started in the first place? How many times you go on to your favourite app to search for a video, which you do find, but end up getting stuck in a vortex of video recommendations from which you cannot just walk away?

The technology in our lives can be so helpful; it has literally changed the world. Communication systems are so mind blowing these days that you can be connected with the world 24/7. But this makes me so agitated because it prevents me from concentrating on things fully. What if there is an important email that needs my immediate attention? A text I might have that’s urgent. Is someone calling me and not able to reach me? Have I put my phone on silent by mistake? All these thoughts constantly distract me. It feels like I am forced to be alert, and active all the time.

We live in a world where fake news is expanding 6X faster than the truth. Advertisers are the customers and the users are the product being sold. And it’s free. You’re being sold every single day.

Let’s see the full picture.

On May 1st, LookUp lost one of our most ardent champions, Ann Reynolds, Co-Founder and Believer in Chief. Ann believed in LookUp’s mission. Truly believed. As a life-long educator and youth advocate, she knew that if we tapped into the energy, courage, creativity, and first-hand experience of students - then we could create a more authentic, humane, and kind society for generations to come.