Explore the innate links between social media, mental health, radicalization, and neuroplasticity.
How can teaching kids and teens about healthy breakups, finding beauty in everyday experiences, or recognizing and coping with guilt, shame, and humiliation end such a vast social-political problem as interpersonal violence? To illustrate our approach, we will explore the innate links between social media, mental health, radicalization, and neuroplasticity. Daring conversations and cultivating emotional agility, accountability, and belonging are the most effective ways to end violence.
Amy Collins (she/her) has been a consultant with Nest since 2015 and joined Nest as Director of Programs in 2022. She is also an adjunct professor who is humbled and honored to instruct the next generation of thought-leaders and change-makers. Amy has her Master's in the Art of Teaching (MAT) and is a doctoral student (Ed.D.) specializing in organizational change. She has over 20 years of experience in social justice, health promotion, and violence prevention, utilizing a restorative and transformative justice framework. Amy is a mother, a cyclist, a baking and cooking enthusiast, and an unapologetic bookworm, often found at baseball games hoping for the wave to pass through her section.
Learn MoreArie Kruglanski is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, where he directs the Motivated Cognition Laboratory at the Department of Psychology. Among the projects the lab is currently pursuing are violent extremism, political activism, the quest for significance, coping with uncertainty, and closed-mindedness. The research uses a variety of methods, including lab experiments, neuroscience techniques, computer modeling, text analyses, and surveys. The laboratory collaborates closely with the Sapienza University of Rome (in Italy); the Jagiellonian University (in Krakow, Poland); the University of Groningen (in the Netherlands); Nanyang Technological University (in Singapore); and New York University Abu Dhabi.
Learn MoreAbbie Richards is a TikToker and TikTok disinformation researcher. She specializes in understanding how misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extremism spread on TikTok and creates educational content which explains these complex issues to a wider audience. She believes that understanding our new world of information is a right, not a privilege, and should therefore be as accessible as possible. So she puts it on TikTok. She's amassed a multi-platform following of over half a million people who are interested in learning about these issues. Abbie is currently pursuing her MSc. where she studies the intersection of climate change and disinformation and she is a co-founder of EcoTok, an environmental Tiktok collective that specializes in social media-based climate communication.
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