Navigating the digital maze: Dhahran summit seeks solutions for youth wellbeing online

Do you know anything about Carson Bride from Portland, Oregon? Here was a promising young life cut short tragically by vicious attacks of cyberbullying. Do we want this future for our children? Carson's life was celebrated and the message that young users are always vulnerable on social media resonated far and wide on the very first day of the recently-held Sync Digital Wellbeing Summit 2024 at the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, as Carson's mother Kristin Bride recalled what it has been like to live with the unspeakable trauma of losing a son. The American teen had worked hard to get a summer job. His family was proud of him. All was well — until it wasn't. One fateful night in 2020, Carson returned home, had dinner and scribbled his work schedule on the kitchen calendar. The next morning, he was gone. To her horror, the grieving Kristin quickly learned that her son was at the receiving end of hundreds of negative, harassing and sexually explicit messages on an app by his high school friends. Kristin has since become a vocal advocate for cyberbullying prevention. She has diligently railed against big tech's apparently unscrupulous, profit-driven practices through their continuous launch of new digital products and platforms without adequate regulation and accountability. Carson was one of the star speakers at the Sync Digital Wellbeing Summit, a gathering of tech wizards, scientists, social media reformists, authors, AI experts, psychologists, child healthcare specialists and hundreds of attendees from all over the globe. In a moment of profound irony, Kristin found herself on stage alongside Steve Wozniak. But "Woz," the co-founder of Apple, proved to be just the perfect match for her in a conference of this nature, which aims to unite the global community in reflecting on not just the dreams but also the deterrents to the growth of technology and provide solutions to an empowering and ethical digital future. Wozniak, who firmly believes in ‘digital positivity’, brought the house down when he deadpanned, “I often like to say that those of us who brought this digital world should be executed.”

But then, the gentle Woz, like the rest of us, has been condemned to live in such a world. That's his punishment. Yet, at the two-day Sync Digital Wellbeing Summit 2024 that took place on May 22-23, it wasn't just Woz who grabbed the headlines. Among the panoply of voices, one stands out — the Bahrain-based social media influencer, Omar Farooq. His powerful and at times, unintentionally amusing documentary, The Dark Side of Japan, wowed audiences. The film's credo encapsulates the essence of the Sync Summit's mission — exploring whether Japan's unhealthy obsession with technology offers a glimpse into the world's collective future and what insights and lessons its darker aspects might hold for us. Watching The Dark Side of Japan with a packed audience at a theatre in King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, popularly known as Ithra, we see a predominantly young crowd hooting and cheering throughout the screening. It's a testament to Farooq's rockstar-like popularity (he is truly a social media phenom, boasting 3.9 million followers on Instagram). With record numbers of young Japanese experiencing the detrimental consequences of their excessive dependence on technology (after all, this is a nation infamous for its anime obsession, cuddle cafes for the lonely hearts, high suicide rates and a unique social isolation phenomenon often referred to as 'Hikikomori') the movie immerses us in a mindset that urges us to approach social media with caution. It prompts us to question whether we can truly regain the lives or identities we have lost amidst the relentless march of technology. The documentary is told through Farooq's eyes and features his voiceover. Few countries in the world are as tethered to technology as Japan, where social media has been identified both as its strength and scourge. So it's refreshing to hear one Japanese interviewee remark that he finds greater happiness in the simple joys of life. “We don't need much to be happy. We are much happier with less,” the man observes, as he tries to navigate the intricacies of the digital world, especially its effects on children and impressionable minds.

Like mental wellness, digital welfare is fast becoming a buzzword as younger users from Riyadh to Rome and New York to Nice Tik-Tok their way to an online mega-verse in the hope of finding a sense of comfort, solace, happiness, round-the-clock entertainment, validation, motivation and even inspiration in what is essentially just a glorified bubble. In our rapidly digitalised world, bombarded by notifications and like buttons, social media anxieties, the need for data management, click-baiting content, the peer pressure to conform to viral trends or engage in slacktivism, the spread of misinformation and major advances in the Internet of Things including gaming, Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), striking a middle ground between our real lives and online personas is more crucial than ever. At the Sync Summit, one of the takeaways turned out to be that digital wellbeing goes beyond just screen time management or avoiding harmful content. It encompasses a broader perspective, including fostering healthy online interactions, using it as a cultural tool, making a conscious effort to spread positivity and kindness through your digital platforms even though you are hiding behind a screen of anonymity, challenging and condemning negative emotions, embracing and learning from the technology's educative aspects and basically, being a good digital citizen, or ‘digital sheriff’, as the zeitgeist has it.