Sarah Kanowski

And then they would help me to understand maybe, yes, I made contributions to that problem, but I can make choices now that help me to walk away from it and also help to take other people with me.

Yeah, I mean, initially, I tried to approach it from what the research told me to do.

And then young people told me it sucked.

So I had to really get back to the drawing board and actually listen to them, right, and ask them questions and get curious about what their world looks like.

Because when I wrote the first program, it was based on what I thought would be helpful for a 16-year-old Dave.

But Dave, being 35 or 36 years old at the time, hadn't been 16 for 20 years, you know.

So it was such a different world.

And in those 20 years, so much had changed, especially in the online space and those social worlds that young people are experiencing.

So I just went back and said, OK, I've stuffed up here.

You have let me know that.

Let's talk about it.

What do I need to do different and what do I not understand about your world?

And then I just started constructing the conversations around...

not knowing anything.

I had frameworks, right, talking about rigid gendered ideas, like what does it mean to be a man or what is masculinity all about?

What is femininity all about?

Tell me about that.

But it wasn't like this is what it is and this is what it is and this is what you believe, therefore you need to change.

Because they knew way more than I did.

And if I stand there and try and tell them I already know, we don't get anywhere.