We collaborate with partners across Canada and the Americas to co-create innovative, collaborative, community-led research projects across 3 integrated areas of research. Working alongside young people and their communities, we explore and illuminate their experiences within contexts of emerging digital and ecological challenges. Together, we co-design engagement, training, and knowledge sharing activities rooted in intergenerational exchange and learning, with the aim of: 1. investigating youth wellbeing within these contexts; and 2. co-developing unique educational tools that support youth wellbeing as they navigate these quickly shifting contexts.

Our 3 Integrated Areas of Research are:

Projects & Partnerships

1. Youth & The Digital Age

At the Young Lives Research Lab, we explore the vast and intersecting impacts of digital technology on youth wellbeing, education, and sustainable living. We currently support a number of projects designed to address and better understand the “digital paradox” within youth are living, where technology acts as both a powerful tool and a potential threat to young people’s mental health and overall wellbeing. With international partnerships and a youth-centered approach, we generate new insights into how young people navigate these emerging digital spaces and challenges.

Our work prioritizes the voices and lived experiences of young people, integrating their insights into studies on digital media’s role in their daily lives. From the impacts of social media to the influence of emerging technologies like AI and algorithmic profiling, our research aims to understand and address the pressures youth face. Through an intercultural and intergenerational lens, we co-design with youth resources that help them engage with digital media more safely and effectively.

Partnerships

We work with partners all across Canada and around the world in our efforts to better understand, uplift and protect young people in digital spaces. Current digital tech-focused partners include:

2. Education for Youth Wellbeing

Our research is dedicated to co-developing educational initiatives with young people that equip them to thrive within today’s interconnected and ever-changing digital, social, and ecological landscapes. Through a collaborative approach, we work with young people and their chosen community members in co-designing educational tools, training, and mentoring programs grounded in relevance, culture, context and lived experiences. Our work provides inclusive spaces for young people to actively shape the learning resources and experiences they desire, fostering resilience, empowerment, digital literacy, and environmental stewardship.

Through direct engagement with youth and their chosen communities, we co-develop innovative educational content that reflects the complexities of young people’s lives, offering training in practical skills that support personal, community, and planetary wellbeing. Our participatory approach not only produces responsive, youth-centered educational materials but also creates pathways for young people to gain leadership and advocacy experience through ‘train the trainer’ models and opportunities for peer engagement and mentorship. By integrating intergenerational learning and cultural sensitivity, our projects empower youth to contribute meaningfully to educational practices and policy frameworks as we strive to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely SDG #4, Quality Education.

Partnerships

We work with diverse partners in our education-focused research and engagement, ranging from academics, universities and policy-makers to grassroots community organizations and youth groups. Together we bring critical expertise, experience and understandings in areas of need, aspects of accessibility and equity, innovations in education, and methods of youth and community engagement to empower young people through transformative learning experiences. Some of our current education-focused partners include:

3. Youth & Planetary Wellbeing

The concepts of human and planetary wellbeing vary across cultures, contexts, and generations but in every setting humans from around the globe seek a sense of balance, security, and support in their daily lives. In the Indigenous language of Mapudungun, Küme Mongen represents the concept of living well and in balance. For tens of thousands of years, the Cosmovisions and worldviews of Indigenous and Tribal peoples have identified the importance of our individual and communal wellbeing and the impacts of important connections between human health and wellbeing and that of the natural world.

Our work seeks to understand and incorporate traditional aspects of wellbeing in our modern society, and to support young people in understanding what wellbeing means to them, what factors help or hinder this, and how the social systems that make up their daily activities and interactions can work to encourage a positive state of being.

Partnerships

We collaborate with a diverse network of national and international partners to drive local and global research and initiatives around concepts and emerging issues of youth and planetary wellbeing. Through interdisciplinary and cross-cultural partnerships, we integrate youth perspectives, intergenerational understandings, Indigenous knowledge, and socio-ecological insights, fostering innovative approaches to address these challenges. Our collaborations support the co-development of educational tools, policy recommendations, and research that empower youth, promote sustainable practices, and contribute to building equitable, youth-centered futures worldwide.

Some of our current planetary wellbeing focused partners include:

The Young Lives Research Lab has partnered with Young People and the Anthropocene, a global group of academics and activists who are working towards better understanding our current global era and the way young people and their communities are living within it. A recent conference in Bilbao, Spain allowed collaborators to come together in sharing knowledge and committing to action in moving towards just transitions to support Planetary Health.  Kate Tilleczek presents Knowing Global Youth in/of the Anthropocene in the video above.