FINISHED FILE

AMERICAN INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH

SEPTEMBER 26, 2018

1:50 P.M. ET

YOUTH DON'T NEED TO BE FIXED:

STRATEGIC FRAMING FOR MESSAGING ON POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

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>> XAN YOUNG: Welcome, everyone. It's the top of the hour, 

so we'll go ahead and get started. Welcome to today's webinar, 

titled "Youth Don't Need to Be Fixed: Strategic Framing for 

Messaging on Positive Youth Development." This webinar is being 

recorded and will be available for later viewing on the 

youth.gov website.

This webinar is being hosted by the Interagency Working 

Group on Youth Programs on behalf of all the federal partner 

departments and agencies, which support programs and services 

focusing on youth.

In a moment, my copresenters and I will introduce 

ourselves, but first, Okori Christopher, our technology 

specialist, will give us a quick overview of the technology 

we're using and logistics. 

>> OKORI CHRISTOPHER: Good day, everyone. Thank you for 

joining us. For those who are not familiar, this is Adobe 

Connect. This is our webinar platform. Today's recording, as 

Xan mentioned, will be shared via the LISTSERV or via email 

after the meeting is concluded. We will also have the 
presentation available in a little bit. We're just making sure 

that we have a shareable version.

For those who have questions as it relates to the 

presentation, please use the Q&A pod that's directly under Xan's 

picture. That's how you will submit questions to us. If you 

have technical questions, I ask that you put "technical" in the 

beginning of it, that way I will screen it, and for questions 

that go directly to our presenters, you can just ask the 

question as is.

Our closed captioning pod, as you can see, is right below 

the presentation. If there are any questions or any technical 

issues that you have, please do not hesitate to contact us via 

the Q&A pod. With that, I'll turn it back over to Xan. 

>> XAN YOUNG: Great. Thank you. Well, on to 

introductions. My name is Xan Young, and I'm a senior TA 

consultant here at American Institutes for Research. I work 

with community members, professionals, and organizations to 

promote policy, practice, and system changes with the goal of 

improving the lives of youth as well as other people across the 

life span.

Through my work with various federally funded TTA centers, 

including CDC’s Youth Violence Prevention TA Center, I've had 

the honor and opportunity to witness firsthand how programs and 

interventions are strengthened when they involve and engage 

youth as equal partners, generating benefits for the program 

that involve youth and ultimately the broader community.

Michelle Stergio and Michael Baran will be copresenting 

with me today, so, Michelle, would you like to introduce 

yourself? 

>> MICHELLE STERGIO: Sure. Thank you, Xan. I'm Michelle 

Stergio, digital and social media specialist at AIR. I have 

over 20 years' experience in digital marketing, 11 years 

specifically in social media. My past includes stints at the 

New York Times, Conde Nast, and nonprofits like New York City 

Economic Development Corporation and Montgomery County Office of 

Partnership and Community Services.

I have been here at AIR now for two years, and I support 

the different practice areas here at AIR with the social media 

and digital. 

>> XAN YOUNG: Michael. 

>> MICHAEL BARAN: Thanks, Michelle. So, my name is Michael 

Baran. I'm a principal researcher here at AIR and a cultural 

anthropologist by training, just enough cognitive psychology 

training also to be dangerous. What I do is conduct deep 

cultural ethnographic research into patterns of thinking and 

daily practices of people in order to then use that formative 

research to improve communications, interventions, and outreach 

on a whole wide variety of issues, including a lot of issues 

specifically related to children and youth.

Before coming to AIR a few years ago, I worked at a 
nonprofit called the FrameWorks Institute, which specifically 

focuses on formative research and message framing, and a lot of 

the research that I'm going to present today and examples that 

I'll present later are going to come specifically from work that 

I did there and work that that organization continues to do as 

well. 

>> XAN YOUNG: Great. Thanks, Michael.

So we'll start off by discussing positive youth development 

in general so that those of you who are new to the concept will 

understand what we're talking about, and, in fact, one of the 

things I'll cover is how people are talking about it, the 

language people involved in PYD programs tend to use when trying 

to explain the principles underlying the positive youth 

development approach and why it's important. And throughout 

this presentation, we'll refer to positive youth development as 

PYD for short, just to save time and simplify things.

I'll move through this part quickly because this content 

may be familiar to many of you, and for those of you who want 

more information, you can find a wealth of materials and links 

to additional resources about PYD on the youth.gov website.

After I speak, Michelle will describe the way people are 

communicating about PYD via social media, so we can see what 

that conversation looks like on those channels, including what 

drives it and how it has changed over time.

Then Michael will explain how culture plays a role in 

strategic message framing, and we'll describe cultural barriers 

that can inhibit our ability to communicate effectively about 

PYD.

And finally, Michael will wrap up with some specific 

suggestions about ways to increase understanding of and buy-in 

for PYD.

So, by the end of this webinar, you'll have a better sense 

of how to more effectively communicate with stakeholders, 

particularly people who fund or work at youth-serving 

organizations, to help them understand PYD and adopt a PYD 

approach. 

Okay. So, let's get started. If you've spent much time 

talking with people about PYD, you've probably found that 

definitions of it vary. What you see here is a definition of 

PYD that can be found on the youth.gov website. For those of 

you unfamiliar with youth.gov, the site was created by the

Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs to provide resources 

to help youth-serving organizations and community partnerships 

plan, implement, and participate in effective programs for 

youth. I'll go ahead and read this definition to you since some 

of you are only participating by phone right now.

It says a PYD is an intentional prosocial approach that: 

Engages youth within their communities, schools, organizations, 

peer groups, and families in a manner that is productive and 

constructive; recognizes, utilizes, and enhances young people's 
strengths; and promotes positive outcomes for young people by 

providing opportunities, fostering positive relationships, and 

furnishing the support needed to build on their leadership 

strengths. 

So personally, I'm glad to have that definition on the 

screen in front of me because I might have some difficulty 

remembering to say all of that if I were in, say, an elevator 

conversation with someone about PYD. You've probably heard 

people talk about elevator speeches, and it's this idea that we 

should be able to communicate a clear brief message on a topic 

of importance to us, something that gets across, like, the main 

idea in less than 30 seconds, or about the time it would take 

someone to ride from the top of a building to the bottom in an 

elevator. So, we were interested in finding out a little bit 

about what people actually say when they're communicating out 

loud about PYD in conversation. 

We decided to interview people who've been actively 

involved in PYD programs and policies, people who've thought 

deeply about PYD, to see how they describe PYD when they try to 

speak about it with others, including people who are unfamiliar 

with the concept.

As you can imagine, the definitions varied, but what you 

see on your screen right now were some key concepts that most of 

their definitions shared, basically the core principles related 

to PYD that seemed to emerge when we looked at the collection of 

all of their responses.

So according to those practitioners, PYD programs and 

policies provide positive experiences or opportunities, 

supportive environments, and empowering relationships; are 

designed to be safe, supportive, and culturally responsive; 

recognize and respect the strengths youth already possess; 

recognize youth and their capacity to contribute; build the 

skills, assets, and competencies of youth; support development 

of positive identities among youth; and promote positive 

outcomes and empower youth to reach their full potential. As 

one person put it, "Youth are precious assets to be nurtured, 

not problems to be solved."

So, we also asked practitioners why PYD is important, and 

here are some important points we heard expressed. First, we 

need to foster youth assets, and assets were described by 

interviewees in a couple ways. They include the supports, 

opportunities, and relationships in young people's lives, as 

well as personal skills and positive self-perceptions and 

values. So, one thing we -- we've learned is that when youth 

are recognized, appreciated, and engaged for their strengths, 

they develop more assets, and when youth have more assets, they 

engage in healthier behaviors, demonstrate more resilience in 

the face of challenges, and thrive.

The traditional risk model really assumes adults are kind 

of like heroes and youth need to be rescued, and the PYD model, 
on the other hand, assumes that youth have agency and can bring 

their own resources and skills and competencies to improve their 

own lives in their communities, and the surrounding environments 

should help to empower youth in that way.

So, the second point that came across strongly is that PYD 

programs don't just benefit the youth involved, they also 

improve outcomes for communities as a whole, and because when 

youth are involved in the design, delivery, and evaluation of 

programs and services, the quality of those programs and 

services improve.

So as one person put it, "Young people can contribute to 

decisions and actions in meaningful and productive ways." PYD 

programs are not just feel-good activities, in other words.

So we also asked interviewees to imagine how things would 

be different if more people understood and embraced the PYD 

approach, and here are some things they told us: More programs 

would employ PYD approaches and practices; policymakers would 

invest in PYD; we would see a shift in the types of supports and 

services provided to young people; we would develop different

measures to determine program successes as well as individual 

successes; and finally, we would achieve the kind of change we 

want to see in the world. If you really want to have behavioral 

change happen and communities be healthy, then PYD's the 

approach is one thing we heard.

So that all sounds great. 

(Laughter) 

What are the barriers? That was our next question. We 

asked interviewees to tell us what they saw as the key barriers, 

and here's what they highlighted: Ignoring or trivializing youth 

voice; lack of cultural competence and responsiveness; excessive 

focus on negative risk-taking; and an expectation that we need 

to "fix" youth. And even people who think they're applying a 

PYD framework often fall back on old patterns of thinking, such 

as this one person put it, saying, youth are the leaders of 

tomorrow, when, in fact, youth possess leadership skills today, 

and a core component of PYD is creating opportunities for youth 

leadership.

So, a major barrier is the way we talk about youth, and one 

said, "I think we live in a society that doesn't value teens. 

You can tell by the way we talk about them."

So finally, we asked interviewees to talk about strategies 

they have used to overcome those barriers, and here are some 

suggestions we heard: Explain that youth are not simply 

recipients of services; talk about youth as partners; create 

opportunities for youth to speak for themselves and be heard; 

and tell stories and provide examples to help people understand 

why PYD -- what PYD is and why it's effective.

So, you know, in that first point, really explaining that 

youth are not just recipients of services but actually active 

stakeholders in shaping the programs and policies that affect 
them.

And then that last point, telling stories and providing 

examples to help people understand why PYD is effective, we 

often use phrases like positive relationships, which just may 

not sound concrete enough to people, so one person gave an 

example that said, you know, say something like "A positive 

relationship is one that makes you feel valued, respected, and 

listened to." So, they tried to use language when explaining 

these concepts that people could relate to, drawing on their own 

lives.

Okay. Whoops. Sorry. Got a little carried away there.

Okay. So Question 1, one thing we wanted to do before we 

move on to the next section is hear from all of you because many 

of you are involved in some way in funding positive youth 

development programs, implementing them, promoting them, so 

we're interested in hearing a little bit from you about 

challenges you've encountered when communicating about positive 

youth development. Take a moment to type in to your chat box 

some thoughts of yours on that, and I'll read out what -- what 

you tell us. 

So, one person said youth want to be treated like adults, 

but they don't act like adults is something that people often 

say, and that's a challenge that she's encountered that she’s 

encountered in conversations.

What else do we have? 

Focusing more on the negative and not giving credit for the 

good or positive is another barrier. 

People just don't buy into the concept. They just don't 

believe it. Okay.

Adults don't think youth have expertise in anything. 

Adult staff think they need to save youth from the streets, 

danger, et cetera.

There are lots of great comments coming in here, I can't 

even keep up with it at all. I'll read a little more, but I see 

there's a lot of great thinking about barriers.

One person said, it's really hard for some of our staff to 

not see clients as a problem.

Another person said, when you have very educated staff, 

they want to impose their wisdom on youth rather than listen to 

them. 

Another person said, it's really hard to keep things 

strength-based, and it's difficult to engage with senior 

leadership to learn about PYD so that you have support from 

people above you. Good point.

And buy-in from stakeholders up the chain, it's hard to get 

that sometimes because they just don't trust the youth.

Okay. So, I have a feeling many of the other comments are 

going to be similar, but also, there are just a lot of barriers 

that people are experiencing, and I appreciate, but actually an 

indication of the number of barriers is the number of comments I 
just got. 

(Laughter) 

So clearly, we've encountered some. So, my next challenge 

to you is to share what are some of the strategies that you've 

used that have been successful for communicating about positive 

youth development? What works for you? You know, we shared a 

few examples from our interviews, but, surely, those of you who 

have encountered barriers have also tried to figure out how to 

overcome those barriers, so what are the things that have worked 

for you.

One person said training, just training; training on 

positive youth development makes a difference.

Motivational interviewing. Great.

What else has worked? 

Okay. Find ways to employ youth and have them participate 

in projects to show the value that they bring to the work.

Speak directly to the youth. Mm-hmm. 

Focusing on an idea of positive youth development being 

about a partnership between youth and adults seems to help.

Youth Advisory Councils are a great tool.

Reframing a conversation that is focused on youth negative 

behaviors by asking what strengths they have seen in the youth. 

Great. 

Service learning. Community meetings that allow youth to 

empower each other.

Helping staff think critically about why the rule needs to 

be enforced and what they can let go of.

Being transparent.

Incorporating youth voices so as to make it personal. 

Youth leadership opportunities, creating more of those. 

Showing the outcomes, showing that -- what the benefits are 

of positive youth development.

Highlighting real-life examples of PYD in action.

These are all great. We're going to talk more in a few 

minutes about positive youth development strategies.

Moving on to some ideas around how to reframe it in a way 

that will really engage people around this idea, but we're also 

capturing all of these good ideas, and we'll find a way to share 

back with all of you because -- so please don't stop writing 

your ideas down. 

(Laughter) 

We don't have enough time for me to read them out, but we 

are going to use all of the information that you're sharing with 

us right now about strategies that work to share back to the 

broader community these ideas through the youth.gov website, as 

we continue to add materials to that site on this topic, in part 

informed by the experiences and perspectives you're sharing with

us today, so thank you for taking the time to share these ideas.

I'm going to go ahead and hand this off to Michelle, and 

she'll move on to the next part of our webinar. 
>> MICHELLE STERGIO: Great. Thank you, Xan. Jumping off 

of Xan's slides on face-to-face conversations, I'm going to 

discuss how positive youth development conversations are 

happening across social media.

AIR has tools which allow us to track and monitor social 

media conversations from more than one trillion public social 

media posts across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others. 

Today we'll dive into a topic positioning assessment focused on 

conversations related to positive youth development, youth 

leadership, and youth engagement between January 2014 and August 

31st of 2018.

Initially we began our query with about 15 keywords related 

to positive youth development. In the initial results, the team

noted off-topic tweets or noise within the conversation, related 

to jobs and cryptocurrency, but in order to neutralize most of 

that noise, we decided to run three independent queries, one for 

positive youth development, one youth leadership, and the last 

one youth engagement.

When analyzing a topic, it's important to measure the 

volume, what is the size of the conversation? Post-volume is a 

wonderful indicator of interest because let's face it, people in 

organizations talk about things they're passionate about.

Since January 2014, youth leadership, the top yellow line, 

has had the most shared voice across the social media platforms. 

Over the years, the conversation has had many peaks and valleys, 

but overall the conversation remains strong, showing a minimum 

decline.

Conversations focused on positive youth development, the 

green line, has the lowest share of volume -- or share of voice 

among the three. The conversation seems to be stable, lacking 

the peaks and valleys seen in youth leadership, and has shown a 

slight increase in volume over the years.

Youth engagement, which falls in between in terms of share 

voice has doubled in post volume and has had a stable post 

volume since January 2018, showing the most potential for 

growth.

Spikes in post volume can happen when an individual or 

organization with strong influence posts on social media on a 

topic that their followers are very passionate about or are 

highly engaged with. The chart to the left visually shows when 

post volume spike occurred, and the post volume trend 

afterwards.

Catching conversations that directly impact positive youth 

development, whether they're positive or negative, helps to 

react and reframe the conversation.

In February of 2014, the conversation around youth 

leadership spiked with the release of a book called "The CEO 

Manual 4 Kids," a homeschooling book. Although the post, which 

is featured to the right, was highly retweeted and shared, there 

was a sharp decline in post volume. Post volume didn't spike 
again until four years later in February of 2018.

The positive youth development conversation spiked in March 

of 2017 when BelievePerform posted a tweet about how coaches can 

promote positive youth development. Ultimately, the tweet 

didn't do much to elevate the conversation in the following 

months.

Finally, youth engagement conversations spiked in March 

2018 when news broke via traditional media that Adam Rippon

would be teaming up with GLAAD to raise funds for youth 

engagement work. Although post volume within youth engagement 

conversation had already begun an upward trend in January, the 

March post simply provided a pop in post volume, as the volume 

settled back to its low upward trend, which began in January.

So, here's something that you'll not hear very much in a 

presentation. Please don't read the slide. It can be very 

overwhelming, and like we said at the beginning of the 

presentation, you'll be able to download these slides after the 

presentation. 

So, on the slide are two topic wheels. The one on the left 

is from 2014, and the one on the right is from 2018. A topic 

wheel is helpful in covering key topics and phrases that are 

part of the overall conversation and identifying the patterns 

between common words that -- common words that dominate the 

conversation.

The inner portion -- let's see if I can control this. The 

inner portion here are the main topics, and the outer layer, 

which you see here, are the subtopics within the main topics.

Now, the topic wheels here are going to show how the 

conversation has shifted over time from 2014 to 2018, but it 

will also show the overall conversation and the synergy that it 

has now in 2018.

In the past, organizations and other Twitter authors have 

used social media to push information out regarding programs, 

events, and webinars, which we can see here in 2014. The main 

topic with the most post volume is supporting positive youth 

development, as we see here; whereas, if we look at the 

subtopic, it promotes a webcast on positive youth development 

given by Teen Health Gov. Focusing on 2018 over here, the main 

topic has shifted to positive youth development programs, which 

we see in this outer ring right here, with subtopics that 

describe the type of program, support, help, girls. So, the 

takeaway here is that most of the conversations happening on 

social media today are related to positive youth development 

programs that support or help the youth with some programs 

specifically for girls.

Now, looking at both of these as a whole, you can see that 

the conversation surrounding positive youth development has 

matured in 2018, as it doesn't have big gaps in the conversation 

as we see in 2014. An example of how it has matured 

specifically is the subtopic Training Programs, which is right 
about here. The subtopic can be found in three of the main 

topics, Positive Youth Development Programs, Learning, and 

Support Positive Youth Development, so it's here, here, and here 

again. Having subtopics represented within multiple main topics 

like this shows that the conversations surrounding training 

programs is being weaved throughout many conversations that 

relate to positive youth development. 

So, who's influencing the conversation? Today social media 

influences come in all shapes and sizes. An influencer is 

somebody or an organization who has a strong relationship with 

their audience or followers, the topic, or both. The 

relationship could mean that they are mentioned frequently in 

posts that relate to positive youth development or they 

frequently tweet about it and their followers engage with the 

post in some fashion, whether it's a retweet, a reply, or a 

comment. 

To the right are four examples of influencers within the 

positive youth development conversation. So, what constitutes 

an influencer? Is it having a ton of followers? Is it tweeting 

a million times a day? Nope, none of that. There are four 

general types of influencers, celebrity, industry experts, 

bloggers and content creators, and micro-influencers. Those are 

the folks who have about 10,000 to 500,000 followers on their

social media channel.

So, as you think of how we can tap into influencers, 

employing a strategy of the influencer marketing can certainly 

be a smart way to elevate and reframe a conversation.

Retweeting is an important aspect of a social media plan. 

In fact, one retweet alone from an influencer can have a 

significant impact on reach. These are the top retweets from 

organizations for -- between 2014 to 2015, 2016 to 2017, and 

2018. The first retweet -- we'll get rid of this -- over here, 

is from January 2014, and shares information from a study. This 

tweet has had 44 retweets, but it was a retweet from @4H, which 

helped amplify the post to their 38,000-plus followers.

The second one from September 2017 announces a multi-sports 

complex, local influencers who engage at a community level, 

like @johnsoncontrols, who has over 24,000 followers, can help 

amplify and elevate a conversation locally and beyond.

And finally, for 2018, this retweet shows how a dialogue 

between two influential organizations, Rights4Girls and 

Children's Defense Fund, impact reach by tagging each other in 

posts and using relevant hashtags. Children's Defense Fund 

significantly extended their reach beyond their own followers.

Hashtags are a valuable tool in amplifying a conversation -

- let me get rid of this -- amplifying a conversation. A 

hashtag is a keyword or phrase used to describe a topic or 

conversation. They are used to categorize posts and tweets in a 

way that makes it easy for other readers to find and follow. 

Utilizing hashtags in social media posts can amplify their reach 
to a wider audience with similar level of interests who may not 

be following your social media pages.

Listed here are the top hashtags used within the positive 

youth development conversation. The bars, broken down by years, 

allows us to see how the hashtags have shifted over time. 

Although hashtag use has historically been the most popular 

within positive youth development conversations, the use of it 

has significantly declined in 2018. #PYD and 

#positiveyouthdevelopment has replaced it. A hashtag that seems 

to be growing in popularity and certainly worth following is 

#investinyouth. This hashtag can provide an easy entry point 

into related conversations.

So now I will pass this off to Michael to discuss what 

happens with messages about positive youth development and when 

it reaches members of the general public. 

>> MICHAEL BARAN: Great. Thank you, Michelle. So, you've 

heard from practitioners, from Xan about kind of what needs to 

be communicated, some of the challenges in that setting, some of 

the successes, you've heard about the messages that get pushed 

out over social media, but what happens when the messages 

actually hit the eyes or the ears of real people in the public? 

So, I'm going to argue that we need to understand culture 

to really understand that, and so first, what I want to do is 

talk about how that works in general, and then I'll get 

specifically the PYD.

All right. So how this works in general, I first want to 

explain that with two examples. They're not directly from PYD, 

but they're not totally unrelated either, but don't get caught 

up too much in the details. I just want to show how this works 

overall and why culture is so important.

So, this first example comes from a project that I did 

working with an organization called Transform Justice in the UK, 

and basically, the experts that they were relying on wanted to 

communicate something like this, okay, "Prison only makes a 

youth offender more likely to commit future crime. Prison 

doesn't do any good for youth who engaged in minor crimes." 

Right? That's not just a value that they have or that they 

believe in, but they -- that's their message because that's 

based on a lot of evidence, right, that when people go to 

prison, they actually it actually increases likelihood of 

committing future crimes for various reasons, pruning networks 

outside of prison, forming identities, forming new networks in 

prison, cutting off certain life opportunities, and stuff like 

that.

So that message, based on evidence, it seems fairly 

logical. What happens, though, when people hear that message? 

They hear something like this, "Yes" -- it sounds like they're 

agreeing, but then it diverges. "Yes, prison is too cushy, like 

a holiday camp!" -- which is a very British expression. "We 

need to take away prisoner activities and make prison more harsh 
so they never want to come back." Right? 

So, it looks at first like they're agreeing, but it goes in 

a very different direction, totally missed message about what's 

going on here.

Here's a second example. This one was from work that we 

did with the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, and the 

scientific experts there wanted to communicate how "Stress is 

harmful for young children's cognitive development," actually 

inhibits their physical brain development, right, a very serious 

issue.

What happens when the public hears this? Ah -- they're 

sort of like, ah, "I experienced stress and it made me 

stronger," Stress isn't really such a big deal.

So here you have these experts and advocates trying to 

advocate for policies to reduce stress among children, and the 

general response is like, yeah, I don't really think so. Again, 

total missed message.

So, what's going on here? If you ask a communications 

expert, they might say things like this, the message is too 

complicated, you couldn't digest it; the message didn't get 

distributed, it wasn't -- people didn't see it enough; the 

message wasn't memorable or attention grabbing, too boring; the 

message didn't trigger strong emotions, so people didn't buy 

into it; the message didn't have facts in it or even worse 

sometimes, it contrasted facts with myths. I'm sure you're very 

familiar with myth fact sheets. There's a lot of evidence out 

there that these are really not a great way to communicate 

because, unfortunately, what actually happens is people remember 

the myths as facts, and that gets worse over time, so you're 

actually reinforcing the myths rather than replacing them with 

the facts, so not a great way to communicate.

Another explanation, that people just misunderstood the 

message, they just have no understanding of this topic, so they 

don't get it.

But here's another possibility that I want to put out 

there, which is that it's culture that's getting in the way, 

okay. Now, what is culture? If you ask a thousand 

anthropologists what culture is, you'd probably get a thousand 

different definitions. If you ever meet one, I actually 

encourage you to do that. It's kind of a fun exercise to watch 

them squirm or try not to use jargon. This is how I approach 

culture, and a lot of people who are psychological cognitive 

anthropologists like me also do. So, it's as models in our 

minds, right, so if you think about a developing child's brain -

- and you've probably heard this statistic a lot -- from the 

first years, from 0-3, the brain is developing 700 synaptic 

connections per second, which is quite astounding. Their brains 

are literally being built in a cultural environment, and as that 

happens, you have these cultural models that form implicit 

patterns of thinking that are very widely shared about what's 
going on in the world, what things mean, how things work. 

Basically, they give us a common sense of what's going on in the 

world in people's minds.

Now, that's really important if you're going to be 

communicating because what happens is the way that messages get 

framed actually cue those cultural models. Now, what do I mean 

by a message frame? What I'm doing is separating the content of 

the message from the way that that message is communicated. 

That would be the frame. All messages are framed, so picking 

out what value is implicit, why is this important, any metaphors 

that are in there in the way the message is delivered, any 

keywords, who's the messenger, what the tone is; all of that 

stuff is the frame, and then you have the content in there. You 

can take the same content and frame it in many different ways. 

Now, that frame often cues a particular cultural model in our 

mind and determines how that message is understood. So, we have 

this sort of outdated way of thinking about what communication 

is, that the speaker has an intention, they code it into a 

message, send it out, the receiver takes that code and unpacks 

it and understands it just the same way the speaker intended it. 

If that's your model of thinking how communication should work, 

when you get the miscommunication, like the myth messages, 

you're kind of surprised.

If we, instead, understand communication in terms of frames 

and cuing cultural models, we're not surprised at all. The 

speaker has an intention, but there are all these intended or 

unintended frames around that message that cue these cultural 

patterns, and you don't know, necessarily, what's getting cued, 

and so depending on what gets cued, your message may have a very 

different interpretation. They're really important to 

understand and really critical to plan for this particular type 

of miscommunication. 

So, this is not just -- people don't just sit around and 

think, oh, this would be a good frame, let's use that. It's 

actually based on a lot of research. There are two phases of 

research. Not going to go into a lot of depth here, but just to 

give you a sense, there's a first phase of formative research 

where you try to figure out during interviews, focus groups, 

things like that, what are the cultural models at play on this 

issue that are going to get triggered, and then once you 

understand that, you come up with a whole list of hypotheses 

about how to communicate differently about this issue, how to 

trigger different cultural models, and then enter into a Phase 

II where you actually test those messages out so that if you 

say, this is our recommendation for how to communicate about 

this issue, it's not just a hypothesis, it's actually based in 

evidence on what works.

So, I want to go back to those first examples I gave you 

and tell you what was sort of one of the conclusions. Of 

course, on any particular topic, there's a whole range, a whole 
set of communications tools and recommendations and messages. 

Here's just one example. So you take that first one about the 

prison causing more crime in the future, and when you do the 

formative research, that first phase, you find out that there 

are these cultural models, two cultural models that are really 

dominant at play here, one being retribution, so people are not 

thinking about future safety, they're not thinking about public 

safety, they're thinking about a crime happened, there needs to 

be an appropriate punishment for that crime, and that's getting 

in the way of some of the messages.

Then, also, people have this idea that humans are these 

rational actor decision-makers, that you've got people out there 

sort of weighing the pros and cons, should I commit this crime? 

Well, the prison is really harsh, so I better not, and that's 

not the way humans make decisions. We know that. But people 

think that that's how we make decisions. So, when you 

understand that, you can come up with different ways to 

communicate.

In this case, here's one example of a reframe that was 

tested and shown to be really positive. Prisons sweep young 

people into a powerful stream of crime from which it's difficult 

to escape. So, this is a metaphorical way of talking about the 

same thing, which allows people to be more receptive to those 

ideas of pruning connections, making criminal connections, 

limiting opportunities, et cetera. It takes that kind of -- it 

allows you to think about the future, you know, what's -- what's 

going to happen in the future, and it allows you to get away 

from that idea of rational actor and see that some things aren't 

entirely in your control, right, that you're getting swept up 

into things, so it's really a powerful communication tool, 

although it's pretty subtle; right? 

Here's another -- the second example about stress. So, the 

common communication advice might be here, oh, well, this is a 

scientist being too complicated, simplify it, dumb it down, 

that's the only way people are going to get it. And what we 

actually found, first of all, is what was going on in the first 

place was a very strong sense of individualism, this happened to 

me, right, and so that's how I'm thinking about it, and also 

this idea that the resilience, doing things better, overcoming 

stress was just a matter of willpower and not anything else.

So, what we found when we did research to figure out a 

different way to communicate is that actually, the message was 

much more effective when it was made more complicated. So, we 

talked about a taxonomy of stress, normal stress, things like, 

you know, if you have children, your children starting their 

first day of school last month or this month, those are normal 

stress things. Those actually are good for you. And then 

tolerable stress, something very serious, death of a 

grandparent, for example, but with support, with love, with 

positive connections, children can get over that. And then 
toxic stress, prolonged abuse, neglect, the kinds of things that 

really do inhibit brain development, just like the scientists 

were trying to communicate.

Now, when the scientist or advocate takes the exact same 

message and instead of calling it stress calls it toxic stress, 

all of a sudden you get a completely different reaction. Oh, 

toxic stress, yeah, that is bad, we should limit that, right, 

and so it's a tiny little change to the frame, but that has a 

big impact.

All right. So now let's turn specifically to PYD. First, 

what are the cultural models that are getting in the way? Now, 

these are based on research, research that was done at the 

FrameWorks Institute, not done specifically on PYD but youth 

issues, things like education, human services, juvenile justice, 

et cetera.

So another thing that I wanted to mention is while you may 

not have these cultural models because through your work you've 

been able to think in different ways, a lot of people do, the 

research is really clear, and so these are some of the things 

you're going to be up against, and it seems like from your 

comments earlier when Xan asked that question, a lot of you know 

you're up against these things, so they'll sound pretty 

familiar.

All right. So, first, cultural model. Thinking about 

adolescence as a time that's inherently risky, that youth are 

highly susceptible to influences, that they will do foolish 

things, make bad decisions, and adults these days are more 

worried about this than ever because of perceived heightened 

dangers, dangers online, dangers with guns and drugs and new 

drugs and things like that, and, therefore -- and this is the 

key piece -- they have to be strictly protective with 

boundaries, right, you get this whole protection frame, and 

while some pieces of this model aren't totally wrong, right -- I 

mean, the brain science on adolescence, for example, shows that 

the executive function decision-making skills are not fully 

developed, and so we have to really take that into 

consideration, but that leads the experts to a very different 

conclusion, not to a we need to protect them with strict 

boundaries conclusion, and so that's what's key here.

Another cultural model, the public basically objectifying 

teenagers, thinking of them as others, that we couldn't possibly 

understand. They're not children but they're not adults either, 

and people just generally having a black box of understanding on 

this idea of development at a particular time during 

adolescence, what happens.

You have this idea that young people are totally under 

their parents' control until they're 18, and then at 18, they're 

an adult. I mean, we know that's not true, according to the 

brain science, right, but in public thinking, that is true. 

You're 18, you're an adult. So, this is really problematic.
There's also this idea, you know, if -- because of that, 

right, if youth are -- they think that they're just making bad 

decisions, having bad judgment, they have no willpower, and 

then, of course, there's just some really strong negative 

stereotypes about youth, teens, adolescence, they're wild and 

rebellious and disrespectful and stubborn and selfish, and these 

are all serious challenges.

Not only that, I mean, stereotypes about teens have existed 

for a long time, but there are specific ways that how people 

think of youth of today as especially irresponsible and 

entitled, you know, to the point where "millennial" is 

considered as a bad word, and people often ignore data to the 

contrary, ignore data that youth values are very much in line 

with adult values and they're volunteering more than ever and 

all of that stuff.

All right. Another cultural model, the public thinking 

that is really contributing to this is the way people have 

associations just about digital media, smartphones, social media 

in general. All of these have powerful cultural models 

attached, thinking that this stuff is all trivial, it's all a 

luxury, it takes youth away from the real responsibilities and 

the real world, that they're passive media, and so youth are 

lazy by using them. Very problematic.

And, of course, all of this sort of leads to sort of a 

throwing up of the hands, it's too confusing to figure out, and 

youth attitudes are just inherently bad, and once they're not 

the parents' responsibilities, there's nothing anyone can do, so 

just what are we going to do, nothing? 

All right. I don't want you to think -- don't think, what 

are we going to do? Nothing. So, moving into some actual 

strategies that could help reframing these issues, okay.

So, one, I talked about cultural models that are 

problematic. Those are often dominant. Within the same person, 

sometimes you can get conflicting ideas, some are dominant, some 

are recessive, and they come out at different moments, but one 

would be just be avoiding triggering those problematic dominant 

cultural models. Don't roll your eyes when you talk about teens 

and laugh and, you know, don't even do that for a joke, right, 

in part of a communication.

Definitely don't use a fear or crisis frame, which can 

trigger that idea that they need to be protected. Don't use 

that protection frame, that just reinforces it. 

Don't judge teens, it reinforces that other thing.

And then watch how you talk about smartphones and social 

media because that can trigger a whole set of problematic 

associations.

On the other hand, we do have sometimes some very positive 

but recessive cultural models that can help to increase 

understanding. So, for example, people do think about hands-on 

learning as being helpful and productive and you can use that to 
talk about supportive and enriching programs and an active use 

of digital media rather than a passive one.

Emphasizing the agency of youth and the developmental 

period they're going through, emphasizing development, again, 

and something positive other than just this protection idea, and 

definitely to avoid being fatalistic. Emphasize that there are 

things you can do. Adults can't control youth, but they can 

support them.

Focusing on the developmental benefits of youth programs is 

critical, something like this. Youth development programs are 

not about just filling time or learning new information. 

They're about the experiences that adolescents need to shape who 

they will be in adulthood. So, it gets people out of that 

family responsibility frame and also replaces that objectifying 

with a developmental perspective.

Use an explanatory metaphor to emphasize this developmental 

process, which people don't understand, so figure out a way to 

talk about it. This is a metaphor that's actually been tested 

to work. Something like this, our brains get built like the 

structure of a house. What comes first in childhood lays down 

the foundation. As children grow, the basic structures get 

built, and the experiences and environments that adolescents 

have available to them become the building materials that allow 

them to adjust to new demands, to support new skills, to develop 

as unique people. So that can really be helpful to emphasize the 

developmental perspective. That emphasizes brain plasticity in 

adolescents, right?

Here's a different metaphor that can be used to explain the 

different brain functions that are developing. Air traffic 

control at a busy airport coordinates many things to keep planes 

moving and keep everyone safe. Similarly, the human brain 

controls its mental airspace through what's called "executive 

function." It lets us create priorities, focus, and make good 

decisions. The Air traffic control of an adolescent brain is 

still developing into its mid-20s, and we need to make sure 

youth get support and practice as they develop these skills, 

okay.

So, I'm talking really fast to get that all in there, but I 

wanted to make sure to get some really practical strategies out 

there for you. These are not magic words, you just memorize 

them and say them and all of a sudden everybody agrees with you, 

but they're generally -- it's really helpful for you to 

understand even more clearly the barriers that you're up against 

but not just feel frustrated with it, but really understand how 

to use that to communicate more effectively for the important 

work that you're doing.

We have a little bit of time for questions, if anybody's 

got questions they want to type into the Submit Questions chat 

box. 

Xan or Michelle, did you notice any questions on there 
while I was talking we could address?

>> XAN YOUNG: I'm not seeing any questions yet. Oh, here 

we go. We have one question, someone's asking, can you talk 

specifically about strategies for getting buy-in on positive 

youth development as a whole up the chain? 

>> MICHAEL BARAN: Yeah, that's a good question because 

that, of course, involves a whole lot of other factors, 

communicating anything up the chain, that have to be taken into 

account. A lot of times what happens is that even people who 

are comfortable with these issues, know what they are and even 

support them, can still be susceptible to some of these cultural 

models, and so adopting these framing strategies can be really 

helpful, even with folks you think have a lot of familiarity and 

understanding of the issue, just reinforcing again and again 

with every communication triggering the positive rather than the 

dominant problematic models. 

>> XAN YOUNG: Yeah, and we're getting a couple of questions 

about where to find additional resources on positive youth 

development, and also whether this presentation is being 

recorded, so I just want to let folks know that we are recording 

this webinar, and we will upload it to the youth.gov website so 

people can see it later, so if you know other people who were 

unable to attend, you'll be able to point them to that website, 

or if you just want to take a look at this later, you're welcome 

to do that as well.

And as -- I also want to let you know that there are 

resources on the website about positive youth development and 

links to many other resources where you can get more in-depth 

information about PYD, so please do go to youth.gov, and if you 

have any difficulty finding the PYD section, just type positive 

youth development right into the Search bar, and it will pop 

right up.

And then there's another question, how would you suggest 

engaging youth themselves in changing this conversation? 

>> MICHAEL BARAN: Yeah, that's a great question. I can 

think of a couple ways. You know, one is in the specific 

thinking about the social media communication, I think youth 

would be critical in having an understanding of how that works, 

how to best communicate about some of these issues. I could 

also see, you know, one way -- if we were -- if I were doing a 

whole new communications research project on PYD, I would think 

-- what we usually do when we start those projects is get a 

group of experts together and interview them and figure out 

according to this group of experts what needs to be communicated 

to a wider audience, and if we were doing a research project on 

this topic, I would want to have youth kind of considered as 

experts on this topic and do a set of interviews with youth to 

see what it is from their perspective that needs to get 

communicated out. I think that would be really important. 

>> XAN YOUNG: Great. Thank you. Any other questions? We 
only have a few minutes left, but we're happy to take other 

questions. 

Great. There are some comments about the fact that this is 

applied in a variety of different settings, and that's 

absolutely true. One of the things that came out in interviews 

was that, you know, this might be something that people think 

about in developing new policies, the positive youth development 

approach to policy development, program implementation. It's 

also sometimes thought of as a set of principles, you know, they 

guide the way we talk about youth, as we mentioned earlier, in 

conversations, the way we frame the things we write, the things 

we talk about, and the whole way we orient ourselves around 

doing any work that relates to youth well-being, so those are 

all really good points.

Yes, and just to clarify, there will be a link to the --

this recorded webinar on the youth.gov website. So, a couple of 

people have asked me to repeat that, so all you have to do in 

your Search bar is type in youth.gov, and you'll go straight 

there. That's the website. 

Great. Anything else? We have one more minute left. 

And there's a question about whether the principal service 

informed the methodology. Yes, I think so. When we talk about 

positive youth development and some of the core concepts that we 

covered in the earlier slides, those underlie the approach, so 

when we talked about, for instance, youth leadership, that's 

considered, you know, a core component of the positive youth 

development approach, this idea that youth are -- currently have 

the capacity to be leaders in the work, and that's why we engage 

them as partners and leaders around anything having to do with 

youth well-being or things that pertain to youth, but that's --

that's informed by some kind of core values or principles, 

right, the belief that that's -- that youth have that capacity 

already. So, yeah, I'd say the principles do inform the 

framework.

That's about all the time we have, but I do want to 

reiterate that although we had hundreds of people on this call, 

and, therefore, we couldn't unmute your lines and have you all 

speak at once, thank you for being patient and typing into the 

chat box. It was a great way to capture the wisdom that this 

entire group of people bring to the conversation. We are going 

to save all of the comments that you posted in the chat box, and 

we'll find a way to share some of that back out to the rest of 

you, since we just didn't have enough time to read off all of 

the great comments and suggestions that we received today.

So, thank you for your time, and I want to thank my fellow 

presenters and the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs 

for hosting this event. We look forward to hearing more from

all of you in the future about the work you’re doing related to 

PYD. We hope you have a great day. 
(Session concluded at 3:01 p.m. ET)

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