A Global Hybrid Symposium
Date: 20-21 October 2026
Venue: Stone & Chalk Adelaide, South Australia
Online: GMT +10.30 Adelaide (AU, NZ, APAC) | GMT +2 Copenhagen (EU) | GMT -4 Ontario (USA, CA)
The digital environments where young people now spend a significant part of their social lives are evolving fast. AI companions, algorithmic platforms, immersive worlds, gaming ecosystems, and virtual communities are becoming part of how young people connect, play, express themselves, seek support, and form identity.
As these spaces grow more influential, often faster than safeguards, policy, and public understanding can keep up, digital mental health and safety can no longer be treated only as an individual or clinical concern. It is now a shared societal challenge, shaping daily interactions across families, schools, health systems, technology platforms, policy settings, and communities.
Rather than treating emerging technology as a distant future issue, RaiseWisely creates space for the people shaping these systems and supporting young people every day to ask better questions, share insight, and build clearer pathways toward evidence-informed digital mental health and wellbeing.
An intergenerational, whole-of-society approach that brings together researchers, clinicians, educators, policymakers, community leaders, lived experience leaders, and industry innovators to co-create safer digital futures through shared expertise, practical insight, and real-world spheres of influence.
Together, we will explore how responsible AI design, digital mental health governance, evidence and evaluation, data protection, human oversight, clinical and educational safeguards, and real-world implementation can better support children, young people, families, and the village around them.
Prof. Robyn Young, Professor of Psychology at Finders University
A/Prof. Nathan Caruana, Associate Professor of HAVIC at Flinders University
Dr. Tiffany de Sousa Machado, Transformative Wellbeing at Dr. Tiff
Dr. Susannah Emery, Senior Lecturer in Games at Adelaide University
Dr. Yuan Zhang, Senior Researcher of AIML at Adelaide University
Dr. Lana Tikhomirov, Researcher of AIML at Adelaide University
More speakers and contributors to be announced
Prof. Carolyn Semmler
Lead of Applied Cognition and Experimental Psychology (ACEP) research group at Adelaide University, member of the Australian Machine Learning Institute (AIML). Using experimental methods and modelling of cognitive processes to understand and improve human decision-making as technologies like AI and social media has vastly changed human experience.
Connect
Christel Cherryadi
Based in South Australia, Christel is a multi-award-winning XR AI innovator and SocioTechPreneur. With 15+ years in creative technology, who now pioneers responsible innovation in EdTech and Mental HealthTech, translating research-informed and evidence-based knowledge into real-world impact, contributing to 8 UN SDGs.
Connect
Tuesday, 20 October 2026 focuses on why digital mental health is becoming one of the defining safety, ethics, and implementation challenges of the AI era.
The social media era has shown how difficult it is for families, schools, health systems, policymakers, researchers, and technology providers to respond once digital platforms are already embedded in young people’s everyday lives. As AI, gaming ecosystems, immersive environments, and algorithmic platforms become increasingly intertwined with the next generation’s digital society, the question is no longer only what went wrong. It is what we can do earlier, and more collaboratively.
Day 1 brings research, clinical practice, education, policy, and industry innovation into a shared conversation about how emerging technologies can be understood, designed, evaluated, and implemented in ways that support mental health, strengthen safeguards, and help communities respond with greater clarity, evidence, and care.
Wednesday, 21 October 2026, unfolds the systems, relationships, and practical conditions needed to create safer digital futures for the next generations.
Digital wellbeing cannot be addressed by young people, parents, schools, clinicians, policymakers, researchers, or technology providers in isolation. It requires shared language, evidence-informed practice, trusted pathways, ethical innovation, and coordinated action across the ecosystems that shape young people’s lives. This is not a wait-and-see moment.
Across families, schools, health systems, communities, government, research, and industry, there are already meaningful spheres of influence where action can begin today through better literacy, stronger support pathways, safer design, practical safeguards, and interconnected implementation.
Through an intergenerational, whole-of-society approach, RaiseWisely explores how these sectors can work together to move from fragmented concern to practical, preventative, and scalable change.
Thursday, 28 October 2026 | 6-8 pm at Stone & Chalk, Adelaide
RaiseWisely International eMental Health Symposium is designed to connect researchers, clinicians, educators, school leaders, policy makers, industry innovators, lived experience contributors, and community stakeholders working across digital wellbeing, AI, XR, gaming, online safety, and young people mental health.
The symposium explores how emerging technologies are reshaping mental health, learning, identity, relationships, and wellbeing, with a focus on safer, evidence-informed, and responsible innovation for young people and communities.
RaiseWisely is intentionally designed as a cross-sector symposium to connect research, innovation, policy, and practice around one shared challenge: how we build safer digital futures for young people.
Grounded in evidence-informed thinking, the symposium takes a whole-of-society, interconnected, and intergenerational approach to digital wellbeing, recognising that global challenges in AI, XR, gaming, social media, and online safety require shared responsibility, stronger translation from evidence to impact and from policy to practice, and a more connected approach to how emerging technologies are understood, designed, governed, and used.
Yes. The symposium is designed as a hybrid global event, with in-person participation in Adelaide and online access for national and international attendees.
Online sessions will be scheduled across three key time zones:
GMT+10:30 | Adelaide, Australia
GMT+2 | Copenhagen, Denmark
GMT-4 | Ontario, Canada
Be an advocate
Help raise awareness about safer digital futures for young people. Share RaiseWisely with your school, workplace, community, or networks, and help start more informed conversations around digital wellbeing, AI, gaming, social media, and online safety.
Give or sponsor
Support RaiseWisely through individual giving, community contributions, sponsorship, or future crowdfunding campaigns. Every contribution helps us develop resources, improve access, support delivery, and bring research-informed digital wellbeing education to more families, schools, and communities.
Become a patron
Patrons help sustain the long-term vision behind RaiseWisely and Mirror XR. Your support enables deeper research translation, program development, evaluation, and access for communities that may not otherwise have the resources to participate.
