Hello, and welcome to another episode of I Way with Jameela Jameel. You okay? I can't believe it's December. That's terrifying.

At least Mariah Carey is on the radio all day every day, which is the only good thing about this month arriving so soon.

I swear it feels like we went into lockdown about a month and a half ago. And yet that was March the 13th, which was all the way at the beginning of the year.

And so I don't know if this should count as three years or not a year at all. I'm not quite sure about how we should have to deal with or respond to this year, but it is extraordinary.

And and maybe just like you, I've come out of it with no skills. I'm just sort of squishier, which is great and fine. And I'm very cuddly and cozy.

And I am more socially anxious, generally more anxious, afraid of going back to work, not sure if I remember how to do literally anything other than pick up a dog shit, which is kind of all I feel like I've been doing this year.

And saying the word sit and no and off. Those are the only three words that I know I for sure can still say.

So yes, December guys, let's get real, but that's why I've chosen today's guest and I will explain why she's on in a second. But first, I just want to tell you that we are doing an exclusive series only on stitch premium, which is a bonus series where you can ask me anything.

Any questions that you have about anything in life, you can ask them to me, bring me your worst, your most personal and I will not give away your identity or anything about your name. No one will know it's you. I will just read out the subject matter.

And I will bring someone on whose opinion I respect, who will help me try and work out how to best help you and serve you with your issue.

So you can call or text us at 1 818 660 5543 or you can email us at iwaypodcast at gmail.com. Anyway, back to today's current episode.

I asked this wonderful and inspiring woman to come onto the podcast in particular now, because as we lead into Christmas, we are going to find that people feel the most isolated, the most vulnerable, the most traumatized.

They're looking back on what has just been unbelievably difficult and horrifying here. That has not just been upsetting when it comes to the ideas of like illness and isolation and pain and death, but also political division and so much unkindness and so much bigotry.

We are all feeling absolutely fucked. And so this would be a good time for all of us, myself included, because I can be a sassy bitch online to be a little bit gentler and a bit kinder and a bit more thoughtful about who is behind these emojis and who is behind these sort of, you know, anonymous profile pictures online.

We should be more thoughtful about how we are speaking to other people, how we are reading their tone, and how we are allowing ourselves to be treated online and whether or not it is actually safe in our current mental health states to be online.

This is Shae Akiwawa, who is the founder of Glitch UK. It's an organisation that helps educate people about online bullying and it holds huge social media platforms to account in how they protect and preserve the safety of people online and they do a lot of work in educating kids and people all around the world in how to be a better digital citizen.

Even that expression alone is part of why I love Shae so much and I will let Shae explain to you herself what that means, what it means to be a digital citizen and what digital citizenship looks like. She came on and just blew my mind with so many facts, so many statistics, so many personal experiences of her own and and just so much wisdom and thoughtfulness about the way that we carry on with our lives and how we have to stop looking at our lives online and offline.

There are separate entities, separate versions of ourselves, it is all the same and we have to be human beings on both types of platforms and as I said before and I talk about this with her online, she and I both have our own regrets about ways in which we have conducted ourselves online and we get into that and I think that a lot of people are guilty of just allowing your worst self out there on the internet because as a part of you that feels dehumanized and when you are looking into a screen,

there is a blue light coming at you that is truly making it harder for your brain to actually produce empathy.

So we are unempathetic and dehumanized and talking to each other as if we're not human beings with feelings and back stories and hearts and souls and we all need to work out together how we can navigate this tricky and scary and way to under supervised world of online, better together to make us all happier and just nicer people.

So this is the absolutely excellent Shea Akowo.

Welcome to Iway. How are you? Hi, I'm okay. We are in what could have been a better week for the state of the world but I am okay.

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