AI With Guardrails: Designing Tech for Sensitive Markets

0:00Not everybody has mental illness, but everyone has mental health, right? Just how we all have physical health, but we're not necessarily sick, right? When somebody's going through a hard time and you start looking at Instagram or whatever, then you're like, oh, these people are doing so well. Why am I not in that position? And then you start to get in your head. To create more of like a social experience. And we saw that that was really what young people wanted. So we thought, okay, we need to evolve the product and create a platform that resembled social media in its relatability, but incorporated empathy and clinician and youth trained AI, wellness analytics, digital wellness skill building, and that it would be a compliment to any kind of clinical treatment that you would be getting.

0:48Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening. Today, I will be hosting this podcast. My name is Andres Figueira, and I'm located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. and this show is brought to you by The Global Talent Company, a company that's connecting top remote professionals from Argentina, South Africa, and any other place you can imagine with leading tech companies worldwide. So if your team is looking to hire world-class South American or South African talent, head over to theglobaltalent.co and we'll see how we can help you out. And today, guys, I am speaking with Greta McEnany, CEO and co-founder at Blue Fever, a youth-centric care navigation solution that bridges mental health needs with life-changing support.

1:28We are their AI companion that's named Blue and a well-being community. So without further ado, welcome, Greta. It's great to have you here. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here as well. And thank you for doing this interview in the daytime my time, probably evening your time. So I feel already I'm at an advantage here. No, it really is a pleasure, Greta. And even more so when we investigated what Blue Fever is and what a noble mission your company that you founded has. It really it is something very special. So we had to make the space and the time in order to have this episode. So the budget is all ours.

2:09And Greta, just so that we get into the groove of the episode, would you be able to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and a little bit more context of what Blue Fever is? I am an entrepreneur and, you know, a public health innovator that's really focused on youth mental health at the intersection of media and technology. My background is actually as an award-winning filmmaker. And I've had, you know, 10 plus, well now like 12 plus years of building youth-centered tech, blending that with storytelling, product, and now policy work. which I don't think is too much online but I'm starting to get more into the policy and like government space I think that inevitably happens when you go deeper and deeper and you realize okay like policy is where we've got to end here and and and so some more civic engagement there I I co-founded Blue Fever really as you know I I had been out in the field as a impact filmmaker And I had been working with a lot of young people across the nation and seeing this pattern of young people self-medicating with media.

3:17And this was way, way back in like 2013, 2014. And I thought, I think that there's going to be this future where it looks almost like a triangle where you have media technology. and at the time I was calling kind of the tip of this triangle identity development, but I really think I meant mental health because I didn't at the time know the difference between mental health and mental illness. Not everybody has mental illness, but everyone has mental health, right? Just how we all have physical health, but we're not necessarily sick, right? All the time. Yeah. And so I said, I think there's this interesting triangle, the space that I want to play in.

3:56And that kind of led to the first product, which was curating media based on mood and emotion, that then got distributed in a chatbot. Well, first, it was just text message of me and my co-founder and interns texting people that we were, we'll talk about this with marketing that we used as a marketing channel. And then that evolved into one of the first evidence-based AI chatbots for youth mental health way back in that was in 2017. 2018 is really when that happened. So yeah, so it's been a really interesting progression and journey for me as a professional kind of moving from artist to more of a storyteller to a technologist.

4:40And now, like I said, I'm playing more in the policy space. I think that answered my journey. I'm happy. Is there anything else you want me to add there before I kind of talk a little bit more about the product? No, no, no worries. Like it's I know it's a high level overview. So no worries there. If there's anything else you'd like to elaborate later on, just feel free to do so. But yeah, just let us know a little bit more now about Blue Fever because it sounds like like like a big project. Yeah, yeah. It's you know, we're a venture backed company backed by investors like Amazon and Serena Williams.

5:16And so we've really it's been it's been quite the journey from where we started just with this early intuition about support that young people needed and how media and technology would play a role in that. And I think that, you know, we've been caught in this, like, I always say it's like a crack in the, you know, like couch cushions, right? Where nobody wants to sit in between the couch cushions. Like, there's this, like, couch cushion of, like, social media, right, that everybody understands what social media is. And then there's clinical mental health. And everybody under, well, maybe they don't understand deeply, but they understand clinical health, mental health care, behavioral health care exists, therapy, inpatient, medication, et cetera.

5:58And we really were in between the two. At the time when we first launched, our investors were saying, oh, you're not mental health, but you're like positive social media. And we were like, oh, that's super interesting. Right. At one point, we were calling ourselves emotional media, not social media. And so from there, you know, we saw that, again, this like epiphany about mental illness versus mental health and saw that a lot of young people, you know, the youth mental health and overall mental health epidemic was rising. but especially for young people you know young people grow up to be adults there was this real like lack of trust of Gen Z and the behavioral health system and that they were really unlikely to seek help you know if they were feeling lonely or depressed or anxious and the first place they would go for mental health support would be either the ER or I think it's called ED today emergency department or social media.

6:59And those just are very two extremes, right? Like, neither of which are probably going to be great for the healthcare system. And both of those weren't meant for like mental health, right? You know, true mental health support. And, and we just saw that a lot of solutions in the behavioral health space were made for adults, and they weren't and they were being retrofitted for young people. And this next generation of Gen Z, Gen Alpha, even millennials a bit. I'd assume we're both millennials or maybe you're a Gen Z cusper, but that like we're digitally native or digital first. So the way that we have a higher bar that we expect when we interact with mental health tools.

7:42And so we, you know, when we were kind of accidentally stumbled across stumbled across this text message as a product, not as a marketing platform. You know, we had young people texting us back. We'd say, hey, are you feeling sad? Check out this video. Are you feeling stressed? Did you just go through a breakup? And we got responses like, how did you know I was feeling that way? And we were like, well, we didn't, you know, but the human experience is specific, not unique. And so we just texted back. and when we texted back you know we were just shocked at the level of engagement and trust we were getting and grew pretty quickly to close to half a million young people on text message and built out this whole persona of an older sibling older sister named blue and for me blue was modeled after the big sister I always wanted growing up but never had I had an older brother who had a lot of special needs.

8:42And so he got a lot of the more clinical mental health kind of attention. And for me, that wasn't things weren't as dire. I didn't have that support. And I didn't feel comfortable talking to my parents about what I was going through. So I thought, you know, what if I could give that big sister to so many other young people? And then, you know, text message became just a little unwieldy. It's I think it's an amazing kind of like communication channel, but it can be expensive and it's also very linear. So if you want to build out different product features on top of it, it's really, really hard.

9:18There's also not a lot of like, you know, you can't connect to people, like especially in SMS, like it's hard to create more of like a social experience. And we saw that that was really what young people wanted. So we thought, okay, we need to evolve the product and create a platform that resembled social media in its relatability, but incorporated empathy and clinician and youth trained AI, wellness analytics, digital wellness skill building, and that it would be a complement to any kind of clinical treatment that you would be getting. And so we built that app out and launched it really 2021 and have been iterating and growing it from there and really focused on lower young people with lower acuity needs and help them, you know, treat those lower acuity needs, which, you know, and then also triage them to other supports as needed.

10:17And then we've been, you know, growing additionally with partnerships with cities, finding that cities as healthcare, especially in America, is certain healthcare is on the chopping block. There's a lot of people who can't afford care and a lot of young people who won't, you know, they can't get mental health care unless they go through their parent, but they don't want to go through their parent. So we're finding that blue fever is really this front door to mental health that's super powerful to get young people in so that we can assess what they need. But it still feels fun and relatable like social media.

10:53The app itself has lots of really great ways for you to express yourself, but really keeping that safe and towards the focus of wellness as opposed to social media, which is maybe more the focus of performing. If you are someone who actually posts or if you're someone who is like the majority of us who just kind of consumes, right? It's, you know, it almost feels like a new form of like cable these days, right? I'm just like flipping through creators and flipping through video. It's much more video oriented. So I'm consuming a lot. And young people and all people are not really expressing as much on social anymore, which is fine.

11:31But they still need those places to express. And so we've built one with Blue Fever. Wow. Okay. The story is amazing and I totally empathize with the sentiment of what you mentioned that you wanted to be that big sister that you never had. Because in my personal experience, I'm the firstborn of my generation in my family. So it's like me, my little brother, my cousins. And I always was that big brother figure. I used to, like what you mentioned, that I didn't feel I could talk to anybody on my issues that I had because it was either my parents or my grandparents, but it was never somebody that I felt was an equal to me.

12:11Or relatable, right? Like relatable to you like your cousins and your siblings had. And I think that that's what I found is like, is like I was pretty like competent, high achieving rate. But those are the people you have to watch out for. If you're the one who everybody's turning to for support, then like where do you go for support? And I find that a lot of young people either think their problems or are too big or in this case kind of related to what we're talking about, that their problems are too small. Like, well, yeah, like my friend has like chronic depression, but I don't have that. So I don't really need, you know, I don't want to take up my parents time.

12:50I don't want to make people worry. I don't want to, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I think that the more that we stay in, you know, isolation and keep these things in our head, and we don't reach out and express ourselves and like name those things, the more toxic, right? Like the more toxicity builds up. Yeah, it's like that little voice in your head that says you don't need it. You're okay. And you're not feeling okay. So it's like, it's weird. Yeah, it's just like you can cope, you can cope, you can cope. And I think that what we're really trying to, it's like you can cope, other people need you.

13:20And that's not your role. Your role isn't to get support. Your role is to give support. And I think that there's a certain subset of our users who really feel that way. And the beauty of the platform is that on Blue Fever, you can both be a supporter and you can get support from other people. And I think that that is also just hopefully reinforcing being human, even if it feels uncomfortable. It's like sometimes we're giving, sometimes we're taking. And that's okay. And it's not bad. Okay. No, I totally agree with that. And it's beautiful. I think it's a very, very, I mentioned it at the beginning.

13:56And I think it's such a noble idea. And it's incredible how you've been able to make it into something concrete. And that works. And between what I've been hearing of what you've been saying, Greta, I know that you've mentioned that you've supported over half a million young people through Blue Fever. And I'd love to know, and I bet the audience as well, what's the biggest misconception you believe adults have about Gen Z's mental health needs nowadays? days. Yeah, I think I was actually just talking to a reporter at a pretty well-known publication last week who reports on tech and AI and youth.

14:32And we were having a really interesting discussion where one of her co-workers, who's also an adult, and I think he and she are more Gen X, and is a little bit older than millennials, but not too old, right? But they have kids who are more, uh, gen alpha, maybe gen Z. And this, uh, colleague of hers was saying, um, you know, why don't, um, young people, why, why don't they just like suck it up and get out there and stop talking? You know, they're always focused on, um, they're so sensitive. They're always focused on, you know, um, them. It's really hard, uh, for them to do things in person. Like we should just kind of like push them and just say, deal with it.

15:11And, um, because they're just kind of, they're being lazy, they're being this, they're being that. And I think that there's a piece of that that is true in terms of, yes, like there are some young people who really lack a lot of resilience skills and they lack a lot of social skills and they need a lot of extra handholding. And should we try to improve that? Of course. And is part of that on them, especially as they grow up? Absolutely. But I think that adults often forget that this generation wasn't born, right? They weren't born like this. They were raised and adults are really kind of complicit in what the output has been.

15:52That like when you grow up and you're a young person and your parent just puts a tablet in your hand and you get to use it for hours and hours, you know, and then you wonder why, you know, you're now at dinner as a teenager and you're looking at your phone instead of talking to people or you can only text, you can't pick up the phone and call, it's not entirely their fault, right? And I don't think adults understand that they've grown up in a really different environment and adults helped create that. And so if we're going to get young people out of this and, you know, more engaged in the workforce, more resilient to everyday challenges, contributing to the economy, like all these things that are kind of more high level, we need to start by um owning like our i mean i didn't raise these kids but like owning the people who did like owning owning that part right of like how you contributed to it and then working together to be like okay we're here how do we move forward we can't just like push you out of the nest and say go go change immediately but what's a plan where we can help you be stronger and more resilient like over time and build these skills so it's a very long-winded answer but I think that it really frustrates me when adults when older people are just like well yeah I mean this generation they're they're this they're this they're this and it's kind of putting it entirely on them where it's like these kids didn't control the environment that they grew up in they didn't control that people were giving them smartphones and social media at the age of nine and they were you know, entering, you know, pro-anorexia groups on Tumblr at age, you know, 11, like this is not that that was not created by them.

17:32So we have to take some responsibility there as well. Hey, I had never seen this perspective that you're mentioning. And I must say, I'm loving it because I totally agree. And I do believe that if you look at it in the way that you're seeing it, it's true that that the adults nowadays, when they raise their kids, they didn't help cultivate those social skills that we take for granted because we just had it. Because we didn't have a phone in our hand all the time, right? Like you had to call up your, like one of my favorite influencers online is like, you know, he's a, he's like an elder millennial and he's like, we developed social skills because I had to call my friends home line, right?

18:09And be like, hi, Mrs. Figuera, like is Andres there? Can I talk to him? And then she's like, how are you? How's your mom? And you're chatting, right? Like there wasn't this bypass of I'm just going to text my friend. You had to call up, usually talk to their parent, risk the parent being on the other, you know, like being on the other landline, like listening in, right? Like you just – the infrastructure was different. And on the same hand, I feel bad for the parents because a lot of these parents that raise Gen Z and Gen Alpha have really been guinea pigs. you know, when it comes to technology, social media, like all this rapid innovation, they haven't, it's been on them to figure it out, which like parenting is hard enough.

18:52And then figuring out this huge new wave of innovation and how that affects childhood development. Like that's like, that's like what people get degrees in, you know what I mean? And then you're like a parent here navigating it. It's hard. No. And like you mentioned that, yeah, you give a tablet or a phone to a kid with social media at nine and they're going into Tumblr groups at 11. It's like, what was I doing when I was nine years old? I was taking my skateboard and looking at magazines to try to recreate those tricks in the street, like in the physical world. And there really is a notable difference with that.

19:27I will never, ever say again that this generation is guilty for what is happening to that. But if I leave it, it is true that there's a certain responsibility to the parents of those people that were yeah well and society right and i think that's like um i think i think that like we also as i mean we're all scarred by our parents right like nobody's parents were perfect and there are things our parents did like i don't think they really like talked about mental health and whatever and so okay fine like but and so maybe parents take some responsibility there for our generation but i think that as you become an adult um you also have to take responsibility for the for for for yourself so i don't think it's entirely oh these poor kids like we should coddle them these poor young people like i think that we should say yeah like you know there were a lot of stuff there were a lot of circumstances that didn't teach you great behaviors and um you know lack of skills etc but like now we're gonna help you and it's there's a big responsibility on you as well to go figure out how do you function in the workplace how do you date?

20:31How do you, you know, do all of these things that Gen Z isn't doing a lot of, right? Like, they're not dating a lot. They're not going out. They're struggling in the workplace. It's true. No, I'll take it. I'll take it like in a super simple thing that I just thought about. Like my cousins, they can't order pizza, like by the phone. It's it's it's a whole thing. It's like, no, I don't want to speak with anybody. It's like weird. It's uncomfortable. And I'm like, gets quicker. Why do you have to go in the app and play the game that takes 10 minutes to order just to order a simple pizza, man, talk.

21:04That totally you and me, you and me. Yeah, we wouldn't have an issue one of us would call because yeah, I feel the same way. Like sometimes it's easier to order online, but other times it's like step by step by step by step by step. But I think it's just like that's the environment that they grew up in. So we have to meet them part of the way, but then they also, we have to, you know, set some boundaries and expectations, right? Especially, I feel a lot of empathy for them that like they're in the, you know, they were entering the workplace when COVID happened or they were in college, right? And so maybe they didn't get to intern in person or now a ton of companies are remote and I'm like, man, as a mid-level, mid-career, excuse me, professional, I have had experience in an office.

21:49I understand etiquette. But if I'm just working, like, so working at home is awesome and gives freedom, right? But if I was, like, 21, like, I'd want to be soaking in, you know, all of these learnings from, you know, from other people. And I'd really want to understand, like, okay, like, I got to learn the ropes of, like, what it's like in the professional world, right? And how and mirror what my boss is doing or my boss's boss, etc. Of course. or camaraderie with peers you know it's true no my little brother he actually and and this is true story covid he saw three-fourths of his college career online so it was like he i'm so sorry for college covid hit he graduated online his first job thankfully it was physical but but he has had Had a little bit of, how can I phrase it?

22:44Growing pains? Yeah, he had difficulties like entering the normal or what we define as the norm of the workplace. And how to actually do a job. He doesn't have that experience and he's nervous. And I'm just like, dude, go ahead and just try it out. You'll see that you'll learn along the way. I learned it. Fake it till you make it is my motto. Well, of course. I got it in undergrad. I got a degree in theater and a degree in broadcast journalism. And I joke that my degree in theater is my degree in pretend, which allows you to like, as a human, you're just pretending your way to the next thing to the next thing.

23:21Because like, nobody's lived life before you don't know how it goes. Right. So but I but I think that like the if you if you put yourself in the shoes of a young person who grew up through the lens of a phone, and there was so much cancel culture and judgment and, you know, so much risk there, um, that they're really afraid. They're really afraid of taking chances because they've seen what happens. Somebody takes a chance and they're just done. They're canceled. Um, and so I think that like normalizing this idea of what you're talking about of, um, like failure is part of it. It's part of figuring it out.

23:57That's what we have to, um, that's what we have to like help, help them build, build skills towards, right. And create spaces where they can do that and feel safe. So I just don't think there's a lot of safety because they've grown up seeing that. I keep on using my hand for my phone. I don't even know where my phone is. But yeah, I think it's just a different... I think we... What's that phrase? It's like walking. I'm not going to get it right, but you don't know somebody unless you've walked a mile in their shoes or something like that. It's like, yeah, just I think what the world needs today is more empathy of like your operative reality isn't somebody else's and how did their reality get to be that way so then how can we actually work to problem solve now and and i i i do agree with what you're mentioning that there is like no safe space for them to understand that it's okay to be wrong and it's okay to make mistakes because even with social media nowadays posting is selective and people post their best moments or when they look the best or when something incredible happen.

24:58Or it means to an end, right? Like I want to sell product or, you know, like have a partnership or whatever it might be. But it's a fake, perfect fairy tale for everybody on social media. So when somebody is going through a hard time and you start looking at Instagram or whatever, then you're like, oh, these people are doing so well. Why am I not in that position? And then you start to get in your head and it turns into a whole thing. Well, it's all the stories we tell ourselves, right? I think that humans are driven by stories. So if we can tell ourselves different stories, right? Like, you know, I think that we can end up in different places mentally and otherwise, but there's a lot of stories that are being told.

25:36And even though we all know social media is a highlight reel, it's still really hard when you're having that down day and then you go look and see and you're like, damn, like for me, I'll be like, you know, maybe somebody else is like, wow, their life looks amazing. But also like, I should be posting. Why am I not posting? You know what I mean? It's like that, like guilt there of like, oh, I gotta, do that. And you're just like, wait a minute. I'm shitting all over myself. I should be this. I should be that. And if I'd grown up with that, that I'm building a brand before I even have my identity figured out, that's backwards.

26:12That's tough. And okay. Going back to the questions that I had, Greta, because this conversation has been amazing. It's just like a friendly convo because I've been very interested in everything you're telling me because Blue fever just sounds so cool. Like I would have valued it so much if I had the opportunity to use that when I was growing up because I did go through things like everybody. And speaking of the access that young people have, do they have to pay a certain fee? Is there a subscription or is this like more of a pro bono service for them? Yeah. So we've experimented with a couple different models.

26:49So we have been open to everybody, all youth for free, because typically youth don't have money, right, to be spending on these things. So we've been subsidized in different ways. Most recently, we are doing partnerships with cities. And so we partner with cities and cities will actually provide blue fever as well as other clinical mental health services for free for every young person, 13 to 26, who lives in these cities. So we're building up that roster more and more now. But we've, you know, we found that it's a tricky thing to monetize something when the end user doesn't have money, right?

27:31Like a young person doesn't have like extra money. And they don't want to and especially they don't want to tell their parents like, hey, I'm using this platform because the parent might be like, well, then what's wrong? Are you okay? So we've had partnerships with different like brands that are really aligned with, that are really aligned with like wellness. They don't necessarily have to be a mental health brand, but they could be like a really fun like pimple patch company, right? Or like clean beauty. So we've done partnerships with like corporations that way. And now we're seeing that there's like a real path with municipalities.

28:06So cities and states who are saying like, hey, like we, we really want to provide something and it is in our youth's best interest and our city's best interest to provide this for free to them because, you know, problems that are started now that don't get addressed turn into, in the worst case, right, like drug addiction, homelessness, truancy, you know, and on and on and on because, again, young people grow up. So the more that we can be preventative in nature, the better. And I'm sure you'd agree it's like this is in the United States, but all over the world, you know, things just keep getting more and more chaotic, right?

28:44There's like so many more wars and this and that. And like, just to live in this world and imagine like growing up in this world, we just need more support, right? And more tools at our fingertips. Yeah, it's totally true. And it can get overwhelming with everything that's happening. And like, from my perspective, me being from Venezuela, I've lived through turmoil all my life. But the fact is that it can feel like, Like it can feel daunting to grow up into a world that you're not even certain what's going to happen. So, oh, my God. And is this reason and is this why you're mentioning that the company is turning more into policy because of what you're doing with the cities and the municipalities and the state?