Building Blue Fever: A Journey of Empowering Youth Mental Health Through Peer Support

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of what is now the Drug Prevention Hour Podcast. Yes, that’s new in my vocabulary. Now I’m getting used to say that instead of the party talk podcast, but the same great content where we’re inspiring leaders and youth drug prevention. And today, I’ve got a great new friend, her name is Greta. And actually, it was a family from church. their kid is in our youth group, and they’re an amazing family. And when they said, Jake, you need to meet Greta. I was like, Okay, let’s see what happens. And we connected and I’m so excited to introduce you to her. And Greta, I’m not going to tell them all about Blue Fever. But we’re going to do that together. So can you just give us a quick intro of you and what you’re up to with blue fever.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Jake, I’m so excited to be here. And I’m really glad that my cousin shout out to Miranda and made made the connection. And Sierra who’s in the youth group, I think Sierra will kids, but shout out to them. As so you know, I love the new title. By the way, I think it’s very clear, I didn’t listen to the old podcast, but I’m super clear on what you need to talk about on this one. So my background, I’ve been an entrepreneur in the youth mental health and wellness space for over a decade now. And I’ve really focused my time on building awareness and tangible solutions at the intersection of mental health, well being media and technology. And most of my time has been spent in the field and I say in the field, yes, physically with adolescents, like at schools, in our physical lives, but also in the field digitally. Because let’s face it, kids have a digital life now, as well as a physical life and I’ve been in the field digitally with adolescents and young adults really understanding their challenges, aspirations and needs. And, and I started off as a filmmaker, we won’t get too much into that. But But I, the first film I ever made was on the childhood obesity epidemic. And I lived all across America. And you know, with all these different families and educators, and it was such a privilege, and I really saw how people were supporting their overall health and well being. And then, after that long story short, I saw that young people were self medicating with media. And I knew that we had to come up with a different solution to support their mental health and that social media wasn’t just the, the only way to reach them. And so I started Blue Fever. And Blue Fever is a platform that acts as a mental health companion, and community for Gen Z, Gen Alpha. I know, we’re kind of like the generations are shifting on us a little bit. Middle School high schoolers. And we essentially provide a bridge between the wellness needs of young people, and the information products and services, right, that can best help their growing up journey. So this happens today in our app, which is a high trust, you can think of it almost like a community diary, we can talk more about it later, but where you can come and authentically express yourself. And that unlocks peer support, but also support from our empathetic at pure mental health AI blue, who we have been building since 2018. So can talk a lot about that. And blue provides acknowledgement and resources for your mental health.

Wow. Okay. That’s amazing. And I think with with our audience, being professionals who are in the drug prevention field, as we know that social media can be such a touchy landscape, because students use it to communicate with their friends, things like Snapchat, they’re more likely to respond to a snap Snapchat than they are a text message or an email or even a phone call picking up the phone. So like they’re used to using these platforms. But there’s also a lot of scary things that can happen on those apps, because it is so unregulated, and there seem to be no boundaries on what people can say. And there are all the Yeah, the freedoms to make dumb decisions out there as well. So the cool thing that I think you’re doing with blue fever is it’s got a focus, that it’s focused on serving young people as a mental health. I don’t wanna say advocate, but kind of like a mental health resource. And this is the way it’s designed to do this one thing, and they don’t have to choose between being on and off social media. And one of our more recent episodes, we talked a lot about this, about technology and social media. And I have noticed that the students who wait a longer time to start using social media, they seem to develop faster and they’re they’re more mature and they’re more confident. So what you’re doing though, is building something that’s kind of new. I don’t know if it’s like a blue ocean thing. But when I think of social media, I just think of the big players. And maybe Blue Fever, one day will be a big player, but not in this general landscape of just taking your time, but in the landscape of helping people. So I would love to have you share kind of what you share with me on how this all started, like, how did you? How’d you go from no idea to this idea?

Yeah. And that is, I want to but before I answer that question, I want to just touch on what you said of about Blue Fever that you’re like. This is a platform that serves young people. And I haven’t really heard somebody use that language specifically before we say like support, but I think like, you know, it, we are very intentional, right, we do serve young people and plus one that I’d say that we want to be a space where also young people can serve each other. And that, I think, is where real magic happens. Because at this point in their lives, there’s a lot of identity development, foundational identity development happening, and a lot of cues, and important lessons etc, come from peers. So I just, I thought that was well put and, and wanted to plus one that I that we hope that young people will serve each other within the platform but..

That’s powerful. That’s, that’s really powerful. And I bet you like our listeners, I’d be like, Yeah, and it’s true, because like, you’re the peer work in the prevention field is also the game changer, where we’re trying to figure out how to get young people involved in becoming part of the solution. And so yeah, that’s built into your experience.

And I think that a lot of times, specifically with mental health, right? Or, or, you know, when people hear mental health, they automatically think mental illness, when I say mental health, just to be clear, I’m speaking more in the traditional definition of it of like, you know, what, you know, makes you high functioning member of society fulfilled, right, your most authentic self, because ever, because 100% of us have mental health. And, and when I, when I, when I look at like young people today, a lot of times they are being told they’re the problem, right? “Oh, you have anxiety? Or oh, you did this or that. And we really try to say, well, how are you?” How can you be the solution, right first, and it’s sometimes easier to try to be the solution for someone else, right to show up in support. But what we find is when young people show up and support me, this is peer to peer definition, obviously, we didn’t build this, but we’re utilizing it, they come to support others, they actually end up supporting themselves as well. And I think that that’s, like you said in the drunk in the drug prevention space, you know, peer pressure can be really good or really bad. And we want to make sure that we like, you know, use that for for, for good. Right and to make good decisions. So yes, we could go down a million things, but I’ll answer your question.

Yeah. Let’s talk about how you started. That’d be great.

The Journey of Blue Fever: From Idea to Peer Support Platform

Yeah, so a little bit more about my background. I never, ever, ever thought I’d be doing what I’m doing today. Yet. When I sit here I go, Oh, that’s like the most natural thing ever. I feel really fulfilled and my purpose and I’m super grateful for that. I started off really with a background as an artist and thought I would be doing performing arts. I was for those educators listening, I was one of your nerdy theater kids, I’m sure you would have many. I was one of those and, and I was going to, you know, go become an actress. So I studied theater in college. And, and also broadcast journalism, because my parents were like you, I want to hedge your bets a little. And I ended up, you know, wanting to actually have more creative control over the stories I was telling. So after I’d done some professional film, TV theater, as an actress, I decided to start a production company and make a film about the childhood obesity epidemic. And that was my first foray into filmmaking and really creating a product because at the end of the day, a film is a product that takes many, many people to create. And I lived all across America from East LA to rural Mississippi and developed this really unique point of view on who the American teen was and what they were going through. And we talked primarily to young people who were were you no clinically obese. And the film, yes, focused on their physical health. But we also saw that physical health is related to mental health and social health and emotional health. And it really got my wheels spinning. So you know, I said earlier in my introduction, that, you know, I saw that young people were self medicating with media. And I went, this is really interesting, I think, I think this is the future. And so as I released the film, we were really lucky to get it in theaters and on now Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, I had brought my first product to market as like a business venture. And then I also had this like idea in my head that I couldn’t get out of like, okay, what, what is what is how do I, how do I help people’s well being with media and technology, and I just saw it as like a triangle right? Of Media Tech and well being, and, and that tech was going to make media scalable for everybody. And we’ve seen that play out and media was going to make technology irrelevant, it was going to make us want to go on our technology, and then it would impact our well being and for better or for worse, and we’ve seen that I think, in both ways. But I think the worst stories get a lot of publicity. And so you know, we are, we’re focused a lot on those. But I’m here to tell you a better story today of how technology has helped young people, hopefully for the better. And so I will kind of skip over more films that I made more kind of interest in telling stories that were more representative of different people. And finally kind of landed on this concept that I was going to curate media based on mood and emotion and deliver that to young women at the time was the fourth focus. And it was young millennial women. I’m a millennial. And so it’s like this, you know, if we could just, you know, almost self medicate with media in the right way. How cool would that be? Very quickly, we found out that when we were we had like, put up this really janky platform and like, like linked a bunch of YouTube videos, and we started text messaging people. And we were like, “Hey, are you feeling this way? Watch this piece of content? Are you going through this situation? Watch this.” And what we saw is that people started to text us back. And we did not anticipate that we we were like, Whoa, what do we do? Like, do we answer them? Do we not? Like they’re engaged with us? And so we said, Okay, well, we’ll we’ll text back. And, you know, in a month, suddenly, we had 10,000 people that we were texting. And then like, couple months later was 30,000 people. And it was, you know, myself and my co-founder and a bunch of interns. And we were up till like, two in the morning responding to people and really got us a sense of like, what people are going through and how alone they felt and how they just they really wanted to connect, and they love that we we kind of engaged back and forth, but also like prescribed, if you will, this piece of media and and one of the things that came from that is this particular voice that we developed, we were texting back and forth. And this eventually became that that we like, couldn’t scale. And so we decided to create a chatbot that wouldn’t be available 24/7. And that’s when Blue was born. And Blue is our empathetic, near peer mental health AI. And blue is really the inspiration for Blue was this magical big sister that I always wanted growing up. I don’t know about anybody else. But I was just like, oh man, if I had that big sibling that I could like, talk to and confide in, like, I could just I don’t know, it would make my life a lot easier because my parents didn’t get me and some of my friends have gone through certain things before. And instead of that magical Big Sister, I had an older brother who had epilepsy at the time and autism. And so he wasn’t, you know, he didn’t show up in the way that I wanted him to. When I was the teen, which I think is totally fair. Now as an adult, right? He showed up the best he could. But I didn’t. But I always wanted that. And I think that when you want something for yourself, you often go out and become it for other people. And so I kind of started to fill those big sister shoes for other people just personally right in my relationships. And then Blue. The the voice of Blue just kind of came around. And it’s like, yeah, who wouldn’t want this near peer-like big sibling figure who was always there never judgmental, and could really help guide you through these situations, life milestones, feelings, that felt very big and large. And yeah, and so that’s like the that’s how Blue Fever started. And then we moved on to an app for a couple different reasons. But i i That’s like, how we got to where we are. So it wasn’t like a lightbulb idea. I didn’t like wake up one day and be like, Oh, I have a vision for the app, I think, much more realistic story. And most of the stories when you actually peel back the layers are like this is just like iteration after iteration and learning and really listening to young people and then co creating with them to create an experience that they are like, Yeah, I’ll use and it’ll support me.

Wow, that’s so fascinating. Because when you when you think about the journey of building a product, is you started with one thing in mind, which was oh, we’re going to start this platform and they can share how they’re feeling and then great. Well, here’s a piece of media that’s probably really relevant for you. Then realizing they didn’t want the piece of media, they wanted to connect with someone. And then as you were connecting with them, you and your interns and your team, I’m like laughing imagining this, like you started this company. And they’re like, wait, what’s happening? We didn’t expect this. Now our job has completely shifted to something different and..

Demographic dropped, I meant to mention that the demographic dropped from Millennial to Gen Z, right? And, and we were like, Whoa, wait a minute, we have no clue who this end user is.

Whoa, okay. That’s See, that’s so crazy. So everything shifted, your audience shifted, and the mode of what you expected to, like be communicating with them has shifted.

Yeah, like we thought we were doing a good job at it now, because it’s just such a hard business model to do that. But we thought we were building a subscription video on demand, like media company, we thought we’re building like Netflix for millennial women. And we ended up building, you know, like this mental health app that like, you know, has this big sibling personality. And I think that, you know, at the time, people weren’t talking about mental health like they are now. It wasn’t as it was more of a taboo conversation. And I remember, my investor said, “do not, like do not say your mental health do not talk about it. You are not mental health.” And I think what they meant is you’re not clinical mental health, right? You’re not meant to you’re not dealing with mental illness, but are treating mental illness rather. But I think that, you know, as the time went on, and we’ve learned more, we were like, Okay, so there’s this, like, need for a big sibling and somebody to talk to, that you won’t feel judged by, because you feel like you can’t open up to other people. And then mental health, everybody’s like, Oh, we should pay attention to this. And it’s, and it’s hard and complex for anybody, but especially young people, like they’re growing up than in a different world than us. And a world like I mentioned, where they have that physical and digital life. And I think there’s, you know, we learned pretty quickly that there was like four pillars to delivery and holistic mental health support, and I’m just gonna, actually, it’s, I think, perfect time to share my screen, if that’s okay with you.

Blue Fever’s Four Pillars: Creating a Safe and Supportive Space for Youth

Yes, please show please. And I’m going to, I’m going to preface this because I want us to go into into this. And I just think what’s something to point out? Because I can imagine, like, when I first heard this is you, you’re building this AI platform, which to most people sounds like how could you like, that seems like an impossible task. But as you as you explain it, and maybe we can do this quickly, before we dive in? Is you building AI is basically you’ve recorded 1000s or 10s of 1000s of conversations that you’ve and your team of God, with real people. Oh, millions. Wow. Okay. So and, and what’s really cool is that the, this chatbot has learned, basically how to duplicate what you’ve done, and it can do it for millions of more people, because the barrier of communication isn’t there. The scalability is, is not an issue now because the computer can do it based on what it’s learned from an actual human, like yourself and your team and the rules that you have set up. Right?

Yeah, yeah. So there’s two parts. So um, yes, I’m gonna I think this is a great place for us to dive in. And I’m, if we, if we have time, or interests, we can walk through the the product itself, but I think that, you know, what, what we built was initially like, like you said, it was humans texting other humans, right, and really listening and doing that peer support. Like, unofficially, like we never said, Hey, we’re a peer to peer company. But we were giving, I guess, near peer support, because I would never call myself a 16 year old when I was in my 20s. Very, but like it was near peer support. And, and we we then decided to move to an app because we saw that there were four things that I have on the screen now that young people really needed to have this holistic mental health experience, like a holistic, like positive mental health experience. And the way that I ended up the first one is safety by design. And so when you think about our text message product, we were you know, it was you and it was either a vetted human or it was you in blue, so pretty safe, right? Like you’re not going to run into nefarious characters or, you know, information that is, you know, maybe not appropriate, because everything was really controlled. And so we knew that if, if people are in the safe space, like one safety is good for people, but to do it allow them to express themselves, because the biggest barrier to getting young people to engage a lot of times they don’t have that trust If they don’t feel safe, and and then if they felt safe enough, they they, we heard repeatedly over text message like, “Hey, can I text with like blue, me and my sister or blue, me and my best friend or like, Hey, can I connect with other people?” And we were like, okay, so we need to create a community component. And and so that was missing in text message. And then, you know, positive guidance, what we saw is that, like, people, young people specifically wanted a more reciprocal relationship between themselves and their technology. And what that means, you know, right now we see, I don’t think we see great reciprocity on social media, because the algorithms decide everything and really kind of take your time. And sometimes you get something good back, but it’s really out of your control. And what we found here, it was, like, really, like we designed blue with this, like, give and take. So with our, when we expanded it, and I’m coming back to your AI, like questions and comments is that we designed a community space within the app, where blue would interact. But we also then designed to chat so that you could still chat with blue, you could still engage in that chat experience was based off of all of the millions of conversations and insights and learnings, right. And so it was the community experience, but it was it was all, you know, intentionally designed, over time, intentionally designed so that it it, like it’s focused on trust, and it focused on or were things like, belonging, and self esteem and purpose, right, like really like intangible things. And I’ll close by saying like this is, we really see these as, these are four pillars, they’re like four legs of a table. And for any table to have a stable foundation, like you need, you need all four legs, I mean, I guess there could be three legged tables, but why not, don’t need that. But these these pillars, right, like, it’s, it’s a conundrum to provide and create new safety, that’s something really intangible and a hard thing, to inspire the feeling of, but in order to create, you know, trust, there’s lots of ways of going about doing it. And this is just how we chose to, you know, we’ve chosen very specific ways to go about that, which I can talk more about, but, but really, I like to present these as these are four legs to a table. And, and we we are like at a low acuity solution for young people, but also this addendum to therapy, if somebody is in treatment, for kind of before, during and after that treatment.

Yeah, and I want to, because I love the four pillars that you have, I’m just gonna read them. If you’re on our YouTube channel, you can take a look if you’re listening in your car. So Safety by design, it’s a safe space where you are anonymous, the community is supportive, and the platform moderates toxic toxicity. So you don’t have to worry about I love the thought under Self-expression to that instead of performing for others, you can share your inner thoughts without judgment and feel better under Social Support it’s not a social is not a product, it’s a feature for Gen Z. So you can be part of a relatable community that supports you through the ups and downs. And then the Guidance. I love how you talked about like, we want that reciprocal relationship, we just don’t want to dump our stuff into technology, but that the AI guides supportive recommendations for your growing up journey. And I remember you telling me this on our last call, because I’d asked you they both I mean, what happens if there’s something that’s beyond your abilities and what you’ve talked about, or your training and just pure support? And you’re just very clear about? Yes, there’s a there’s an ending point where we we need to recommend other services. And by no means is this a replacement for real human like interaction. Because when you think about it is we’re building this middle, it looks like you’re building a middle space where young people are comfortable going to their phones. And if we leave it up to the internet and AI to solve their problems without creating something different, then they’re going to get crazy, terrible guidance. Even just I was in a, I was in a conference with the drug free foundations of America. And they were talking about how different AI tools were promoting vaping products as a good way to deal with stress. When we know studies show that it increases your stress and anxiety. And it’s terrible for the young mind and for mental health. But that there was I mean, obviously something else behind the the algorithm that was pushing that stuff. So to me the idea of having a safe space that’s focused on mental health. Sounds pretty cool.

Blue Fever’s Approach to Youth Mental Health

Yeah, I mean, there is the AI is not perfect. Our AI is not perfect either. But we’ve really put in some guardrails to say like, Hey, these are topics you won’t talk about like Blue will not Talk about, and if somebody is in a crisis situation, especially a mental health crisis situation, where there’s self harm or suicide involved, you know, they are routed to the appropriate resource and encouraged to share, I think that, you know, our AI is only as good as our training data. So it’s, I look at AI as almost this, this mirror, it’s like a mirror of society, because a lot of these large language models that so if people are familiar with like chat GPT is kind of AI chatbot, a lot of people have heard ups, you know, that large language model was built, ingesting, like, so much information off the internet, right? And it’s learning from all of that information. So if we’re putting in information that says, hey, like, vape, and you know, it’ll make you feel better, I’m sure that was said somewhere on the internet, right? Like, then, then it might spit it back out. And so we try to be really careful about what data we are training our algorithm on. And I and I have built up a large corpus of this multi dimensional data to make sure that like that, that it’s doing, you know, that it’s achieving the goal we wanted it to. And I think that for people who are suspicious of AI, rightfully so, but I will also say that, like, when dealing with an adolescent audience base, I think a lot of people take for granted, like, if I can reach a kid, right? At school, for example, like and if I can just ask these questions like, I can just alleviate their pain. But in a lot of these contexts, kids might not trust adults with their problems, or even know how to synthesize their problems to communicate it. Right. And that is a is a barrier. And so a lot of like, what we offer is, is a risk free first space to to get it out, right. So maybe you’re really struggling, and you don’t know how to talk to your parents about how you’re struggling in school, but you share it on blue fever, you get some positive support people encourage you, right, like, Hey, you should actually share with your parent or a trusted adult, that can be the first step right in it in a journey. And I think a lot of Envision mental health solutions, you know, say you can you put a young person with like a clinical like, helper, right, like a therapist, and I think that it’s, that’s not always a solution for everyone. And we, they just need more spaces, or they feel like, okay, I can actually like, work on figuring out what’s going on. Because once they figure out how to say it, then we can actually help them right. And I think there’s a lot of like real world help, that we bridge to at Blue Fever, we won’t say hey, like, come here, and I’ll we’ll, we’ll deal down everything and your problems are solved. But it’s more like, this is the start, this is a start. And we’re here. And we’re here in ways that maybe other people can’t be. But um, but also don’t forget about your as the kids say, like IRL community, like they really mattered to.

Is that in real life?

Yeah. In real life? Yeah, as you’re investing in real life community, and and, and we know, we’re also working on more features within the product to bridge to the caretakers, right of young people. So how do we work better with schools and teachers, we work better with parents, because we really have that trust, we take that trust very seriously. And we don’t want to hurt it. But we also know that like, it takes a village when helping a kid. And you know, just talking to appear might not always be the solution, or just talking to Blue might not always be the solution.

Empowering Youth Mental Health: Blue Fever’s Outreach and Partnership Opportunities

Okay, yeah. Well, I, I’m excited to just learn more about Blue Fever. And I’ve gotten this introduction from you, which sounds really cool. So I’m excited to dive in. And if anyone else listening it, like wants to know more, and wants to get connected with you, how can they do that? And please share if there’s any way to that, like, can they work with you? Can they use blue fever and share it with their students and check it out? So anything you want to share with them? Yeah. 

Thanks, Jake. Appreciate it. So right now, we are actually working on doing a couple different pilot programs with schools, and nonprofits. So we have three slots left. If you are interested, we are essentially rolling out the app to young people at your school or your organization. And then working on doing some kind of high level like data reporting and efficacy reporting with the adults again while maintaining trust and proving out you know, how supportive this tool can be within that environment. So if anybody is interested in bringing Blue Fever to their school or organization, you can email me and I’ll just give my email at directly it’s Greta G-R-E-T-A At Blue fever, b-l-u-e f-e-v-e-r  just spelled normally like when you’re hot, you got a fever.com so greta@bluefever.com And, you know, I’d love to hear from you. We’re really excited. We’re on the we’ve been named Apple app, Apple’s App of the day. So we’re on iOS, but we’re expanding to Android soon. And and who’ve been to launch with a couple different, diverse partners. So excited to learn, I excited to learn more from you, and hopefully, partner, if there’s anybody out there that’s interested.

That’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing that opportunity on here. Maybe some of us can take advantage of it. So if you’re listening, Greta@bluefever.com, reach out to her ask some questions. And I know a lot of y’all you’re either involved in a school or if you’re in a coalition, you have school districts that you’re interested in. So definitely check that out. If it sounds really cool to you. Again, Greta, I’m so excited for what you’re doing and can’t wait to dive in more and learn more. So once again, thank you for being on the podcast. I appreciate you giving us your valuable time.

Thank you, Jake. I, it was so great to be here. I don’t have enough time in the day to meet with every single educator, every single person who works with or on the behalf of young people. So this is a great opportunity for me to connect right in a digital way. And also thank you all everybody who’s listening for the work you’re doing with young people. It is it takes all of us. So appreciate you all as well. Thanks for having me.

Amazing what a great way to wrap it up. If you’re listening to this episode, first favor if you found it valuable, please share it with a friend who could use this information. And if you want to thank us for doing this free content for you. We love doing it every single Monday. And so the best way to say thanks is to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. And again, just share with with someone so that we can spread the love and it takes a village. So let’s keep doing this great work and we’ll see you next Monday for another episode. Talk to you later.