Ava Smithing is the Advocacy Director at the Young People’s Alliance, where she builds nonpartisan policy solutions for safer technology development and empowers youth to reimagine what social media could be beyond the attention economy. She also hosts and produces ‘Left to Their Own Devices,’ a Toronto Star and Paradigms podcast that takes listeners into the real experiences of young people navigating life online. Her work bridges lived experience and policy, positioning young people not just as informants but as the architects of the technology they’ll inherit.