Natasha Devon on navigating teenage years

Natasha Devon talks to young people, a lot, making hers a voice to listen to when it comes to helping them (and us) navigate the light and shade of growing up

Words Libby Norman

Natasha Devon speaks with authority about young people because she talks to them, all the time. In fact, her work still takes her into an average of three schools, colleges or universities a week. She’s a body image campaigner and was awarded an MBE for her activism on mental health issues. She’s also, clearly, a very good listener.

Toxic is her first foray into fiction and was inspired by some of her conversations and focus groups with young people. It explores the grey area around bullying and centres on a best-buddy school friendship between Llewella and glamorous new girl Aretha that takes a negative turn. Devon believes toxic teen friendships can be hard for an outsider to spot, let alone understand. “When we think of bullying, we think of something tangible,” says Devon. “But then there are all of these incredibly sophisticated ways that young people find to torture each other and undermine each other’s self-esteem. So that’s what I’m trying to focus on because there’s no protocol for that in schools, and rightly so, it is a very nuanced thing.”

Natasha Devon Pic Jonathan Donovan — Natasha Devon was awarded an MBE for her activism on mental health issues. *Portraits by Jonathan Donovan*

Devon says a close teenage friendship is different. “It’s really intense. It’s a kind of platonic infatuation, I think.” She points to the changes that happen in the teenage brain that make such friendships vital, but also volatile. “We’re supposed to be having a greater reliance on our peer group because that’s how we establish independence from our parents. So, it makes total sense how much young people are investing in their friendships. But, by the same token, they’re at an age where everybody’s discovering who they are and trying on different identities.” Boundaries get crossed and pain, misunderstandings and confusion can follow.

“Teenagers are natural libertarians. They don’t want to think that their way of thinking or their behaviour has been influenced or manipulated”

Setting boundaries and protecting yourself are big themes in Devon’s discussions with young people. That includes protecting themselves online, where so much harm happens in the teenage friendship landscape. “That’s very much where I’m trying to lead them – digital citizenship. That’s not a term I invented. I’m an ambassador for a charity called Glitch and it’s a term they use a lot. It’s this understanding that we have an online life and that it’s not just about consideration of others in the way we behave online, it’s about being safe online ourselves.”

Sound advice, but do young people understand how big an impact social media is having on their lives? Devon’s answer, rather ruefully, is no they don’t. “I love working with teenagers – they are some of my favourite people – but the only thing I find challenging about them is that they are natural libertarians. They don’t want to think that their way of thinking or their behaviour has been influenced or manipulated,” she says. “Trying to introduce this idea that the brain is plastic, and therefore the more of something we do the more the brain develops in that direction, is quite difficult.” She focuses more on encouraging young people to think of self-care and, rather like art curators, surround themselves with what she calls: “the nourishing stuff”.

Devon speaks from a position of personal knowledge about the dark avenues young people can go down. She started having panic attacks at the age of around ten after a series of destabilising and traumatic family events, including the death of a cousin, but was only diagnosed years later, at 31, with anxiety disorder. A decade on, it remains a part of her life and can be managed. “It doesn’t define who I am, and it doesn’t stop me being happy, productive or anything anymore. But it was such a long journey to have got to that point.”

“There are all of these incredibly sophisticated ways that young people find to torture each other and undermine each other’s self-esteem”

It was her own therapy journey that inspired her interest in mental health and shaped her career path. Today, Natasha Devon’s work with schools centres on helping young people to understand that the mind is something to nurture. “Everybody has got mental health and it’s something that we can monitor throughout our life, that will change throughout our life. Knowing that about yourself, being armed with that knowledge, is not something to be frightened of, it’s something that can really help you.”

There are pinch points that test young people’s equilibrium. Devon’s survival guide, Yes you can: Ace School Without Losing your Mind is for one of those pinch points – the transition to Year 9. “That is the year when everything happens,” she says. She means the classic teenage stuff: first love, changing bodies and growing self-awareness. It’s full of practical wisdom, with recipes, exercises and advice on everything from study routines to creative breakout activities – also fun quizzes. “Including lots of quizzes about things like ‘are you a lark or a nightingale?’, ‘what’s your motivation?’ helps to keep their interest. They’re learning about how they learn at the same time.” Underlying it all is a “scaffold” approach – helping them build on existing knowledge – and showing that good mental health and good grades can coexist.

Devon has listened to the concerns of young people for well over a decade now – from body image and bullying to their sense of being constantly scrutinised and failing to live up to expectations and ‘perfect life’ social media narratives. And now Covid – unsurprisingly, post-pandemic issues are in the conversations. “The big thing that I’m getting from young people is this sense of unfairness, also this sense that they’ve been written off.”

“The big thing that I’m getting from young people is this sense of unfairness, also this sense that they’ve been written off “

She thinks we adults could help by toning down the negativity – what she calls “lost generation rhetoric”. She chooses a glass-half-full approach. “I’ve been having lots of conversations about how, when you look at the most successful people, they learned to adapt their goals in response to their experiences,” she says. “Also, I talk about how important it is that they’ve learned to motivate themselves to work from home.” She discusses the self-knowledge they acquired during Covid and home schooling – including coping strategies they can use again. “It’s trying to get them to flip the narrative,” she says. “See it as an advantage that they had the opportunity to learn those things.”

Having escaped her destructive friendship, Toxic‘s heroine Llewella concludes: ‘The thing about clouds is, they pass. And, if you’re very lucky, you have some lights to guide you home’. This is a pretty good description of Natasha Devon’s approach to working with young people – helping them to manage those inevitable clouds and discover their guiding lights.