Haugen: working to build an ecosystem of accountability around social media. (Photo by Christina Gandolfo)

I went to a Montessori preschool. My parents were very big on the idea that children are people and treated me with great seriousness. If they asked me to do something, I was allowed to ask why.

Debate was a big part of my high school experience. Coaching debate requires you to be very clear about why you believe something. Essentially, you lead someone else through a dialectical process, very much like what happens in the HBS classroom.

I didn’t set out to be public. I’m grateful [Wall Street Journal reporter] Jeff [Horwitz] told me I could quit at any time. Solutions need to be systems-based, not dependent on one person. That was a beautiful and liberating thing to hear.

A big part of my advocacy is cultivating an ecosystem of accountability around social media safety. The goal of Beyond the Screen is to bring together NGOs, academics, litigators, and technologists to itemize harms and the levers to prevent and mitigate them.

If we can all sit around the table and have a shared conversation, we can get to a duty-of-care standard. We’re not saying do it all; we’re saying there should be a floor somewhere in the middle.

I use the analogy of the automotive industry and Unsafe at Any Speed, which revealed all the very fixable safety issues carmakers weren’t implementing—like making seatbelts standard equipment. We need to bring the same transparency to social media.

The two history classes I took at HBS gave me such a great perspective on the power of time. It helps you realize that what you’re experiencing is not uniquely special, because others have struggled the way you’ve struggled. That understanding brings so much strength and resilience.

Every single time we’ve invented a social medium, we’ve had to learn and correct. The printing press unleashed a huge amount of destabilization. This new way of spreading information unfortunately included inflammatory pamphlets that incited violence against people with different religious beliefs.

Four or five days a week at sunset, my husband and I go out into the ocean, hang onto a boogie board, and catch up on the day. The ocean is so infinite and eternal—it makes everything you’re going through feel like it can’t be that important.

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