Community Guidelines: Feel Out Loud Community Creator Space
An online environment like this allows you to share a piece of yourself with others who may have similar real-life experiences or are interested to learn from yours. The intention of this opportunity is to create a space where young people can share their experiences and explore topics related to mental health and wellness. This is also a space to share your creativity! Whether you’ve created something digitally or with pencil and paper, we’ve made this space for you to Feel Out Loud with other young people in whatever way feels best for you. We encourage you to share whatever would be meaningful for you.
We also want to make sure we maintain as welcoming a space as possible for all young people. As such, we ask that you uphold the following guidelines when submitting content:
Demonstrate respect for everyone.
Sharing your creativity can take courage. We ask that you take into consideration other young people when sharing your content as well.
- Please don’t engage in racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism or any kind of discrimination.
- Don’t share any potentially harmful written content, images or videos (i.e. nudity, pornography, depictions of violence or substance use, etc.).
- We also ask you not to use any explicit language (e.g. swear words).
We’re all learners and may make mistakes. Our moderators will email you to help you (if you’ve provided your email address with your submission) when they notice disrespectful or harmful content in your submission. They may offer you suggestions about how you can make your content more respectful for everyone.
Put your own safety first.
It’s OK to challenge yourself to share tough things, but please don’t feel pressure to share anything before you feel ready to. Sharing online can be a great way to connect, learn and more, but there are some safety considerations to keep in mind.
Consider reviewing Kids Help Phone’s online safety tips to help you take care of your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health before sharing your content.
Protect your privacy and everyone else’s.
As this is a public, online space that is viewable by all who visit this site, we encourage you to be mindful of what personal details you might be sharing and the importance of maintaining your anonymity.
- Please don’t share any personal or identifying details in the content of your submission (i.e. names, age, location, school, phone number, social media handle, etc.) that would break your anonymity or anyone else’s if your submission is published to our website.
- Share only from your own experiences and don’t share someone else’s story without their permission.
- We also ask that you don’t share any videos / images of anyone without their consent. Because you are the one providing consent when you submit your content, we don’t have consent to publish any videos / images of other individuals. Consider changing people’s names if you’re sharing a personal story to protect everyone’s privacy.
Maintain everyone’s confidentiality.
You are prohibited from sharing any other user’s content that’s been published to the Feel Out Loud Community Creator Space. People have chosen to share here, not somewhere else.
Help support everyone’s well-being.
We ask that you don’t provide instructions on how to hurt / harm yourself or other people within your submission to this space.
We’d like to share harm-reduction and helpful behaviours instead. Your submission could share ways to make thoughts, actions or activities like suicidal ideation, self-harm, disordered eating, drug use, sex work, etc. less harmful.
We also ask that you avoid mentions of explicit details of a violent or sexual nature that may be upsetting for yourself or others, and that you don’t mention specific measurements for things like personal weights, calories or BMI.
You can visit our Peer-to-Peer Community for more tips for safer sharing (and explore how you can also connect with other young people about your experiences).
Get support if you’re in crisis.
If you need help now, you’re not alone. Kids Help Phone’s e-mental health services are open 24/7 to offer support. If you’re in a crisis, we encourage you to connect with a professional counsellor or a trained, volunteer crisis responder.
The Feel Out Loud Community Creator Space web forms and email address are not monitored 24/7, and we can’t provide crisis support over web forms or email.
If you submit something to the Community Creator Space that suggests you need more help (e.g. that leads us to believe you or someone else may be in danger), our moderators will connect with you by email during their working hours (if you provide an email address with your submission) to share ways you can connect for support. We may also be required to disclose the information / content you submit to an external agency, usually a local child welfare agency or, less commonly, the police, if we think that you or others may be in danger. This is called the “duty to report.” For more information on Kids Help Phone’s duty to report, you can review our privacy policy.
Help maintain and share accurate and relevant information.
This space is for you to share your creativity and experiences!
- We’d like to keep this space free of external ads and solicitations.
- Please don’t share any third party information including links to events, surveys, brands, social media handles, etc.
- We also request that you respect intellectual property and only share content that you created yourself.
- Please don’t copy someone else’s written or visual content and submit it as your own. This is known as copyright infringement or plagiarism.
We also want to let you know that Kids Help Phone reviews all submissions to the Feel Out Loud Community Creator Space. If your submission doesn’t meet these community guidelines, we’ll suggest changes and ask you to re-submit your creative content (if you provide an email address with your submission). We reserve the right to reject submissions to help ensure a welcoming environment for everyone.
