TED Talks Daily - Beyond the Talk: Deja Foxx on finding alternative online spaces

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

"Teen girls have solutions to save us from some of our biggest problems," says digital strategist Deja Foxx. Following her talk at TED2025, she joins Elise Hu, host of TED Talks Daily, to discuss the power, innovation and intelligence of teen girls — especially amid a rise in online platforms censoring women's health and creativity. Foxx reflects on how she went viral for speaking up at a town hall meeting, talks about the importance of carving out space for a different kind of internet and shares some of the women-led platforms uplifting female creatives. She also explores her journey into politics and shows how anyone can practice civic engagement, both online and offline.TED Talks Daily is nominated for the Signal Award for Best Conversation Starter Podcast. Vote here!Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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bombas.ca. That's b-O-M-B-A-S dot CA and use code music to start doing good and feeling even better. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Deja Fox is 25 years old and she already has a decades worth of experience as a public figure and activist. That's in big part thanks to social media. Through sharing her youth activism, Deja grew a strong following that translated into a budding career in politics, including becoming one of history's youngest presidential campaign strategists during Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign. Now Deja is challenging us to reimagine what our internet like, and how to make social media a more inclusive space for everyone, including girls and

women. We sat down together at this year's TED conference to unpack how our online lives have moved offline and what that means. And a quick note, this conversation was recorded in April 2025, while Deja was still running for Congress in a Democratic Party primary election for Arizona's 7th Congressional District held in September. The conversation mentions her run. Well, Deja, congrats on your TED Talk. Thank you. To kick things off, I would love to know what it was like just preparing for the TED Talk. Sure.

What surprised you along the way in this whole journey to winding up on stage. Yeah, I mean, my introduction to TED Talks were through my public school education. My teachers would put them on on the board and we would watch. And I had never really thought about if I were to give one what I would say. And when the opportunity came, I sat with what I knew. And what I know is that teen girls have some of the solutions to save us from some of our biggest problems. I know that my friends have built new and amazing strategies to protect themselves and me. and that I've built political power online

that is translated into real-world impacts. And so as I was thinking about what to write, going through the process, I had to remind myself that I didn't need a PhD, even though some of the people here definitely have those. I needed to lean into my experience, what I knew. Yeah, yeah. Why do you think it is that teen girls so often

get written off culturally as a source of power and innovation and intellect? Yeah, people hate everything, teenage girls like. My final essay I ever wrote in college was, why don't we call selfies self-portraits? And I've been interested in this question academically, but also in praxis. Like, you know, I think about my first viral moment, which was me going toe to toe with my senator, Republican senator, who voted to take away my access to birth control funding. And in that moment, I asked why he is this middle-aged white man was making these decisions

about me and my body, even though he'd been dodging me and all these other activists who'd been outside of his office attempting to have a conversation with him. And he, the politician he was, told me that he supports policies that support the American dream. And I asked him why he would deny me the American dream, right? His birth control is helping me to be successful, go on to higher education. And overnight, that video went viral. Millions of people saw it. And my life went from private to public. And I experienced what it meant to come of age in the public I, right? That was, I was 16 years old. I turned 17 a few days later. I'm 25 now. I've been counted out more times than I can count, right? In this most recent election, you know, I announced

a bit for Congress. Every headline says, influencer runs for Congress, though I've been an activist for a decade. I was one of the youngest presidential staffers in history, a digital strategist for Kamal Harris. I'm not a teen girl anymore, but still I see my accomplishments, flattened diminished. Right. Yeah, and I think women of every generation can relate to that. Unfortunately, I don't think we grow out of it. Well, some of it might be structural too, right? I mean, obviously you're talking about kind of culturally the way that things are labeled and identified and spoken about and who gets to count and matter and who doesn't. But also there's structural aspects of our online platforms. Yeah, that's right. what your talk gets to, that can be quite difficult or unsafe spaces for women and girls. And so you are advocating for alternate online spaces that are built by and for young women. We'd love for you to just kind of expand on what that looks like and how an online space that is coming from and governed by a more women's perspective is different.

Yeah, I mean, the world we build. online translates into the lives we get to live offline, not just in politics, but in everything from culture to economics. And so when we think about the digital architecture we live in, right, something like Facebook that was originally designed as a way for these men to rate their female classmates, it really should be no surprise that this digital architecture was not built with the goal of democratizing who gets to be a storyteller, right? Like, Mark Zuckerberg did not design Facebook for me to go viral and be on even footing in the public discourse with the United States Senator when I was a teenage girl working at a gas station. That was not the

design. And so when we think about what is possible as we build a new world, right? And I think even this resonates maybe for people who are feeling hopeless or dejected about politics is there are so many ways to be a world builder. And one of the ways folks are doing that, girls, women, are doing that is online. By building alternative digital platforms, right, I think about how in response to major platforms censoring women's health information, we've seen platforms like DM, which is this like Reddit alternative pop up in a quarter of their searches are about reproductive rights. And it's trained on conversations that women are having with each other. Or I think about how Sun Room, I mentioned in the talk too, has grown out of, it's where girls get paid to

exist. And it's personalized and monetized content, fitness coaches, career coaches, and hot girls. But, you know, they grew out of an issue online that they saw, which was that on these visual platforms, women's hotness is commodified by the platform, right? Like, they profit from it. Sure. And there's also a lot of sameness. I mean, one of the big knocks against the TikTok algorithm, right, is that you often see the same heavily, largely white, thin, you know, women with feminine, traditionally or conventionally feminine features.

Are there platforms that you're wanting to see that do that differently, or are there those in existence that kind of offer a different look at reality? Yeah, I think somewhere like Sunroom, right? what makes them interesting is that they're pushing back against these major platforms that profit off of women's beauty and their hotness and just our visual being, right? And saying that then those women should have a cut of that profit. Got it. And so, you know, I think that's revolutionary in its own sense about how we take up economic power because these companies are making money off of our attention and our content even when we are not.

Right. But to your point about diversifying then whose bodies are celebrated, we've seen platforms like Instagram censor larger bodies where they do not censor, you know, these like typical, you know, thin bodies. And so somewhere like Sunroom, they've responded by having content moderation done through a woman's lens, right? Or zero tolerance for harassment and hate speech. And something I think we'll probably get to later, but I'd like to touch on is that

that being a woman online is scary. It is hard. There are new kinds of digital violence, gender-based violence, that have been made possible because of these platforms, whether it's something like doxing or deepfakes, which absolutely has to do with the conversation around AI in women's rights and who gets to take up space in our public square. When it comes to these alternative spaces,

who's in charge of them? Because obviously the mega, tech companies and the mega conglomerates are in charge of our existing spaces. What about the new platforms who's running them? Is it also profit-driven in the same way? Yeah. What I think is interesting about the examples I raise in the talk is that they really are thinking about new models of ownership and control.

Okay. Which I actually think to expand it out, not to be too woo-woo, that if we can model a kind of like matriarchal, community-owned digital world, it might just spark a different kind of world in our real lives, too. I think about something like Archive of Our Own, which was founded in 2008, so not exactly part of this new wave of builders. And I know the fan girls out there are like, yeah, archive of our own, put that on, mention it. It's where, you know, all these fan works are hosted. and it supports a user base of 8 million people. Many girls my age will tell you that that's like

where they found the internet for the first time anyway was through these fan works. But their structure is non-profit, non-commercial. They are run by an elected board and they're completely volunteer run. And so they're proving concept that there's a different way to govern online. And, you know, it'll never not be astounding to me

that we let these tech bros write these community guidelines about whose bodies get to show up where and how we get to talk and what counts as hate speech effectively legislating for a billion people around the world, even though they are unelected and unaccountable. Well, that raises the next question. Are there certain tech regulations or proposed regulations of social platforms that you're supportive of? That's a good question. And I actually think what we need to do first is get people into office. who understand how these platforms work. Oh, yeah, no, I've watched those hearings. Take it all the way back, right? Yeah. And so this is actually part of why I've raised my own head up to run for office.

Like, I have been the victim of digital violence on the other end of cyber mob. And that's something that affects who gets to participate in our political process, right? When 39% of U.S. adults under 30 are getting their news on TikTok, if someone like me is intimidated out of it and platforms don't stand up for me, right, don't have clear protection. against that harassment, then we will have a different political ecosystem in five years. We already do than five years ago. And so I think absolutely there's legislation here. But I think the first step is unfortunately that we need to get people in power who understand the urgency of the issue.

So there's nothing in particular that Congress has looked at so far that you're like, oh, yes, we need to curb this. Yeah. I think some of the attempts have been pretty misguided, things like a TikTok ban, right? They've not landed with young people. They have been received poorly by the people who they're intended to protect. And so, again, I think these companies need new regulation and they're going to come from people in power who truly understand the experience. So when it comes to the new spaces that your talk focuses on, alternative online spaces, ones that are kind of

growing now. How would these new platforms protect and preserve safety and have the online community guidelines that maybe are missing now? And how should they be prevented from? Yeah. Wining up with the same problems and the same muck that's showing up in our current online platforms. Well, one of the reasons that these platforms get away with what they do is because they're massive, right? Think about what your Facebook is tied to. Like, if you were to delete your Facebook, you would no longer have access to a variety of things. And in some countries, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. And so what I'm proposing here is not that we should sub this platform for that one, but that we should have a diversified platform ecosystem, right?

That these companies that have essentially... They've gotten too big. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And that we deserve choice. about where we get our information, where we build our community, and that we shouldn't be forced into participating in their hate-for-profit business model, literally to have our voices heard, right? Like, to just get to have a say on politics or to share our perspective or to connect with our friends and family. It's really about a platform ecosystem that's different and has more choices.

And frankly, that has more women builders. Yeah, but does it create any, like, I guess, a balkanized kind of internet, though, where it's like, this is the girl internet, and this is the boy internet. And then there's, like, the gender wars that we're already seeing continue to play themselves out, but in completely different echo chambers. I fear that we are already in that reality, right? When you think about what you give any of these platforms when you first sign on, it's probably your birthday, your gender, and your age.

And so gender is one of the primary determining factors of the content you are being fed from the beginning of your time on a class. Even though we're on the same platforms, we are seeing vastly different information. And so I think what building new architecture looks like is giving girls and women a safe space online to build community that can translate into in real life change. And, you know, I would push back too in the sense that like these major platforms are the boy internet. Like we are all being forced to live in the boy internet.

They're boy built and boy focused. And so it's not so much about saying that we need one internet for boys and one for girls. It's sort of saying that we are all living in boy architecture on the internet and we are already being tracked in two different directions on our algorithms and that girls deserve to have their safe space and to be able to model a different way of being online that has benefits for literally everybody of every gender. And so I think about just how different our digital worlds could be. be, and no one should be forced into any of them, but we should have the choices. Stick around. We'll be right back after a short break. This episode is sponsored by Bombas. As fall settles in, the cooler days are a reminder to bring a little more comfort into our routines for the cozy season. And honestly,

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B-O-M-B-A-S.C-A-S-T-A-S-T-A-S-TED and use code TED at checkout. Hi, I'm Samantha Edwards, online culture reporter at the Globe and Mail. I investigate how online culture, from memes to AI, shapes the way we live offline. If that's journalism you value, head to Globe and Mail.com slash subscribe. Let's connect our conversation to what you're up to now. Yeah, let's do it. How has your previous activism and your social media work connected to this decision to try and go into electoral politics? Why electoral politics?

Yeah. I got my start a decade ago. I'm only 25, but I've been doing this for a decade. When I moved out of my mom's house, she was having issues with substance abuse, and I moved in with my boyfriend and his family, and I was sitting in a sex ed class taught by the baseball coach. Very common story, yes. And realizing that there was no one at home that was going to fill in the gaps for me with this curriculum that was last updated in the 80s.

And, you know, this ties into our information ecosystem, too, because you could Google all you want, but finding good information on sex education is hard. you don't know where to look, and often leads to misinformation. Or porn. Or porn, right? And so I started getting active. I started showing up to school board meetings, truly the most local level of government, and telling my story.

And then asking my friends if they'd come along and do the same. And we won. We won an update in Southern Arizona's largest school district of our curriculum. And that's when it clicked for me that my story had power. Yeah. You can imagine being a teenage girl in high school. The last thing you want everyone to know is that you're homeless. But when I saw what it could do, when I shared something that was scary and vulnerable, I never looked back.

I started going to town hall meetings, right? Going to senators. And I ended up going to college being the first of my family. An Instagram DM is how I got my job on the Kamala Harris campaign in 2019. And the reason there was space for. me on that campaign was twofold because I worked in the most diverse campaign in the field where I was routinely in meetings with just other women of color who saw my potential. And because these new emerging digital spaces, right, nobody has a PhD in TikTok.

Right. And so young people like me who have been at the front of content creation and the intersection of social justice and social media have a unique opportunity in this moment to take up leadership in our places of work, in politics, on campaigns, and yes, in Congress too, because we know how to use these platforms better than anyone else because we were basically raised on them. As I think forward to this moment now, a lot has happened since that 2020 run. We are in a vast way. What has it happened? Right. We're in a vastly different political spot. And I had to sit down with myself and ask a really hard question, which was,

can I continue to do the behind-the-scenes work for causes and candidates? And the forward-facing content creation work of asking young people to continue to show up in our political process if they don't have something to get excited about. And the answer was no. And so I decided to run. Be the change, right? Because they deserve someone that they feel like,

can really get behind. And it is in our best interests, as regardless of party, as a democracy, to make sure that we do not lose this generation of voters, of participants, of activists, of campaigners and electeds. But they deserve something to get excited about. They deserve someone they can see themselves in. And frankly, it's obscene that like an entire generation, Gen Z has like one member. in the House representing them. And the flip side of this is that after World War II, all the electeds were in their 20s because it was like all these war veterans who just came home. And so Congress, if you actually looked at people who were elected officials in like the 1948 Congress,

and most of them were probably in their 20s or at least half, right? So it's pretty astounding. What is your message then to young people who might be feeling pretty cynical? I know it. If not cynical, helpless, about civics right now. I want people to know that you are an expert in your experience and that that is enough to get involved. Whether it's showing up to your school board meeting or sitting down at Sunday dinner with your family and telling them a hard story or truth, that the people who care about you are going to care about what you care about and you don't need to have tens of thousands, hundreds of, thousands of followers to make a difference, that when you can tell your story and know that it

matters, other people will feel it too. And that can look like all different kinds of things. For me, it has been advocacy, right, town hall meetings, school board meetings, and content creation that's straight to camera work. But for you, it might be, you know, hosting, talking circles with your friends, call it a brunch. It might be your art or your creative outlet. Like, if you're a coder, figure out how to put that to good use. If you're a photographer, put it to use. If you're a public speaker, we need you too. And, you know, the last thing I'll say on the hope and optimism piece is that I'm still working on that too. Things feel hard because they are, but I hope they know that I'm in their corner and that I'll be a fighter for them.

Okay. Let's do our lightning round. Oh, I love this. I wish we'd started here. I know. So maybe we should. So what does innovation or a good idea look like to you or mean to you? Oh, okay.

Hmm. I always used to feel compelled that if I had a good idea, I needed to write it down right away, or I'd lose it. But if it's actually a good idea, you'll remember it. Oh, so a good idea has staying power. Yeah, okay, good idea sticks. What would you say is the merit to distilling big ideas into something like a TED Talk? Now that you've done it. Now that I've done it.

Big ideas need to be shared, right? And I think about how my first introduction to TED Talks was in my public school classrooms. And now more than ever, people need a sense of possibility. And so being able to share them, that's what matters. Great. All right. What is something new that you brought into your life in 2025? A run for Congress.

Okay, boom. You got that one. And then that was a real lightning answer. And then what are you hoping to leave behind this year? Like I said, I got my start doing this when I was 15. My life went from private to public. People had eyes on me as I came of age, and I had a mentor. Oh, I'll cry.

One of my mentors, Cecil Richards, who passed away this year. Yeah, I'm a Texan. I know her, yeah. Yeah. She once told me, Deja, you don't have to be so goddamn perfect. And that was really hard to hear when I was 16 and in this public eye, and I wanted people to take me seriously so bad, and I was fighting an uphill battle on it. And still am, but I refuse to hold the pressure of perfect.

Okay, love it. This conference has spent already a lot of time talking about AI. It's going to continue to focus on a lot. There was a robot that came in. There's been so many, I mean, how many robots have there been? What is the conversation about AI missing, do you think? What do you want to hear more of in these conversations? When I think about AI, I think about deep fakes.

And most of deep fakes, like in the 90s, 90-something percentage, is porn. And almost all of that is of women. And when I think about what it looks like to be one of the first Gen Z women to run for this level of office, for Congress, I think about the threat level to my personal well-being for things like AI and deepfakes, right? Like, this is a new kind of digital violence,

gender-based violence, and I hardly hear people talk about it. You're right. We don't hear about it that much. Yeah, it's not the conversation I hear about AI, but it will impact who decides to lead and who decides to take up space in our public square and who decides that it's just not worth it, that they've been intimidated out of it.

And it doesn't just impact the women who are at the center of it, right? Who the deep fake is made of. It affects every woman that sees it and thinks not me. Right. Is there a regret you have, a mistake that you've made in your life, that has really taught you something in particular? Oh. What's your transformative mistake?

My transformative mistake? That's a good question. This is a non-answer in some ways. I am a big believer that things are always unfolding as they should. And so I don't really have many regrets. I think things, even when they're unclear to you, are working out the way they're supposed to. I love that. I love that.

Okay. Last question. Okay. What is a small gratitude that you have in your life right now? So a detail, something really specific, that you're like, ugh, I'm so glad that exists. Or I'm so glad for that particular moment or product. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's the mountains in Tucson. Every day I walk out and I see those mountains and that sunset and I'm reminded that the world is bigger than whatever is happening in politics or on TikTok.

Yeah, they've been around for thousands of years. And it will continue to be. Love it. Deja Fox. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was Deja Fox in conversation with me, Elise Hugh, at TED 2025 in April 2025. You can check out Deja's talk on the TED Talks Daily feed and at TED.com. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. This episode was recorded by Rich Amies and Dave Palmer of Field Trip, production support from Daniela Balerozzo and Shuhan Hu.

The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tonzaka Sangmar Nivang. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Hily, I'm Haley Steinberg, Senior Style Editor at The Globe and Mail. I might be biased, but I think I have the best job in the world. My team and I cover the fun parts of the news, from Taylor Swift's engagement ring to viral trends, to Canadians shaking up fashion and designations. My goal is to show you how art, culture, and style touch our lives, and why it matters.

If that's the kind of journalism you care about, head to globemail.com slash subscribe. On October 17th, I'm an angel. See the wings? Don't miss the new comedy Good Fortune starring Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, and Keanu Reeves, critics rave, needs have an cent. Don't you have a budget, guardian angel? Kind of. You were very unhelpful. Good Fortune, directed by Aziz Ansari.

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