For as long as she can remember, Lexi Underwood has been starting meaningful conversations while advocating for others. “At a young age, I feel like I was given permission to use my voice, to speak up for whatever I was passionate about,” the Little Fires Everywhere actress tells Seventeen. From attending the 2017 Women’s March to working with March for Our Lives, the now 18-year-old is more committed than ever to showing up and speaking out. Lexi’s latest endeavor? Partnering with 4-H, the largest youth development organization in the country to host a virtual conversation with other teens about their experiences with mental health.
Like many young people, Lexi is familiar with the responsibility that comes with wanting to make the world a better place — especially amid an ongoing global pandemic. In June 2020, 4-H released a survey that found seven in ten teens are struggling with their mental health in the wake of COVID-19. “There are so many things happening in a day and it's important for us to take a break and internalize our thoughts and our feelings and check in with our bodies," she says.
"Being a part of the conversation with the other 4-H-ers was incredibly eye-opening," Lexi explains. "It made me feel as though I was not alone with how I was feeling. I could one hundred percent relate to what they were saying." Here, Lexi tells Seventeen about her journey towards becoming a mental health advocate, and shares tips she finds helpful when experiencing mental health challenges.
Seventeen: Tell us about your experience participating in the 4-H Council’s What I Wish People Knew panel?
LU: By hearing your peers, by hearing other people that look like you, that are in your same age group, talk about what they're experiencing, and how they cope and how they also rise to the occasion and come up from their moments where they may not always feel their best or also just talking about their past and how they've grown from it that I believe that'll also hopefully inspire the next Gen-Zers who watches the conversation to do the same, to find ways to cope and to find ways to rise above all the negative energy or the self-doubt or whatever they face.
Seventeen: Can you talk about the importance of establishing a community with your peers?
LU: I definitely think that it's important to have a peer group around you to talk and to be able to relate to things that your parents or your therapist, which is very important to talk to your therapist, but people who are part of an older generation may not fully understand.
Your peers are the ones who are going through the exact same thing that you're going through every single day, our generation is going through all the stereotypes. All we see, everything that will ultimately impact our future in the news and just social media, we're growing up in a time like no other. I think that it's important to be able to talk to people you can relate to.
Seventeen: What practices have you established to maintain and preserve your mental health?
LU: I meditate twice a day once when I wake up once when I go to sleep, I also do yoga. I also pray whenever I find myself feeling lost or feeling like I don't necessarily have anybody to talk to. I always turn to God. I also have a journal and I tend to write down how I'm feeling almost every day so that I can look back and reflect and see how far I've come with my journey with mental health or help me see a bigger picture whenever I'm feeling down again.
Seventeen: What advice you would offer young people who feel like social media plays a negative role in their mental health and wellbeing?
LU: On social media, most things are facades where people are trying to create this image to make it seem like they have their lives together. Like everything is perfect. Like they don't ever have moments where they feel down or like they don't ever face challenges. And sometimes that could be the case for some people, but oftentimes it's not. And so you gotta think about like a duck floating on water and how they seem perfect, how social media makes things seem perfect.
But when you go underneath the surface, oftentimes the same people that you idolize on social media are desperately trying to keep themselves afloat, just like you, they are struggling or going through things, or they have their moments where they feel down or they don't feel their best just like you. It's important to keep in mind that we're all humans and we're all trying and not to take it so seriously not to take life so seriously, cause that's not what this is about. I think that by sending time limits and just, you know, keeping in moderation, how much you share on social media or how much you compare yourself to people on social media, I think it'll make the world different.
Seventeen: What are some tips or best practices for how Gen Z should manage their mental health throughout the school year?
LU: It can be a lot. I just started college, so I know what that's like to go back to school right after this pandemic and we're still in the middle of it. Just take your time, do the things that make you happy. Obviously, schoolwork, make sure that you're prioritizing that, but then also make sure that you're giving yourself [enough]time that you're not constantly stressing yourself out about deadlines or about social status or fitting in all those things that don't necessarily matter. Just do things that make you happy, prioritize your mental health, whether you love meditating, you want to do yoga or you have your favorite person to talk to, or your favorite instrument to play that calms you down.
Make sure that you're also taking out those 15 minutes out of your day to just check in with your body and make sure that you're doing okay because oftentimes we don't necessarily see that our emotions, our behavior, our mood can impact the way that we work can impact the way that we focus. I definitely think that it's important to take time for yourself and to create a plan as to how you can find balance in those.
Jasmine Washington is an Assistant Editor at Seventeen, where she covers celebrity news, beauty, lifestyle, and more. For the past decade, she has worked for media outlets, including BET, MadameNoire, VH1, and many others, where she used her voice to tell stories across various verticals. Follow her on Instagram.
