Young people aren't confident their elders will fix the country, so they're looking to themselves.
It's clear to many of our younger citizens that our institutions, and the older adults who run them, aren't going to save them. |
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Between the disgustingly routine threat of school shootings, climate change and the life-altering disruption of a deadly pandemic, anyone growing up in the United States these past few years could be forgiven for losing hope. |
Many of them also don't believe that adults will fix things, in some cases because their elders have told them so. When Opinion reached out this week to readers to ask how — or if — they were talking about the Uvalde, Texas, shooting with their children, one parent said any attempt to reassure his teenagers would be "pathetic." Why even pretend that America cares more about kids than guns? His already know it doesn't. |
And yet, for all their reasons to despair, Gen Z is also impressively resilient. While generalizing about millions of people is often a fool's errand, many teenagers and young adults I know strike me as far more politically aware and involved than I was at their age. |
One of them is Cameron Kasky, who was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., when 17 people were killed there by a teenager with an AR-15-style rifle in 2018. Despite years of inaction on gun laws, the movement he helped start with other students who lived through the Parkland massacre, March for Our Lives, has planned protests around the country on June 11. |
When I spoke to Kasky for my newsletter, he said he wasn't particularly optimistic that his generation will be any better than the ones before it. I have more hope than he does, but as a parent, I need it to raise my kids in the midst of all this. |
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