Youth are essential to ensuring change in the U.S.
by Olivia Levy
Have you ever thought to yourself, “it feels like no progress is ever going to be made because it takes so long for change to happen”? Well, many teens and young adults have thought the same thing throughout history, but instead of just waiting for time to pass, they took it upon themselves to speed up the timeline and get things done. This continues to be a theme in current times with youth leading movements surrounding many issues including the climate crisis, gun violence, and systemic racism in the US.
A model of this was the global climate strike. It is estimated that over 7 million people participated and protests were held in approximately 150 countries around the world. This event was led by the movement that climate activist Greta Thunberg started at only 15 years old. I attended one of these protests on September 20th, 2019 and was surprised to see that approximately 80% of the people there were under the age of 25.
Another example of students who took action for a cause they felt strongly about is the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After a shooting at their school in 2018 killed 17 people, they became activists for gun control. The school’s students along with parents and teachers organized marches and walkouts and even spoke with President Trump about changing gun laws.
Both of these examples resulted in more media coverage on these issues along with educating many people about necessary change. Although they were just high schoolers, like me, they began the conversation about the issues and possible solutions.
A common argument against youth activism is that young people are too self-centered, naïve, and ignorant to be good leaders. People often disregard the ideas of younger people because they are “inexperienced” or “don’t know what they are talking about.” I have experienced this myself as a teenager who was taught that it is important to speak up when I feel I have something important to say. Among my parents’ friends, if I added something to the conversation, I was mostly met with sweet condescending smiles instead of considering that my contribution could have been helpful. As a younger child, I most likely didn’t have anything worthwhile to add, but as I got older and more knowledgeable, the reaction to anything I had to say didn’t change much.
However, Greater Good Magazine suggests that activism at such a young age is natural for youth in the current and past generations. Generativity is defined as, “concern for future generations as a legacy of the self,” and it is usually known as something that is much more prevalent in adults, but in reality that is not the case. Research shows that people between the ages of 14 and 29 show levels of generativity equal to or above adults, which is a psychological cause for youth activism.
Without these and many more displays of activism from youth in the US, we would not be where we are today as a country. A major instance that illustrates this is the Greensboro sit-ins of 1960. This was a movement that was started by four teens from ages 17-19 in North Carolina and spread to over 50 cities. They started the sit-in to desegregate lunch counters and gained enough momentum that they ended up contributing to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned segregation in public areas.
People under the age of 25 currently make up almost half of the world’s population. These younger generations are the future, so they play a very important role in shaping everything that will happen in the world to come. As said by the International Center for Research on Women, “Partnerships between adults and youth can lead to success where programs designed by adults for youth have failed.” Without the collaboration of adults and youth, the adults don’t know what youth need in order to thrive and become productive members of society.
As a teen, it is easy to feel helpless when it comes to societal problems that seem like they would uproot everything if they were to change, but the future only looks more hopeful as more young people become change agents in their communities. From spreading awareness over social media to founding organizations and attending protests, anything that you can do to make a difference matters. If we can accomplish this much at a young age, just imagine what we can accomplish in the years to come.
Works Cited
Astor, Maggie. “7 Times in History When Students Turned to Activism.” The New York Times, 5 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/us/student-protest-movements.html.
Ramey, Heather L., and Heather Lawford. “Why Activism Is Natural for Young People.” Greater Good, 28 Feb. 2020, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_activism_is_natural_for_young_people.
“September 2019 Climate Strikes.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Feb. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_climate_strikes.
Shapiro, Emily, et al. “Parkland School Shooting 3 Years Later: Remembering the 17 Victims.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 29 Jan. 2021, 9:36am , https://abcnews.go.com/US/teacher-coach14-year-freshman-florida-high-school-massacre/story?id=53092879
The Critical Role of Youth in Global Development. ICRW, Dec. 2001, www.xuetangx.com/c4x/Stanford/WomensHealth/asset/Wk2_Reading_Critical_Role_of_Youth.pdf.