The Good News About Kids

By Dr. Matthew Levin

We’ve all heard the bad news about young people today: trapped by social media, uninterested in the world around them, and avoiding an in-person social interaction. When they do get together with friends, they are most likely eating tide pods or engaging in some other outrageous behavior that alarms parents, teachers, and other adults.

After working with young people for the past ten years, I can honestly say that there is much to celebrate about today’s teenagers. Yes, many of them are too consumed with social media and video games, though it’s worth mentioning that they’re not all different from their parents in this regard (those same parents that gave them devices in the first place). And yes, there’s general agreement that more and more students are anxious, depressed, or otherwise struggling with mental health issues. You would be hard pressed to find many adults who would want to be a teenager in today’s world; the challenges and pressures on this generation may be more intense than for any generation that came before.

Bad news makes for good headlines, but there’s a lot more to this generation of young people. For those who don’t spend a lot of time with teenagers, and even for those who do but sometimes lose sight of the big picture, there is a lot of good news. In addition to their sometimes poor decision-making, teenagers are also creative, kind, funny, and curious about the world around them. They support their friends through tough times and put incredible energy into the things that interest them. Just one example of this energy is the surge of activism around the issue of gun control in the last few months. Whether or not you agree with their politics, students locally and around the country have demonstrated exactly the kind of strident interest in their community and their nation that we want from this generation.

In case you don’t trust the perspective of one local teacher, at least some experts agree. Wendy Moser, an author and clinical psychologist who has interviewed groups of teenagers across the country, concludes in a New York Times article that “they’re courageous, energetic, optimistic, and really smart.” Historian and author Neil Howe says that today’s teens are experts at working within the system, negotiating with the adults around them and sometimes bending the rules to create a space for themselves.

For those who would prefer to look at hard facts, there’s good news here as well: surveys show significant evidence that at least some risky behaviors are less common among today’s teens than they were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. Alcohol use, teen pregnancy, cigarette smoking, and teen car accidents are all down significantly across the nation, just to give a few examples, and the most recent Dane County Youth Survey, which polled 26,000 teenagers, suggest a variety of good news. 80% of teenagers feel like they belong at their school, 74% say that most of their classes are interesting, 63% have done some volunteer work in the last year, while only 13% say that they’ve ever smoked a cigarette, and only 35% of high school students report that they’ve used alcohol in the last twelve months.

While I see a broad range of behaviors in our own school and will admit to sometimes being frustrated by students who seem distracted or unmotivated, I also know that I don’t have to look far to find students doing things that reassure me about the success of our high school and the future of our community and even our nation. Here is just a short list of things that are going on at McFarland High School:

• Many students are working after school and on weekends to pay for extra spending, save for college, or even help support their families.

• Students are engaging in a wide variety of social activism, from gun control issues, to protecting the environment, to raising money for education in other parts of the world.

• Many students recognize the value of their education and understand that hard work is necessary to achieve their goals.

• According to school data, 82% of students this year are involved in at least one sport or club (and many are involved in more than one).

• Many students are taking classes at MATC or UW, participating in a youth apprenticeship, or otherwise expanding their education beyond the high school.

None of this is to say that we don’t have some work to do--teachers, parents, and, of course, young people themselves--but it’s important to remember that there is so much more to this generation than what we see in the headlines. When I walked into my interview at McFarland High School in the summer of 2008, one of the questions I was asked was “what’s wrong with kids today?” I don’t know if the interviewers had a “right” answer in mind, but the answer I gave, and the one I’d want to hear from anyone working with young people today, is that there’s nothing wrong with this generation. They face a lot of challenges, some of them different than the ones faced by earlier generations, and it’s our job, as teachers, parents, and community members, to support them and help them find their way in an increasingly complicated world.

As a teacher, I get to watch students grow, mature, and sometimes stumble. I get to watch almost all of them graduate (98% last year!), proud of their accomplishments and ready to face the world. It’s at this time of year that I feel especially uplifted. I’m optimistic about the future, not because today’s students are going to follow directly in the footsteps of their parents or grandparents, but because they are going to find their own way.