The Next Generation Is Being Shaped by Crisis

A few months ago, I was talking to my husband about the 2020 election. I was worried, I told him, about what Donald Trump’s reelection would mean for my now-nine-year-old daughter. If he’s elected for a second term, Layla will be 14 years old before he leaves the White House.

From coronavirus to climate change, our children have witnessed a string of disasters with seemingly no end in sight

That means the entirety of her childhood will be defined by the national anxiety that comes along with having a narcissistic bigot as president: children at the border being forcibly separated from their parents, white nationalists marching in the street, the increase in hate crimes and unapologetic misogyny.

It isn’t just Trump and all that’s come with him, though, that has me worried about my daughter’s future. Watching the extreme weather ramp up across the globe reminds me that she may never know a time when the climate was normal and predictable. The school shootings that are so specific to America mean that she has been practicing active-shooter drills since preschool. (Literally: They started right after the Sandy Hook shooting when she was two years old; her teachers taught her how to stay quiet and hide behind different items in the classroom.)

I can’t help but wonder if this next generation will be defined by the seemingly nonstop crises around them.

And now, there’s Covid-19. I can’t tell my daughter when she’ll be in a classroom again, when she’ll be able to hug a friend, or how long it will be before she can use the swings or go down a slide on a playground. She’s old enough to know that this is very far from normal and mature enough to understand that the adults in her life are afraid.

And so I can’t help but wonder if this next generation will be defined by the seemingly nonstop crises around them.

A friend of mine has a daughter, for example, who is missing the last half of her senior year because of Covid-19. Trump was elected to office when she was just a freshman — that means her entire high school experience has been framed by national trauma.

What will this young woman and my daughter have in store for them when they reach adulthood? More pandemics? Increased climate change and gun violence?

And what will all of this disaster do to who they are as people — how will it change who they could have been? It’s not possible that this kind of incessant bad news won’t come with a psychological price.

We already know that anxiety is on the rise in America. There’s evidence that Americans are among the most stressed and anxious people in the world — and that our current political turmoil has something to do with it. A 2019 Gallup poll showed that for people under 50 years old, part of their negative feelings have to do with Trump being president.

For young people, it’s even worse. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 3 teens will experience an anxiety disorder; and in 2017, 13% of teenagers reported having at least one major depressive episode in the last year — up from 8% a decade earlier. According to a 2016 survey from the American College Health Association, 58.4% of undergraduates reported “overwhelming anxiety,” up 8.5% from 2011.

I can see it already with my daughter — the way she’s trying to remain brave but will break down in tears when she can’t hug her grandma or realizes how long it’s been since she’s seen her best friend. I can’t even reassure her that things will get better because I’m not so sure that’s true.

That said, my sincere hope is that a generation in crisis will be one that radicalizes far more quickly and broadly. We can see it already in response to income inequality and climate change; younger and younger people are getting involved and demanding that the adults around them change things for the better.

The injustice is that they’ll have to do this at all.

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