Welcome to Youngsters Immediately! I’m Anna North, a senior correspondent at Vox masking coverage and tradition, and as we speak, I’m launching a Vox e-newsletter that can have me in readers’ inboxes weekly with tales about Technology Alpha (folks born between 2010 and 2024) and American childhood. It’s a e-newsletter about youngsters — for everybody. In case you’d wish to obtain it, enroll right here.
I’m a guardian of two younger youngsters, however I’m not right here to speak to you about parenting. For that, I like to recommend Sara Petersen or Angela Garbes. On this e-newsletter, I wish to concentrate on the expertise of really being a child in America proper now.
Childhood in 2024 is an extremely fraught subject. We’re all attempting to make sense of the aftermath of a pandemic, the influence of social media, and the consequences of local weather change and struggle on the world youngsters develop up in. Kids have additionally taken an outsize function within the upcoming presidential election, with Sen. JD Vance and others arguing that having youngsters is a patriotic responsibility, and never having them makes you “deranged.”
A part of my aim with this article is to get deep into a few of the most heated debates round modern childhood and provide you with an accessible, panic-free have a look at what’s actually happening. I fear about youngsters as we speak (the demographic, not this article, though I’m positive I’ll fear about it too) as a lot as anybody, however I additionally know that each era has freaked out concerning the kids on its garden, and I wish to strategy as we speak’s scary headlines with a dose of skepticism.
I additionally wish to convey you a portrait of Gen Alpha that tackles what’s distinctive about this group of younger People, in addition to what they’ve in widespread with Gen Z, millennials, and past. We dwell in a time of intense and fast-paced generational warfare, and whereas a few of that’s fairly enjoyable and humorous, I additionally wish to have a look at the place these generalizations fall brief.
I’ll acknowledge that I’m an imperfect information to the world of youngsters. As a grownup, I’m inherently uncool. I’ll by no means perceive child tradition in addition to youngsters themselves do. My very own older child likes to name me “Man Who Doesn’t Know Something.”
That mentioned, I’ve been speaking to youngsters — from preschoolers to youngsters — as a part of my reporting course of for almost a decade now. I’m dedicated to assembly youngsters on their degree, with curiosity, openness, and honesty. Whereas I’ll positively speak to grownup specialists for this article, I’ll be bringing you the voices of precise kids at any time when potential.
Youngsters are us earlier than our filters totally developed, when the world was nonetheless contemporary and unusual and complicated. Youngsters are unpredictable. (My 6-year-old, for instance, simply requested me if worms can do yoga. Sure?)
However youngsters are additionally sensible and considerate. They’ve sharp insights concerning the world as we speak, and concerning the future after they’ll be in cost. I’m excited to study from them, and I hope you might be too.
Subsequent week, you’ll get a full e-newsletter from me about what youngsters take into consideration “Gen Alpha” as an idea — how they see their very own era, and what they give thought to TikToks and information tales that criticize them. Within the meantime, right here’s a little bit of what I’m studying and eager about as summer season winds down:
- Faculty provide lists are all the time a problem this time of 12 months — with district budgets usually inadequate, households or academics find yourself on the hook for buying every little thing from pencils to graphing calculators. I’m additionally concerned about how youngsters take into consideration back-to-school buying, and to what extent the monetary stresses of this course of trickle all the way down to them.
- Youngsters’ relationship to nature is set extra by their socioeconomic standing than by whether or not they dwell within the metropolis or the suburbs, based on a brand new research.
- Extra states are transferring to place chaplains in public faculties, regarding some who fear that these clergy members might proselytize, or provide counseling to college students with out correct mental-health coaching.
- Child-friendly dance events, the place mother and father can take pleasure in home music with toddlers in tow, are apparently on the rise in Brooklyn. I used to be ready to be irritated by this however truly it’s candy.
- Proper now my older child is obsessively watching Bread Barbershop, an animated present a couple of slice of bread who’s a barber.
- My little child doesn’t wish to learn Spring is Right here, by Taro Gomi, a soothing story concerning the inevitable biking of seasons that helped maintain me sane through the pandemic. He needs to learn a e book that makes vrooming sounds, and that I can’t identify.
A last notice: I’d love to listen to your questions on youngsters and childhood, whether or not you’re a guardian, a childfree grownup, or a child! (Youngsters with questions on grownups are additionally welcome to put in writing in.) Are there subjects you need me to cowl? Experiences you wish to share? You possibly can attain me at anna.north@vox.com.