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Welcome to Youngsters As we speak! I’m Anna North, a senior correspondent at Vox protecting coverage and tradition, and at the moment, I’m launching a Vox e-newsletter that may have me in readers’ inboxes weekly with tales about Technology Alpha (individuals born between 2010 and 2024) and American childhood. It’s a e-newsletter about youngsters — for everybody. When 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 need to concentrate on the expertise of really being a child in America proper now.
Childhood in 2024 is an extremely fraught matter. We’re all making an attempt to make sense of the aftermath of a pandemic, the impression of social media, and the results of local weather change and battle 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 purpose with this article is to get deep into among the most heated debates round up to date childhood and provide you with an accessible, panic-free have a look at what’s actually happening. I fear about youngsters at the moment (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 technology has freaked out concerning the children on its garden, and I need to method at the moment’s scary headlines with a dose of skepticism.
I additionally need to carry you a portrait of Gen Alpha that tackles what’s distinctive about this group of younger Individuals, in addition to what they’ve in frequent with Gen Z, millennials, and past. We stay in a time of intense and fast-paced generational warfare, and whereas a few of that’s fairly enjoyable and humorous, I additionally need to have a look at the place these generalizations fall quick.
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 stated, I’ve been speaking to youngsters — from preschoolers to youngsters — as a part of my reporting course of for practically a decade now. I’m dedicated to assembly youngsters on their stage, with curiosity, openness, and honesty. Whereas I’ll undoubtedly discuss to grownup specialists for this article, I’ll be bringing you the voices of precise kids each time attainable.
Youngsters are us earlier than our filters absolutely 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 at the moment, and concerning the future once 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 technology, and what they consider TikToks and information tales that criticize them. Within the meantime, right here’s a bit of of what I’m studying and eager about as summer time winds down:
- Faculty provide lists are all the time a difficulty this time of yr — 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 fascinated by how youngsters take into consideration back-to-school procuring, and to what extent the monetary stresses of this course of trickle right down to them.
- Youngsters’ relationship to nature is set extra by their socioeconomic standing than by whether or not they stay within the metropolis or the suburbs, in line with a brand new examine.
- Extra states are transferring to place chaplains in public faculties, regarding some who fear that these clergy members could proselytize, or supply counseling to college students with out correct mental-health coaching.
- Child-friendly dance events, the place dad and mom can get pleasure from 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 few slice of bread who’s a barber.
- My little child doesn’t need 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 cannot title.
A last be aware: 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 need to share? You’ll be able to attain me at [email protected].
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