How to go viral with dire-sounding – but phony – “statistical trends”

Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| August 2025

“Breaking Points” August 11, 2025, alarmingly headlined: “Viral Chart EXPOSES Internet Fueled Personality Destruction,” with blaring subheads: “Studies show internet is ruining our cognitive abilities.” “Especially for young people,” podcast hosts Saager Enjeti and Krystal Ball warned, reeling off terrifying claim after claim about online perils (but somehow failing to foreswear that personality-destroying cognition-ruining internet themselves).

The evidence? Statistician John Burn-Murdoch of The Financial Times created charts from the Understanding America survey, which “Breaking Points” uncritically featured. Popular media presentations of the 2016-2025 trends, shown in the following charts for two key measures, certainly look frightening, illustrating a society in calamitous decline:

However, those who look closely for even a few seconds – certainly not Saager, Krystal, or other media sources I found – will notice two severe problems. First, the vertical axis showing averaged responses to questions on a scale of 1 to 5 is severely truncated in order to grossly exaggerate age differences and trends. Differences and trends are further embellished by presenting them in tall, narrow charts.

In contrast, below is a presentation of the same numbers in honest fashion, using the full 1 to 5 scale in figures that have equal vertical and horizontal dimensions:

Presented accurately, these statistics and trends would never have gone “viral.” They look like the near-nothings they are.

Psychologist and statistician Christopher Ferguson takes a deeper look at the Understanding America and Financial Times data and concludes: “No, conscientiousness hasn’t collapsed among young people in recent years.”

Further, neither media commentators nor the study in question even tries to show that “the internet” (as opposed to, say, reasoned assessments of real-world developments) is to blame for these minimal trends. Like social-media panickers, they just assume it must be – a highly arguable assumption, given that internet and social media use was well established back in 2016 when things were supposedly rosy.

Nor do they show whether, to cite the most salient trend, people of all ages (especially younger ones) might be acting rationally to be somewhat less trusting today than in 2016.

An individual, especially a younger one, might see our leading institutions are acquiescing and even backing genocidal foreign policy, doing nothing about climate change, widening economic inequality, financing more sumptuous lives for the privileged by dumping massive debt on young and future generations, and retreating back into openly Jim Crow racism, among other evils only barely anticipated back in 2016. That could be seen as untrustworthy and depressing, depending on one’s politics.

My humble assessment is that anyone who feels “trusting” today – along with anyone who is not getting more depressed at leaders’ rising brutalities and betrayals – is either not paying attention or brainlessly delusional.

But the point here is that even by the Understanding America data, the most salient decline in the averaged trust score, from around 4.1 in 2016 to 3.8 in 2025 on a scale of 1.0 (totally untrusting) to 5.0 (totally trusting) among ages 16-39, is hardly unexpected or catastrophic. The age 16-39 score in 2025 still approaches “strongly trusting,” well above the scale median of 3.0.

I don’t know how Burn-Murdoch characterized these data, and I’m not about to pay the firewall fee to find out. I’m more interested in how the “viral” media communicates them to the public. To listen to Saager and Krystal (and others) rant, we should immediately shut down the internet entirely, confiscate everyone’s cell phone, computer, laptop, and tablet, and mandate daily in-person coffee klatches and beer-bowling.

Either that, or inaugurate authorities’ and media’s critical responsibility on youth and culture-war issues, an American first, to replace the endless shrieking.

As I’ve documented repeatedly, young people were not better behaved, less troubled, thriving educationally, or more pro-social in pre-internet decades. In fact, they acted much worse than Gen Z does today.

Our top officials have refused – flatly – to pay any attention to what teenagers tell us on leading surveys is causing their depression and anxiety. Teens overwhelmingly cite household grownups’ abuses, violence, mental illness, and addiction – and self-aggrandizing authorities stubbornly refuse to listen. In this reality vacuum, demagogues blaming the internet and social media based on thin evidence have hijacked discussion, sabotaging badly needed confrontations toward real problems.

For the record: I am not affiliated in any way with social media, tech, or related interests, nor have I ever been paid by them. I despise Zuckerburg, Musk, Bezos, and the lot. Nothing here should be construed as approving of the way social media and tech moguls operate.

Not another “teenage panic.” Call in the National Guard!

Mike Males, Principal Investigator, YouthFacts.org| August 2025

Jesse Pomeroy took extreme exception to people making fun of his deformed eye. From ages 11 to 14, he brutally beat, sexually assaulted, tortured, and dumped at least 10 children; his final murder was of a 10-year-old girl. Easy as it would be to blame “social media,” Pomeroy’s mayhem took place in the 1870s. He remains America’s youngest multiple torturer and killer.

Shocker: pre-teens are American humans. Like other Americans, they commit violence, though far less than us older folks did back when we were youngsters or do now. The FBI reports around 100 people have been killed by pre-teen murderers across the country in the most recently reported decade. Before we indulge another outraged panic at “kids today,” note that 163,203 people were murdered in the United States over the period.

Pre-teen killers murder 4 or 5 victims age 25 and older (that is, important people) per year. Meanwhile, killers age 25 and older murder over 600 pre-teens.

Part 1: Let the mindless panic begin

Amid his usual crate of lies about crime being “out of control” in Washington DC and other liberal cities, “Trump’s primary targets are those he describes as criminals — in this case often teenagers, many of them Black,” NPR reported. (Many? 85% of persons arrested in DC are Black). Added NPR: “Washington has struggled at times with violence caused by young men who sometimes ride motorcycles and four-wheelers.”

One could demur that Trump, ordered by two courts to pay $89 million to a victim he sexually assaulted and who pardoned hundreds of fellow thugs to roam the streets, is DC’s costliest, most prolific violent criminal.

In addition to the president and his pardonees, who actually commits violent crime in our nation’s capital? The DC Metropolitan Police report perpetrator ages in 8,724 violent crimes and 42,551 total offenses in the most recent 12 months tabulated. Of these, genuine “pre-teens” (those too young to have “teen” in their ages) committed a terrifying 0.4%. Further,

· All under-15 ages account for 3% of violence and less than 2% of all crime;

· Age 15-17: another 8% of violence and 4% of all crime;

· Added up, the total “juvenile” and “youth violence” and “teenage mob” toll the press, cops, and “experts” endlessly bang on about perpetrate just 11% of the city’s violent crime and less than 6% of its total crime.

· Add age 18-24, and a total of 27% of Washington’s violent crime and 22% of its total crime is committed by all persons under age 25. You’d think it was 97%.

So, it isn’t pre-teens, teens, or young men, four-wheeling or otherwise. Washington DC’s worst ages for rates of committing crime and violence are:

· 30-34: 17% of violent crime, 17% of all crime;

· 25-29: 15% of violent crime, 17% of all crime; and

· 35-39: 12% of violent crime, 12% of all crime.

· Age 40-44 is no slouch either: 10% of violent crime, 9% of all crime.

Why do 25-44 ages commit 55% of Washington’s violence and crime, twice as much as the entire crime volume perped by all pre-teens, teens, and young adults under age 25? Isn’t that the real news, the big mystery for the grant-funded academics? Aren’t these 25-44-agers supposed to enjoy fully developed, executive-reasoning cerebral cortexes as well as higher economic status that render them immune to committing crime?

Let me repeat: police figures show Washingtonians under age 18 account for less than 6% of violent crime and 11% of all crime.

If officials and the media wanted to address the truly high-crime and high-violence ages, why aren’t the president, cops, “experts,” press, and liberal podcasters hollering about the “30-age” crime scourge and demanding curfews for grownups? Urging kids to help keep the adults out of trouble? (Or at least implementing mutual deterrence, like GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson enlisting his 17-year-old to keep both Dad and Son away from porn.)

Because that’s no fun

Over the last year, we’ve seen a barrage of official statements and news stories complaining of “a number of violent crimes in recent years involving young people,” as well as large gatherings where some “young people” allegedly commit crimes. The city has imposed another pointless nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of 9 or more, applied only to persons under age 18. In a city in which over 200,000 people were arrested, including 40,000 for violent crimes, over the last 5 years – and those were low years for DC crime – it would be shocking if juveniles didn’t commit some of them.

Crime, like violence, like drugs, like suicide, like mental health, become disturbing topics if grownups have to admit our own outsized numbers. Americans need powerless scapegoats to point outraged fingers at, like teens and “pre-teens.”

If a group 300 teens gathers (often we later find media-dubbed “teenage” or “juvenile” groups are mostly adults), a few will do something bad that commentators can mass-blame on all youth. Of course, when crime-prone 25-44-agers go to bars and crimes result (450 people that age are arrested every week in DC), no one blames all adults.

The one thing far Left to far Right agree on is shutting down cerebral reasoning when talking about young people. All sides slurp from the shallowest dish: wildly exaggerate anything the commentator doesn’t like, then blame “social media.”

Part 2: Why did young men (and older people, but ignore that) vote more conservative in 2024?

I talked about this before, but the progressive media keeps harping on this point. The bar set by The New York Times’ Ezra Klein’s “Why Trump Won” show and Democratic pollster David Shor recites an endlessly-repeated mantra that Gen Z is “potentially the most conservative generation.”

That’s baloney. Major-media exit polls in the 2024 election showed men ages 18-29 were more likely to vote AGAINST Trump (49%) than any older male age group – more anti-Trump than Klein’s and Shor’s generation. Gen Z were overwhelmingly anti-Trump (61%).

Anyway, who do they blame for their non-fact? Of course, it’s just “social media.” “The ‘manosphere’” online has “had a huge effect on young men’s political opinions,” Klein declared, without a shred of evidence. Agreed Shor: “Suddenly shifting a bunch of young people’s social worlds to be entirely online all at once caused the political situation to change.”

But wait. In April 2025, the Harvard IOP poll showed men age 18-29 disapproved of Trump by a stunning 34-59% margin. How can this be? Did the “toxic manosphere” suddenly veer Left? Or – ponder this – could young men’s attitudes relate more to personally lived experiences than just aping shallow social media vibes?

Part 3: Netflix’s “Adolescence” – brainless hate speech

The wildly acclaimed Netflix series ”Adolescence”, in four tedious, muddled hours, didn’t even try to show its 13-year-old male protagonist was driven to kill a female classmate by online “manosphere” misogyny (which he said he didn’t like)… as opposed, say, to his family’s history of male violence, led by the lad’s father’s and grandfather’s rampages. In fact, boys’ murders, including of girls, plummeted in the UK and US as social media proliferated.

Again, family violence, is no fun to talk about. So, screw the facts. Incited by actor Stephen Graham’s demagoguery, the gullible media and academic herd stampeded: just blame boys and social media!

Part 4: The decline in boys’ support for women’s rights

This is a troubling even if nuanced trend, one I discussed 3 months ago, now returning again to re-alarm leftist media. Among 8^th and 10^th grade boys surveyed by the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future, support for women’s job opportunities and equal pay fell sharply from 2018 to 2023.

Liberal/Left podcasters’ nanosecond-rushed explanation (no one even pretends critical thought any more): It must be social media! All those boys sitting alone in front of screens, snarfing misogynist toxicity.

What crap. Economist David Waldron actually researched the trend and applied rare analytical thinking. “Many commentators on the topic of misogyny among boys are quick to blame social media and internet subcultures such as the ‘manosphere’ or ‘incels’” along with “social media algorithms [that] tend to amplify misogynistic content,” he noted.

Sadly, Waldron’s analysis found, “this particular hypothesis is not confirmed by data from this survey.”

In fact, MTF “data shows that the sharper drops in the share of boys endorsing gender equality occurred in those who spend the least time using social networks.” Further, boys who spend less time watching videos and playing video games show the LEAST decline in and a HIGHER level of support for women’s rights.

It isn’t the “loners in their bedrooms” (UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s demons) who show the biggest drop in support for women’s rights – it’s boys who spend the most time hanging out with other people.

Ponder that. Now, the big puzzler.

While fathers have little effect, boys with college-educated mothers (much more supportive of women’s rights prior to 2018) show a bigger drop in support for women’s equality since than boys with less educated mothers. That ain’t spozed to be. Educated moms are supposed to raise enlightened liberal boys, especially now that more education is correlated with more liberal politics. We need to figure this one out.

Finally, and most crucial, a non-surprise: “That the popularity of gender equality plummeted so much among religious boys seems to be the main clue available in the survey about what factors might be driving this trend,” Waldron finds.

In 1990, boys who reported religion is important and those saying religion is unimportant showed about the same “completely agree” support for women’s job equality (52%). But by 2023, full support for women’s job equality plummeted among religious boys (to 38%) while bouncing around and winding up the same among non-religious boys (52%).

Anti-social-media dogmatists’ pet remedies — just get boys away from those screens, out in public with people, and going to church, and their attitudes will improve — actually would exacerbate boys’ sentiments against women’s rights.

The obsession with social media is obscuring vital social factors, as I detailed earlier. The gender pay gap has dwindled among under-20 workers to near parity while remaining distressingly large among older workers. Enjoying their lucrative, sexist pay gap privileges enables older-male commentators to smugly deride young men’s anxieties.

The biggest challenges in this area are to confront the manufactured panic against youth, the manufactured panic against social media, and the very real political backlash against the remarkable progress of young women in educational, career, and activist realms. Meanwhile…

Progressives: youth issues are not an excuse to send your brains on vacation. Get a grip.

Gen Z, Mental Health, and the Impacts of Systemic Neglect

Milo Santamaria | October 2024

Many major research reports have come out showing that abuse and domestic violence are often the main causes of youth mental health issues, not the internet or social media like many new outlets claim.

Gen Z is one of the most politically active generations, we are passionate about reversing climate change, achieving racial justice, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights. We are not a hopeless or apathetic generation, yet we are also facing high levels of depression and anxiety.

Many people think of mental health as a very individual challenge, that all it takes is talk therapy and medication. However, young people are not only individually facing neglect and abuse at the hands of their families and caretakers. Some teenagers and families are also currently experiencing systemic neglect on a widespread scale. This week, families from Florida to West Virginia, have lost their homes and livelihoods, with little to no support from the federal government.

Every year many teenagers watch as their classmates are killed or injured by school shooters, they protest and walk out to make their schools safe from gun violence, but their voices continue to be dismissed. I was born on the exact day Columbine happened, and I was 6 years old watching people being airlifted out of their homes in New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina. A city that is still rebuilding, almost 20 years later.

This year, we have also watched the genocide in Gaza unfold on our phones, as the US government continues to send billions of dollars to fund Israel’s genocidal war.

How are children and teens supposed to grow up without mental health issues, or feelings of despair, after constantly witnessing such destruction and pain? After getting told time and time again, that their families are not worth saving from floods? That they don’t deserve to feel safe from gun violence at school? That an entire city could be leveled to the ground or completely underwater and the US wouldn’t lift a finger if they were born in the wrong area of the world?

If neglect and abuse correlate to mental health issues and depression, then what is the impact of our government failing to protect us from harm and provide support during disaster? Being abandoned by the people we rely on to protect us is devastating and traumatizing.

But hey, what do I know? Maybe it’s just that damn phone.

Abuse Is Not Accountability: Hitting Your Kids Will Not Prepare Them For The “Real World”

Milo Santamaria | September 2024

It’s no secret that Gen Zs and Millennials are advocates for therapy and addressing their childhood trauma. However, parents from older generations do not seem happy about their children distancing themselves and forming their own beliefs.

Many social media creators have started making videos where they pretend to be their parents, exaggerating their traits for comedic effect. At first glance these seem like lighthearted comedy videos, however they also point to this trend of Gen Zs and Millennials understanding how their parents’ behavior may have impacted them in negative ways. These videos take verbal, and physical abuse, and manipulative behaviors and turn them into entertainment.

I don’t see these videos as a form of minimizing the abuse and harm, (though this can become a problem) that these creators may have experienced, I see them as a way of bringing the widespread mistreatment of children to light. These video skits show how abuse is a systemic issue that many children are experiencing, rather than an individual problem by a few “bad apples.”

A common defense to some of the criticisms of physical punishment online is that hitting or berating children is a form of discipline that helps teach children a lesson, however in my own experiences I’ve been able to see how this is not the case.

For example, I dated someone in college who I related to a lot because we both grew up in abusive families. I ignored a lot of their harmful behavior towards me because I understood the environment they grew up in to some degree, but when I was breaking up with them because they were lying to me, being coercive, and refusing to talk things out they seemed genuinely surprised that I called them out and defended myself.

And I did not do it in a mean way. I was just direct in saying if you can’t meet my needs I can’t be in this relationship. And he became really defensive and mean and passive aggressive after I broke up with him.

I remember thinking “Has no one ever held this guy accountable or told him his behavior is harmful?”

I understood his behavioral patterns and I knew I couldn’t be the only one harmed by his behavior.

But this relationship taught me that abuse doesn’t teach people to be better, it just destroys our self esteem and makes us scared of conflict and making mistakes. Because we were taught if we do something bad we deserve to be hurt and so we run from accountability and admitting when we’ve messed up. It’s a protective measure, but it still causes immense harm.

In some ways being abused pushed me to learn to be better because I didn’t want to be in the same dysfunctional situations I grew up in forever, but we can learn and grow without being abused or mistreated and no one deserves to be abused.

We make better choices when we feel good about ourselves and trust ourselves to make good decisions, but abuse completely destroys our trust in ourselves and other people.

Raising kids isn’t just about meeting their physical needs or putting a roof over their head. “Preparing your children for the real world” means giving them the emotional skills needed to be in relationships with people. It means creating an environment where they feel safe and cared for.

Abuse will never teach your child to hold themselves accountable, it will only make them feel like they deserve to be mistreated and abused, or worse teach them that it is acceptable to mistreat other people.

Berkeley Teens May Finally Get The Right to Vote This Fall

By Milo Santamaria / July 2024

In 2016, Berkeley voters passed Measure Y1 allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections. However, it took almost eight years to finally implement the measure.

The Berkeley city council reports that teens may be able to vote for school board members as early as this fall, if the electronic voting systems can be updated in time for the November election. The city council resolution also called for a voting center to be established at the local high school to make it easier for teens to cast their votes.

According to local news source Berkeleyside, the city council resolution that was recently passed must also be revisited and approved before each election year. The resolution says that “the school district ordinance can disallow youth voting in a given election year ‘for any reason,’ including “administrative, technical, or financial infeasibility.”

Though it seems strange to give teens voting rights that can be easily stripped away, the city council members, and local residents seem optimistic about the measure.

Current city council member (and mayoral candidate) Sophie Hahn argues that allowing teens to vote will help motivate them to continue voting in future elections. The city council representatives also mentioned the possibility of allowing teens to run for school board, and other elected offices in future years.

Oakland passed a similar youth vote measure in 2020, and Oakland residents are also working to ensure that teens will be able to cast their votes in upcoming elections. Many of the teens who worked to make these measures happen have graduated and moved on with their lives; however, their efforts are ensuring that future generations will have their voices heard in future elections.

After Citizenship: What’s Left for Young People

By Anthony Bernier / July 2024

Have we become complacent envisioning our young people as citizens in a
democratic culture?

Every adult alive today grew up under political skies we felt were, like climate,
never changing. Like the seasons, we took for granted that election cycles would
come on the regular and would produce what they always produced: agreed upon
results. Winners would win; losers would concede. We assumed confidence that
elections would determine leaders in an ongoing churn between the lines of the
political playing field.

But it’s dawning on more and more of us that big things like this do change.
Ice caps melt.
Rain stops falling.
And democratic culture erodes before our eyes.

My question is this: is it imprudent to begin thinking of young people not as
citizens in a democratic culture but as subjects to a king or an authoritarian?
When we exchange the “Pledge of Allegiance” for the Ten Commandments,
what form of society do we imagine for young people? When elections no longer
end the matter of who is and who is not elected, how do we imbue young people
with volition, initiative, and confidence in a fair process for making community
decisions?

When elections are “settled” instead by who is threatened more, intimidated
more, run off by political violence, as we saw on January 6 th and in an assassination
attempt, in all honesty how can we hold out the notion of wanting youth to “mature
into adulthood.”

What does “adult” even mean if the “rule of law” is simply just a phrase we
inscribed into buildings once upon a time?

What does “adult” mean when the obligations and imperatives of citizenship we
once owed to one another under a shared social contract are coerced into fealty to
The One?

It’s one thing for today’s adults to fret about the future we see changing from
what we once knew. It’s our fault, after all.

But it’s another to imagine how the institutions we created to raise new
generations will need to re-imagine the young people forced to deal with those
changes.

Who would they be after citizenship ends?

A High School Punk Band Walks Into A CIty Council Meeting: Youth and The Free Palestine Movement

By Milo Santamaria | April 2024

“The human and humanistic desire for enlightenment in emancipation is not easily deferred, despite the incredible strength of the opposition to it” – Edward Said 

“There is not a singular age where we arrive at wholeness: we are whole always” – Aiyana Goodfellow 

Over the past 7 months, I’ve attended a few Pro-Palestinian rallies and marches, both in California and in New York, but the event that felt the most impactful to me was run by high school students in my hometown of Montclair, California. 

What I’ve learned about rallies organized by young people is that they’re not just protest spaces, they’re also community spaces. Whole friend groups come out to support, it becomes a space to hang out and connect with other people. 

In early April, the high school students in my hometown threw a punk concert in the skatepark outside the city council chambers. They disrupted the city officials and the whole neighborhood blasting their guitars and drums. They formed a mosh pit, they hit their vapes, and they walked into that city council meeting with their colorful hair, band t-shirts, and skateboards in hand. 

Even though I graduated high school almost 10 years ago, and I was more of an emo kid than a punk kid, at that moment I felt at home. The youth attending this event were mostly Latinx, and working class, they dressed in baggy clothes. 

They weren’t the typical middle-class preppy white teenagers destined for ivy leagues that are acceptable to white city council officials. These kids knew that the systems in power would never serve them, and they were brave enough to speak truth to that power. 

“I just want to start off by pointing out how many high school students are here advocating for a permanent ceasefire,” one resident began her speech at the city council meeting, “You’re all lacking so much at your jobs that the high schoolers had to come out. These people are not even registered voters yet, they’re underage and they’re over here pressuring you to do your job and represent your citizens. It’s a shame that they will speak up when you will not.”

What made this demonstration in support of Palestine so powerful is that it was a collaboration between the adults and the youth. The adults in support of Palestine didn’t patronize the teenagers, they valued their perspectives, and let them take the lead. The adults understood that teens are often disenfranchised by the same people in power that enable genocide and war. 

Many young people today rightly criticize the American education system for not teaching them enough about other countries, but this is by design. It is much easier to dehumanize and justify the exploitation of communities in the Global South if we’re uneducated about their histories and the social issues that they face.

Politicians, university admins, and lobbyists have largely been able to control what we learn in schools. Youth organizing on social media threatens the influence that these institutions have. This is why bills like KOSA and nationwide book bans have become so popular. 

Youth organizing on their college campuses have begun to understand that universities are a part of the problem. Not only do universities invest in weapons manufacturers, they also prevent students from “stepping out of line” and challenging the systems of oppression colleges are built on. 

In her new book, Innocence and Corruption: an abolitionist understanding of youth oppression, seventeen-year-old British activist Aiyanna Goodfellow compares adult’s views of children to colonial views of indigenous communities and people of color. She writes, “The adult’s burden is to civilize the child.”

Western countries expect young people to fall in line, and believe the narratives they are being told by their governments. We’re taught to pursue individual success and move up the hierarchy for ourselves, but we’re not taught to think about why the hierarchy exists. 

Renowned Palestinian author and scholar Edward Said argues that prestige and success in the West are rooted in our ability to dominate others. Pro-Palestinian movements inherently disrupt this focus on our individual lives and economic success. These movements force us to remember our collective humanity. This is why so many marginalized communities such as immigrants, people of color, queer and trans people are showing up at Palestinian marches. They recognize that all of our struggles for justice are intertwined. 

In the last few months, people have been leaving their positions of power, and have been kicked out of their institutions because of their support for Palestine. People have realized that being pro-Palestinian means disrupting capitalism because so many companies and institutions use their profits in support of empire and war. 

Said writes, “Every single empire, and its official discourse has said it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and it uses forces only as a last resort.”

As Goodfellow explains, we can’t have youth liberation until children are not oppressed by colonial empires and states that prioritize profit and war over their lives. As we challenge adult supremacy, we must also challenge white supremacy and colonial powers that murder children and their families. 

References

Goodfellow, A. (2023). Innocence and Corruption: An Abolitionist Understanding of Youth Oppression. The Anima Print.

Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.

Further Reading and Resources 

https://librarianswithpalestine.org 

https://decolonizepalestine.com/ 

https://medium.com/invisible-histories/how-to-archive-a-protest-a-field-guide-for-southern-memory-workers-0d6151efdfea 

 

Quiet on Set: How Adults Fail To Protect Children From Abuse

Milo Santamaria | March 2024

After the release of the shocking documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, a 4 hour exposé on the abuse that took place on Nickelodeon sets, viewers have taken to the internet criticizing parents and other adults on set for failing to protect children from abuse.

Many are asking:

“How could they leave their children alone with them?”

“Why didn’t they stand up to the producers?” 

Or  “Why didn’t they call the police?”

Viewers who grew up watching Nickelodeon feel betrayed after finding out that their favorite actors were being exploited and groomed behind the scenes.

However, these feelings of betrayal are not new to survivors of abuse, who face immense obstacles and backlash for coming forward. Despite recent movements such as #metoo which have made conversations on abuse and workplace mistreatment much more mainstream, our culture still has a tendency to brush accusations of abuse under the rug.

Several former child actors have come forward about their experiences only to be dismissed and met with ridicule. Stars like Britney Spears, and Amanda Bynes have constantly been criticized by the media, despite their attempts to share their experiences of abuse. 

Children are also especially dismissed by adults when they speak out against abuse. When former child actor Drake Bell revealed he had been sexually assaulted by his voice coach, several actors and TV executives wrote letters defending his abuser saying Bell must have done something to “tempt” or “provoke” the man who assaulted him. 

Years later, Bell was also accused of inappropriate conduct with a minor and the young girl who came forward about the sexual assault she experienced was dismissed because she was only a teenager.

One of the lawyers on the case stated “A grown man does not engage in inappropriate text messages to a teenager. There’s a reason why a 14 or 15 year old does not have the right to drive, does not have the right to vote, does not have the right to serve in the armed forces. They don’t have the emotional or mental maturity to properly gauge their conduct.” 

This case shows that the law reflects our skewed perceptions of teenagers. Children and teens who come forward with their experiences of mistreatment and abuse are often dismissed for not being “emotionally mature” enough to understand what was done to them. Their abusers are also rarely held accountable despite being “emotionally mature” enough to understand the harm they have caused. 

This concept of emotional maturity is often used to deny child actors agency over their finances. Parents and managing teams often take advantage and financially abuse child stars. Many child actors are also the breadwinners for their families, which puts additional pressure on them to accept mistreatment in order to continue working in Hollywood. As Senior Research Fellow Dr. Mike Males argues, “No one has a good solution when “protecting kids” collides with profits.”

Furthermore, Quiet on Set reveals why abuse is so prevalent in all aspects of our society, not just in Hollywood. As Journalist Scaachi Koul stated in the documentary, “The person at the top sets the tone for the entire production. If you run a show dealing overwhelmingly with children, then you are responsible for creating an environment where those kids feel beyond comfortable to tell you they’re not comfortable. It needs to be so safe that your most vulnerable person on set is able to say to you, the most powerful person there, “I don’t want to do this.”’

Quiet on Set shows that our society is not a safe place for survivors of abuse and exploitation to come forward. Parents that tried to defend their children were pushed out of Hollywood, leaving their children even more vulnerable to harm. 

Nickelodeon executives such as Dan Schneider, created extremely abusive environments that pushed out anyone who chose not to conform or enable abuse. Many parents tried to be agreeable to protect their children’s careers, often at the expense of their children’s wellbeing.

Quiet on Set shows that capitalism makes us extremely isolated and vulnerable to abuse. Living under capitalism often makes us feel replaceable and inadequate, which makes it much harder to stand up for ourselves out of fear of being excluded and replaced. It’s also much harder to rely on people around you for support when you are told they are your “competition.”

Hierarchical structures make us afraid of being disobedient and disagreeable but Quiet on Set reveals that our silence will not protect us. It only upholds the status quo of abuse and exploitation. 

References 

M. Robertson (Executive Producer). (March 17-18, 2024). Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV  [TV series]. Maxine Productions, Sony Pictures, Television, Business Insider

Review of Why Aren’t We Doing This

By Anthony Bernier | October 2023

Adults love writing so-called “non-fiction” books about young people. The most popular of these books indulge cliched and unsupported claims based on moral panics-of-the-week. This week’s panic is about “the teenage brain” and depression. The next week it’s about overindulging an energy drink, a new social network application, or teen mental health. Such moral panics historically reach back to the morally corrupting influence of AM radio.

In 2022, a popular example was You Are Your Own Best Teacher, by Claire Nader, claiming youth to be helpless apathetic victims to the always nefarious “tyranny of peer groups.” Authors of these titles receive lucrative, immediate, and un-scrutinized national notoriety. Few such authors’ claims or opinions percolate from anything more than a handful of instances – from psychologist or social worker caseloads or a journalist’s random field observations. Fewer still actually include young people in their assessments.

On the other hand, Why Aren’t We Doing This: Collaborating with Minors in Major Ways, pushes back on such books lining the nation’s library shelves, with the direct question of its title. Co-authored by the intergenerational team of 19-year-old youth advocate, Denise Webb, and veteran radical youth advocate, Wendy Schaetzel Lesko, they invert the legacy cliches found in conventional and popular non-fiction about today’s young people.

Scrutinizing over 80 interviews with a wide array of highly involved youth service providers and young people, Webb and Lesko present a vision of youth as something other than innocent & hapless victims or marauding criminals.

They answer their title’s question.

Webb and Lesko imagine young people as already capable, active, and contributing agents in many nonprofit organizations and governmental institutions. Their findings urge the rest of us to see young people this way, too, as intergenerational collaborators.

In an inspiringly accessible narrative voice, Why Aren’t We Doing This – teaches the topics and addresses the concerns skeptics simply accept to justify why incorporating young people is just too hard.

Webb and Lesko illustrate how it’s not.

Their well laid-out Table of Contents usher readers through six logical arguments and strategies for disrupting legacies that exclude youth through inducting and infusing youth into the operational and strategic fabric of our organizations. Along the way Why Aren’t We Doing This shares real-world insights from their interviews as well as offers practical resources, such as the “Ladder of Real Vs. Token Youth Participation,” to help guide organizations away from superficial manipulations of young people through to genuine influence and power enhancing collaborations.

While Why Aren’t We Doing This inherently criticizes conventional “youth development” theory’s outdated indoctrinations and “colonialist” aspirations, something long overdue(!), this reader would like to have seen a more direct confrontation. This, however, perhaps says more about my own agenda than the authors’. I would also have appreciated a bibliography of the resources the authors drew from in mounting this important guide.

That said, as someone who teaches youth service professionals, I particularly appreciate the detailed content about appropriate on-boarding, coaching, and co-piloting techniques leading to authentic youth influence building.

Youth advocates, political activists and campaign strategists, social workers, teachers, and civic officials of all kinds will find Why Aren’t We Doing This an indispensable and practical guide to acknowledging how, as the Forward reads, young peoples’ lives “have value NOW.” [emphasis in original]

Order your copy here:

Order your copy here:
https://www.amazon.com/Arent-Doing-Collaborating-Minors-Major/dp/B0CJ49HL5S