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

Librarians Punch Down on Teenagers

By Anthony Bernier | October 2023

How can I continue doing this work? I teach future librarians about serving teenagers professionally and equitably. People find it odd that librarians need this teaching. The behaviors of national library leaders, though, demonstrate they do.

The hottest issue in libraries today pits libraries against “book banning” zealots challenging intellectual freedom. Librarians find themselves defending books and materials their professional ethical commitments require them to make available to everyone.

Most of these disputes constitute what we know as “cultural war” issues particularly as they pertain to books for young people. Attacks include charges of promoting anti-American themes, “wokeness,” and “deviant” sexual, gender, and racial identities.

Librarians rightly defend intellectual freedom. If you don’t like a book or an author’s writing, don’t read it. One of my own librarian heroes, Dorothy M. Broderick (1929-2011), gained notoriety by posting a sign: “If you don’t find something offensive in this library, see the librarian.”

Toleration for difference, unfettered access to contrary opinions, and the promotion of free expression number among the institution’s core values. This is especially true as libraries continue to adopt policies and practices promoting DEI and LGBTQ rights. Presumably, it is these values that keep libraries among the nation’s most trusted public institutions.

So, it’s all the more disturbing to continually discover national library leaders punching down on the very young people they purport to be defending in these pitched battles.

During the last month alone, the president of the American Library Association indulged in unqualified negative characterizations of youth (an entire demographic) not once, not twice, but three times! Each instance includes peeks into what is also clearly a challenging domestic situation – for which a teenaged son is held accountable in front of a large social media audience.

And in the latest issue of the Public Libraries, the president of the Public Library Association, in an otherwise cliched attack on library schools, also punches down on youth. The essay’s only mention of youth characterizes “unruly teenagers” numbering among the topics library schools allegedly do not address.

Among the worst aspects of these anti-youth screeds, aside from the fact that they
contradict the profession’s own ethical aspirations, is that these national leaders feel entirely confident that their bigoted assertions appeal to large and sympathetic audiences. Unfortunately, my own studies of the profession’s legacies and practices tend to support these assumptions.

Another odious aspect of these behaviors manifests in how they distract from more pressing concerns about young people. During our current effort to emerge from pandemic, many claims surface about the crisis in youth mental health. Librarians enthusiastically participate in the campaign – producing columns in national media, at conference presentations, in classrooms. This enthusiasm spreads even though librarians are not trained or equipped to identify, assess, or treat mental distress.

Yet, as YouthFacts’ own Mike Males points out in his 15 July 2023, article in Salon.com, the crisis originates not in schools or among peers but at home.

Males cites the Center for Disease Control’s statistics documenting, for instance, 400-600% increases in physical and psychological abuse among girls perpetrated by parents or other household adults.

The crisis, nearly universally blamed on youth behaviors, emanates instead from home.

Males’s point deserves wide readership among policy experts as well as library leaders hell-bent on punching down on young people.

In answer to my opening question, about continuing my work,” I’ll borrow from Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

At least part of the responsibility for the rollback on reproductive choice rests with an unlikely culprit: liberal Hollywood.

By Anthony Bernier, July 2023

Isn’t it nice to blame it all on Trump? Trump’s reactionary political base. Trump absconding with the Supreme Court. Trump repealing “Roe” – a women’s right to abortion. While true, of course, these things do not tell the whole story. At least part of the responsibility for the rollback on reproductive choice rests with an unlikely culprit: “liberal Hollywood.”

When looking back at the films preceding the Trump era, to the period giving rise to the Obama Administration, more complexity emerges. In popular films of that period, while baby boomers enjoyed choice, popular films denied it to younger women.

Intergenerational hypocrisy is not unique to boomer political ethics, of course, especially when it comes to public policy. What we did to advance our reproductive freedom was world historical.

Gee. Weren’t we great?!

You kids just have to suck it up. Too bad. So sad.

Among the period’s most celebrated films about youth were Juno (2007) and Twilight (2008). In the first, Juno puts the baby up for adoption; the second film’s master narrative reclines on un-reflexive sexual restraint: the male lead, vampire Edward, doesn’t even have a bed in his bedroom! 

When you see one or two treatments avoiding reproductive choice, you take it in on one level. But when you see it over and over again without exception it’s time to start connecting the dots.

In addition to Juno’s adoption option and Twilight’s tortured “Just Say No” abstinence regime, a long list piled up well before Trump.

Natalie Portman in Where the Heart Is (2000) portrays a 17-year-old in Oklahoma struggling to rebuild her life after being abandoned by the boyfriend. She insists on raising her new baby alone.

In another, Drew Barrymore portrays a boozy high school girl in Riding in Cars with Boys (2001). Barrymore’s character arc gets pregnant (of, course, what else do boozy high school chicks do?), has the baby, and raises it to become the “adult” in the family.

In Waitress (2007) Keri Russell plays a young woman disconnecting from yet another unreliable (and in this case dangerous man) who parlays taking her baby to term as a metaphor for becoming “empowered.”

As with Twilight and Juno, these films all depict young women’s culture, community, and endurance. Under different circumstances this might be a welcome counterpoint to otherwise predictable anti-youth screeds found in adult non-fiction, mass media, public policy, and popular culture.

But when viewed against a larger and consistent backdrop these films become a de facto Hollywood anti-abortion campaign.

I’m not a fan of abortion. Who is? But the very idea of “choice,” as a right and a viable option, in all these representations, “option” means only carrying the baby to term or abstinence.

Correction. There is one exception.

In Coach Carter (2005) Samuel L. Jackson plays a self-righteous high school basketball coach teaching an inner-city school how to turn boys into men. The girlfriend of team’s African American star terminates her pregnancy to preserve his collegiate aspirations.

Well, so long as the kids are Black and it’s for the right reasons…

The coming on of the “Obama Moment” promised a new narrative about young motherhood – perhaps even young parenthood. We hoped that a new narrative might extend all the choices to which citizens are entitled. While boomers did enjoy that moment, younger women were left adrift.

How convenient to blame it all on Trump. But anti-choice vampires were there first.