The teens behind the phone-free movement
A nonprofit is directly funding phone-free, student-organized activities.
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The conversation about kids and technology is almost entirely driven by adults, and I find myself flitting between both sides of the aisle. I think full-blown social media bans, for instance, cut young people off from valuable resources and leave them dangerously unprepared for navigating the internet once they’re adults. But I also think it’s frustratingly bullheaded to not listen to the clear evidence that young people’s lives are very different from generations past, that they’re unhappy about it, and that phones shoulder a significant part of the blame.
But in these viral debates, whether you’re for or against the measures that have been taken to curtail phone use, the teen experience is often reduced to a series of charts. When tech companies address teen mental health and social media use, they hardly seem to be consulting teens themselves. And so when #HalfTheStory, a nonprofit dedicated to youth digital wellness, invited me to their NYC Teen Tech Council Training Day, I was eager to finally be in a room with the teens I’ve read (and, I’ll admit, written) so many headlines about.
The room, inside of an event space in the West Village, was decked out like a sort of high-school Coachella. Polaroid walls, a BonBon candy stand, a junk journaling station, and lockers for storing phones spanned the perimeter. When I arrived, the place was already bustling with the 60 high school students who had come from as far as Buffalo (a 10-hour bus ride away) and who were now clustered around tables selecting stickers or getting to know each other. While some had brought plus-ones to the event, almost everyone in the room started as strangers.
Because I have my journalistic priorities in check, the first thing I did was get BonBon, then merch, then a journal to bedazzle. Once I realized that I, a 32-year-old, had hurried to be the first in a line of teenagers to get a 7th Street Burger for lunch, I decided I needed to Cool It.
Luckily, this is when the first panel began. Led by mental health advocate Shudu Musida, engineer and CreatorsForZohran volunteer Alexis Williams, founder of the National AI Youth Council Harveer Saini, and Ally Millar, Pinterest’s Senior Lead PMM of Wellbeing & Safety, the conversation emphasized something I had suspected coming into this event:
