American teenagers aren’t having a good time. They aren’t having sex. They aren’t driving. They are depressed, anxious, and lonely. (Whether social media is the cause or the catalyst is a subject of ongoing and intense debate.)
We’ve done a lot of reporting on Gen Z. Earlier this summer, we decided to ask them to report on themselves.
More than 400 teenagers submitted essays for our inaugural high school essay contest, on themes ranging from gun violence and AI to student debt and fentanyl.
Three essays in particular blew us away.
Today, we’re announcing our runners-up: Caleb Silverberg, 17, from Santa Barbara, California; and Isabel Hogben, 16, from Redwood City, California. They each won a $1,000 cash prize and a lifetime subscription to The Free Press. Tomorrow we’ll announce our winner.
Both Isabel’s and Caleb’s essays, which you can get a taste of below (click through to read the pieces in full), touch on the dangers of technology and what can be done to fight them.
See you in the comments. —BW
During the pandemic, I became a slave to screens. Online classes were followed by scrolling Instagram or playing Fortnite for hours, ignoring hunger pangs while I immersed myself in a world of pixels.
My Saturdays were pretty grim: I’d wake up and drag myself to the couch where my Xbox had been waiting for me all night long. The closed shades blocked the beaming sun and any hope of enjoying it—swimming in the ocean, biking in the mountains, hiking with my dogs.
At 15 years old, I looked in the mirror and saw a shell of myself. My face was pale. My eyes were hollow. I needed a radical change.
I vaguely remembered one of my older sister’s friends describing her unique high school, Midland, an experiential boarding school located in the Los Padres National Forest. The school was founded in 1932 under the belief of “Needs Not Wants.” In the forest, cell phones and video games are forbidden, and replaced with a job to keep the place running: washing dishes, cleaning bathrooms, or sanitizing the mess hall. Students depend on one another.
Once I heard of this technology-free oasis, I immediately applied to attend high school there. A few months later, the morning of April 12, 2021, I received the best news of my life. At 7:30 a.m., an email popped into my inbox with the subject line “Welcome To Midland!”
September 2, 2021, was my first day at Midland, when I traded my smartphone for an ax.
I was ten years old when I watched porn for the first time.
I found myself on Pornhub, which I stumbled across by accident and returned to out of curiosity. The website has no age verification, no ID requirement, not even a prompt asking me if I was over 18. The site is easy to find, impossible to avoid, and has become a frequent rite of passage for kids my age.
Where was my mother? In the next room, making sure I was eating nine differently colored fruits and vegetables on the daily. She was attentive, nearly a helicopter parent, but I found online porn anyway. So did my friends.
Today I’m 16, and my peers are suffering from an addiction to what many call “the new drug.” Porn is the disastrous replacement for intimacy among my sexless, anxiety-ridden generation.
When I talk to adults, I get the strong sense they think today’s porn is a hot bombshell in lingerie or a half-naked model on a beach. This is not what I stumbled upon back in fourth grade. I saw simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism, and unthinkable physical violence. The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog.
I am told that in the less explicit twentieth century, porn stars looked human. Today, they are fake: the boobs, the butts, the pleasure. Even the erections are artificial.
But the preadolescent and adolescent brain doesn’t know it’s all fake. It believes wholeheartedly what it sees. I certainly did.
If you support our mission of nurturing the next generation of independent journalists, become a Free Press subscriber today:
Also: We’re hosting our first live debate on September 13 at the Ace Theatre in Los Angeles! Has the sexual revolution failed? Come argue about it and have a drink. We can’t wait to meet you in person. You can purchase tickets now at thefp.com/debates.
Teenagers not having sex is a bad thing? In prehistoric times, yes. Since the 19th c? No. Not a bad thing. Unless abortion is a form of birth control.
These are both great essays - congratulations to the writers and I can’t wait to read the “winner”.