Welcome to Kids Today! I’m Anna North, a senior correspondent at Vox overlaying coverage and tradition, and right now, I’m launching a Vox e-newsletter that may have me in readers’ inboxes weekly with tales about Generation Alpha (individuals born between 2010 and 2024) and American childhood. It’s a e-newsletter about children — for everybody. If you’d prefer to obtain it, enroll right here.
I’m a dad or mum of two younger children, however I’m not right here to speak to you about parenting. For that, I like to recommend Sara Petersen or Angela Garbes. In this text, I need to give attention to the expertise of really being a child in America proper now.
Childhood in 2024 is an extremely fraught subject. We’re all attempting to make sense of the aftermath of a pandemic, the impression of social media, and the results of local weather change and conflict on the world children develop up in. Children have additionally taken an outsize position within the upcoming presidential election, with Sen. JD Vance and others arguing that having children is a patriotic obligation, and never having them makes you “deranged.”
Part of my aim with this text is to get deep into among the most heated debates round modern childhood and provide you with an accessible, panic-free have a look at what’s actually happening. I fear about children right now (the demographic, not this text, though I’m certain I’ll fear about it too) as a lot as anybody, however I additionally know that each technology has freaked out in regards to the kids on its garden, and I need to strategy right now’s scary headlines with a dose of skepticism.
I additionally need to deliver you a portrait of Gen Alpha that tackles what’s distinctive about this group of younger Americans, in addition to what they’ve in widespread 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 children themselves do. My personal older child likes to name me “Guy Who Doesn’t Know Anything.”
That stated, I’ve been speaking to children — from preschoolers to youngsters — as a part of my reporting course of for practically a decade now. I’m dedicated to assembly children on their stage, with curiosity, openness, and honesty. While I’ll positively discuss to grownup consultants for this text, I’ll be bringing you the voices of precise kids each time potential.
Kids are us earlier than our filters absolutely developed, when the world was nonetheless recent and unusual and complicated. Kids are unpredictable. (My 6-year-old, for instance, simply requested me if worms can do yoga. Yes?)
But children are additionally good and considerate. They have sharp insights in regards to the world right now, and in regards to the future after they’ll be in cost. I’m excited to study from them, and I hope you might be too.
Next week, you’ll get a full e-newsletter from me about what children take into consideration “Gen Alpha” as an idea — how they see their very own technology, and what they give thought to TikToks and information tales that criticize them. In the meantime, right here’s just a little of what I’m studying and enthusiastic about as summer time winds down:
- School provide lists are at all times a problem this time of yr — with district budgets usually inadequate, households or academics find yourself on the hook for buying every part from pencils to graphing calculators. I’m additionally taken with how children take into consideration back-to-school purchasing, and to what extent the monetary stresses of this course of trickle all the way down to them.
- Kids’ relationship to nature is decided extra by their socioeconomic standing than by whether or not they stay within the metropolis or the suburbs, in keeping with a brand new research.
- More states are shifting to place chaplains in public faculties, regarding some who fear that these clergy members might proselytize, or supply counseling to college students with out correct mental-health coaching.
- Kid-friendly dance events, the place mother and father can take pleasure in home music with toddlers in tow, are apparently on the rise in Brooklyn. I used to be ready to be aggravated by this however truly it’s candy.
- Right now my older child is obsessively watching Bread Barbershop, an animated present a couple of slice of bread who’s a barber.
- My little child doesn’t need to learn Spring is Here, by Taro Gomi, a soothing story in regards to the inevitable biking of seasons that helped hold me sane throughout the pandemic. He needs to learn a guide that makes vrooming sounds, and that I can’t title.
A remaining be aware: I’d love to listen to your questions on children and childhood, whether or not you’re a dad or mum, a childfree grownup, or a child! (Kids with questions on grownups are additionally welcome to write down in.) Are there subjects you need me to cowl? Experiences you need to share? You can attain me at anna.north@vox.com.