This is intended to be copied (the text itself, not the link) and emailed to schools (focused on adolescent youth, I’ll make another for younger ages in the future.) Most schools have a public website with a contact email. The future of our society depends on how our youth are treated and educated. Please consider finding the schools near you and sending this.
If the text doesn’t paste correctly, paste it without formatting into a word document first, then copy and paste again into an email.
Hi, this message comes from a local concerned about the future of our youth and our society. Please make sure whoever helps run the school reads this message.
Currently a lot of big problems are damaging our society. There is a mental health crisis, emotional abuse is common but often not recognized, obesity is rising, and as a society we’ve started to isolate our children over a “stranger danger” panic (while 93% of CSA is committed by a trusted adult or family member) which keeps them inside and glued to apps that are designed to make them angry and damage their ability to focus.
Mental health and abuse:
https://www.camh.ca/en/driving-change/the-crisis-is-real
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/01/trends-improving-youth-mental-health
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/types-of-abuse/emotional-abuse/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3998989/
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/fv-vf/caw-mei/p6.html
Recognizing personality disorders (helps with mental health and identifying abuse):
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/personality-disorders
Attention span and social media:
https://www.humanetech.com/attention-mental-health#
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/tiktok-mental-health-social-media
https://theoxfordblue.co.uk/tiktok-and-the-death-of-the-attention-span/
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=126948
Diet and obesity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK83814/
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/obesity/index.htm
CSA prevention:
https://rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens
Mental health, attention span, diet, connection to community are all critically important for young people who are growing into adults and for the society that will house those adults. At the bare minimum we should spread information on abuse and mental health to make it more accessible.
Covering mental health books in class may be a useful idea, I recommend Stolen Focus and Lost Connections by Johann Hari. The first covers attention span and the second covers depression.
Here’s a program intended for schools that you should look into: https://letgrow.org/
I also recommend educating young people on their human rights, especially considering the dangers they face https://www.youthrights.org/about/what-are-youth-rights/ Scroll down to the “young people at the mercy of older people” section. Standing with youth and recognizing when they’re treated unfairly will lead to them feeling more supported at school.
Misinformation is more prevalent than ever, and this is particularly dangerous in politics. As an example, in 2018 an election in Brazil was influenced by disinformation intentionally spread on Facebook https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/brazil-election-fake-news-whatsapp-facebook.html Disinformation also played a role in the recent 2024 US election https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-disinformation-defined-the-2024-election-narrative/
Young people deserve to understand what’s actually happening in the society and world they’re a part of. I think it would be beneficial to teach current politics in a practical and unbiased way. Informed youth can also inform their misinformed parents, resulting in a larger safety net. This can be used to teach critical thinking and investigative research which are necessary skills for adult life.
As a school you hold a huge amount of responsibility for our children and our future, unfortunately with little acknowledgement. So, thank you sincerely for all you do. The effort you put in now will reward later. When those kids grow, will they feel they benefitted from support, or will they feel like it was just another bad chapter in their lives they want to forget? Successful adults may want to support the school and staff that helped them thrive. They’ll also be better members of society in general, because they’ll have been taught how to take care of their minds and bodies, and how to think critically about the world around them. Wellness can spread.
In this difficult time school’s bear the weight, but the work you do is invaluable and you can make a difference. Every child matters, everything you do matters. Thank you for all you do, and thank you for taking the time to read this message.