To Be 17 Years-Old in 2020

I’ve been thinking a lot about 17 year-old kids these days. As the Presidential election unfolds, I think they might be the most unlucky age group in the United States. They are powerless, unable to head to the polls to vote, many are stuck at home during their senior year of high school after losing out on a junior year that typically sets them up for college. No summer college visits, pass/fail grades, no sports.

It’s not just the fact that they’re 17 years-old right now, but it’s the fact that they were 14, 15, and 16 during this presidential term. Their online lives blossomed during Trump’s presidency. TikTok, SnapChat, Twitter, IG, YouTube are all places where fear and hatred lurk in the weeds. The weeds have grown higher since 2016 and so have the teeth of the predators lurking.

Memes of the President get passed around because they’re funny or stupid, but some of them are neither, they cut too close to the bone and feel personal. Adolescence is hard enough without the noise that’s been added to their lives. They’ve seen hypocrisy at the highest levels of leadership in this country, they’ve seen grown-ass adults saying horrible things about each other. They’ve seen fighting in the streets, they’ve seen an America that doesn’t line up with the one they learned about in school. They’ve watched wild fires rage, storms destroy towns, and floods drown others.

On Tuesday night, they saw two white men in their 70s on TV running for the highest office in the land. An image that DID, sadly, match their textbooks and history lessons. White men, bickering on the TV. One refusing to stare down the camera and disavow white supremacists, instead telling them to “Stand Back, Stand by” like some idiot LARPing in his backyard (and Joe Biden is the delusional one???). They learned that “whataboutism” is the perfect way of deflecting ownership of any mistakes.

As a Dean of Students in a middle school, it took until the 2018 school year for politics to bubble to the surface. Pepe the Frog as a wallpaper on a school laptop. Kids dismissing history lessons and discussion around religion. Parents pushing back on teachers for teaching about Christopher Columbus from the perspective of (gasp!) indigenous people.

Jokes about the KKK, racism, homophobia, misogyny. It even became harder to just be a new kid, the walls were up: “You don’t belong here.”

To be honest, it beat the crap out of me and it’s a big part of why I left education for now. The negative energy became a constant hum in the background.

I don’t think my story is an isolated one, either. It’s why I’ve been thinking about 17 year-olds and feel bad for them right now. They have no ability to vote, but have seen their lives rattled so much that I wish they could go to the polls. So if you’re thinking about skipping the polls this year because it just doesn’t seem worth it (especially after that train wreck of a debate). Think about those 17 year-olds that would love the privilege of voting. And think about those 13 year-olds right now that are just entering the wider world, eyes wide open, looking for things to believe in and fight for.