Weathering many storms, kids still trying to make world a better place

For over 20 years, teens from across the Cape have been meeting each fall and spring to discuss issues ranging from human rights to community service, and generally improving the environment of the schools they attend. This was originally the brainchild of the Barnstable County Human Rights Advisory Committee and it's called the Human Rights Academy. I was one of the faculty cofounders over 20 years ago and have not missed a meeting since.  I am at this point an O.F.E. (Old Fart Emeritus) and the torch has long since passed to the next generation of teachers and mentors.

Over a month ago, I offered a column about the kinds of trouble our school kids are in.  Extrapolating from data drawn over the last few years, let's imagine a public school of about 1,000 kids. We would expect 210 students to be experiencing symptoms of anxiety; 170 students experiencing symptoms of depression. And 200 would be considering suicide.  (Remember that some of these kids would be appearing in several categories.)  Girls this age are almost twice as likely to consider suicide as boys.

I promised to revisit this issue, looking for strategies that work and signs of health among our kids on Cape Cod.  And I come with good news.

This spring’s gathering of the Human Rights Academy had “inclusion” as its theme. Let's not drag this good news into the culture wars. Kids isolated from the social whirl of school will not likely be happy. They're apt to feel, as someone recently put it, that the full story of their character and value is a rumor no one wants to hear. And we know, given the statistics, the kind of trouble and tragedy that follows.

The Academy kids have been meeting all year long in their schools to discuss the same issues the grown-ups are discussing.  But for them, suicides are not an abstraction. Kids who just fold up and stop trying are not an abstraction either. These are their friends — often friends of many years. And they care because this seems to be the kind of kids they are.

In the spring meeting, kids from various schools tell the rest of us what they accomplished.  Given the tensions over the Israeli–Hamas war, several student groups staged public discussions.

Different groups responded to local insults to local minorities … a swastika sprayed onto a Wampanoag building in Mashpee. Others had heritage events to celebrate where their classmates originated. The “Mashpee has your back” initiative had kids purchasing backpacks for Cape Cod homeless people, then filling them with clothing, socks, hygiene products, and first aid kits. Another group sponsored a “Walk to Water” drive to raise money so Third-World villages can build their own wells and have their own access to safe water. Schools around the Cape have been involved with this project for years.

But then the student discussions swung to social media. This quickly became the heart of their day together. In tables spread across the hall, kids sat with poster board and Post-it notes and started sharing their thoughts and putting them up.

Turns out our kids have the same worries about social media that their parents do. You could read their posters: “Social media is like an addiction. That makes it difficult to escape.”  “Social media can deepen depression or other mental health issues.”  “People can lie on social media so easily it makes it hard to know if something is true."  “Instagram hurts people,” said one Post-it. “Toxic.” “It's hard to find genuine people,” another student wrote. “Also, deep connections are hard to find.”

It's not just Cape Cod. A global survey from 2021 to 2022 warned that 21% of adolescents ages 12-17 report experiencing symptoms of anxiety, and 17% said they had symptoms of depression.

Meanwhile, at the Human Rights Academy, our kids were offering solutions. Significantly, their solutions required disciplines that our kids would have to impose upon themselves. “Let your page be a safe space. Do not post raw opinions or negative things.”  “Respect other people and don't be aggressive.”  “The best way is to block and report anti-social content and do not engage in their behavior.”  Another wrote, “When speaking out on social media, make sure you always double-check sources, have all the facts and are spreading true information.”  “Only post and use platforms to make positive contributions.”

These Human Rights Academy kids are the tip of the spear … organized inside almost every school on Cape Cod, dedicated to making the mental health, physical safety and charitable outreach in their schools a viable and vibrant thing. Every civilization needs this. We should also remember that American high school kids donate over a billion hours of community service each year. Despite mounting depression and anxiety, despite all the horror and stupidity on display from the adult world, our kids are still trying to make the world a better place, starting with the schools where they live.

Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him atcolumn response@ gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape's students confront racism, homelessness, clean drinking water