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We asked, “What can you show or tell us to help explain what it’s like to grow up in this political moment?” Students from around the world responded with powerful art and writing.
What can you show or tell us to help explain what it’s like to grow up in this political moment?
That’s the overarching question we put to teenagers last fall, during a year of pivotal elections around the globe. First we broke it down via a series of informal conversation forums that posed additional questions — about their political identities and values; the issues that matter to them; today’s information environment and their news habits; and how they talk about politics across divides. Those forums garnered over 5,500 comments from teenagers around the world.
Next, we challenged them to make something in response. As long as it somehow addressed one or more of the questions we posed in the forums, submissions could take the form of writing, art, audio or video.
Now, as a new administration takes office in the United States, we’re publishing a collection of the best work from the 1,600-plus entries we received from all over the country, as well as from Europe and Asia.
We hope you’ll take some time with this collection and note both what resonates with your own experience and what shows you something new. Then, we hope you’ll tell these young artists what you think by posting a comment to our special related forum here.
Please note: After each work of visual art, you’ll find an excerpt from the related artist’s statement that gives it a bit more context.
Teterboro, N.J.
My parents are not very political. My peers are not very political. Yet, there’s no denying the “us versus them” mentality that has seeped into the public conscience. Democrat versus Republican. Tradition versus progress.
The values that I get from my family and the ones that I get from my community have never been in harmony, but I don’t believe that they have to be mutually exclusive. My purpose in creating this video is to use food, something that we all need to sustain ourselves, to show that disparate ingredients from different cultures can indeed come together to create something wonderful.
While our political system may employ a two-party system, all of us are a mixture of ideas and beliefs. We must come together to create a stronger whole.
Las Vegas
Filling out forms that solicit demographic information troubles me. I don’t fit neatly into a box. Born to an African American dad from Nevada and a Latina-English mom from Texas, my cultural and personal identity traverse those rigid confines.
I live in a semirural part of Las Vegas, but attend an urban, Title 1 public high school where most students are Latino and African American. Tunes of Drake and Bad Bunny fill the school parking lot, a sharp contrast to the classical music I mastered on piano and flute at home. On the weekends, I sit with my grandparents, who share stories of growing up in segregated communities in the South, or tell of their immigrant “Coming to America” from England experience. On the weekends, we attend St. Anthony’s Catholic mass or Victory Baptist (even though I don’t believe in God!). I was born and raised in — and now thrive in — my multicolored world of brown, black and white. I’m comfortable moving across and within different boxes and communities.
Additionally, I hail from Nevada, an ideologically complex state: Libertarian; gun-loving; socially progressive; rural; pro-union; immigrant-friendly; fiscally conservative. Nevada is considered a purple state because, like me, it doesn’t fit into a box. Nonpartisans comprise Nevada’s biggest voting bloc (at 32 percent).
Like a growing number of voters in the Southwestern U.S., I identify with issues and values more than a political party. This may be the result of having been raised in a house governed by two public servants/community advocates who have diverse political views. We regularly engage in animated debates about education, civil rights and criminal justice reform. My views are nuanced. For example, I support criminal justice reform (I want to be a public defender), but I also support the death penalty. I am the proud descendant of men who served in the military (one of whom was a prisoner of war released on Armistice Day in 1918), but I also understand Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem. My family owns guns, but I believe that no one with a record of mental illness should be allowed to possess guns. I come from a deeply religious family, but growing up surrounded by Nevada’s strip clubs, show girls and prostitution has highlighted the importance of having autonomy over my body, including my reproductive choices.
Given my background, I seek to understand issues and my community by researching and asking questions. We would be a healthier community if more people identified as purple and focused on understanding the issues and one another instead of focusing on party affiliation, the boxes that we check, or the labels that we hide behind.
Incheon, South Korea
I stand at the cliff’s edge, toes gripping the rock, my body buckling under the weight of those stacked above me, their faces calm, as if unaware of the weight they press down on me. A tower of lives that rises skyward, balanced on my trembling frame.
Fewer of us are born each year to bear the growing burden of an aging population. They tell us, “You are the future, the hope of the nation,” but they pile on expectations, and dreams from an era long past.
What happens when we can’t hold them up any longer? In their world, there were more hands to share the load, more voices to call out, more feet to hold the line. But here I am, alone at the edge.
If we don’t lift some of this burden together, who will be left to carry it when we fall?
Hoboken, N.J.
This comic is about how teenagers learn about politics today. Feeling too old to rely on their parents and wanting to form their own independent opinions, they turn to social media. Then their heads are filled with false information which they continue spreading.
I created this piece using Pixton right after having a conversation with my friends at lunch. I was blown away by just how much they trusted what they read online.
London
I have the pleasure of walking past the illustrious Abbey Road Studios on my daily walk to school. The adjacent crosswalk is almost always flooded with tourists running across the street to take the perfect picture, disrupting the flow of traffic. I’m certain that I’m in the background of upward of a thousand Christmas cards. Alongside the photo opportunity is the chance to leave a mark on a cultural institution; passers-by have the opportunity to scrawl a message on the white wall outside of the studios.
The wall is typically filled with lopsided signatures and looks more like an explosion of multicolored Sharpie than a collection of any legible words. I find the wall incredibly endearing. It bears the mark of thousands of passers-by who have traveled and waited and wanted to leave a remnant of themselves in a place of history.
I no longer can romanticize this segment of my morning commute.
In the past year, the accumulation of signatures has been spray-painted over with messages pertaining to the unfolding conflict in the Middle East. Hastily scrawled messages read “Save Gaza,” “bomb them all,” and “free the hostages.” Every couple of days, blue and white turn over to red, white and black, and back again.
It’s hard enough to escape the news already; the front page of every newspaper is some kind of conflict and my social media feeds are flooded with footage of horrific violence. Still, we are able to put our phones down and take a moment to breathe.
Living as an Arab in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, the anguish is inescapable. The synagogue down the street has had an influx in security over the past year. Rain-soaked posters of hostages are pinned onto every lamppost I walk by on my commute. Members of my community are wracked with dread for family members abroad; in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Iran.
It’s a commonly held conception that we are collectively desensitized to the news. Yes, we are constantly fed violence. No, that does not strip us of our capacity for empathy.
Frustration with responses to the conflict in the Middle East is spilling out in small ways. Protests take place across the country; people pressure public figures to make statements; and graffiti artists take turns making statements on the Abbey Road Studios, two thieves in the night, desperate to make a change.
We cannot ignore the writing on the wall any longer, nor can we ignore the everyday effects of the ongoing devastation.
Atlanta
I live between the very liberal and left-leaning climate of my school and social life and the heavily conservative values of my Florida-grown family. Who can reliably fact check if everybody claims everybody else has an agenda?
During the 2020 election, I became aware that sharing my middle-ground or questioning beliefs to my family or friends usually resulted in a lecture from both sides. All I ever heard was “Hillary is crooked!” “Donald Trump is sexist!” “Why would you think that?” “Don’t get that vaccine!” “Your parents are stupid for being anti-vax and here’s why.” “All the Democrats want are your tax dollars.” “What if my Republican neighbor shoots me?” “They’re not your real friends, they’re too liberal.” I’ve heard all of the words in my painting on a regular basis from both friends and family.
We’re told from a young age that we don’t have the full picture without another perspective. But what if two different perspectives are telling two very different stories? Are my friends right when they say that Chick-fil-A wants gay people persecuted? How many of my parents’ conspiracies from Twitter are actually true? Is Donald Trump an evil billionaire looking to rule the world, or is he just a contrarian exposing what we don’t see? How many rich people have our congressional politicians in their pockets? How many of Trump and Harris’s accusatory campaign ads are true?
Some might say that it’s cowardly to hide in the gray area of politics, but it feels so wrong to choose a side when you don’t know who to trust or what’s real.
Fort Collins, Colo.
Growing up as a young woman of color in America, I have watched as our rights have been fought for and then taken away again. This is my emotional response to the world I see, the fear I feel — and the flickering hope I hold.
At the center is a towering figure of a woman, a silent scream etched across her face. My reference was a bust of the goddess Demeter whose fury, often demonized in modern retellings, represents to me the fierce, misunderstood pain of women fighting for what they love. I wanted this piece to encompass the collective experience of all women and girls. It reflects our common anguish, strength and defiance.
In the river below, my generation holds signs of protest. We have the potential to create the change we wish for, despite navigating the turbulent waters left by our predecessors. The lanterns they carry can light the darkness and illuminate the path forward.
Watkinsville, Ga.
This painting captures a moment in which a compassionate doctor chats with my cousin, who is in the middle of a grueling week of chemotherapy and blood transfusions. The doctor has brought a service dog, who has fallen asleep on Emma’s bed.
In January 2023, my cousin was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, which 50 years ago would have been almost certainly fatal. Medical science has advanced so it’s now likely she’ll be in remission by spring.
I often think about illness and wellness and the line between them, which is thin as a ghost. I live in a conservative rural town and I worry about adults’ eroding faith in science. Listening to the people around me, I’ve come to understand that science denialism comes from looking at medicine through the lens of narrative.
In the arena of medicine, stories fail us. The most interesting story is often the most terrifying — like the child who died from a vaccine. If we look at data, this story might be true, but it is exceptionally rare. If we look at data, medical science is extremely effective.
This painting represents my optimism for our future. It reveals a moment when I can see years of cancer research, psychiatric research, health care policy and compassion healing my cousin’s leukemia and her despair.
Even in my rural public high school, students are questioning their parents’ stories and their disdain for expertise. I have hope that my generation will vote for education, environmental safeguards and universal health care. We’re studying hard to understand the world for ourselves.
Tbilisi, Georgia
One day I woke up and heard the news: Military forces were gathering on the border. A few days later I woke up and heard the news again: Military forces invaded a neighboring country. Then again, and again, and again I heard the news about the horrors of war. Cities are bombed and leveled to the ground. Innocent lives are ruined. Kids are killed. Missiles are aimed at residential buildings. Soldiers die not in battle, but from hunger, yet the government does not care about them. Messages about drone attacks are received by citizens every day.
Propaganda. The term “special operation” could be heard from all government-controlled media, as if they are trying to hide the already obvious truth. Even in schools, there is an additional lesson about it. But kids hear not about the horror of war, they hear about its “heroes” and how “patriotic” it is to participate in “the operation.”
People protest, go out to the streets, yell in despair and grief, in hope that they will be heard. But no, they get only a prison sentence, they can’t speak up.
Then mobilization. The government didn’t kill enough of its own citizens, they will force more to die. They write new laws, so you can’t evade the army. It is now either death or prison. Your life is ruined either way.
Then news about a revolution. Soldiers revolt because they don’t even have the equipment to fight. Tanks and hundreds of military units travel to the capital. Yet even soldiers don’t want peace. They want bloodshed.
I already moved to another country, hundreds of miles away from home. Yet, even on that cold winter day when it all began, I already felt like I was away from home. I am trying to continue my life, to find new friends, to get into a good university, to build a career. Yet I don’t feel safe. I will never feel safe. And again, and again, and again — news of death, destruction, and broken lives. A few questions never leave my mind: Why? Why don’t people see all these horrors? Why don’t people live in peace? Why do people suffer and die? Why does someone else decide in what world I will live, if I will live at all?
These questions might never be answered, but maybe there is a way to build a future where nobody will need to ask “Why?” again. A future where people spread love and compassion instead of hatred and suffering. There is still hope. Hope that future generations will never experience the horrors of war that I witnessed firsthand. Hope that someday the world will know true peace.
Mannheim, Germany
The room in the picture is part of the German parliament “Bundestag,” the place where all political parties debate and fight like children. I drew the part where the Party AFD is sitting. The AFD is the right-wing party in Germany.
I’m a young girl, I’m not straight, I don’t want to be a housewife in the future. I just want to live somewhere where no one is starting a war because of too much testosterone, where no one decides that women are not worth anything, where no one forgets about the young generations who have to live on a destroyed planet because of old men to whom money and power are more important than lives.
I decided to portray the members in a ridiculous way to demonstrate that I’m not scared of them, that I don’t think they are better than me. While I was drawing, the thought came to me that perhaps it would be better if chickens ran the world.
The Bronx, N.Y.
A kid from the Bronx.
An inner-city kid.
A girl.
Black.
This is the lens that I look through. This is a permanent lens that cannot be taken away.
Politics has always seemed worlds away for me. Anytime a new politician gets elected, or the incumbent re-elected, it never feels like anything changes. At least in my community. The only attention the Bronx ever gets is when the Yankees win, some crazy crime story appears on the 6 o’clock news, or a politician says something along the lines of, “Black children in the Bronx don’t know what the word ‘computer’ is.” Or if it’s news about whatever they’re doing to the “Joker stairs.” As I walk past those exact steps (which appeared to be ever so pristine in the movie) that are littered with garbage, my surroundings are vivid, almost competing with one another: the merengue music vibrating off the walls, crowded slow buses inching toward the traffic light, drill music overpowering the merengue and coming from an out-of-place expensive car that zooms past the bus. I kick the empty Sprite can that dwells in the middle of the sidewalk and see that the Bronx is no melting pot. Instead it seems like the Bronx itself is melting. Politicians are failing us.
With political inaction becoming the norm in communities that are drowning in poverty like mine, it is easy to look at politics with a cynical view. Seeing all of the political ads this election season makes me realize that both we the people and politicians have lost the true meaning of democracy. People in underserved communities such as the Bronx get caught in a cycle of letting the system beat them down. Communities that are majority brown and Black, low-income and “urban” are not designed to elevate those who live there. They are a catalyst in the slow genocide of minorities like African Americans, and we sadly succumb to these conditions.
A lot of us have become complacent with our local politicians. We’re discouraged, thinking that our voices are insignificant and therefore cannot make a difference. Politicians, on the other hand, believe that they can parade around with empty promises, shouting “mi gente!,” only to get into office and not make a single change. Inaction should light a burning fire inside of all of us, it should make us realize that we are not mere pawns on a chess board. It should serve as a metamorphosis of thinking, of education, of yearning. The lens that I look through is a lens that has an inkling of hope. That maybe, just maybe, people who look like me will get tired of a system that wants them gone.
Tenafly, N.J.
“The Weight of the World” captures the heavy feeling of anxiety that comes from living today. Surrounded by chaos, I am unsure of where I belong or how to make a difference.
The images I drew — soldiers abroad, water scarcity, oil spills — represent the diverse yet interconnected crises weighing heavily on us. I show myself as trapped, blocking out the overwhelming pressure.
But by acknowledging these emotions, my generation can work together on what matters. Even though it feels like the world’s weight is on our shoulders when young people like myself are called “the leaders of tomorrow,” there are ways to lessen the problems.
Darnestown, Md.
My name is Phrog; this is the name I chose for myself. I am genderfluid; this is the gender I chose for myself.
I have the freedom to decide these things about myself, but many others do not. My piece is about all of the bills being passed to oppress the identities of people who don’t fit into society’s idea of men and women, let alone people outside the gender binary. People who are just that: people.
The bricks represent the bills. Heavy burdens for the people who care, always looming in the background. Even heavier for the people they affect. The light inside the person is their spirit.
Forty-five anti-trans bills were passed this year alone, banning gender-affirming care, preventing trans kids from playing school sports and prohibiting trans people from using public bathrooms. These bills were passed under the pretense of protecting people, but only harm has come.
I hope that my piece can make people realize that I am a person too.
Palo Alto, Calif.
“Did you hear? Apparently, there’s a war going on between Ukraine and Russia.” I remember this as a passing conversation during 7th grade over our school lunches. The table bubbled with confused murmurs and quiet exclamations of “Wow, really?” It felt strange to hear that somewhere on the other side of the world, people were witnessing deaths at the hands of militaries. The mere concept of “war” felt so distant and archaic. Had we not moved past that in modern times? There was a sense of denial that was hard to shake off.
Then, last October, Hamas launched an assault on Israel, followed by retaliation and dramatically escalating tensions. Suddenly, I was bombarded with ads featuring Palestinians pleading for donations while I scrolled through social media. The tonal whiplash and severity of the situation was intimidating. Some pro-Israel advocates pushed for a one-state solution, while supporters of Palestinians rallied for justice, calling what was happening in Gaza a genocide. Having been someone who didn’t frequently follow the news, the hostile and divisive nature of its discourse deterred me from engaging.
I got tired of feeling uninformed and out of the loop. Once I opened the dam with a question, it spiraled from there. As I discussed with my parents and began reading articles, I realized how deep the rabbit hole goes — it never seems to end. I experienced something like the Dunning-Kruger effect: My understanding seemed to dwindle the more I asked. There was so much at play beyond just Israel versus Hamas, including U.S. support and complicity, Israel’s history of tension with neighboring countries, and more.
With my piece, I wanted to convey the realization that there is so much of the world I had not seen. The Statue of Liberty, with its motherly stance, initially guides the student forward and away from the unknown, but that is just the comfort of ignorance.
San Diego
My father’s phone lights up with election betting.
“Put 500 on—”
I begin looking at schools in Canada
I imagine asking the gods, How
will you fix it?
They bow their heads. We will
give you time, they say. I do not want time,
I do not have time.
I ask: Let me
kiss my grandmother goodbye once more as I leave Hubei. Let me
secure myself as American, the way I was born to be. Let me
own a home that’s large enough to have a bathroom separate from the kitchen. Let me
save myself to be more than my body and my babies. Let me
see glaciers and polar bears once more before they are gone. Let me
see listening to women for the first time. Let me
witness patriotism again. Let me
stay here;
I do not want to leave.
“Put it on Harris.”
Istanbul
Growing up in Istanbul, old people often told me when I misbehaved, “If you were born in a village, you’d be married by now since your feet can touch the ground when you sit.” With over 12 million girls worldwide whose feet could touch the ground before the age of 18, what is the possibility of not one of them being the next Nobel Prize winner or Olympic gold medalist?
Coffee fortunetelling is a traditional Turkish practice. After drinking coffee, people turn their cups upside down and look at the patterns formed by the leftover grounds. These patterns, known as telve, are believed to reveal clues about the future and destiny. In my painting, which uses coffee as well as paint, I depicted historical figures as if their telve had revealed their fates as child brides.
But not every child needs to change the course of history for their story to matter. My painting is a tribute to these lost voices, and aims to spark discussion about the vicious cycle we face today where harmful cultural norms reinforce legal loopholes, and in turn, legal loopholes perpetuate these harmful norms.
Riverdale, Iowa
It’s becoming harder and harder to tell whether a piece of media online was created by the hands of a hardworking person … or just a mindless machine.
I identify as an artist myself and feel connected to my fellow artists, whose present and future occupations are being taken over by artificial intelligence. The joy of overcoming challenges is a long-forgotten part of the art journey that too many people are uncomfortable going through. With the help of A.I., people are able to create images with no effort or meaning and post them online for millions of likes and views, robbing themselves of valuable experiences and taking away engagement from other artists.
People seem to have forgotten that the whole point of art is expressing human thought and emotion through creation.
Los Angeles
Social media platforms join forces with rapidly growing fast-fashion brands, then social media influencers relentlessly endorse these new products and trends. This creates a harmful cycle of consumerism and overconsumption.
As a 16-year-old girl, I have fallen victim to this trap of never-ending purchases myself, but I have also discovered the questionable and unethical foundation that these fast-fashion brands are built upon. The microplastics and waste resulting from our impulsive purchases deteriorate our world. The fast-fashion companies exploit their workers and steal designs from smaller businesses.
By constantly targeting an impressionable audience of teens, these brands convince adolescents that their unsustainable and poorly-made products are a necessity they must have to fit in. But I am learning to celebrate my individuality rather than adhere to the insatiable standards of social media. I hope I can encourage others to ignore the heavy pressure to conform and embrace their uniqueness instead.
Mercer Island, Wash.
Gen Z stresses every single day: Uh oh, there’s a test tomorrow. Flu season is here — is there going to be another pandemic? Oh, another shooting close to where I live. I wonder how the presidential election will turn out?
Everyone needs their escape from reality. For people like me, sports is that escape. Maintaining athletic performance means that there is no room to think about other things, clearing the brain and making way for new perspectives and ideas. During practice, all of my attention shifts to All-Star Cheer. In my head, I am constantly thinking, “Use technique, slow down, breathe.”
One day while I was upside down at practice. I looked at the gym around me, realizing how different everything looked when the floor was over my head. My generation is holding on to our sense of childlike imagination. We can use that imagination to tackle issues from a new perspective. Thinking outside the box requires acknowledging both the challenges and the opportunities, and we are globally connected and engaged.
Although the future looks pessimistic, Gen Z will flip the situation with creativity and collaboration.
_____________________
(In alphabetical order by the creator’s first name. Students, if you would like your last name published, please have a parent or guardian complete our permission form [PDF] and send it to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.)
Amelia (Mel) Diemert, 16, Lakewood, Ohio, “Queer Kid Imagines an Alternate Reality/Politics Disguised as a Love Poem”
Candy Martinez, 17, West Palm Beach, Fla., “Connection Lost”
Daniela Avrekh, 13, Brooklyn, N.Y., “Land of Freedom”
Elliot Pomper, 16, McLean, Va., “The American Media Diet”
Genevieve Watson, 16, Los Angeles, “Eldest Daughter”
Hannah Stortz, 17, Eldridge, Iowa, “Plugging Into the Word”
Jamie Davis, 17, Golden Valley, Minn., “Sunshine Baby”
Kinley Johnson, 16, Greensboro, N.C., “Hypocrisy”
Leia Lundby Francis, 13, Starnberg, Germany, “Break the Box, Own Your Identity”
Lola Pell, 18, and Tania Aguilar-Cruz, 18, Saint Peter, Minn., “The Impacts of Growing Up”
Luna Gao, 13, and Sarah Haenisch, 13, Munich, Germany, “NSFW”
Maira Zaidi, 16, Washington, D.C., “Age of Suspicion”
Malky Mintz, 16, Hewlett, N.Y., “Unity Through Hatred”
Nathalie Canetta, 16, Belmont, Mass., “The Divided States of America”
Owen Burman, 16, Aloha, Ore., “safe place”
Peggy Tsai, 15, Taipei, Taiwan, “Breaking the Enigma”
Tatiana, 14, Chelyabinsk, Russia, “Freaky Silences"
Alina Dayeon Lee, 15, Seoul, “Floura”
Camilla Joffrey, 15, Santa Barbara, Calif., “The Same Thing”
Ella, 16, North Andover, Mass, “Still Young”
Ella Herb, 15, and Eva, “In Girl World”
Eva, 17, Russia, “Opinions in Russia About the U.S.”
Garance Héomet, 15, Paris, “My Hopes for the Future”
Hyunseung Lee, 17, Incheon, South Korea, “Growing Up in a Polarized Society”
Serena Strohmeier-Gach, 15, Albany, Calif., “The Future Lies in Our Hands”
Thomas Svencer, 16, Marblehead, Mass., “Snowless Ski Hill”
Yuna Jeon, 13, Moorestown, N.J., “Day in the Life of a News-Addicted Teen”
Annissa Hambouz, Elisa Zonana, Erica Ayisi, Caroline Gilpin, Jeremy Engle, Jeremy Hyler, Katherine Schulten, Kathy Curto, Kimberly Wiedmeyer, Michael Gonchar, Natalie Proulx, Shannon Doyne, Shira Katz and Willow Lawson
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