The student survivors of the Florida high school mass shootings are speaking out about school safety and gun violence. It seems they have the nation’s attention. They have provoked comments that “this time may be different.” Maybe these Florida students represent a new generation with a new voice and a new set of convictions. Maybe.
We’ll all learn more next week on March 14 when this new generation of students lead a walkout from schools all across the nation, including here in Sonoma County. What will be their message? What will our own students try to tell us? We’re listening.
It is one thing for the thousand or so Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students who heard the bullets and saw the dying to be impassioned and moved to action. But what are the thoughts and feelings of our own students? When they walk out of school next Wednesday, will it be for the same cause or will it be just an excuse to take a break from their normal school day routine?
We’re listening and we hope we hear calls to action and what #Never Again means in their lives. We hope we hear and see something we can report on as important news.
This national moment about guns, school killings, mental health and NRA hoopla has been powered by social media platforms like Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook. This time these tech monoliths may be stimulating true social benefits, as opposed to the usual rubbish and time-suck we suffer through our Wi-Fi appendages.
How wonderful it would be if this Generation Snapchat could convene new forums and mediums devoted to fuller democratic participation. How empowering it would be if #NeverAgain can gain the same cultural clout as has the #MeToo movement.
Please, young voices, arise. Prove all the older generations wrong, as did the student protestors who marched against the Vietnam War and at the first Earth Day in 1970. Create the next Arab Spring that toppled Middle East dictatorships in 2010. Turn your Snapchat messages and emojis into civic action tools. Walk out of your schools next Wednesday for 17 minutes, but know why you are doing it — and know what you want to have happen next.
So far, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and all the other similar tech companies have done more social harm than good. And our youngest generations have been harmed the most. Maybe this #Never Again moment will also break these cyber shackles.
In a recent survey by the Center for Humane Technology, almost half (47 percent) of responding parents said their children were “addicted” to their smart phones. One-third of the parents confessed they also were “addicted.” The parents expressed “extreme worry” about the overall impacts to their families’ mental health and happiness.
This picture of our nation’s social fabric, smartphone affliction and communication breakdown goes far beyond our concern about the mental health of a single 19-year-old at that Florida high school.
We know the youth of Generation Snapchat and the rest of us are not going to put down our smartphones anytime soon. So we’d better take back the power these tech companies and their little machines have over us. We can’t heal our social divides, make schools safer or reduce gun violence if we don’t take control of our own messages, attention spans and emotions.
Since even before the advent of television, mass media and related technologies have been altering our society and what it means to be a human. That’s why that AR-15 that killed 17 students and teachers felt like it was pointed at us. Most of us experienced that violent moment thanks to something we call a smartphone.
If these phones are so smart, then what are they going to do to end gun violence, make schools safer and restore, not destroy, all our sanity? We’re listening.
