The 12 teenagers were tentative at first, silent after a focus group moderator asked how they felt about high school today. Charlotte, a 17-year-old from Pennsylvania, broke the ice after eight seconds: “I would say stressed.” Others followed along similar lines, though a few also said “normal” and “safe” — not the words that usually jump to mind about school, but this is Covid-era, post-virtual-learning school we’re talking about.
What quickly became clear in our latest Times Opinion focus group, and what may have accounted for some tentativeness, is that several of the teenagers felt worried about being “judged” about what they said. No matter if the answer was their opinion — some were worried about saying the “wrong” thing. “If you’re not super educated on a topic, it’s scary to put your opinion out there, because you don’t want to be wrong,” Charlotte said at another point in the focus group.
Many of the teenagers felt most comfortable when they were with friends or family, but 10 of the 12 also described being “addicted” to social media and meeting people and exploring the world online. They talked about having difficult conversations in class, and they clearly yearned to be able to have open discussions where everyone could share their opinions and not get pounced on for being “wrong” in the eyes of some.
What surprised us the most were the teenagers’ answers to what concerns them about the future, and what they would ask their 40-year-old self if they had the chance. No spoilers here — but it may not be what you think.
This is the seventh group in our series, America in Focus, which seeks to hear and understand the views of wider cross-sections of Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism. We conducted the discussion with Margie Omero, a veteran focus group leader. (Times Opinion paid her for the work; she does similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups.) This transcript has been edited for length and clarity; an audio recording and video clips of the session are also included.
Margie Omero: Here’s the first question — just fill in the blank: “I feel blank about the way things are going in my school today.”
Charlotte (white, 17 years old, from Pennsylvania): I would say stressed.
Thomas (Black, 16, from Missouri): Satisfied.
Paden (white, 16, from Georgia): Overworked.
America (Latino, 17, from California): Safe.
Emmanuel (Black, 15, from Illinois): Normal. Everything is pretty normal.
Jackie (white, 16, from New Jersey): Conflicted.
Nicholas (white, 16, from South Carolina): Overwhelmed.
Margie Omero: Thomas, tell me why satisfied.
Thomas: Last year we had to do online for most of the year. We’re in-person now. We’re learning more. Online, some people don’t pay as much attention.
Margie Omero: Other folks, tell me why you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, overworked.
Milan (Black, 17, from Arizona): Sometimes the counselors or teachers are not always the most understanding. They don’t give you ways to help manage stress. You just have to figure it out on your own sometimes.
Jackie: Not a lot of the teachers are understanding of when you’re stressed, all your work is being piled up upon you. It gets too much.
Margie Omero: Take us into your world — school, class, clubs, sports, time with friends, social media, texting. In which part of your world do you feel most like yourself, most comfortable?
Paden: I would say when I’m at home and alone, because there’s no one around who can judge me. I can just be myself. I don’t have to worry about how other people think about me in a certain situation.
Gabby (white, 16, from Indiana): I’m on the swim team. They’re like a second family to me. I can really be myself without being judged. I have a community that I’m able to be myself with.
Milan: I feel like myself when I’m with my family. They’re my comfort zone, and there’s no problems when I’m with them.
Emmanuel: I feel most like myself on social media, especially TikTok. I like to watch videos, make comments.
Margie Omero: What makes you feel more comfortable on TikTok, Emmanuel?
Emmanuel: Basically, I don’t necessarily put myself out. I’m just anonymous. So I just comment on whatever I like.
Margie Omero: For folks who said they were worried about being judged, what do you feel judged about?
Paden: I’m particular about my appearances and anything just about me.
Milan: Maybe if you’re different, because sometimes people don’t accept differences in a positive way.
12 Teenagers On What They Would Ask Their 40-Year-Old Selves
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I’m going to ask you to do a show of hands. This is the question: When you’re with friends or with people your age, do you feel you’re most like yourself when you’re talking to them in-person, or texting or chatting with them on social media? Who feels most like yourself in-person?
[Ten people out of twelve raise their hands.]
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: And who feels like it’s when you’re chatting with them online?
[Nicholas raises his hand.]
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Nicholas, why do you feel like you’re more connected when you’re online?
Nicholas: When I’m talking in-person, I tend to do a lot of mistakes that are preventable by texting. My voice cracks a lot. I stutter a lot. And with texting, I can get it across. And if I need to imply a tone, I can put an emoji.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Why is it easier in person?
Eva (white, 16, from Pennsylvania): I think it’s easier for people to understand your mood. And things can be taken the wrong way through text.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: When you’re putting something out on any of the platforms, like TikTok or Instagram, do you think about what you’re sharing? How often do you regret it and delete it?
Owen (white, 14, from Connecticut): If I post something, and I’m not a big fan of it — it’s because I try to be cool and make my friends feel happy — I try to make people laugh. But then sometimes I’m like, that’s not really funny. I shouldn’t really have posted that.
Charlotte: I have an account where it’s just my closer friends. So I think less when I’m posting something on there, because I know it’s just them seeing it. My main Instagram has more people. So I think about what I post more on there.
Margie Omero: What are some words that would describe how you feel while you’re on social media? TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram. What’s the word that would describe how you’re feeling?
Brett (white, 16, from Massachusetts): Addicted. I get sucked in for a couple hours.
Margie Omero: How many people say, I feel or I’m worried that I’m addicted?
[All but Nicholas and America raise their hands. ]
Eva: I’ve tried deleting all of social media before. And it didn’t go well, because I got really bored, and I wanted to know what my friends were doing.
Milan: Instead of deleting it, I just turn my notifications off. But I still go on there periodically throughout the day.
Charlotte: I tried the time-limit thing, but I didn’t really like that. And I tried deleting it, but I felt like I was disconnected from my friends. So I just turned my notifications off, and I don’t really feel like I have to go on it a lot.
Margie Omero: OK, let me ask another question. So how, if at all, do you feel social media has affected your mental health? Jackie?
Jackie: I feel like it can have a negative effect, because I’ve seen some people — they edit their pictures or whatever. Like, you’ll see people with all these healthy routines and bodies and stuff. And it makes you insecure about yourself. But more positively, you can communicate with other people. You can fill your content, mostly on TikTok or Instagram, with things you like.
Margie Omero: Have other people had that feeling that Jackie mentioned, that they see pictures, and it makes you feel like anxious?
Charlotte: I definitely do. And I think it’s just hard because everybody puts their best photos out there on social media. But from a viewer perspective, that’s all you’re seeing.
Milan: They edit pictures a lot. People change the lighting, or they change their face. Or if you see it in real life, the way they pose to make their bodies look certain ways — it’s just not realistic sometimes. And it can make other people be insecure, because they see this image. That’s what I’m supposed to look like. But in real life, they don’t even look like that.
Margie Omero: So we’re going to have a couple raise-your-hands questions. Here’s the first one. I’ve met new people and made new friends on social media. How many people say that describes them very well?
[Seven raise their hands.]
Margie Omero: I often fight with my parents about my social-media use.
[No one raises their hands.]
Margie Omero: My parents know how much time I spend on social media.
[Eight of the 12 raise their hands.]
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: What is something that you might have learned in the past few months through social media?
America: I learned a lot about the Ukraine and Russia situation through Twitter. That’s really how I’ve been keeping up-to-date with what’s been going on. I get all of it from news sources.
Charlotte: The Ukraine situation, a lot of people reposted stuff about that. I find a lot of information through Twitter, especially around the election time.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: If something big happens in the world, would you turn on the TV, or would you go to social media, Twitter, TikTok?
Emmanuel: I would go to Twitter.
Milan: I’d probably go to Instagram to see, and maybe Twitter.
Brett: I just get the news from Instagram stories.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: So you won’t go to television, though.
Brett: Well, if I come home, and my parents have the news on, I’ll watch it. But I usually don’t try to watch the news, because it’s usually biased.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: When you say biased, tell me what you mean.
Brett: Well, I did this project in my school last year on biased versus non-biased. And we found that most news articles have some biased stuff in it. So usually, you want to look one side and then one side, and then find the similarities in them. And then compare the two and then see what’s true and what’s not so you don’t get these false facts in your head.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Does anyone else feel like the news is biased?
Eva: I kind of feel that way, but I also tend to look at multiple different sources. I won’t just look at one network for all of my information.
Margie Omero: OK, we’re going to move on to a different topic. How well do you think your schools are teaching the topics you need? History, social studies, literature. Are there topics that classes are leaving out that you feel like you need to know?
Jackie: I feel like with my history class, we went over the 1900s. And I feel like they should also talk more about racial equality, because it’s something that’s a problem at my school. My school doesn’t really have diversity. I feel like it’s important that we talk about racial inequality and stuff in history, because I feel like that’s something that’s important to me — treating each other equally, not just based on our race, but equally.
Charlotte: I would agree with that. Last year, when I took U.S. history, I think they should have talked about race inequality much more than they did.
Margie Omero: Some people say that they’re concerned about the way race and history in America are taught and discussed. How many people say they’ve heard of the phrase, critical race theory?
[America, Gabby, and Paden raise their hands.]
Gabby: They have this class at my school, it goes over a lot of different injustices that we see in the world. And one of them was racial injustice. And that definitely came up when we were studying that.
Nicholas: I’ve only talked about it lightly in my debate class.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Do you find it’s hard to talk about difficult subjects in the school setting? Does it make you feel uncomfortable, bad about yourself to talk about historical issues or present issues of inequality, slavery, topics like that?
Paden: It can feel kind of uncomfortable, because you think that other people may not have the same beliefs as you. And that can scare a lot of people or make you feel very uneasy.
Charlotte: If we talk about something in class, I’ll talk about it with my friends, and also our opinions on how it was taught by our teachers. If we agree with what they were saying, or if we agree with what one of our classmates was saying, or if we found something that they said offensive, maybe.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Mm-hmm. Is it hard to have those talks?
Charlotte: It can be intimidating to put your opinion out there to your whole class.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Tell me why.
Charlotte: Just because maybe you’re worried that somebody will disagree with you. I feel like I took speech and debate, so I became much more comfortable with it because that forced you to put your opinion out there. But I also think, if you’re not super educated on a topic, it’s scary to put your opinion out there, because you don’t want to be wrong.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Who agrees with that, that sometimes it can feel scary, about sensitive subjects, to talk about them in class or with your friends?
[Eight out of 12 people raise their hands.]
Gabby: It’s not really that it’s a right or wrong answer. It’s more like, you just don’t want people to look at you differently if they disagree with what you’re saying, because it can just be hard sometimes to voice your own opinion if everyone else in the class has a different one.
Brett: I just feel like sensitive subjects — if you talk about it, you might be scared that someone might have a different opinion than you and that they feel like there’s a right or wrong answer. Then you’ll feel pressured into changing your opinion.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Has there been a time, a moment when that happened that you could remember?
Brett: Not for me, personally. But I know, in some classes that I’ve been in, there had been some topics that I feel like if I decide to talk, then I feel like I might have different opinions than other people. And I might have to change my opinion, because I’ll feel pressured.
Milan: There are some topics in class where sometimes it’ll feel uncomfortable just to speak, just the tension in the room, or just because if others don’t agree with you or don’t understand your point of view, then that can cause fear too.
Thomas: If you’re talking about sensitive topics to your class rather than talking to your friends — I feel that your friends won’t judge you for what you said. They won’t be as offended as if you’re talking to someone you don’t know.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Tell me about some of the topics that feel uncomfortable.
Thomas: If it has to do something with race and your friend group is the same race as you, then maybe if you’re talking to the class, someone is a different race than you, then maybe they’ll be offended by what you said.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Was there a specific moment that you could think of where something might have happened?
Thomas: Not really. I’m just saying in general.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Milan, what about you? Was there a specific moment?
Milan: Not to me. But I’ve seen other people in the class where I could tell they wanted to say something, but they were just scared. And multiple people in the class will feel like that. And the teacher won’t pull it out of them. So it’ll just be an uncomfortable conversation that didn’t finish.
Margie Omero: How many people say, we were having a class discussion about a certain topic, and it got uncomfortable.
[Nine raise their hands.]
Margie Omero: Keep your hand raised if it got uncomfortable for you, if you felt uncomfortable that somebody was going to challenge you, or somebody did challenge you or was offended by something you said.
[Five keep their hands raised.]
Nicholas: I feel more uncomfortable talking about the past, because there’s more different reactions when it comes to it. And it just comes down to human rights and stuff like that. And people look at it a different way. And some people aren’t able to explain why they think that way without people cutting them off and insulting them.
Margie Omero: Can you give me an example?
Nicholas: It was a kid who was condemning Hitler’s actions. And a kid said that he believed that — he said that Hitler believed that Jews caused Germany to lose World War I. And the people just jumped on him, calling him antisemitic.
Margie Omero: Can other folks recall an experience where someone was talking in class about something, and it got uncomfortable?
Jackie: It was the Ukraine situation. And my history teacher was talking about it. And there was a group of kids in my class, mostly girls, that were like, why don’t we do something, or why don’t we get involved? And my teacher was saying, we don’t want to. And there was a big debate back and forth of if people are going to actually get drafted and things like that. And it caused the whole class, pretty much, a huge debate about if we’re going to do something, if we should, and what the situation is like for us.
Margie Omero: How many people have had an experience where they left class feeling upset?
America: There was a presentation on food stamps and the people they go to and how people find alternative ways to use them. But it was framed in a way as, everyone who gets them ends up using them for something else or giving them to other people to use or things like that. And they weren’t actually taking into consideration the people who actually use them and benefit from them. So I felt like it was just a really underdeveloped conversation, which is why I walked away feeling a certain way about it.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Adults are talking a lot about what gets taught in schools — what books, what to say about race in America, what to say about being gay, what to say about climate change or Covid. And I’m wondering, what do you think adults are missing? What would you want adults to know about those conversations?
Charlotte: What adults don’t realize is that just because we hear something in school doesn’t mean we’re automatically going to agree with what we hear. Just because our teacher may be biased one way doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily going to take what they say and believe that’s right. I think it’s really important for schools to have open discussions where everybody can share their opinions so you can hear different perspectives and not just your teachers.
Eva: I think that adults should also carry these conversations through in their homes so that their kids or anyone can get a fair opportunity to understanding different perspectives.
America: Adults have a lot of say in what goes on in their children’s education. But also, they need to take in mind that their children are a different generation, and we think about things differently than they did. It’s just adjusting to the times, because you are teaching a new generation of students.
Nicholas: Parents’ and adults’ arguments are that they don’t want teachers influencing their kids on what they believe. But in a way, it goes for the parents as well. Whatever they say to a kid, that might stick with them for a long, long time. If kids are raised to be racist or homophobic, they’re going to believe that’s right, because their parents are teaching them that way. At some age, you’re going to have to let the teachers explain the facts to them with no bias in it and let the child decide for themselves.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Looking into the future, is there something that you think you should be concerned about?
Paden: Colleges are very expensive. A lot of people get a lot of student loan debt. So I think one of the biggest things is, apply yourself now and do well, and apply for scholarships and get a lot of your tuition paid for.
Gabby: I think it’s the stress of having to know that the future is coming and that you have to really be prepared for it. You have to start acting more like an adult than a kid. Transitioning to that is scary.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I want to ask how, if at all, Covid has changed you personally. Does anyone have any thoughts about how the last two years of the pandemic has changed you?
Jackie: When the pandemic started, my mental health was going bad, being stuck in the house and not being able to go out. But now that the mandates are being lifted, and we’re able to go out more, it definitely helped my mental health.
Gabby: During the pandemic, my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer, and so her immunity was really low. And I think that that was really stressful on my entire family, because it was hard because it was already stressful enough. And then you have to add this portion into it. So it just put a lot of stress on us, because we all just wanted to be safe. You had to isolate yourself away from everyone, because you don’t want to get her sick.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: And how is it now?
Gabby: It’s a lot better. She had her surgery, and they got it all out. And all of us are fully vaccinated, and all my friends are. So it’s definitely a lot easier now. But it was definitely very stressful before.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Anyone else have a story about Covid and how it felt?
Paden: For me, it was realizing that I really do need to take school seriously. When it was virtual, it was really hard to sit behind a computer screen for eight hours and just learn when you have so many things that can distract you. At one point, our school district said that from this point on, your grade can no longer drop. I feel like that was the green light for a lot of people to say, we’re not going to do anything anymore. And I definitely think that impacted how much you really learned in that school year, which made it difficult for the upcoming school year.
Margie Omero: One last question. Let’s say you were having a conversation with your 30-year-old self or your 40-year-old self. What would you want to know? What would you ask your 40-year-old self?
Jackie: I would probably ask how my mental health is doing and if it’s gotten better, if it’s worse.
Charlotte: The mental health thing. And I’d be curious as to what I was doing, because now I’m not super sure.
Thomas: I’d probably ask myself how my family is doing, because they’re really important to me.
Eva: I’d probably ask what I’m doing with my life, career-wise, and how my family is, too.
America: I would honestly ask if I had a steady income, if I was making good money, and probably if I was just genuinely happy with the life I’ve created.
Paden: Yeah, I would just ask myself, how well did I turn out? And also, for me, the biggest thing is, are my parents still around? Because especially right now, in your younger life, they’re a big part of the decisions you make. And I feel like when they’re not around, it could be a lot more difficult.
Emmanuel: My career, and then my kids.
Owen: I’d ask how my family is and if I’m successful — what I have to do to be that successful.
Milan: I would just see what I’m doing, the people around me, my occupation, stuff like that.
Nicholas: I would ask what my family is doing, and how democracy and how the world are going.
Gabby: I would probably want to know if I was happy and healthy, and if my parents were OK.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
