Many people, especially those who came from older generations, may think of modern teens as rebellious, insecure, insensitive and incompetent. However, with our current era, it is undeniable that youths dominate the changes contributed to our society. We have Amanda Gorman, Angela Zhang, Allison Bick, Dylan Mahalingam and Dexter Yang: these youths proved that “Ang Kabataan ang Pag-Asa ng Bayan”.
The youngest poet laureate Amanda Gorman performed her inaugural poem entitled The Hills We Climb during the inauguration of President Joe Biden last 20 January 2021. She is also awarded the title National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017. Through her poems, she addressed issues in oppression, feminism, race and marginalization. She also emphasized African diaspora through her published poetry books.
Through Gorman, we can see that modern teens can also serve as cultural preservers through their active roles in Literature. Aside from Literature, did you know that youths play a critical role in health, too? Angela Zhang and Allison Bick both provided championing ideas concerning cancer research and water sustainability.
Zhang used nanotechnology to enhance a non- invasive way to treat cancer by distributing a drug named salinomycin into a tumor and directly targeting the cancer cells. Whilst for Bick, she created a smartphone application that can detect the safety of drinking water. Using the app, you can take a photo of the water and it analyzes the yellow pixels in the photo. The darker the hue, the more contaminated the water.
Many people had a stigma that when we talk of modern youths, the only thing they can do is to be active on social media and other online communities. But this stigma is used by Dylan Mahalingam to maximize the potential of online communities. He co-founded Lil MDGs, an online community that aids the U.N. to fulfill its Millennium Development Goals. This non-profit organization aims to educate kids about these Millennium Development Goals and provide them opportunities to assist on attaining these goals.
Indeed, young people like Mahalingam can significantly play a role in nation building! Speaking of which, let us meet our last teen who also servesas a hope for the society. Our very own Dexter Yang is the executive director of a youth, non-profit organization named GoodGovPH. The main goal of this organization is to promote good governance through educating the citizens about the significance of suffrage and offering free legal assistance.
During the pandemic, GoodGovPH provides help, either financial or services, to all needy Filipinos. Aside from that, GoodGovPH also established its Crisis Education Team (which I am a part of before) as an emergency response team. This program aims to monitor how LGUs are having their responses against the virus and also helping them to devise more comprehensive plans to better serve their communities.
These young people are not the only ones who are being the hopes of the nation. There are still more like them. It is safe to claim that modern teenagers are still relevant because many of them are contributing to the improvement of various fields such as nation building, health, governance and culture.
Overall, it is still true that young people are still the hopes of our nation. It is from them where new ideas, new plans, new ways and new practices emerge. From their generation, modernizations take place leading to the betterment of the society. Even though some of them may have pressing issues as mentioned above, we cannot deny that for a successful and sustainable improvement in the society, we all need young people’s power.
Author: Christian Loid Valenzuela
