1. Identify your chosen focus for the Paradigm Shift projects (essay and TED talk). Indicate the boundaries of your intended focus as clearly as possible. What is the story that you seek to tell? As you now envision it, how long of a time period is covered by the expected focus – several centuries, just the last decade? Remember that the story should end in the present day.

I plan to analyze how youth activism has become an important part of society, starting with college students and shifting to high schoolers more recently. I will focus on the stereotypes that teens endure, the history of college student activism from the 1960s until today (with examples from the civil rights movement, Vietnam, apartheid, and Chinese pro-democracy), the current movements of which high schoolers are taking control (gun control, climate change), and the impacts and motives of the student movements. I will also analyze the backlash from adults towards both college and high school students – is there a shift in the way the older generation reacts as well? I will analyze one of the main causes of the shift to younger teenagers’ activism: technology. I will also discuss the shift to society’s modern cultural pressure for high-schoolers to add extracurriculars to their resume in order to be more accomplished for college – does this encourage apathetic activism?

2. Why is this specific shift significant enough to merit your close investigation and the attention of your audiences? Why does this shift need to be explored and understood?

This shift is highly applicable today amid the Parkland survivor-activists and climate change activists like Greta Thunberg. Teens have made high schools and colleges the sites of national walkouts; they also protest in organized rallies such as March for Our Lives. Many people dismiss these youth activists, even though they are fighting for real change. I think we need to understand why activists take up the mantle at such a young age so that we understand the brevity of the situations. Students who are willing to walk out of class with thousands of their peers nationally and march in Washington with millions of others obviously have something important to say. So why does society still dismiss them? Do they make valid points on concerning issues? Should we be listening even harder to these young people instead of turning away because they talk about controversial topics? These are the questions we should be asking ourselves when we consider youth activists.