Comment by Tade0
6 months ago
It's normal for 13 year olds to have strong opinions on such topics - they have plenty of time to refine them or even change their mind.
I would be more worried about those who by this age didn't develop any interest in geopolitics - it affects them all the same but they typically don't understand why and pick whatever source tells a more compelling story.
When I was 13 (in the US in the 1970s) none of my classmates or friends ever expressed any interest in geopolitics or international relations.
That's probably the benefit of you not being 24/7 glued to the broadcast system called social media. I imagine in the 70s you spent your time mostly with friends in real life, and geopolitics was just 10 easily missable minutes on TV every evening.
Sure maybe there's a minority of kids with social media/smartphone bans nowadays, but they're probably as plentiful as 13 year olds interested in geopolitics in the 1970s.
I browse Instagram's TikTok clone ("Reels") when idle, it's rather dull, when that hurricane hit a few weeks ago, the stories were all about that, a few days later it was forgotten. Obviously, lately it's been about Luigi Mangione...
You don't need social media to be aware of what's going on in the world.
At 13 (early 2000ish) I was reading the newspapers my parents brought home and debated a friend of mine who in turn read his parents' newspapers - mutually exclusive sets from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
I need ask: when is the best moment to, as a parent, introduce a young person to the news cycle? You'll inevitably have to since they're on their way to become voters and taxpayers.
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No one had an opinion about Vietnam? I was 13 in 2003, plenty of people had an opinion about 9/11, civil liberties, and Iraq.
I don't recall any opinions about Vietnam and would probably have remembered if someone had expressed an opinion to me.
And the war or whatever we call the situation in Gaza would be something I'd want to shield my 13-year-old child from having any knowledge of if I were a parent -- for basically the same reason I'd want to shield them from learning about sadomasochistic sex as long as possible.
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