Like many young people today, Kamaldeep Dhanoa, the 17-year-old, knew he wanted to do something in his life and be part of something, but didn’t quite know what that meant.
It is important to propose a career. But more importantly, it found the right friend-discovered the part he wanted to be.
He did it when he joined Improve tomorrowa mentoring organization for teenage boys and young men – vulnerable, Long-term online demographics Charlie Kirk attracted many of his most enthusiastic supporters from it, and most of our social anxiety is centered on his death.
Now, a senior at Dhanoa at Florin High School in the suburb of Sacramento has a plan to become a caregiver, and more importantly, those friendships make him feel not only connected, but also included, and valued.
his something.
“I just know I have brothers around me,” he told me Tuesday. “We’re always between each other. It brings you a sense of security. So if you’re frustrated, you’re always relying on them.”
Dhanoa hangs out in the school’s gym with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who announced the California Men’s Service Challenge, an effort that recruited 10,000 Golden State men to serve as mentors for boys like Dhanoa, so more boys can find their stuff.
It’s a worthwhile effort, and before you start thinking about how this is the reaction to Kirk, I’m pointing out that 10 years ago, California’s first partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom produced a documentary about the connection and identity crisis facing young people, “The mask you live in. ”
Recently, her husband caught up.
To be fair, many of us are slowly absorbed when understanding why so many young people seem to be under the obvious loneliness and disconnection of chronic online life.
Kamaldeep Dhanoa, 17, and Michael Lynch helped Gov. Gavin Newsom announce that he has announced statewide to attract more people to volunteer and coach the work.
(Anita Chabria/Los Angeles Times)
“Touch Grass” has become a cultural shorthand for a generation to describe the isolation and healing methods of people who seem so deep into the virtual world that the real people lose their meaning. It’s a dismissive way of looking at the problem of no boys starting and ending.
But if we didn’t see it earlier, Kirk’s killings show that there are too many boys who need to go back from a very bad brink something. One that has less content related to the left and right is more about who and these boys stumble upon in those ethereal spaces that most parents can’t even find, let alone understand.
“We have to get these kids back,” Newsom said. “They are very susceptible to young people. They are very vulnerable online.”
Even more worrying, Newsom said, is that when nihilism in the darkest corners of the internet catches up with their hearts, “young people weaponize these dissatisfactions,” Newsom said—whether anger is introvert or outward.
Suicides in young people increased. In 2023, the suicide rate for men is about 23 deaths per 100,000 peoplenearly four times that of women, a number that has climbed for years (although somewhat tilted). Sadly, women often try suicide, but men have higher completion rates, usually because they use more deadly means, such as guns.
But lonely boys are also more likely to commit violence against others, especially when they mix anger with politics. A recent study by a social epidemiologist once at the University of Washington School of Public Health Julia Schleimer found that people with few reported social connections “are more likely than others to support political violence or an individual willing to engage in it in one form or another.”
For reference, about 15% of men have no close friendships. American Life Survey Center’s Poll. Newsom believes The number is even higher For young people, “a quarter of men under the age of 30 report that they have no close friends, a fivefold increase since 1990.”
Kirk walked into this gap, providing meaning and belonging not only through his most famous podcast, but also through grass-roots turning points in the United States, which gave thousands of young (gender) ideologies and equally important, real-world connections and events.
“Obviously, Charlie Kirk is not only what he does online, but also offline, and his ability to organize and participate,” Newsom said.
Whether you agree with Kirk or not (I disagree with many views, including the meaning of race, sexual orientation, immigration or patriotism), he created something So many young people are missing. He created a vision of America that needs salvation, which can be saved, and can be saved, by dedication to a certain family and a certain faith. As Newsom describes, young people want more than just a career. They want to feel invested, they want to feel “the obligation to give back.”
If Newsom’s recent dabbling in Trump-style social media proves everything, it is that he is willing to learn, or even imitate success—no matter where he finds success. Newsom attempts to provide the attribution provided by Kirk, rather than permeating the exclusion and rigidity embodied by Kirk, but in California’s values.
Michael Lynch told me about the California Challenge. He is Arriv Your Tomorrow’s Co-founder and CEO, Dhanoa belongs to the organization.
Lynch said the kids get all kinds of benefits from their mentors, but when he asks what those are, the sentence usually starts: “Now I have friends….”
The result of the effort to bring boys out of the virtual world is about who those friends are, pulling them out.
Our boys need not only touch the grass, they need to be with men who do not seek to impose their values, but teach them how to make their own self and how to believe in themselves before they believe in themselves something Someone is selling it.
“What the world needs is your authenticity,” Newsom told a teenage journalist who reported on the activities of the school newspaper. “So I just want us to take a deep breath and discover the most important and powerful thing in the world, that’s who you are.”
If Newsom’s efforts inspired a good person to step up and help a child know who they are and how to believe in themselves first and forever – it would be something.
