What You Need to Understand About Middle Schoolers Today

We all have our own memories of being middle schoolers, no matter how much you try to suppress them, and these memories have likely fueled your current perception of who middle schoolers are, or how they should be. But, I regret to inform you, times have changed.

So, I wanted to share some of the things you need to understand about middle schoolers today, things are a bit different these days and, needless to say, these kids are going through some stuff.

Welcome to Tornado Alley.

1. These Are Still Children

No matter how many middle schoolers might try to put on rough exteriors, or talk, or act a certain way, one thing remains true and needs to be remembered: these are all still just children.

A middle school is a crazy place to walk around each day. In the same hall you can see boys who look like they could bench press you, and others who can barely carry their own backpacks. Mentally, the two are really not that far apart.

I say that they are still children, not to just state the obvious, but also to serve as a reminder. Middle schoolers these days are under more pressure than ever to not act their ages. We think just because they are the same size as us we can expect them to control their emotional outbursts, or have the wisdom to look past peer pressure, but that is hard enough to do for fully developed adults, and occasionally nearly impossible for middle schoolers.

Any time I’m asked to describe middle schoolers, I give the same, possibly overly truthful, answer: they are hilarious hormonal monsters. Middle schoolers can be absolutely vicious to each other, as well as to strangers. But they are also absolutely hilarious. I have seen 12 year olds curse each other out one second, and the next be crying because their pencil broke.

At the beginning of each year I ask students to introduce themselves and there is one video response from the Covid days that still stands out as one of my favorites: with a complete deadpan and an emotionless monotone a student stared at the camera and said, “I like baseball, and video games, and spaghetti, and I dislike broccoli.” Sequential thinking and reasoning skills are still sporadic in the 12 year mind, and the result is often just hilarious.

If you give a middle schooler a phone, they will be glued to it, but if you give them a ball, they will put down the phone and play. Some of the most wonderful moments with my kids in my years teaching middle schoolers have just been the opportunities students have had to just be kids and play.

These are kids, and for kids, play is still a universal language. Last year I had a student who did not speak any English, and was often frustrated in trying to communicate with others who didn’t speak Spanish, she was often alone. But one day we went outside and, without any prompting or plan, the kids played tag, and without any second thought she was included and she smiled, and she ran. And for once she could just be a 12 year kid playing tag on a field.

2. Social Media is Corrosive

I got my first cell phone when I was 15. It was a used Motorola brick flip phone. It did not have internet; I could make phone calls, and I could text. To be a middle schooler in 2024 is to be plugged in at all times. They are never more than 6 seconds away from the ability to access anything they would ever want. And as Uncle Ben would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Could you imagine a 12 year old Peter Parker able to handle those powers?

These kids do not have the luxury that previous generations have had of being able to go to school, and be disconnected from what was happening beyond those walls. They are plugged in, all the time, into 6 different outlets at once.

There are three main social media platforms used ad nauseum by middle school kids, each one poisonous, corrosive, and dangerous.

1. Instagram

   This is the one most people probably have the most familiarity with, and awareness of some of the problems attached. More and more Instagram has become less about our friends, and more about “influencers”. Body builders, fitness models, celebrities, “self made moguls”, professed self help gurus, and everything in between. This is the home of the unhealthy standards and unrealistic lifestyles. This is where you go if you want to feel like shit about yourself, your life, your friends, your vacations, your body, your money, and everything in between. Also, the place where you can buy some weird off brand supplements.

2. Snapchat

   Comedian Bo Burnham has a really great explainer of what Snapchat is and what’s wrong with it:

   "Why do you think Snapchat exists? Why do you think they would make a company for 13-year-olds where a photo disappears after 24 hours? Why do you think kids would want to use that? I've been to Silicon Valley. I've seen these places. They're buildings full of 300 people who are all employed to give children what they want, not what they need. Before, if you wanted to get to a kid, you had to appeal to their parents because their parents would turn the television off. The kids have direct access to it now, so it doesn't matter. There's an entire dialogue happening between these tech companies and kids that parents are completely unaware of." - Bo Burnham

   Snapchat is successful and popular precisely because of what kids think they can get away with on it. Send any picture, to anyone, anywhere and it disappears forever. Honestly, what do you think they’re using it for? More importantly, know, nothing on Snapchat actually disappears.

   I learned last year of a schoolwide Snapchat group chat that would be active all day and every day. What was on it? Updates about the school sometimes, but mostly kids making fun of other kids, sneaking pictures of teachers, classmates, kids vaping in bathrooms, sometimes the explicit content escalated, kids have had nudes sent, pictures of drugs, and more, and yes, these are all still kids. Would all this be happening even without Snapchat? Yeah, maybe, but would everyone else be exposed and immured to this?

3. TikTok

   The one so scary even the government wants to ban it. What makes it so scary? Among many things, it’s extremely addictive. The constant scroll of content on a For You Page can keep you swiping for hours, and the mysterious algorithm is dictating to you what you will be seeing. This algorithm has a way of force feeding content to kids that may never have been searched for or seen otherwise. There is very little content moderation (albeit more than Snapchat). There is also a never-ending cavalcade of “experts” on TikTok giving unending advice to impressionable kids, much of this advice concerns ways to self diagnose for Autism, how to get rich, how to “be a man”, and more, and unlike Instagram, with a longer form of content these “influencers” can really influence.

   Imagine the kid who can’t focus in school, but is watching hours of Flat Earth content. Or the boy who’s sole idea of what it means to be a man is watching clips of Andrew Tate?

   All this isn’t even mentioning the whole “being controlled by the Communist Chinese Government thing.”

The influence these social media platforms has on kids can be markedly impactful. As a teacher, I have seen huge differences between kids who are on social media and those who aren’t. Kids without social media, on average, have been kinder, more well adjusted socially, more capable of having a conversation with someone, less likely to bully, more likely to do well in class. The correlation between time on social media and performance in school is a rigid straight line.

3. The Kids Are Watching!

Your kids are watching you. They are watching how you talk to your partner. They are watching how you talk to the waiter. They are watching you complain about long wait times, and yell at customer service. They see how you treat people. They hear what you say under your breath. They notice who you revere, who you look up to as a model, not the values you preach, but the values you practice.

Middle schoolers concept of the world begins and ends with their parents.

Bullying, discrimination, disrespect, are all learned traits, and more often than not, their first models of these behaviors are their own parents. Parents might scoff at this, thinking, “Well I’ve never been so disrespectful in my life!” You sure? Have you ever crossed the street when you see someone “threatening”? Have you ever locked the car doors when driving through certain neighborhoods? Ever make sweeping comments about whole types of people? What these actions are doing is giving your kids permission to do the same, but at larger scales where they can test the boundaries of what they can get away with.

All behaviors start at home, and only at home can they be addressed and fixed.

I wrote before about the concept of cruelty becoming more and more pervasive in our society, and trickling down to kids. And this is inherent today. There is currently someone running for president who has been convicted of 34 felonies, found guilty of rape, and is the classic archetype of the schoolyard bully — and the presidential race is currently a toss up. What does this tell our kids about what our society values? They pick up on that, whether we acknowledge it or not. Being cruel is cool, it grows your popularity, it makes you famous, powerful. What does being kind give you? Where are our kids seeing great models of kindness? If it’s not at home, it won’t be worth much.

4. Middle Schoolers Want You to Like Them

When I first made the shift from teaching high school to middle school there was something I noticed pretty quickly: middle schoolers really want you to like them. In high school, students often couldn’t care less if their teachers or other adults liked them, they are far more worried about the acceptance of their peers, but middle schoolers, whether they would admit it or not, are clamoring for your approval.

Go into any classroom and you can tell the indelible difference of a group of students who feel like their teacher likes them, and a group that doesn’t. Students will learn better if they like their teacher, and if they believe their teacher likes them.

Oftentimes the students who are acting out, are doing so because they feel like they are not liked by adults. Sometimes it is a presupposition, “I’m a bad kid, no adult likes me, so I’m gonna do whatever I want!” The key is to preempt this — bring them into conversations, ask them questions, be curious about them and their lives, show that you care about what they think and what they say.

Middle schoolers are the middle children, they feel lost and forgotten, they feel like no one understands them or sees them. When we give the time and attention, it pays off, they already care, but now they might listen.

5. It is Harder to be a Middle Schooler Today Than Ever Before

Yes, stop your griping about how much harder it was “back in your days!” it wasn’t.

Just developmentally middle schoolers are going through absolute internal turmoil, but when you add our undeniable social turmoil — which these kids are more plugged into than ever before — it is leaving deepening impacts and scars on our kids.

Covid was an obvious scapegoat for much of this, but it’s been 4 years and the long lasting impacts have not faded nor become less long lasting. Covid locked kids in their homes, it isolated them, it effectively erased a year of schooling, socialization, and self discovery. During this time students spent more time observing the adults around them, the hate, division, the cruelty currently endemic in our society. It created new models, and goals, drifting from self improvement, learning, kindness, and to selfishness, power, and cruelty.

Kids are meaner today than they were 4 years ago. They are meaner to each other, they are more disrespectful to teachers, parents, and anyone else in their lives who would dare tell them what to do.

To be a middle schooler today is not merely to go to school, and learn about their changing bodies, but it’s also to be plugged in and surrounded by cavalcades of sensory input and stimulation. To still be a child, but be told to act like an adult, be flooded with toxic portrayals of masculinity and femininity to be emulated, to feel the negative vibes and energy from the people around us, the overlaying gloom of the world with its everlasting feelings of impending doom. It’s to see bullies succeed and kindness beat down, compassion called weakness, ignorance rewarded and intelligence ridiculed. It’s to watch your parents, your first models, curse out neighbors for their political yard signs, or shout down school board meetings with unhinged rants about indoctrination.

To be a middle schooler today is to sit, and watch, and see the world around us spin, and change, and feel a kind of daily apocalypse: an end to everything we know, each and every day, and then, at the end of the day, be asked, “So what did you learn at school today?”

---