“This is the life I’d rather live.”

Dozens of things would help young people like James find those lives sooner. Prison is just not one of them.

In the end, housing was what he needed: "Drug court gives you a chance. Here's a house, here’s some programs to do, they'll help you if you need it. And I needed it.

“That helped me bring myself back to reality, who I am, who I really am, and not have to be all that stuck in that other life.”

"I just wanted a normal life. Couldn't have it. No matter how hard I was trying. Like, I've tried it, put myself in TAFEs, carpentry courses … Didn't go far with it, ‘cause, when you got nowhere to stay … worrying about where you're going next, it's hard to make it to stuff like that”

“I've been three times in youth jail … four times adult jail.”

James returned to prison time after time because it did nothing to help him.

“I’d always get out … nowhere to live, not be able to make my appointments because … couldn't even work out where to fuckin’ lay my head at night.”

These are important findings in the context of the upcoming social media ban and nationwide trends towards punitive youth justice laws – for what kind of childhood are we imagining for our young people through these policies and circumstances?

Key findings:

85% of young Australians experienced financial insecurity in the past year.

79% think they will be financially worse off than their parents, up from around half in 2022.

26% rated their mental health as poor or very poor

Around half feel they are missing out on being young.

Fwiw - if you watch the video all the way through - the participants bring up pretty valid issues that you would broadly expect young people to care about, they aren’t as posh as internet leftists are making them out to be, and good political role models are far and few between in this country 😮‍💨

Of course kids have rich inner lives! But we should never think they are beyond understanding, or else we will not even try to understand them.

It’s why a blanket ban like this is such an unsatisfying, barely surface scratching solution to the vast issues that kids and families are facing today.

Instead, we must – as always – look to more transformative possibilities, like transforming the way we assess or even abolishing grades altogether...

Anyway, figured sharing this essay was a good enough reason to finally get on BlueSky :)

Young people today have grown up in an environment where $$ is poured into punitivity – police, prisons, but also AI detection and proctoring software – but there somehow never seems to be enough left over for their schools or educators.

A punitive 'crackdown' on AI use will not solve these crises.