COVID changed social life — now Voices helps kids vent

LACONIA — Voices is designed to be an empowering experience, a rare opportunity for kids in 6th through 12th grade to sit face to face and speak what’s on their minds to peers in the same age group — who may be steeped in similar thoughts and reeling from the same anxious feelings.

For most school-age children, COVID stole real-time interaction and suspended social life in and out of school. For over a year, education sputtered along as a hybrid or lonely virtual version, and much of everyday life switched to social media or Zoom.

To adolescents and teens, sharing perspectives now in person might feel a little awkward or unnerving — but it may also be liberating, like water released from a dam after a long, suffocating drought.

Voices is a forum where they’ll be heard. Gathering in person with kids their own age who get what they’ve been through in the last 20 months may make them feel more connected and stronger than when they walked through the door.

That’s the hope of the organizers, hosts and sponsors of Voices. This spring at The CAKE Theatre, high school and middle school students across the Lakes Region will convene in small groups to talk about a range of things including mask wearing, sheltering in place, peer pressure and family life, to leading more of their lives alone or online when they truly long for friendships in person. It’s a chance for them to air their thoughts and wishes unfiltered and not be judged by parents or teachers, and an opportunity to connect with others in their situation. 

“I think it’s good for kids to have a forum to talk with their peers. It’s allowing kids to realize they’re important and their words are important,” said Melissa Aupperle, brand manager for Chaos & Kindness, which is hosting the event at The CAKE at 12 Veterans Sq.

“Everybody’s been stuck at home for so long. A little bit of their social skills have been put to bed and this will allow them to see that they’re not alone in what they think and feel, just because they haven’t been socializing with their peers as much.

“Screen time for them has escalated. They’re likely living in some falsities of what other people do and say. This will allow them to see that not everybody’s as mean as they are on social media,” said Aupperle. “There’s a natural connection you make face to face.” 

“The reason this is so important now is because of the anonymity, with so much of us living in the digital age, with our heads bent down toward our phones,” said Jennifer Anderson, who teaches psychology and education classes at Lakes Region Community College and Plymouth State University. “It’s easy to have misconceptions about what others are experiencing. So much of what we share online loses the context. Hearing perspectives from the mouths of people living those experiences is priceless right now.”

With the pandemic and its after-effects that drag on now, “Our youth lived in isolation for an entire year and are just now able to see their friends and community. That isolation has affected them all in different ways,” said Ashley Sullivan, co-moderator of Voices, who runs the Drug-Free Community program for the Partnership for Public Health — Winnipesaukee Region, and who meets regularly with students at Laconia’s middle and high schools. “For those who participate, I want them to feel heard, valued and most importantly, impacted. They need to feel like their voice matters. If we can empower them to feel that, it could motivate them to take action in other aspects of their lives. They can give us a perspective no adult can, and tell us what matters to them without feeling judged.”  

Anderson, who is school board member-at-large in Laconia, hopes the students will gain “a sense of empowerment and ownership of their own experiences. I’m hoping a broader understanding and empathy is achieved for themselves and other people. It’s easy to forget that young people have grown up with social media from a very early age. It’s the life they’ve been living.”

Research has shown that during this period, the most important people in adolescents’ lives are their friends — however they make those connections, whether through social media, gaming or other platforms, Anderson said. “Middle and high school students are in such a tough spot with adults making most of the decisions in their lives.” It can be liberating to speak without being filtered or muted.

Eric Herr, a businessman who lives in Hill and a sponsor of the Voices event, hopes it will help facilitate a “civil civic dialogue” between young people, “if not bridging the divide, have two sides listening” at a time when the adult world is failing to set a good example of how to listen and respect someone else’s opinion. “In COVID and in education in general in New Hampshire, kids are becoming the brunt of divisiveness and I think it’s important to hear from them. We need to be investing in the next generation, to have them learn how to participate in civil, civic dialogue. A huge part is learning to listen to each other and respect each other in the process,” Herr said.

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Students interested in sharing their experience may contact Jon Decker at jon@laconiadailysun.com.