If you’ve read any commentary about younger people, none of the following statistics will surprise you.

Approximately 19% of Americans who are 12 to 19 years old are depressed – higher than any adult age group. Only about 58.5% of teens who are 12 to 17, meanwhile, say they consistently receive the emotional and social support they need. They often have little faith in institutions – be it the government or schools, or one another. And the average American child age 8 to 18 spends 7.5 hours a day watching or using screens.

On the one hand, these statistics are understandable: Young people are facing a future shaped by climate anxiety, political extremism, economic instability and chronic loneliness.

But those numbers may only be telling part of the story.

I have spent the past six months reading hundreds of poems submitted by young writers age 10 to 21. In June 2026, we will publish an anthology of writing from 177 of these young people in the “1455 Young Poets Anthology.”

More than 300 young people submitted their poems to a nonprofit I run, called 1455 Storytelling Arts. The poets mostly come from the U.S., but nine other countries are represented.

I continually found myself surprised, encouraged and inspired while reading their poetry. In a world that sometimes seems to reward the noisiest and the most aggressive, the wealthiest and the most selfish, these young poets understand something at once simple and profound that I think many adults have forgotten: Hope is not optimism. It’s endurance.

‘The only way through is through’

For the young writers whose work crossed my desk, hoping for a........

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