We’ve all heard the mutterings… ‘the youth of today, don’t know they’re born’… ‘what have they got to worry about?’… ‘don’t realise how lucky they are’… and that timeless adage, ‘youth’s wasted on the young.’ Unlike us, that never gets old.
Well, a read of the most recent Teen Power List makes for an uplifting antidote. In amongst the inevitable trickling of glamorous star power, more than ever it showcases a critical mass of youngsters shouting for a better world and, most heartening of all, it’s the girls who are shouting the loudest.
Of the 22 names mentioned in the Times’ list for 2019, 14 are young women and, without being too biased, it is they who have the most interesting reasons for being included. Think my judgement is a little clouded? Let’s have a look at the boys first.
There are eight of them and yes, some of them stand out. There’s American Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, 19, brought up in indigenous traditions by his Aztec father, and by his mother who is a leading figure in conservation. Xiuhtezcatl was basically born to environmental activism and is one of 21 plaintiffs now suing the US president for failing to act on climate change.
So he’s pretty special, as are Rishab Jain, the 14-year-old inventor from Portland credited with using AI to improve treatment for pancreatic cancer – what did YOU do at summer camp?! – and David Hogg, one of the survivors of the Parkland school shooting, alongside fellow Teen Power Lister Emma Gonzalez, whose gun-control advocacy group has helped bring about a change in federal legislation.
But some other male names on the list boast distinctly old-school superpowers. Callum Hudson-Odoi is 18 and earning £100,000 a week for kicking a ball, albeit extremely well and for Chelsea Football Club. Meanwhile, Liz Hurley’s photogenic son Damian appears to have made the cut purely for his oft-photographed cheekbones, along with South Korean model and TV host Han Hyun-min (who was racially abused at school, and so has climbed a steeper mountain already than Damian will ever have to).
For the rest of the boys, the power is in the platform, with 19-year-old twins Ethan and Grayson Dolan reaching 10m subscribers on their YouTube channel, and 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf pocketing a cool $3m at last month’s Fortnite World Cup. Yes, that is a thing apparently – as testified by the 40 million people who entered.
A few names on the girls list prove the enduring power of stage, screen and sport, but they’re still more interesting versions of their previous counterparts. At 17, Glastonbury headliner Billie Eilish is the youngest ever female solo artist to debut at No1 in the UK chart, while American teenager Maddie Ziegler’s dance moves have made her a star, initially on ‘Dance Moms’ and most frequently in the videos of singer Sia. Marsai Martin is still only 14, but already Hollywood’s youngest exec producer of her own film ‘Little’ after being discovered in TV comedy ‘Black-ish’. ‘Stranger Things’ brought Millie Bobby Brown an Emmy nomination, but it’s her own unique look and style that have made her an Instagram sensation with 25m followers, and she’s still only 15.
Marsai’s ‘Black-ish’ co-star Yara Shahidi is also on the Power List aged 19, and, with her clear, confident political statements about human rights, her name is already being mentioned as a White House candidate for the future. Similarly, tennis player Coco Gauff has dazzled Wimbledon aged 15 and is confidently expected to be one of the sport’s great stars.
But the majority of girls’ names show instead some highly personal battles being waged all over the world. For the young warriors in the West, predominantly the US, a lot of their new-found ‘power’ is built on campaigns to come out of everyday hopes and needs. 18-year-old Haile Thomas is now hailed as Instagram’s most prominent vegan activist, six years after she founded HAPPY Org to provide nutrition education, and a decade after her father’s diabetes diagnosis inspired Haile’s family to change their diet.
Also 18, Jazz Jennings from Florida is the world’s most high-profile trans teenager, with a foundation, and of course YouTube channel, to her name. Meanwhile, in the UK, 19-year-old Amika George has made life easier for millions of teenage girls with her war on ‘period poverty’, leading 2,000 teenagers to Downing Street to demand the government pay for sanitary products for schoolgirls who can’t afford them – testament also to the power of a witty hashtag, #freeperiods.
The really impressive names on this list, however, are those girls for whom making change has profound political implications. Look at Rayouf Alhumedhi, a Saudi immigrant living in Germany, who was trying to create a WhatsApp group, when she discovered there was no emoji to represent her, no woman wearing a hijab. That was until Rayouf got to work, enlisting Apple, Google and the emoji consortium of Unicode, and sitting down with a designer. A few months later, the first hijab emoji appeared on an iphone. Rayouf is 17.
Then there is Ahed Tamimi, an 18-year-old Palestinian who, two years ago, was imprisoned for eight months after slapping an Israeli soldier at the entrance to her home in a military-occupied village in the West Bank. Ahed used her time behind bars to study international law.
And there are the Indonesian sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen, now 17 and 15, moved to despair by the plight of their beautiful native island of Bali, currently beleaguered by plastic and other ocean pollutants, but not for ever if these two have their way. Bye Bye Plastic Bags is their campaign, and even Bali’s governor signed their petition after they went on hunger strike.
Finally, there is one name that jumps out of the list, that of Greta Thunberg. A year ago, the 16-year-old Swede started out, solitary but tireless, boycotting school to stand outside her national parliament and protest about climate change. A year later, and millions of school children across the world have followed her lead. As she prepares to cross the Atlantic – by emission-free boat, naturally – to speak again in the US, the title of her book is a reminder of the inspiration set by all the young soldiers on this year’s Teen Power List, that is, ‘No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference’.
