This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that delivers a daily dose of what's happening in the world of technology.
Support Networks Aim to Help Kids Through the Polycrisis
In the late 2000s, six-year-old Pim Sullivan-Tailyour sat in the back of a car in Thailand and saw a mountain that had been quarried away. It was her first realization that humans could alter the world for the worse. That awareness stayed with her, eventually leading her to join an online group for young people concerned about climate change. “I realized that I wasn’t alone,” she says. And she wasn't: global surveys show that most kids are anxious about the state of the world.
Today’s youth are growing up amid what experts call a “polycrisis”—a confluence of interconnected crises. The planet is warming, conflicts persist globally, housing has become prohibitively expensive, and many fear AI will displace workers. It’s an overwhelming burden. That's why online support networks like Force of Nature and the Good Grief Network have attracted thousands of participants, offering young people a space to process their anxieties and take action.
—Sarah Scoles
This story is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about kids and technology.