Teen Poets Are Writing Wisdom We Need to Read: What a 6-Month Poetry Project Reveals About Young People

The narrative around young people these days is pretty bleak. Too much screen time, rising depression rates, disengagement from reading and thinking. But a six-month poetry review project by Sean Murphy is challenging everything we think we know. Murphy collected hundreds of submissions from writers aged 10 to 21 across the US and nine other countries, and what emerged was unexpected: teenagers are writing thoughtfully about depression, mental health, distraction culture, and what it means to maintain humanity in a world obsessed with monetizing attention. These aren’t surface-level observations. These are young people grappling with real fear and real meaning.

What makes this project so powerful is that it flips the script on the stereotype that this generation doesn’t read or care. One contributor, Emily, wrote:“Nothing true aches forever. And sometimes the bravest thing you can do is simply open your hands.”That kind of emotional intelligence and poetic wisdom suggests these teens aren’t avoiding difficult topics. They’re actively confronting them with depth and insight that honestly puts a lot of adults to shame. They’re using creative expression to process anxiety, find purpose, and bear witness to the reality around them.

The takeaway here is simple but profound: young people might actually have more to teach us than we’ve given them credit for. If you’re a parent, educator, or anyone concerned about the next generation, these poems offer a counternarrative to the doom-and-gloom statistics. What’s one thing you’ve learned recently from someone younger than you that surprised you?