I don’t disagree, but I would argue what congress is missing is not youth, but curiosity. Which can be said about a lot of other groups and institutions. 🤷♂️
Civic Action
Commonly, researchers have looked for civic life in a distinct sector in which they assume that voluntary associations will cultivate special skills and virtues. Gathering together many challenges to this approach, and using ethnographic cases of housing advocacy and youth civic engagement projects, the authors reconceptualize “the civic” as civic action and show how patterned scene styles shape it. Doing so reveals patterns of action in complex organizations that may span institutional sectors. The authors show how researchers can locate scene styles, and with an extensive literature review, they portray several common styles and suggest that different civic styles often lead to different outcomes.
We could be building a better world with our students. Why are we disempowering them instead?
And why did our constructionism impulse die when it was most needed?
Tiny Publics: Small Groups and Civil Society
It has been conventional to conceptualize civic life through one of two core images: the citizen as lone individualist or the citizen as joiner. Drawing on analyses of the historical development of the public sphere, we propose an alternative analytical framework for civic engagement based on small-group interaction. By embracing this micro-level approach, we contribute to the debate on civil society in three ways. By emphasizing local interaction contexts-the microfoundations of civil society-we treat small groups as a cause, context, and consequence of civic engagement. First, through framing and motivating, groups encourage individuals to participate in public discourse and civic projects. Second, they provide the place and support for that involvement. Third, civic engagement feeds back into the creation of additional groups. A small-groups perspective suggests how civil society can thrive even if formal and institutional associations decline. Instead of indicating a decline in civil society, a proliferation of small groups represents a healthy development in democratic societies, creating cross-cutting networks of affiliation.
Democracy x AI Cohort | Mozilla Foundation
The Democracy x AI cohort is founded on the hypothesis that, if built differently, AI could strengthen democracy rather than erode it.
New study finds Canadian trans youth rarely detransition | Xtra Magazine
A group of Canadian researchers found that 97 percent of youth who seek treatment for gender dysphoria still identify as trans years later
Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth o…
Few topics are as timely as the growth of government. T…
Prompt Injection as Role Confusion
First, I absolutely love this: This is a blog-style writeup of the paper. I wish every paper would come with one of these. Academic writing is pretty dry - the …
The Anxious Generation | Jonathan Haidt
The Local Connection Crisis: New Data on What Communities Need
Australia’s Teen Social Media Ban Is Just Training A Generation In The Art Of The Workaround
We’ve been covering Australia’s under-16 social media ban since before it went into effect, first noting the confusion and obvious implementation problems as pretty much everyone realiz…
Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Is For You.
Podcast Episode · The Ezra Klein Show · 02/03/2026 · 1h 31m
It’s time for movements to rethink social media
Movements can still find people on social media. But the real organizing has to happen somewhere else — and that's the part we keep skipping.
</> htmx ~ Yes, and...
In this essay, Carson Gross discusses his advice to young people interested in computer science worried about the future given the advancements in AI.
Three important steps in my maturation process – Thomas Dullien / Halvar Flake
My father passed recently, and he was twice my age. I am approximately the same age that he was when I was born, and I am now “the old generation” - there’s no one left in the generation above me.
How to grow tomorrows
What if schools were not just sites for delivering education, but societies in miniature? Thousands of chances to cultivate a better future
