Can TikToks reduce gun violence? Ask these teenagers

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Project Unloaded invited students in Chicago to create online marketing campaigns – here’s what happened

Once upon a time in America, people rolled their eyes at seatbelts, four out of 10 high school students smoked cigarettes, and campers left their fires smoldering through the night. Then we changed.

Project Unloaded’s wager is that if enough young people know the facts, and even a portion of them choose not to arm themselves, America’s gun death trends will, at long last, reverse course.were taught how to respond to an active school shooter before they were taught to read. Yet, even more than their elders do, young people have come to believe the myth that guns provide safety: sixty-eight percent of people under 34 believe a gun makes a house a safer place, compared to 61% of baby boomers.

In addition to giving advice and making content, the council has taken on its own projects. This year, they launched a teen-focused SMS text program that sends out gun-safety stats, and are developing a toolkit for student clubs. They also published an independentwhere shootings are most commonly self-inflicted. But could the messaging strategy work in a place like Chicago’s South Side, one of the rare places in the US where firearmto create a campaign against gun violence.

I told this story to Selwyn Rogers, founding director of the University of Chicago’s trauma and acute care center, the place most people on the South Side go for treatment if they are shot. Rogers, who also sits on Project Unloaded’s steering committee, wasn’t surprised. The young people he speaks with have divided feelings about guns. On one hand, they greatly fear them. On the other, having a gun gives them a sense of control over their life.

But he wondered whether a campaign like SNUG might work better if it offered an alternative, like how the drunk-driving campaign suggested designated drivers. What if, he posited, a campaign against gun violence did the same: don’t feel safe at home? Consider an alarm system. Or maybe adopt a dog. They both keep you safer than a gun would.

On the first day of their summer jobs pilot program, Olivia Brown, Project Unloaded’s program director, handed out a survey to see where the students stood on gun ownership. Twenty percent said they didn’t plan to be gun owners, and another 19% weren’t sure. The majority said they would either probably or definitely own a gun one day.

 

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