Andrew Shivone | May 30, 2026
American teenagers are lonely, depressed, apathetic, anxious, exhausted, distracted, overwhelmed, and impotent. Anyone who is skeptical of this fact can easily do a google search of the data and find study after study showing the same reality: our teenagers are suffering in unprecedented ways. One particularly revealing number is that over 73% of teenagers report feeling lonely most of or all of the time. According to Mental Health America, over 20% of teenagers experienced a Major Depressive Episode (MDE) in 2023.
There is abundant anecdotal evidence as well. College professors and high school teachers almost universally report having numerous students in their classrooms who are incapable of engaging in even basic class work either because they lack the requisite skills or they are too anxious or depressed to garner the effort to do the work. A recent story in The Atlantic reported that professors even at the most prestigious universities in the country are reporting that their students are largely incapable of reading whole books. It is not that they are incapable of decoding words—they are not illiterate—but they are unable to sustain the attention necessary to complete lengthy readings.
One might argue that teenagers have always been sullen, moody creatures, and this is no doubt true. What is different now is that oftentimes today’s teenagers remain at the nadir of moodiness and seemingly never experience the high enthusiasm that we typically associate with youth. There are many causes for this, and any overly simplistic account of the crisis would be irresponsible. Nevertheless, it is now clear that the prevalence of digital technology and social media have played a major part. The irony, of course, is that smart phones and social media were marketed as tools of connection and community. The truth is that they are more like factories of loneliness.
It is encouraging that schools across the country have begun to address this crisis by banning smart phones in the classrooms and hallways. Many schools that have implemented these “cell-phone bans” report that students are actually in favor of these policies and have welcomed liberation from their devices.
Oddly, these same schools often simply replace students’ smart phones with tablets or laptops. They replace one screen with another. Private schools especially promote and celebrate that they are “one-to-one” schools by which they mean every student has a personal computer or tablet that they use in every class. This is despite the abundant evidence that digital technology harms our capacity to be with ourselves and others.
We need a more radical solution, one appropriate to the problem facing us. Schools should develop curricula and pedagogical methods that not only avoid using digital technology but that actively counteract the negative effects of technological overconsumption. At the St. Jerome Institute in Washington, DC, we have intentionally developed a curriculum and culture that is not so much “anti-tech” but pro-friendship, pro-thinking, and pro-reality. We have developed a school where students are allowed to think deeply and trained to engage in sustained reflection with their friends about the most fundamental human questions.
One way we have done this is by placing a special emphasis on the seminar. In our view, a good seminar is the perfect antidote to the many maladies of digital technology. If the effect of these devices is to isolate, distract, and weaken our capacity for thought, the seminar is designed to connect, focus, and strengthen our reason.
In a well-run seminar, the typical script for a class is flipped. Rather than the teacher driving all the activity and “delivering” content to students, the burden of the class is instead placed on the students. Typically, the seminar teacher requires students to read a literary work before class (like Homer’s Odyssey), listen to a piece of music (like a Palestrina), or observe a piece of art or natural phenomena. The teacher proposes a few questions and the students are expected to discuss and come to a conclusion about the matter at hand. The teacher guides and directs but the burden is on the student to develop conclusions and master the material. The discussion is not simply random impressions or feelings but rather arguments based on the text or reality in front of them.
For example, in a recent Junior Humanities class, our students were comparing Aristotle and Augustine’s view of friendship. The students had read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and were at that moment considering Augustine’s Confessions. From the outside, someone might think that such a class would involve a dry and pedantic discussion of the opinions of some old dead white guys. Quite the contrary. What our students recognized is that these authors were forcing them to grapple with a fundamental question: what is friendship and what does it mean to be a good friend? What are the goods of friendship? What are the potential evils? Our students were able to see that these seemingly dry academic texts helped give answers to immediately pressing and relevant questions.
Beyond the intellectual benefits of the exercise, the seminar demands that participants be courageous, humble, and vulnerable. Their interpretation might be wrong; they might stumble over their words; other students might think less of them if they give a foolish answer. Precisely in being vulnerable to each other and engaging in real conversation, what begins as an apparent academic exercise becomes an experience of friendship and community. The shared experience of discussing perennial discussions itself becomes the foundation for friendship. Our students report, after they graduate, that the friendships they developed here are the most valuable and permanent parts of their education.
The political, social, economic, and personal benefits to cultivating young men and women capable of engaging in humble and real thought and conversation are obvious.
I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that the seminar is a simple solution that will automatically cure all adolescent problems. Nevertheless, our experience suggests it can work as an effective antidote and one remedy to the seemingly never-ending growth of loneliness and depression.
Andrew Shivone is the president of the St. Jerome Institute, a classical Christian school based in Washington, DC and Falls Church, VA.