Gun violence impacts the mental health of big city teens
By Ginger Roger Ceballos, Michelle Flores, Genevieve Jennings and Giana Newball
Youthcast Media Group®
Israel Hernandez was about 11 the first time people started shooting at each other in front of him. Israel, now 17 and a senior at Back of the Yards College Prep in Chicago’s New City neighborhood, was in Gage Park when the shots began. The second time he was a teenager out at a neighborhood festival on a Sunday afternoon when someone started shooting nearby.
And while he feels relatively safe in his Gage Park neighborhood (he says he only hears shots fired there four or five times a year), he still knows not to be outside after a certain hour.
Gun violence among youth in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, although declining in recent years, remains an ongoing threat, especially to the physical and emotional wellbeing of young people. In 2022, there were 2,526 gun violence deaths among 1 to 17 year olds nationwide, marking the third year that gun violence was the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Chicago last year, 58 youth died due to gun violence, and more than 300 were shot. In Philadelphia, there have been 22 fatal shootings of children so far this year, and 131 non-fatal shootings.
The long term mental health impacts of this violence are just starting to be quantified. According to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, exposure to gun violence has been linked to post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety and depression in youth, much like other “adverse childhood experiences” such as exposure to domestic violence or the death or incarceration of a parent.
In a 2024 Youthcast Media Group non-representative survey of 83 teens and young adults across the country, nearly 70% reported being exposed to gun violence in their neighborhood, school or community. The majority of respondents said they think about gun violence or the threat of gun violence some, a lot or all of the time.
The trauma of early exposure to gun violence has stayed with Nayell Centano, 18, of Brooklyn. When she was five years old she says her family was at a barbeque at a neighborhood park when three gun shots went off. Although it happened over ten years ago, it caused her to view the safety of her neighborhood and community differently, even now. “I never went back to the park,” Centano says. “The shooting has stayed with me, and I think about it every day.”
Jessie Scott, 16, who lives in the Bronx, was even younger when he witnessed gun violence– he was just three years old when his father was grazed by a bullet. At a young age, he says he was already numb to the violence around him.
“I wasn’t scared… it was nothing that put fear in my heart really. I’ve been hearing about it and stuff. I grew up, like, liking violence, so it didn’t really do nothing,” he says. Jessie, who attends Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters, says it’s not unusual for many people his age to carry guns.
“I know a lot of people who bring guns to school, you know,” he says. “It’s not really scary because they use it for their protection most of the time. But some use it to act cool and stuff… guns just build egos for people.”
Myles Francis, a project director at the University of Chicago’s Crown School of Social Work, who focuses on youth, says the trauma of being exposed to gun violence, especially at a young age, does not heal overnight. “If somebody is either directly or vicariously impacted by firearm violence, that's going to make them question their safety all the time,” he says. “It's going to make them wonder whether they're ever really safe.”
The random and unpredictable nature of shootings can reinforce that fear and hypervigilance. A shooting at Chicago’s Magnificent Mile Lights Festival and Parade on Michigan Avenue in November was a reminder of this for Israel. “Despite downtown having a heavy police presence it wasn’t enough… and that just shows or at least to me that it can happen where you least expect it,” he says.
While violence prevention experts are happy to see the drop in gun deaths in many cities, Francis worries that the ongoing mental health toll of gun violence on youth is being underestimated and that there are not enough programs that can help youth living in urban areas deal with the aftermath of gun violence where they live.
“It is telling that the mental health impact doesn't always get publicized in the same way that the violence itself does,” he says.
And even in cities such as New York (considered one of the safest big cities nationally) and Philadelphia, where gun-related deaths dropped nearly 40% last year, young people still have a hard time reconciling the statistics with their daily experience.
“It's awful that kids have to be scared for their lives and not know if they're going to make it to 18,” said Beautiful Vinson, a Philly teen whose brother was shot and killed in 2021.
Robert Schentrup, a national gun violence activist for Brady, the country’s oldest gun violence prevention organization’s youth-led initiative, Team ENOUGH, knows firsthand about the trauma and exposure to gun violence among youth. He lost his sister in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
“We see it in the media all the time and it impacts our mental health as young people,” he says. “It does not feel great to have gun violence constantly be this thing that's in the back of our minds.”
Israel in Chicago agrees. “Gun violence has gotten so bad to the point that it feels like it is a never ending cycle,” he says. “The ongoing school shootings are constant reminders that teens might not ever feel truly safe.”
Jessie in the Bronx echoes that sense of futility: “There’s no really keeping the community safe when it comes to guns,” he says.
Still, many youth who participated in the Youthcast Media Group survey say that they, and other young people like them, have a role in reducing gun violence. Nearly 30% of participants want to see stricter laws around the types of guns that are available in communities. They also talked about the importance of programs and campaigns that provide awareness of the dangers, and of a shortage of access to mental health services in the community.
In cities across the country, youth are getting involved in efforts like Team ENOUGH, Students Demand Action (an initiative of Everytown for Gun Safety) and Project Unloaded, among many others. And while some applaud the youth involvement, others lament that it’s even necessary.
“I don't think it should be up to the students themselves to reduce gun violence,” a 17-year-old survey respondent said. “Shouldn't the adults be protecting us? So why have we resorted to protecting ourselves? Why have the adults let it get so bad that we have to resort to protecting ourselves and coming up with our own solutions?”
Schentrup with Brady’s Team ENOUGH says that leaving it up to older generations – and older solutions– probably won’t work, though. “The gun violence retention movement is quite old,” he says. “It's been around for about 50 years, and so there's a natural inertia and momentum to the ideas that were around back when things got started, but gun violence looks very different and has changed a lot since those ideas first came into the world.”
His organization was a part of a bipartisan effort called the Gun Violence and Community Safer Communities Act of 2022, “that was the first time at the federal level , that we passed a bill related to gun protection in 30 years. In response to the needs of youth the bill “pushed to invest billions of dollars into student mental health resources and school safety, and provided money for programs that actually are effective in interrupting gun violence in our schools,” he says. These are the solutions that many young people advocate for, he says.
Israel, who hopes to study political science and one day work in Congress, has seen the power of young people to spark change in his work with the Chicago youth-led climate change advocacy group Green Heart Initiative.
“I definitely believe youth are more likely to solve the gun violence problem in the USA due to their openness to change… which allows them to have different perspectives of thinking and coming up with different solutions,” he says.
Ginger Roger Ceballos is a junior at Manhattan Early College for Advertising in New York, Michelle Flores is a senior at Back of the Yards College Preparatory School in Chicago, Genevieve Jennings is a junior at Palatine High School in Illinois, and Giana Newball is a sophomore at Bronx Academy of Letters in New York. They were participants in Youthcast Media Group’s fall 2024 reporting workshop and worked with YMG Mentor-Editor Andrea King Collier.
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