Toy Story Lets Its Characters Grow Up
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Teens who have genuine self-worth don’t need what the crowd is offering.
Every year, at the start of the school year, I say something surprising to my students' parents: My primary goal for their child is that their child believes in themselves a little more than they did in September.
The more I've taught, the more convinced I've become that this is the overarching goal as a teacher. If a kid leaves the year without having grown academically but with a stronger, more rooted sense of who they are, I've given them something for life. A kid who leaves with straight A's but still doesn't know their own inner worth and crumbles the moment someone looks at them sideways, I've failed them regardless of what their transcript says.
Drugs, screens, and academic pressure are real issues, but the root crisis is a widespread and largely unaddressed lack of self-worth.
I believe this is the defining crisis of this generation. Drugs, screens, and academic pressure are real issues, but the root crisis is a widespread and largely unaddressed lack of self-worth.
Children succumb to peer pressure when they lack a strong sense of self. A young person who doesn't know who they are will conform and let other people tell them. The crowd becomes the mirror.
Peer pressure offers belonging and recognition. These are deep-seated needs, especially for teens. Going along with the crowd superficially and temporarily fills those needs.
The teen who knows who they truly are already belongs to something. His self-identity is rooted in his values, history, family, and his relationship with God. When the crowd extends its invitation, he is far less tempted and can afford to decline.
This self-awareness nurtures inner confidence, the only real inoculation against peer pressure.
This emphasis is largely absent in school.
When a young person lacks an inner sense of self, the crowd's approval becomes his oxygen. His identity is constantly shifting and at risk, with every social interaction prompting the questions: Am I cool today? Did they laugh at my joke? Did anyone like my photo?
When a young person lacks an inner sense of self, the crowd's approval becomes his oxygen.
This insecurity stems from a person trying to construct himself out of other people's reactions and approval because he has no inner anchor.
Social media has accelerated this to a terrifying degree. Every platform is an identity feedback machine. You post a version of yourself and the machine tells you how much that version is worth. You adjust and post again. The self becomes a product optimized for audience approval -- never secure and always on trial.
The person is reduced to a performance which is exhausting to maintain and devastating when the audience disappears.
Today, 42% of teenagers report persistent sadness or hopelessness. Youth mental health crises have skyrocketed. Anxiety is so common among the young that it barely registers as remarkable anymore. The primary solution is to nurture a strong sense of self identity that is independent from what people think. One that goes to the essence of who you are as a soul.
The educational response to the youth mental health crisis has been, by and large, to try to make children feel better about themselves – affirm them more, grade them more gently, protect them from failure, celebrate participation rather than achievement. Tell them, loudly and repeatedly, that they are special and worthy and enough.
The intention is genuinely kind but the effect has been catastrophic.
This approach misunderstands the difference between feeling confident and being someone. You cannot give a child an identity. You can only help them build one -- and that requires effort, struggle, challenge, and the hard-won satisfaction of having actually done something. A child who has been told they are wonderful without ever having done anything wonderful is not confident. They are fragile and the moment reality disagrees with the affirmations, the edifice collapses.
Genuine self-worth is not a feeling you can instill in someone. It is the natural result of knowing who you are -- your values, your commitments, what you stand for, what you refuse to do. That knowledge comes from experience, from being challenged, from being held to real expectations by people who take you seriously enough to demand something of you.
The foundation of self-respect the concept of being created in the image of God. The Torah declares in the very first chapter of Genesis: "And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him." Your worth is not something you earn, accumulate, or perform. It is built into the structure of your existence. You were made, deliberately and with intention, with a spiritual soul that bears the divine image.
You have a built-in spiritual core that is the bedrock of your identity. You have it by virtue of being human, by virtue of being a child of God, by virtue of being irreplaceable.
You have a built-in spiritual core that is the bedrock of your identity. You have it by virtue of being human, by virtue of being a child of God, by virtue of being irreplaceable. The Talmud teaches that whoever destroys a single soul has destroyed an entire world, and whoever saves one has saved an entire world (Sanhedrin 37a). Every person is a self-contained world. Not ranked against the rest of the class or compared to anyone else. An entire world, by himself.
When a person internalizes this, the dynamics of peer pressure change. You no longer need the crowd’s counterfeit version of an identity because you already have one. Your worth is not contingent on the approval of others; it’s something you were born with waiting for you to embrace.
