{"id":297815,"date":"2026-10-01T19:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T19:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/297815\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T19:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T19:06:11","slug":"philly-teens-share-top-issues-ahead-of-2026-midterm-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/297815\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly teens share top issues ahead of 2026 midterm election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to open your phone without seeing a headline somewhere shouting about some national or divisive topic: data centers, climate change, the Philadelphia Eagles\u2019 offense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soon, voters will take to the polls and weigh in on those issues by casting their ballots in the November midterms. Everyone who\u2019s over 18, a U.S. citizen and registered to vote can put their thumb on the scale, but for the roughly 333,000 under 18 in Philly and millions more nationwide, they\u2019ll be without a vote until they\u2019re of age.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

At WHYY\u2019s Youth Town Hall event Wednesday night, Billy Penn asked young attendees what national issues were on their minds ahead of the midterms and how they wanted to see them addressed.<\/p>\n

International relations<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been over 200 days since the U.S. began its war with Iran, and young people gathered for Wednesday\u2019s town hall said they thought it\u2019d gone 200 days too long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know each country has their own beliefs, but like we shouldn\u2019t be going over trying to change that,\u201d said 14-year-old Kamari Gaudin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that the war in Iran, which was unconstitutional to begin with, is addressed as a main priority,\u201d said 16-year-old Wahyes Islam. \u201cI believe that we shouldn\u2019t be engaged in a foreign conflict that we had no right to begin or to involve ourselves in, especially with gas prices going up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Islam was part of a panel of four students at the town hall event, where he and his peers spoke about youth civic engagement. Last summer Islam said he was invited to a Democratic Party event where he spoke with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker. One day, Islam said he hopes to become mayor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Public investment<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need safer cities, more things for teenagers to do and stricter laws on gun violence because now it feels like streets aren\u2019t safe,\u201d said 16-year-old Aaron Paige Douglas. \u201cLike you can\u2019t just walk around without worrying about something bad happening to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas said she viewed elected officials as \u201ckind of lazy\u201d and hoped whoever replaced them would invest more in nonprofit groups that could provide services to younger people. She attributed the recent \u201cteen takeover\u201d trend where young people congregate en masse in public areas to the lack of third spaces for teens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t do anything. We can\u2019t go to the malls. There\u2019s always curfews, or they\u2019re kicking us out. We can\u2019t go to the movies because we have to bring a parent. We can\u2019t go to stores, or they think we\u2019re stealing, so they kick us out,\u201d said Douglas. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing that we can do. So the only thing we can do is gather in public.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Yena Su and Winni Jiang snack on cotton candy at WHYY\u2019s Sept. 30 Youth Town Hall. Su and Jiang said they heard about the event through their school. (Davis Cuffe\/Billy Penn)<\/p>\n

AI and environment\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hanging around a cotton candy stand before the evening\u2019s panels started were 16-year-olds Yena Su and Winni Jiang. The two took a break from their cotton candy to humor me and answer questions about the country\u2019s greatest threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think definitely AI and how future employment would be affected by it is an issue,\u201d said Jiang. \u201cOn the note of AI, I would also say environmental issues, since we all know how AI might be harmful for the environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jiang said she hoped to work in research one day and worried AI might take that opportunity from her. Su, a hopeful accountant, said she shared the concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to see politicians put limitations on how far AI can be used in the decision-making process,\u201d Su said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. It\u2019s hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5201,902,758,69,71,70,50,97289,3857,1824,122972,6732],"class_list":["post-297815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-elections","tag-gun-violence","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-politics","tag-teen-takeovers","tag-trump","tag-voting","tag-whyy-youth-town-hall","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}