by Aziah Siid
Before the 2024 presidential election, Aissasatou Dia, a senior at Uncommon Charter High School in Brooklyn was concerned about a lot of things: irreversible climate change, spiraling college costs, police violence, and the overall economy.
Vice President Kamala Harris, she said, would be a better choice than former President Donald Trump, who would “cut funds from the educational system, which is very devastating” because education is the key to a better future for herself and the rest of the planet.
But Dia couldn’t make that choice herself. Like millions of other students her age, she is too young to vote. And she wasn’t happy that Trump defeated Harris.
“I am a little bit disappointed, but I know this is not the end,” she says. “There’s a better future out there for us. We just have to fight through these four years.”
Across the country, young people old enough to understand elections but too young to vote are coming to grips with the nation’s decision to send Trump back to the White House in 2025. Along with disappointment, they are assessing how the election’s outcome will affect their lives.
In Los Angeles, a student identified only as Lucia was as disappointed as Dia.
“I thought that we were ready for a female candidate, a woman of color,” she told LAist, an online magazine. “But, you know, we weren’t. It hurts that the country wasn’t ready for that because it makes girls feel that the country isn’t ready for them either, you know.”
Like Dia, she isn’t giving up: “It just further motivates me to try harder, to do better, and you know, hopefully the country will be ready for me when it’s my turn.”
Back in New York, Naomi Beinart, a 16-year-old high school junior in Manhattan, described a sharp gender divide between the boys and girls at her school. She wrote of girls in her school sobbing about Harris’s defeat, while the boys played video games and cracked jokes.
Joshua Smith, a senior at Brooklyn LAB school, was worried before the election about “a social recession within our communities” if Trump defeated Harris. “I am really scared because if he’s actually elected again, I don’t see any way we can recover from it in this decade.”
Smith said he was stunned by the election result.
“Election Day really had me in awe,” high school senior Joshua Smith says. “Moments like this feel so uncomprehendingly surreal.”
Now that the election’s over, Dia said she’s worried — not just for her future, but for what her family may experience with a second Trump term. She says the concerns she had before the election — tough abortion restrictions, irreversible climate change, spiraling college costs and a tanking economy — could soon become realities for herself, people in her household and others around her.
“Besides food and a household being expensive, inflation is really a key part that is stopping some families from being able to get off the streets and from being homeless,” Dia says. But abortion rights weren’t far from her mind, either.
“I haven’t really discussed ways to stay protected, but I do know that as a woman that I can still make my own decision because I live in New York,” Dia says. “Just making sure that I focus on school and making sure that people learn about safe sex, and stuff to do when they need it.”
