In response to the cynicism and chaos of our 2025 national politics, people everywhere are quite sensibly craving optimism and order. Here in our local community, we are blessed with many fine young people who are willing to share the advantages of their inexperience with our older population. Advantages that seem to be in short supply these days, like idealism, energy, and goodwill.
A case in point: our Nevada County Youth Commission. Founded in 2023, the Youth Commission is a group of young people aged 14-19 who grapple with local issues, then present their perspectives to our county Board of Supervisors. The 14 commissioners, who represent all supervisorial districts of the county, meet regularly as a group and in subcommittees, listening to speakers, conferring, then writing and submitting an annual report to the Supervisors.
“I want our youth to see that government is more than just the presidential election,” says Commissioner Sophia Martin, a Truckee High School Senior. Commissioner Grant Lacrosse, a junior from Ghidotti Early College High School, adds: “The youth voice is as important as the adult voice.”
Mackenzie Rist, a Nevada Union senior and chair of the commission, is proud of the productive relationships and connections the group has established with our supervisors, county agencies, and other youth throughout the county.
Commission meeting agendas are filled with significant matters of importance to county residents, young and old: climate resilience and emergency preparedness; youth mental health; recreation; career technical education; school lunch programs; family home and food insecurity.
Recently Mackenzie Rist sat down for an interview to discuss matters large and small, local and national. Mackenzie not only chairs the Youth Commission but also serves as the Nevada Union High School Student Body President and captain of the track team, while maintaining a 4.2 GPA. For her senior project, she has been job-shadowing an orthopedic surgeon, reinforcing her personal dream to attend UCLA and eventually become a surgeon herself.
Like leaders everywhere, she emphasizes the successes of the organizations she represents over her personal aspirations. “As our student body president, I am determined that our student government is keeping our campus culture healthy and safe for all students.”
“Everything we do,” she says, “from our school-wide smile day to our outreach programs for middle school students have these common themes: Everyone matters. Everyone can contribute. Everyone can get involved.”
Mackenzie herself did not benefit from an outreach program for middle school students. “Covid hit while I was attending Seven Hills Middle School. For over a year, I never left my house.”
But she avoids dwelling on the negatives of the Covid years. “I really learned a lot about myself during that time, and how I need my independence and my alone time for the balance needed to work effectively with others. I think Covid also taught us all to appreciate who we are with, while we are with them. For too long, we took our social connections for granted.”
Mackenzie also acknowledges how many of her classmates suffered socially from pandemic isolation. “Coming out of Covid, it was difficult to field sports teams and build back our clubs and activities. I have been more concerned about the social toll Covid has taken than any learning gap. Most of us made an okay transition to distance learning, and then back again into the classroom.”
Regarding the negative aspects of smartphones and social media the pandemic isolation reinforced, Mackenzie admits that some students became more addicted to electronic devices. “But what’s so surprising about that? If you go into any restaurant, you see parents handing over devices to keep their young kids occupied instead of teaching them to communicate and relate courteously with others during meals. They are being taught to consider phones an essential component of their daily life.”
In response to the growing movement to ban phones from schools, she says: “Well, it just won’t do much at all. Smartphones are embedded in our culture. They are here to stay. We just need to learn how to be responsible and sensible with our phones. Everyone.”
Such views run counter to the prevailing movement to ban and regulate smartphones in our schools, a view strongly endorsed by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who argues in his 2024 runaway best seller, “The Anxious Generation,” that phones and social media have caused a tidal wave of mental illness in today’s youth. According to Haidt, average school hallways are populated by screen-fixated zombies bumping and stumbling into one another. Haidt joins a long list of popular authors who have indulged in generational trashing. In 1976, Tom Wolfe excoriated Baby Boomers for their self-absorption in “The Me Generation.” In 1993, David Martin labelled Generation Xers “The Whiny Generation” for their sense of unwarranted entitlement. In 2013, Joel Stein dubbed Millennials “The Me Me Me Generation” for placing personal fulfillment ahead of social responsibility.
As usual, an exceptional woman delivered the perfect counterpoint to the grumpy gents. Eleanor Roosevelt, forever young, remarked late in her life: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
Mackenzie Rist, here’s to you and here’s to your generation of young people who are now coming of age. Here’s to your splendid personal and societal dreams of making the world a better place.