When Tanvi Chawla got a phone in fifth grade, she wanted access to “everything” – all social media. But her parents said no until she was 13. Now in 10th grade at an all-girls school in Pasadena, California, Tanvi’s views on social media have almost entirely reversed.

In early 2020, when Tanvi – along with the rest of the world – found herself stuck at home, social media became her “entire life,” she says. “I didn’t post much but it was a means of communication with my friends because ... I couldn’t see them physically.”

But after a few months of life online, Tanvi deleted Instagram in the beginning of eighth grade. She hasn’t replaced it with any other social media. “I just saw how harmful it was to my mental health and I think it was negatively impacting my peers, too,” she says. “So I made that decision for myself to stop using it.”

The pandemic forced most students almost entirely online for their school and social lives, renewing the focus on the effects of social media on children and young adults. Many students enter high school with their phones seemingly glued to the palms of their hands. And rates of anxiety and depression, particularly among girls, have skyrocketed since 2010.

“[Technology] is just so present that it’s impossible to completely disconnect and function for many people,”  says Liz Kolb, a clinical professor of education technologies and teacher education at the University of Michigan. “If it’s true for adults, it’s also true for the students.”

As a teacher, Ms. Kolb understands the inclination to go straight to cellphone bans. But whether a school bans phones or not, it’s worth taking the time to teach students good habits, she says. “I think best practice is not about trying to ignore the thing that our students have to use to function every day, but rather teaching them how to use it in a way that is going to be positive and healthy.”

In May, the U.S. surgeon general issued a public warning about the risks posed by social media to youth mental health. On June 14, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that would ban anyone under 18 from a broad variety of social media without explicit parental consent. The Louisiana House passed a similar bill earlier this month, and other states, including Connecticut, Minnesota, and Ohio, are considering parental consent laws. A new poll found that most Americans, regardless of age, would like to return to a time when society was unplugged. The desire was highest among Americans ages 35-54 (77%), but 63% of 18- to 34-year-olds said they’d prefer to live in a simpler era, too.

The town that banned cellphones

In Ireland, parents and schools in the town of Greystones implemented a townwide voluntary cellphone ban for children.

Rachel Harper, principal of St. Patrick’s primary school in Greystones, has noticed increasing anxiety among her 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old students. Parents report the same, adding that it’s hard to get their kids to sleep at night. Students are concerned about their bodies and self-image in a way Ms. Harper hasn’t noticed in that age group before.

“Their childhood is getting shorter and shorter,” she says.

Both parents and teachers are concerned for students’ online safety. “They’re just not emotionally ready to maneuver everything on a smart device,” she explains.

So she reached out to the principals of the other seven schools in Greystones. Together with parents, they started a community-led initiative to shelter children by agreeing that, across the town, students wouldn’t have phones until after primary school.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Cara Saks, a 12-year-old resident of Southborough, Massachusetts, has a Taylor Swift screen saver on her cellphone.

The collective effort makes all the difference, says Ms. Harper. “From a kid’s point of view, there’s that sense of fairness, that it’s not just them” without a phone.

The voluntary ban has attracted positive attention from all around the world, says Ms. Harper. She’s heard from many educators saying they’ve wished to implement a similar approach in their schools, though they didn’t think it was possible.

Many schools in the United States have cellphone bans to curb use. Policies vary from allowing students to have but not use phones to requiring them to place phones in locked pouches during school hours. The Buxton School, a private day and boarding school in northwestern Massachusetts, last year banned cellphones entirely during the semester. Buxton offered students an alternative: the Light Phone, which texts, calls, and offers basic functions like a calculator, but has no capacity for email or accessing the internet.

After one full school year, the experiment appears “largely successful,” says assistant head of school John Kalapos, who also teaches English and wood shop.

Living through screens during the pandemic was a fine temporary substitution, says Mr. Kalapos. Now that in-person interaction is back, technology should be used as a tool; what he terms “smartphone creepage” should be minimized.

Students do say they want to be on their phones less, he says, though not all of them love Buxton’s no-smartphone policy. The policy was first considered in early 2021 and was rejected. But gradually, Mr. Kalapos says, faculty started seeing that “community wasn’t strengthened because we had [smartphones] there.”

When students’ whole lives suddenly shifted online in 2020, Mr. Kalapos became much more aware of cyberbullying. It tends to be based on exclusion, which is challenging for teachers to mediate when it takes place in the form of “likes” – or the lack thereof – online.

It’s countercultural to not have a smartphone, says Joe Hollier, co-founder of Light. And while something like the Light Phone is a useful product, actually cutting back on technology exposure “takes user will.”

Fear of missing out is what prevents most people – himself included – from moving away from smartphones, says Mr. Kalapos of the Buxton school. But once you do it, “you realize it’s not as valuable as you think.”

“I used to be a little Luddite”

Ilena Moses, an 11th grader at the same Pasadena school as Tanvi, has always been skeptical of tech and social media. “I used to be a little Luddite,” she says.

Now, she sees being online as “a necessary evil,” so she has Instagram – logging on a couple times a week for five to 10 minutes.

Last year she was struck by the fact that “hanging out” with friends meant sitting in a room together scrolling on their phones. 

That didn’t sit well with her. “There should be something better. We could be talking; we could be reading; we could be playing mini golf,” she says. “There’s a whole world out there.”

Ilena, who’s the editor of the school paper and is starting to look at colleges, loves studying writing and history – especially early American history and the Progressive Era.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Andy Saks of Southborough, Massachusetts, says he is concerned about the everpresence of technology and its effect on children’s minds. His daughter Cara got an iPhone only after negotiating limits on social media use with her parents.

Proceeding, cautiously

Twelve-year-old Cara Saks, from Massachusetts, was the last of her friends to get an iPhone. She is also, as far as she knows, the only one to draw up a contract to gain her parents’ permission. Her parents made their own edits to the contract. Some of the rules: Her phone must charge in her parents’ room at night, and her social media accounts are private. And though their concerns about the pervasiveness of technology persisted, they gave Cara her first iPhone for Hanukkah.

On top of general concerns about the content their daughter could be presented with, Andy and Deb Saks struggle to keep up with the pace at which social media and technology are evolving. “I’ve told [Cara] many times, your generation is part of an experiment that we’ve never tried before, to see how children cope as they grow with this exposure to this giant online world,” says Mr. Saks.

“And I wonder a lot about how we’re shaping this generation’s perceptions of themselves,” he says. “I worry a lot about how it feeds into her self-esteem.”

Still, there’s an inevitability to it, Mr. Saks says. Setting boundaries and talking through situations as they come up seems, to him and his wife, to be the safest way to expose their daughter to social media.

Cara, for her part, feels like her parents are more worried than others. To her, it’s simple. She does notice addiction creeping up at times, so she’ll “just stop,” says Cara.

And there are things she loves, like the ability to stream Taylor Swift. Music, she says, “is not one of the bad addictions.”

While researchers, teachers, and government officials are examining data, students like Ilena, Tanvi, and Cara are focused on self-awareness. And while they’re aware of how the presence of social media affects them, they’re also aware of the advantages to having it, like social cohesion.

Social media is so often a topic of conversation “in real life,” says Ilena, that not keeping up with trends can feel ostracizing. She picks up some information from friends, but “it can feel a little isolating.”

For Tanvi, who no longer uses any social media, interacting with her own friends isn’t difficult. But it’s harder when she’s meeting new people, who want to chat about social media trends, to find common ground.

One thing she has noticed since abstaining from Instagram is leisure. Now she bakes and reads memoirs – most recently, “Acid for the Children,” by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Says Tanvi, “I have so much more free time.”

Sue Ogrocki/AP

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond opposes the recent approval, by a school board in his state, of the first publicly funded religious charter school in the U.S.

More than six decades ago, a landmark United States Supreme Court decision deemed prayer in public schools unconstitutional. That hasn’t stopped other attempts to blur the line between taxpayer funding and religious education.

The latest effort stems from Oklahoma, where a relatively obscure school board recently voted to allow a Roman Catholic charter school. It would be the first religious public school in the nation. And its approval comes amid a backdrop of cultural battles about what can be taught inside classrooms and how public dollars should be equitably distributed for education purposes.

The move sets the stage for litigation and a courtroom showdown revolving around the separation of church and state as set out in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947 – and where public schools fit into that time-honored American principle. Here’s a closer look at the school board’s decision and what’s at play moving forward.

What happened?

In January, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City submitted an application for a proposed charter school called the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The vision, as stated in the original application, would be to operate “exclusively for educational, charitable, and religious purposes,” including Catholic teachings built into the curriculum.

The decision fell to the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board. The board, which included a newly appointed member, granted approval for the religious charter school with a 3-2 vote in early June.

The virtual school, set to open in the fall of 2024, would serve students across Oklahoma from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general is among those calling the school board’s vote unconstitutional. “By dispensing with the first clause of the First Amendment, three members of the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board drove a stake through the heart of traditional American liberties,” wrote Gentner Drummond in Tulsa World.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A second grade student at Abby Kelley Foster Charter School in Worcester, Massachusetts, writes on her desk during a phonics and spelling lesson in 2021.

Why does it matter?

The Oklahoma decision raises large questions about the separation of church and state, a principle that scholars say is baked into the establishment clause of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion.”

The existence of one religious public school could open the door for other states or jurisdictions to follow suit, a situation that opponents say could undermine the institution of public schools in America.

Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center, calls it a “destabilizing” decision.

“We think the states have to provide enough resources for schools to function properly, and we oppose all forms of discrimination in public schools,” he says. “The current situation in Oklahoma really threatens to upend support for public education, which is also threatening to democracy.”

It could also fundamentally shift societal perceptions of charter schools, which are a more autonomous form of public schools that receives tax funding but must follow certain accountability measures. The charter school sector has been growing across the nation and, in the 2020-2021 academic year, enrolled 7.5% of all public school students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

“It’s not a sector that people have a really clear grasp of right now,” says Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Having religious charter schools enter that sector, in my view, would fundamentally reshape people’s understanding of what a charter school is.”

A revamped view of charter schools, he says, could affect who supports, attends, and works in them.

What has the U.S. Supreme Court said in the past?

Over the past 25 years, there has been an effort afoot to allow tuition assistance programs – such as vouchers or Education Savings Accounts – to be used at private religious schools.

For instance, in 2002, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of an Ohio law that permitted Cleveland students to put voucher money toward religious private schools. At the time, the outcome of the case, Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, was considered a landmark decision.

More recently, the nation’s highest court ruled last year – in a case originating in Maine – that any state tuition assistance made available to families should be allowed for use at religious private schools, not just nonsectarian ones. The Supreme Court’s rationale pointed to the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, which protects the right to practice any religion. It followed a similar ruling in 2020 for a case that started in Montana.

Gabor Degre/The Bangor Daily News/AP/File

Bangor Christian Schools sophomore Olivia Carson (left) and her mother, Amy Carson, arrive at the school in 2018. The Carsons are one of the Maine families that challenged the state's ban on using public money to pay tuition at religious schools. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor in Carson v. Makin in 2022.

Voucher-style aid typically goes to families who can, in turn, choose what school they want their children to attend. The Oklahoma charter decision, though, would for the first time send taxpayer money directly to a public charter school teaching religion.

“Our concern is that in doing so, this also creates the issue of state-sponsored discrimination against students whose identity or values don’t match those of these institutions or schools funded by the state,” says Mr. Kim of the Education Law Center.

What kind of legal challenges may be on the horizon?

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has vowed to “take all possible legal action to fight this decision” in Oklahoma. The organization’s president and CEO, Rachel Laser, says litigation is being prepared, though the exact timing and location of the filing has not been determined.

“Public schools should never be Sunday schools,” she says. “They can educate but not indoctrinate.”

In its revised charter application, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City argues that prohibiting a religious charter school “violates both Oklahoma’s Religious Freedom Act and the United States Constitution and therefore cannot be enforced.”

Defending their claim that the prohibition is unconstitutional, Catholic officials pointed to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions as well as the very identity of charter schools. 

“Charter schools in Oklahoma are not ‘state actors’ for this purpose, regardless how they might be labeled,” they wrote in the revised charter application. “Oklahoma charter schools are not operated in any meaningful way by the State but are subject only to broad oversight, with private – including even for profit – organizations given control over their day-to-day operations.”

Jessica Levin, acting litigation director at the Education Law Center, expects the legal challenge to center around Oklahoma’s own state constitution and charter school laws, which require these schools to be secular and open to all students.

“There need not be any slide down a slippery slope because the law is very, very clear that charter schools are public – that they must be secular, that they cannot discriminate,” she says.

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks with President Joe Biden during a State Arrival Ceremony at the White House on June 22, 2023, in Washington.

There will be no shortage of pomp and circumstance, hugs and handshakes, as Washington lays on a lavish welcome for an increasingly key partner in Asia: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Yet, the most important aspect of the visit, which includes an address to Congress and a state dinner Thursday, may get lost in the atmospherics.

It’s that, despite genuine enthusiasm on both sides for strengthening relations between the two democracies, U.S. policymakers know that India is never likely to become a full-scale ally and friend.

It is one of a number of strategically located “friendversaries” – countries with the shared interests typical of allies, but also adversarial interests, priorities, and even values. Washington is keen to keep them as close as possible. And that delicate task has taken on greater urgency as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the escalating U.S. rivalry with China.

Among other friendversaries are states like South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

But India may be the most important to Washington’s main long-term challenge: finding a way to compete with and, where necessary, constrain China without risking head-on conflict.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Troops parade as President Joe Biden welcomes Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a state visit at the White House in Washington, June 22, 2023.

India borders China, a frontier that flared into violence as recently as several years ago. It’s a member of the so-called Quad – the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – alongside the United States, Australia, and Japan.

Earlier this year, it overtook China as the world’s most populous nation. Its economy has become the world’s fifth-largest, and, though it is still far smaller than China’s, it’s growing more rapidly. Annual trade with the U.S. has increased to some $130 billion, and America recently displaced China as India’s main trading partner.

Talks also began this year on joint technology projects in areas including semiconductors, aerospace, and artificial intelligence.

But that’s the friend part of friendversary.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The “adversary” piece

On the adversary side of the scales, India’s main arms supplier is Russia – a carry-over from India’s prominent, often distinctly Moscow-friendly role in the nonaligned movement during the Cold War. And while Mr. Modi has voiced displeasure with the Ukraine war, India has abstained from U.N. votes condemning the invasion. Ignoring calls to sanction Moscow, it has been eagerly buying up cut-price Russian oil.

Its relations with China, too, are a mix of rivalry and partnership. India and China sit side by side in the BRICS economic alliance, which also includes Russia, South Africa, and Brazil.

And while India prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy, Mr. Modi’s brand of Hindu nationalism has led to discrimination and violence against members of the country’s 200-million-strong Muslim minority – as well as restraints on the media and opposition political voices.

Still, Prime Minister Modi’s state visit is evidence that Washington sees India as a rising counterweight to China’s regional dominance, and that the Biden administration is determined to find a way to build on shared interests with India while finessing the differences.

That’s an especially tricky balance for a U.S. president who has made the contest between democracy and autocracy his central foreign policy theme. Mr. Modi’s human rights record and response to the Ukraine war will surely come up during the visit – but only glancingly, if at all, in public.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Attendees wave the flags of India and the United States as they gather on the South Lawn of the White House to watch an official State Arrival Ceremony in Washington, June 22, 2023.

Still, with bipartisan support for a firm stance on China, and business enthusiasm for widening economic ties, President Joe Biden’s embrace of Mr. Modi is unlikely to face major pushback.

That’s not the case, however, with two friendversaries in other areas of the globe where China and Russia have been expanding their influence: South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

South Africa is deeply tied to the U.S. economically, with nearly $11 billion in annual trade, including $3 billion in tariff-free exports under Washington’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) initiative.

But South Africa, too, has resisted condemning the Ukraine invasion. It recently held a joint military exercise with Russia and China. And there have been reports, citing U.S. intelligence officials, that it’s been sending arms to Russia.

The Biden administration is clearly concerned a major diplomatic clash would undermine efforts to deepen U.S. influence in Africa: Officials say they’re still awaiting the results of an investigation by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa into the reported arms shipments.

But a bipartisan group in Congress has now urged the White House to relocate the annual meeting of AGOA from South Africa to elsewhere on the continent.

Friction with Saudi Arabia

There’s even stronger sentiment toward Saudi Arabia.

A key U.S. ally for decades, it still relies on America for security and military hardware.

Areas of friction have been growing, however.

The starkest one remains the 2018 murder of U.S.-based Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. But Saudi Arabia has also strengthened ties with Russia and China. And when pressed by Washington to increase oil production after the Russian invasion, the Saudis reduced output instead.

Again, Mr. Biden seems reluctant to risk further fraying ties. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has become the leading political voice in the Arab world, and the concern is that a full-scale rift could simply encourage greater Chinese influence.

Finding common ground with the Saudis will be especially challenging for Mr. Biden. He was appalled by the Khashoggi murder, saying during his presidential campaign that it had made Saudi Arabia a “pariah state.”

Still, with his wider focus on Russia and above all China, America’s main international rivals, he seems to have concluded that a change in approach is necessary – that Washington needs to view Saudi Arabia not as the key ally it was for many decades, but instead, as a key friendversary.

Few things have united the Colombian population like the recent successful rescue of four young Indigenous children following a deadly plane crash – and their ability to survive alone in the jungle for 40 days.

The story of Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy, Soleiny Jacobombaire Mucutuy, Tien Ranoque Mucutuy, and Cristin Ranoque Mucutuy, who ranged in age from 11 months to 13 years at the time of the crash, grabbed hearts and headlines this month for their incredible resilience. The plane wreck killed all three adults on board, but against great odds the children survived alone in the jungle by tapping into ancestral education about the animals, edible plants, and survival tactics in the wild jungle.

Their survival is an inspiration, but the saga also put a spotlight on challenges faced by Colombia’s Indigenous populations, who fight to preserve their culture amid historical marginalization. In 2021, Colombia had the highest share of Indigenous people living in poverty of any Latin American country.

A promising thread has emerged in the days since the children’s discovery, which is the unparalleled, collaborative search efforts by the Colombian military and Indigenous guards that led to their rescue in the first place. It has many here looking to what the future of respect and partnership might look like between the government and Indigenous communities.

“This was a lesson ... to look for commonalities” between the government and Indigenous groups, says Rufina Román, a leader in the National Organization of Indigenous People of the Colombian Amazon, a nongovernmental organization. “We are going to need to rely on joint action for many other issues [beyond this plane crash] that come at us, like climate change” and environmental protection, she says.

“It’s proof that coordinated actions are needed for the common good.”

Mie Hoejris Dahl

Rufina Román, an Indigenous leader and member of the Huitoto community, sits at the balcony of the National Organization of Indigenous People of the Colombian Amazon, in Bogotá, Colombia, June 20, 2023.

“Special capacity”

On May 15, two weeks after an engine failure caused a flight carrying three adults and the four children to crash in the dense Amazon jungle, rescuers found the front part of the plane stuck between trees in the southern Colombian state of Caquetá. The pilot, an Indigenous leader, and the children’s mother were found dead.

Although the search team saw signs of life – a baby bottle, half-eaten fruit, and dirty diapers – the children were nowhere to be found.

The Colombian government deployed search-and-rescue planes and helicopters, as well as land and river teams to the crash site. They scoured for the kids in an area of about 1,650 miles and used sound systems to play a recording of the children’s grandmother speaking in their native language, Huitoto, telling them that people were looking for them and that they should stay in one place.

The children kept moving, some close to them speculate out of fear of who exactly was looking for them. Armed dissident guerrilla groups are a threat for many Indigenous communities in the jungle.

But even so, the search was challenging from the start.

“It’s a very remote zone that requires special capacity,” says Pedro Sánchez, the general who led the government search operation. Some 16 hours of rain a day, humidity, dense vegetation, and dangerous animals make the terrain hard to penetrate even for the country’s best-trained soldiers. It’s hopeless trying to see anything from the air due to tree coverage, and it’s hard from the ground, too. “It’s impossible to see more than 20 meters ahead,” General Sánchez says.

Mie Hoejris Dahl

Indigenous leaders, as well as Indigenous guards from the rescue mission and family members informed about the search for the four children, take part in a press conference at the office of the National Organization of Indigenous People of the Colombian Amazon, in Bogotá, Colombia, June 15, 2023.

Eventually, General Sánchez authorized Indigenous volunteers from across the country to participate in the operation: a decision that almost certainly saved the children’s lives.

“Without them, we still wouldn’t have found the kids,” he says of the approximately 80 Indigenous volunteers.

Working with the guard helped multiply eyes and ears on the ground, but also contributed important, deep-seated knowledge about the jungle. Spiritual knowledge, too, General Sánchez says.

He describes the collaboration as “very fluid,” which stands in contrast to the historical mistrust between Indigenous people and the government’s armed forces. Indigenous communities are often stigmatized as uneducated, violent, and out of touch with modern society. And the absence of the state in many of these remote communities, lack of public services like roads and running water or electricity, and few security measures in a region overrun by armed groups mean that many mistrust and feel abandoned by the state.

The family on the felled flight is part of the Huitoto Indigenous community, one of more than 87 officially recognized Indigenous groups in Colombia. Their small community, and the broader Caquetá region, has suffered decades of violence at the hands of armed groups – and the government.

“Part of their vulnerability is they’re isolated to begin with,” says Oliver Kaplan, associate professor in international relations and human rights at the University of Denver. “To connect with the rest of the country is extremely difficult.”

Changing perceptions

There’s hope that the unprecedented collaboration that took place between the armed forces and the Indigenous guard in Operation Hope, as the rescue mission was dubbed, can blaze a new path for relations between the government and Indigenous groups here.

When the soldiers and Indigenous guards were deep in the jungle, on several occasions their technology, like GPS satellites and compasses, stopped working. “What do you say?” General Sánchez asked the Indigenous guards.

That simple question was “something spectacular,” says Janer Quina, regional coordinator of the Indigenous guard in Cauca and a member of the Nasa (also known as the Paéz) community, who participated in the search. It contrasts with his experience with non-Indigenous Colombians in the past. Historical knowledge around nature, for example, is often met with skepticism from outsiders, he says. “A big part of the country will not believe what happens in the jungle.”

Fernando Vergara/AP

Indigenous men line up upon arrival at the airport in San José del Guaviare, Colombia, May 21, 2023. They were invited by the armed forces to help search for the four Indigenous children who went missing after a deadly plane crash. The young kids braved the jungle for 40 days before being found alive.

In the long, emotional search, the soldiers and Indigenous guards shared food, personal questions, and survival techniques. Indigenous guards shared ancestral knowledge, like medicinal plants, while soldiers taught them to use their high-tech equipment.

“They changed their perception of us,” Mr. Quina says.

Learning young

What was perhaps even more surprising was the kids’ ability to survive in such precarious conditions.

“We taught them how to survive in the Amazon jungle,” says Eliecer Muñoz, one of the Indigenous rescuers, of the education that children in many remote Indigenous communities are brought up with about plants, animals, and how to construct a shelter.

Ms. Román, who grew up Huitoto like the kids, says the capacity to survive is developed early on – starting in the mother’s womb. When kids play, they imitate adult life: Instead of dolls, parents might give their children a knife to peel a cassava root, she says. Thus, “Lesly [the 13-year-old] knew what to do,” says Ms. Román, including which plants or insects were edible and how to care for a baby without any of the tools many Westerners rely on, like formula or a crib.

The successful mission, and the shared responsibility between the military and the volunteers, signifies the possibility of a more constructive relationship between these groups down the line, says Mr. Kaplan. “It’s inspiring. It shows that understanding and respect are possible.”

At a news conference in Bogotá last week, Indigenous leaders said there’s a need to guarantee basic rights for Colombia’s Indigenous people. “We hope for more state presence via social programs,” says Ms. Román, “but recognizing our own Indigenous systems as well.”

Colombians have been invited by President Gustavo Petro to celebrate the four outstanding children and approximately 200 responders on June 24.

It’s moving to get so much praise and appreciation for the importance and power of Indigenous know-how, says Mr. Quina. Although there’s still a long way to go for Indigenous rights and respect for the diverse heritage and tradition here, the national unity around the rescue is a good start, he says. “Our Indigenous guards have demonstrated the flip side of how the world usually characterizes us.”

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Rep. Jeff Jackson, a freshman congressman from North Carolina, writes weekly newsletters and creates short videos on TikTok about what he’s learning in Congress.

One minute he was eating a taco, and the next a king was reaching out to him. 

Jeff Jackson, a freshman Democrat from North Carolina, may not chair any committees or hold a position in leadership – but he’s quickly becoming one of the U.S. House’s better-known members outside of Congress, thanks to his viral videos about what goes on under the dome. After he was named to the Committee on Armed Services – unusual for a first-year member – top brass and even a monarch got in touch. 

Since being sworn in, the major in the Army National Guard and dad of three has gotten a crash course on many topics. Quantum computing. Taiwan’s “porcupine” strategy of defense. The House rule against calling people things like “little bugger” on the floor, even though members say much worse on TV.

Representative Jackson says the place reminds him of high school, and also a wax museum come to life. “I think a lot of folks in politics and some folks in media treat the outrage model as basically the only way to get attention,” he says.

“I can prove to them that that is false,” he adds, noting that his own nonsensational, explanatory approach has garnered him 2.2 million followers on TikTok – and, he says, 1 million on Substack. 

On an afternoon when votes were canceled because of intra-GOP wrangling, he sits down on his office couch for an interview. He understands why outrage politics can seem like the only game in town, he explains. He once did, too. Before he ran for Congress, he tried writing down all the members whose names he knew. He got to 38 out of 435. And that list, he says, presented a warped view. Coming in, he guesstimated the proportion of lawmakers on “Team Outrage” vs. “Team Serious” was roughly one-third vs. two-thirds.

“I was totally wrong,” says the former state senator, who realized Team Outrage actually makes up less than 10% of the Congress. Now he tells constituents back home: “There are many more serious people than you are led to believe.”

During his first month in office, he wrote about bumping into a fellow representative on the House floor whom he’d assumed he would never be able to work with, based on what he knew of them from TV and Twitter. To be polite, he introduced himself. They ended up talking for 20 minutes, and Mr. Jackson said he found this member to be “brilliant.”

“It taught me an important lesson,” he wrote to folks back home on his Substack. “Don’t assume anything about anyone here until I’ve had a chance to meet with them personally.”

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Rep. Jeff Jackson, a congressman from North Carolina (c., with tie), poses with young people on Capitol Hill after one of them, Noah Yarborough (back row, left), recognized him from videos on TikTok.

When he started attending committee meetings, he learned that some members who routinely spout off in front of the cameras are totally calm and rational in meetings closed to the press.

In a much-watched video in which he claimed that the most angry voices in Congress are “mostly faking it,” he didn’t name anyone – but Newsmax did, defending GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert and mocking “Congressman Nobody” and his “boring” social media posts. Just because he’s calm doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a political agenda, they implied. 

A year ago, Representative Jackson barely knew what TikTok was. A staffer suggested he add it to his growing portfolio of social media accounts.

He had started with Facebook and Twitter when he was a 31-year-old who suddenly became a state senator when he was appointed to fill a vacancy.

“People had no idea who I was,” he recalls. “I was this young, broke politician, and social media was the only way I had to communicate with my constituents.”

The public response was so positive that he started considering it part of the job: keeping people posted.

Now, nearly a decade later, he writes several Substack posts a month and films his own highly produced videos – with a script, a high-quality Sony camera (iPhones just don’t cut it, he tells fellow lawmakers), a microphone, and lighting that he tests out on his kids so they can be part of the process. He’s even learned that there’s a special word for making the bowl of bananas in the background just the right amount of blurry: bokeh. He does all the editing on Adobe Premiere, which he taught himself.

“I watched a bunch of YouTube videos,” he explains. “I was watching a bunch the other night about color-grading. It’s just a super-deep rabbit hole.”

Other members are eager to develop his kind of following, but when they ask how long it takes him, they may be put off by his answer: many, many hours.

In the next few weeks he’s holding a workshop for digital staffers, who can help other members with such work. 

Notably, for Congress’s biggest star on TikTok, he was relatively restrained in his write-up of a contentious, marathon hearing with TikTok’s CEO this spring.

Amid a bipartisan push to ban TikTok, Mr. Jackson called senators’ grilling of CEO Shou Zi Chew “brutal” and explained the basis for their concerns about privacy and national security. While he would arguably have the most to lose of any member of Congress if the platform were banned, he still acknowledged a six-year-old Chinese law that, in his words, basically says “that if Chinese intelligence services tell TikTok to hand over all of your data, they have to do it, and they don’t have to tell you.”

He also noted he was optimistic about passing broader data privacy legislation that would cover all social media platforms. 

“I’m really interested in using this position to become a credible source of information,” he explains, which he sees as key to building consensus. “That’s so much harder than using this position to give my opinion on everything.”

In an age of growing disinformation and distrust in media, “there’s a real demand for speaking to people in a normal tone of voice and in a substantive way,” he says. “I feel like there’s going to be a generational shift in what we’re looking for from news. It cannot continue to be this angry all the time.”

REUTERS

Madagascar's Molo mine, owned by NextSource Materials, opened in April to produce graphite needed for electric vehicle batteries.

World leaders gathered in Paris on Thursday to help low-income countries shift toward a post-carbon future. The effort is up against at least one big obstacle: The cost of borrowing for poorer nations is two times higher than for richer ones. At the same time, many of these countries are also major sources of strategic metals used in green technologies like batteries and solar panels. That points to another obstacle: how to safely extract the metals for a country’s financial benefit without an upsurge in corruption.

In response to these issues, more companies and countries are adopting stronger codes of conduct that call for transparency as well as a financial concern for communities where the metals are found. The trend is nascent, but it shows that the threat of “green corruption” can be turned into an opportunity for honest governance.

“Just including a clause in a legal contract isn’t going to tackle” corruption, says Hannah Koep-Andrieu of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “That interplay between individual responsibility ... but also working collectively to try to address the challenge at large is definitely one that we’re seeing across sectors.”

Global demand for green-tech metals like cobalt, nickel, and lithium will increase as much as thirtyfold by 2040. Already, 1 in 5 cases of transnational bribery occurs in extractive industries – oil, metals, timber, metals – according to the OECD. The International Monetary Fund found that illegal tax avoidance by mining sector companies costs sub-Saharan African countries from $470 million to $730 million in lost revenue annually.

Many of the countries where green supply chains are most vulnerable to corruption, conflict, and human exploitation like child labor lack the capacity to counter these risks through regulations or law enforcement.

But weak law enforcement does not necessarily mean a lack of political will. More than 50 countries have signed on to an integrity standard known as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. These countries commit to working with businesses and civil society to ensure transparency in data, contracts, and corporate ownership.

Statkraft, the largest generator of renewable energy in Europe, applies their own standard of transparency and human rights protection in the 20 countries where it has projects. “You cannot work on corruption in one way and human rights breaches in a completely detached, separate way,” said Maja de Vibe, a senior vice president of Statkraft. The only solution is “to build capability not just within government, but also within civil society, and have that combine with responsible business practices.”

The vocabulary around climate change tends to emphasize vulnerability and inequality. Yet the pursuit of a greener future is fostering integrity in business and governance, drawing humanity together to uplift both the environment and poorer nations.