At Monday’s gun violence roundtable. Students connect with local and state leaders, including New Haven State Rep. Toni Walker (center). When Hill Regional Career High School junior Ma’kenzie Parker lost two friends to gun violence less than a year apart, she wished she had more counseli ng support and guidance for dealing with grief in school. When Hillhouse High School senior Dionte Smallwood goes home every day, he wishes parents like his didn’t have to work long hours and multiple jobs to provide for their families. He believes children need more time at home with their parents — and less time on their phones — to learn emotional regulation and other life lessons. And when Hillhouse High School sophomore Sarah Marie Butavia sees videos of fights on social media, she wishes people would stop posting laughing emojis in response — which only desensitizes young people to violence. Parker, Smallwood, and Butavia offered those perspectives Monday afternoon as dozens of high schoolers from across New Haven gathered at Metropolitan Business Academy to speak with local and state leaders, including Gov. Ned Lamont, about the root causes of gun violence — from a young person’s perspective. The event was organized by Connecticut Against Gun Violence (CAGV) in partnership with the governor. The local and state leaders in the room included Lamont, CAGV Executive Director Earl Bloodworth, Mayor Justin Elicker, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negrón, State Reps. Toni Walker and Al Paolillo Jr., and Police Chief David Zannelli, among others. The students in attendance on Monday are a part of the Citywide Student Council. Bloodworth and Elicker each noted Monday that while numbers are trending down for gun violence there is still lots of work to do. “No life lost is acceptable,” Elicker said. Bloodworth added that while the numbers of homicides and violent crimes have been trending down, “we’ve also seen a steady increase, unfortunately, in suicides.” Bloodworth to high schoolers: “We want to understand your point of view,” That’s why, he said, leaders gathered with students Monday to hear directly from young people about what violence prevention work is needed. “Today is really about all of you, youth that are in the building, we want to hear from you. We want to understand your point of view,” Bloodworth said. After Monday’s introduction to the hour-and-a-half-long discussion, the adults joined small groups of the students in breakout rooms. In one room, Lamont, Negrón, Walker, and NHPS Youth, Family and Community Engagement Chief Gemma Joseph Lumpkin listened in as a group of students answered the question, “What circumstances lead youth to gun violence?” Hillhouse sophomore Sarah Marie Butavia answered, “It really messes up a child’s psyche when the people that are supposed to nurture them don’t, and that can lead to a life of violence.” She said that for many young people, “the first thing they think of for a solution is to fight.” She said she sees that dynamic at work on an almost daily basis both inside and outside school. Butavia added that many teens are basically being “raised by social media.” While that is a problem in itself, she said that society has normalized violence through, for example, videos of fights on social media sending a message to youth that it’s “cool” and “normal” to resort to violence. “When you post it online you get that engagement with a bunch of laughing faces [emojis].” That led the group to touch on the entire country’s desensitization to violence. Students lamented how school shootings and other instances of gun violence rarely result in sustained media coverage or legislative change. “As an entire generation we’re just desensitized to guns and gun violence in general. We just accept it and think it’s okay,” Hillhouse senior Dionte Smallwood said. Butavia added that the desensitization is a result of parents “just shoving a screen in their face and expecting that to teach them everything in life. … Parents are no longer raising kids to be emotionally intelligent and functional.” Smallwood pointed to a lack of emotional care from parents to their kids as also contributing to gun violence. He said parents too often act like their kids’ friends or just lack in emotional maturity themselves. While Smallwood said he understands parents must work, he said more opportunities should be offered for parents to work remotely, closer to home, and for livable wages so that they don’t have to work multiple jobs. Co-Op sophomore Yamilet Sampedro agreed. “If parents can’t afford to feed their families, how are they supposed to afford childcare to watch over their kids?” If parents are afforded the opportunities to be home with their children more, Smallwood said, they’d be able to teach young people the importance of emotional development. “Human connection can get you through problems if you are taught how to actually socialize,” he said. “But if they’re not there, you rely on tech instead of human connection.” Smallwood said he was able to rely on his older brothers and younger sister to avoid being alone at home. He also said that school suspensions play a part in young people’s lack of emotional development. Sending a student home from school to be alone only hurts them, he said. “We don’t even know how to make proper eye contact or shake somebody’s hand because you go to school, you get suspended, you go home, and you’re just there by yourself,” Smallwood said. “So you’re just sending a kid home to be by themself all day. What do you think the kid’s gonna do when they already feel like the school gave up on them? Your phone’s going to always comfort you.” “When they just feel like they don’t have anything else,” he concluded, “they stop even looking for opportunities to better themselves.” The group urged the superintendent to consider existing efforts like Metro’s Youth Justice Panel (MYJP) course, a student-led course focused on mediating school-wide disciplinary issues and encouraging students to resolve problems through restorative justice rather than punitive actions. At the end of Monday’s session, Parker told the room that she would like to see more guidance counselors in schools and other supports to help young people through all that comes with grieving. She recalled losing two people to gun violence in September 2025 and again in June 2026. “Nobody had anything for me,” she said. If it isn’t possible to hire staff, Parker noted, then schools could simply designate more areas in the building for students to work through grief or other challenges. Or they could have volunteers help provide support. “Even when I didn’t want to talk with anyone, I did want to cope together with someone, but there was no one,” she said. She added that she thought she was a problem at one point because she was angry while grieving. “I don’t know how to handle grief. But if somebody were there just telling me stages so I knew I wasn’t a problem it would’ve made a huge difference.” She concluded that she hopes the leaders listening to students’ perspectives Monday would next take action to support youth. “I wasn’t one of them, but so many kids grieving want to take revenge because of that anger. I felt that but eventually distracted my mind from the violence. We all need help getting on the right path sometimes,” Parker said. The full group of high schoolers spoke about their breakout-group conversations at the end of Monday’s gathering. They said that circumstances that lead to gun violence include young people feeling undervalued and unsafe in their communities, not having guidance at home, childhood neglect and abuse, lacking emotional development, limited youth leadership opportunities, social media influences, systemic inequities, financial pressure, a lack of thoughtful school programming, peer pressure, and lacking problem-solving skills. Students also suggested solutions to these issues, including police having more non-enforcement engagement with the community, teen centers and safe places for youth to gather, policies that support social determinants of health, better school-conflict resolutions and mental health support, less social media, and more mentorship services. Metro senior Brandon Daley called for Board of Ed student rep votes to be officially counted to make students actually feel valued. He also asked that leaders visit students more often to talk. Metro senior Madison Gay lost a friend to gun violence. She said when she lived in New York her district had half a dozen teen centers that helped her and her peers meet new people, connect with mentors, and explore personal interests. BRADA sophomore Anderson Hernandez said peer pressure can bubble up into violence. For example, a student can have a friend barrow $5 and now then their peers pressure the student to fight their friend because they haven’t paid them back quickly enough. The post Youth-Focused Gun Violence Convo Spotlights Social Media, Parents appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less