Society, Law & Politics

Only 1 in 3 people arrested by ICE have a criminal conviction

Lisa Marshall — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:03:13 +0000

Only 1 in 3 people arrested by ICE have a criminal conviction Lisa Marshall Thu, 07/30/2026 - 11:03

Lisa Marshall

Just 34% of people arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during President Donald Trump’s second term have a criminal conviction, according to new research published July 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

That’s a near-historic low, the authors note.

“Our results reveal that the reality of immigration enforcement diverges sharply from the public narrative that ICE arrests are necessary to protect public safety by removing people who commit crimes,” said lead author Chloe East, an associate professor of economics at CU �ֲ��ý.

Labor economist Chloe East

East and her colleagues analyzed 1.6 million ICE arrests from October 2015 to March 2026, looking at the location and method of each arrest and whether the person arrested had a criminal conviction.

They found that early in each of Trump’s terms, his administration delivered on its promise to increase immigration enforcement activity. For example, the daily average number of ICE arrests in the first 14 months of Trump’s first term was 436, up 43% from the daily average during President Barack Obama’s final year in office. In the first 14 months of Trump’s second term, average daily ICE arrests soared to 952 per day, up 214% from President Joe Biden’s final year in office.

Increased enforcement did not, however, translate to more arrests of previously convicted criminals. Instead, the opposite happened.

Just one in three ICE arrests during Trump’s first 14 months in office—for his second term—involved individuals with criminal convictions. That’s down from 52% in Biden’s final year in office, 70% in Trump’s first year of his first term and 79% in Obama’s final year.

“We found that there is an inverse relationship between the number of arrests that ICE makes and ICE’s ability to target people with a criminal conviction,” said East.

The study also identified stark changes in the way ICE arrests are being conducted, with more arrests now made in community gathering places like schools, workplaces and airports. In the past, ICE typically detained individuals who were already in law enforcement custody.

Prior to Trump’s second inauguration, only 17% of ICE arrests were made in the community. That has risen to nearly half of all arrests.

Enforcement activity has not taken place evenly across the country, the study found. In 2025–26, Democratic strongholds like Denver, Boston and Washington, D.C., were far more likely to see dramatic spikes in community arrests, the study found.

For instance, in the enforcement area that includes Denver, which has a democratic mayor and governor, ICE arrests increased 220% at the beginning of Trump’s second term, with community arrests increasing 269%.

Previous studies have consistently shown that immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are less likely to commit crimes than are people born in the United States.

East fears that by increasingly arresting those with no criminal record, heightened ICE enforcement efforts could make communities less safe by making law-abiding citizens afraid to report crimes.

Such efforts also hurt the economy, her previous research has found.

“When you remove thousands of people from the labor market through arrest, detention and deportation, that alone has a harmful effect. But we also find that those who remain work less because they are afraid,” she said.

In another recent study, she forecasts, at the state level, how ICE surges could lead to thousands of lost jobs for U.S. born men too, as company leaders turn down projects due to lack of workforce.

For instance, she estimates that in Colorado a statewide ICE surge that arrested 1% of the immigrants most at risk would result in a direct removal of 1,000 immigrant men from their jobs and shrink the labor force by an additional 2,700 immigrant men due to chilling effects and employment decline. The largest employment loss would ultimately be on U.S.-born men, whose employment level would shrink by 6,800. Wages for those remaining employed are not predicted to change.

East hopes her findings will help lawmakers from all parties develop more effective immigration policies.

“Overall, our data provide important new evidence that simply increasing the funding and scale of ICE activity is unlikely to improve public safety.”

An analysis of 1.6 million ICE arrests shows that while arrests are at a historic high, most of those detained have no criminal conviction.

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Do elections affect political anger?

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 11:09:37 +0000

Do elections affect political anger? Megan M Rogers Thu, 07/30/2026 - 05:09

CU �ֲ��ý political scientists have found that far-right voters in Austria were less angry after electoral success, while many mainstream voters correspondingly became more angry.

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Ukrainians see Trump as an enemy, Americans as friends

Lisa Marshall — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:21:20 +0000

Ukrainians see Trump as an enemy, Americans as friends Lisa Marshall Mon, 07/27/2026 - 10:21

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance clash with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy during meeting in Oval Office on Feb. 28, 2025. Credit: The White House via Wikimedia Commons

Lisa Marshall

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance clash with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy during meeting in Oval Office on Feb. 28, 2025. Credit: The White House via Wikimedia Commons

Most Ukrainians have no confidence in the U.S. team negotiating with Russia to end the war, and more than half view President Donald Trump, to some degree, as “an enemy,” according to new research from CU �ֲ��ý and Virginia Tech.

“Our results show that the Trump administration has generally not made a great impression on Ukrainians,” said Sarah Wilson Sokhey, associate professor of political science at CU �ֲ��ý.

Sarah Sokhey

The representative survey of Ukrainians is the latest of dozens of polls—including tens of thousands of Ukrainians collectively over the years—that CU researchers have organized and conducted in Ukraine since 2000.

Nearly five years into the Russia-Ukraine war, it offers insight into how people on the ground feel about their own president, government corruption, the draft, Americans and more.

“If there is going to be any stable peace, Ukrainians have to be on board,” said Sokhey, who studies Central and Eastern European politics and last visited the country in summer 2025. “What they think matters, and we should be paying attention.”

For the most recent survey, Sokhey, CU �ֲ��ý Geography Professor John O'Loughlin and Virginia Tech Professor Gerard Toal worked with Kyiv International Institute of Sociology to conduct a telephone survey of 1,801 Ukrainians from June 9 to June 26, 2026. For safety reasons, they did not survey individuals in regions occupied by Russia.

How Ukraine feels about the U.S.

Sokhey notes that, over the years, Trump has frequently lauded Russian President Vladimir Putin as “smart” and “a strong leader.” In 2025, Trump made global headlines when he publicly chastised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting in the Oval Office.

While aid to Ukraine has been significant—making it the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid with $195 billion since the war began in 2022—no significant aid package has been passed since April of 2024. A promised $400 million military aid package has been delayed.

To determine how all this has shaped Ukrainian’s impressions of the U.S., the survey asked: Is Trump a friend or an enemy of Ukraine?

Thirty-six percent of respondents chose “enemy,” while 17% chose friend and 24% chose “a bit of both.” Sixty-seven percent said they had no trust at all in Trump.

When asked about their confidence in U.S. negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, 57% said they had “no confidence,” while 32% said they had some, and 3% had high confidence.

Still, 74% said they viewed Americans as friends, and only 4% viewed them as enemies.

“In a way this is not surprising,” said O’Loughlin, who has been doing surveys in Ukraine for nearly 26 years. “If you look at worldwide surveys across many countries, people tend to make a distinction between the American government and its foreign policy actions that they don’t like, and Americans.”

John O'Loughlin

O’Loughlin notes that Ukrainians have shifted their views on who the country’s most vital foreign partner is.

When asked about the U.S. role in world affairs, 26% said they had negative feelings, 62% had mixed feelings and 8% felt positively.

“They are looking more to Europe now, especially France and Britain, as their most reliable supporters,” said O’Loughlin.

How Ukrainians feel about their own government

While Zelenskyy’s approval rating has held steady over the past year, not everyone trusts him either. The new survey found that 14% of respondents have no trust at all in him, 47% trust him a little and 37% trust him a lot.

Surprisingly, when Ukrainians were asked what they worry most about, more than a third ranked government corruption as the nation’s top challenge. Half chose Russian aggression and 14% said they were equally concerned about both.

Zelenskyy ran on an anti-corruption platform but has struggled to rein it in, leading to protests.

“Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world when it comes to things like government contracts and military sources. It’s endemic,” said O’Loughlin.

Resisting the draft

In April 2024, the Ukrainian government lowered the draft age from 27 to 25. Since then military authorities have reportedly used a violent method known as “busificaton” to forcefully detain young men and haul them away in minivans to serve on the battlefield.

The new survey asked Ukrainians specifically: “Is it time to draft all young Ukrainian men into military service?”

Read more about the surveys on The Conversation

Amid grinding war, protesting Ukrainians still want their voices and values heard at home

We asked Ukrainians what they think of Trump—more view him as an enemy than a friend

Fifty-six percent disagreed and only 8% fully agreed.

This resistance to the draft played out on the streets of Ukraine earlier this month, as young protesters turned out in record numbers to oppose the firing of Mykhailo Federov as defense minister. Federov has led the charge to use unmanned drones over on-the-ground soldiers to fight the war.

On July 23, Zelenskyy reversed his decision and promised Federov a return to a “prominent position” in the military.

“Ukraine, even before the war started, had an aging and shrinking population. Then you add war to that, with 8 million people leaving the country and hundreds of thousands of soldiers being killed,” said Sokhey. “Our survey suggests that they are realizing they won’t have anyone left to run the country if they send all their younger people off to war. They are running out of people to fight.”

Fewer than 17% of Ukrainians view Trump as a friend to Ukraine, and 57% say they have no confidence in the U.S. team negotiating to try to end the war, according to a new CU �ֲ��ý survey. The survey also offers insight into Ukrainians' views of their own government, the draft and the lingering war.

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Can leaderless societies get stuff done? Ask the honeybees

Lisa Marshall — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:24:17 +0000

Can leaderless societies get stuff done? Ask the honeybees Lisa Marshall Tue, 07/21/2026 - 13:24

Lisa Marshall

Do organizations do better when they have a central leader who calls the shots or a decentralized group of individuals who sort out their own division of labor?

The question has intrigued philosophers, biologists, political scientists and business leaders for centuries.

A new honeybee-inspired study, published in the journal PNAS, offers answers. It suggests that while both kinds of organizations can survive and thrive, leaderless groups may have an edge—as long as communication is good and there’s just the right mix of risk-takers and cautious followers.

“We found that decentralized strategies of decision making are at least as good as centrally coordinated ones and, in many ways, may be more robust and resilient,” said corresponding author Zachary Kilpatrick, a professor of applied mathematics who studies how animals, including insects and humans, make decisions.

Using math to understand decision making

Peek at a bee colony and you’ll find tens of thousands of individuals toiling away, each with their own unique role in supporting the hive. Some explore surrounding meadows, foraging for nectar and pollen and scouting for information to bring back to the group. Others hang back, cleaning the hive and feeding the larvae. While the queen lays eggs and chemically signals her presence, she doesn’t determine who does what.

Elephant troops follow the lead of the matriarch while baboons and schools of fish tend to collectively decide which way to move. Credit: Adobe Stock photos

Ants and termites operate similarly, without a central authority.

Other animals are more hierarchical.

In a herd of elephants, the oldest female makes the call on where to find water and when to flee, when survival is at stake. Wolf breeding pairs direct where the group hunts and rests.

Wild baboons are a mix of hierarchy and egalitarianism, living in ranked groups but deciding democratically where to go when it’s time to move.

To get at which system works best under what circumstances, and how leaderless societies manage to accomplish so much, Kilpatrick and his colleagues—Hyunjoong Kim of the University of Cincinnati and Krešimir Josić of the University of Houston—developed a mathematical model informed by research on real animals in the wild.

The model simulated life in a bee colony under different scenarios with varying numbers of bees; good and bad environmental conditions; and a central coordinator vs no central coordinator.

Surprisingly, the study found no difference in outcome between scenarios where a central coordinator determined who does what and scenarios where individuals acted based on their own risk tolerance.

“Turns out those models behave identically,” said Kilpatrick.

And in some ways, the leaderless group was more resilient, the model suggested.

“If one individual is making the decisions for an entire group, and that individual dies, gets removed or can’t communicate with the group it leaves it really vulnerable,” Kilpatrick said. “In a decentralized group if you knock out one communication pathway, there are others.”

Another question at the core of the experiment, and in day-to-day life in a hive: How many risk-takers, or scouts, should be sent out to forage and how many should cautiously wait?

The study found that the larger the group, the smaller the proportion of risk-takers it required. That’s because each brave bee that puts its life on the line to leave the hive adds proportionally less new information to the colony upon return.

“If you send too many foragers out, you’re going to waste a bunch of energy for little additional benefit,” he said. “The same scaling logic may hold for human groups, where a small team may need half its members exploring while a large field needs only a handful.”

Notably, the study found that the more challenging the situation, in terms of weather and resources, the more critical it was for this division of labor to be dialed in.

Zachary Kilpatrick

Lessons for humans

Kilpatrick said the findings could help inform development of artificial neural networks (computing systems modeled after the human brain) and multi-agent systems (think drone swarms working collectively toward a common goal).

“One of the best ways to design efficient systems and technologies is to look at what nature has done.”

But the study also yields other lessons for humans.

Research has shown that our ancestral default, from living in small hunter-gatherer bands, is to make decisions collectively. Some small organizations, like kibbutzim or co-ops, still do this. But as organizations grow larger, humans tend to build centralized hierarchies and install powerful leaders to control them.

“That flexibility is one of our most distinctive traits as a species,” Kilpatrick said.

Yet much human advancement can be attributed to moments when, without direction from above, risk-taking individuals break out to make scientific discoveries, launch startups, explore new territories or create avant-garde art—nudging the more cautious to follow them when the time is right.

As new, more complex challenges arise, humans might want to take a cue from the bees, said Kilpatrick.

“Our research suggests that there can be a real benefit to having decentralized, individuated exploration that ultimately gets shared back with the community.”

A new honeybee-inspired analysis suggests that central control isn't necessary for group success, as long as there's good communication and just the right mix of risk-takers and cautious followers.

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Want to get published in a top-tier journal? Where you're from matters

Lisa Marshall — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Want to get published in a top-tier journal? Where you're from matters Lisa Marshall Wed, 07/15/2026 - 12:00

Lisa Marshall

Scientists from prestigious universities are more than three times more likely to have their research published in top-tier scientific journals than authors from lesser known schools are. Meanwhile, authors based in China and those studying politics, economics, gender or other social issues face a significant disadvantage.

These are a few takeaways from a sweeping new CU �ֲ��ý-led study, published July 15 in the journal Science Advances.

The analysis of more than 110,000 manuscript submissions over five years offers the most comprehensive glimpse yet at who makes the cut, and who doesn’t, during the rigorous editorial and peer review process at elite science journals.

“These journals play a special role in the science ecosystem, shaping what ideas get attention, inform society and shape policy,” said senior author Aaron Clauset, a professor of computer science and researcher with CU �ֲ��ý’s BioFrontiers Institute. “Yet very few studies have been able to open the black box and take a look at their review process.”

Aaron Clauset

Sam Zhang

The findings raise an important question: To what degree are important scientific discoveries going unnoticed because their authors lack certain characteristics?

By calling out potential biases and making their dataset available to the public, the authors also hope to help journals improve their processes.

“With the rise of AI slop and the ability to mass produce junk science, the role of established gatekeepers like these elite journals becomes more important,” said first author Sam Zhang, an assistant professor of mathematics and statistics at University of Vermont who earned his doctorate in applied math from CU �ֲ��ý.

Probing the ‘science of science’

For a decade, Clauset has studied what he calls “the science of science,” scouring data to paint a clear picture of who enters (and leaves) academia, who gets tenure and whose ideas tend to spread.

“There is no science without scientists, so it’s important to know who has the opportunity to be ‘in the room’ so to speak, and who does not, to make discoveries,” said Clauset, who also serves as external faculty for the nonprofit Santa Fe Institute.

For the new study, Clauset and Zhang were joined by Dan Larremore, associate professor of computer science at CU, and Nick Laberge, then a doctoral candidate there. They analyzed anonymized manuscript records for 110,303 submissions to Science and Science Advances between 2016 and 2020.

Unlike topical journals, general interest journals cover everything from health to space to politics and are regularly covered by the mainstream media. They strongly influence careers, with grants and tenure often tied to publishing there.

The competition is stiff. In 2023 alone, Science received more than 15,000 submissions.

As a result, such journals have a two-tiered review process: In-house editors make a first pass and then enlist outside subject experts to make suggestions and then accept or reject.

Over five years, the study found, Science accepted just 6.1% of submissions; Science Advances accepted 10.5%. �ֲ��ý 83% of submissions to Science and nearly 75% to Science Advances were screened and rejected by in-house editors prior to undergoing peer review.

It also found that:

Papers with 10 or more authors are three times as likely to be published than papers with 1–5 authors.
Manuscripts with corresponding authors from the most prestigious institutions had an 11.6% acceptance rate, compared to 3.4% for those from the least prestigious institutions.
Studies with authors from China were more than three times less likely to be published than papers with U.S.- or Canada-based authors. Notably, authors with Chinese names, but based in the U.S., also faced a disadvantage.
Even pre-COVID, research related to viruses, infection, RNA and immune response had a six-fold greater likelihood of being accepted than research on politics, economics, gender and the societal dimensions of health.
Work by female corresponding authors was slightly less likely to be accepted. Had this trend not been there, Science would have published about 23 more papers by women per year.

“The fact that we find only a very marginal association with gender is in some sense reassuring,” said Clauset. “But the number is still not zero.”

Are editors and reviewers biased?

The authors stress that the findings do not prove journal editors or reviewers are inherently biased. Instead, they shine a light on questions they and other researchers should explore.

Are reviewers inherently biased toward papers that come from Harvard or Stanford, or are those papers truly of better quality?

Are journals somehow biased against Chinese-based researchers, or do Chinese government incentives and other factors prompt China-based authors to submit an inordinately high number of papers?

In the spirit of transparency, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the journals’ parent organization), volunteered to share the data, as long as the team developed a way to anonymize it.

“The current evidence suggests, overall, these journals seem to be doing pretty well at just treating the science as the science. But this is not a totally clean bill of health,” said Clauset. “In the current environment where the integrity of science is being attacked in bad faith, we need to be thinking about whether the processes at these journals live up to the ideals the scientific community has set for them.”

An analysis of 110,000 submissions to elite general science journals shows that researchers from prestigious universities are more than three times more likely to get published than those from lesser-known schools. Meanwhile, China-based researchers, small teams and social scientists face a disadvantage.

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What video evidence can reveal—and conceal

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:50:47 +0000

What video evidence can reveal—and conceal Megan M Rogers Tue, 07/14/2026 - 12:50

Lisa Marshall

From police body cams to cellphone videos, visual evidence plays a growing role in courtrooms and public discourse. CU �ֲ��ý researcher Sandra Ristovska explores the challenges of interpreting footage in the age of AI.

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Is it temple robbery? That depends on who is doing the taking

Megan M Rogers — Fri, 22 May 2026 12:40:55 +0000

Is it temple robbery? That depends on who is doing the taking Megan M Rogers Fri, 05/22/2026 - 06:40

A new book from CU �ֲ��ý scholar Isabel Köster examines temple robbery and the ancient Roman politics of moral blame.

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Heightened ICE enforcement harms US-born workers, shrinks workforce

Lisa Marshall — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:33:36 +0000

Heightened ICE enforcement harms US-born workers, shrinks workforce Lisa Marshall Mon, 05/04/2026 - 07:33

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Los Angeles in June 2025. Credit: U.S Department of Homeland Security

Lisa Marshall

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Los Angeles in June 2025. Credit: U.S Department of Homeland Security

Heightened immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration has not expanded job opportunities for U.S.-born workers and is associated with a reduction of employment for U.S.-born men with no more than a high school degree, according to new CU �ֲ��ý research.

The study also found that employment among remaining immigrants declines 4% on average after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge, likely due to a “chilling effect” in which they stop going to work out of fear.

The study is the first national assessment of the impact the Trump administration’s immigration policy has had on the labor market.

It was published May 4 by the nonprofit, non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

“We show that heightened ICE activity is harming the labor market overall, and we find no evidence that it is benefiting U.S.-born workers,” said author Chloe East, associate professor of economics at CU �ֲ��ý. “If anything, job opportunities for U.S.-born workers are going down as a result.”

Thousands of lost workers

For the study, East and co-author Elizabeth Cox, a research assistant with CU’s Institute for Behavioral Science, analyzed data from the federal Current Population Survey (CPS)—a monthly employment survey of about 59,000 households. They also looked at detailed data on ICE arrests across 58 regions around the country.

When comparing regions that had experienced a large and sudden increase in monthly ICE arrests between January 2025 and October 2025 with regions that had not, they found major differences in labor markets.

On average, in a region that had experienced an ICE surge, 4% fewer “likely undocumented” immigrants remaining in the community reported working in the previous week. (Because no U.S. survey asks for immigration status, economists use a proxy to estimate undocumented immigrant populations).

The study found no evidence that employers increased wages to attract U.S.-born workers to jobs once taken by undocumented immigrants, or that U.S. workers had more job opportunities after ICE enforcement surges.

But it did find that, on average, in regions which had experienced an ICE surge, 1.3% fewer U.S. born males with a high school degree or less had jobs.

These reductions in workforce are on top of the number of immigrants removed from communities through detention, arrest or deportation, notes East.

For instance, in a region where 1,200 people were arrested or detained by ICE over the study period, approximately 7,574 fewer undocumented immigrants and 1,200 fewer U.S.-born men with a high school degree or less would be employed, the study suggests.

“For every six male undocumented workers lost, we found that the labor market also loses one male U.S.-born worker,” said East.

Labor economist Chloe East

Employers cutting back

The CPS survey does not ask exactly why people leave the workforce. But previous studies of enforcement surges during the Great Depression and the Obama administration have shown that heightened immigration enforcement can have a chilling effect on remaining immigrant communities, prompting them to avoid going out in public—including for work.

That effect has been much stronger during the recent ICE surge than in previous enforcement upticks, the study suggests. That’s likely due to a change in tactics in which agents are arresting more people in public spaces, such as schools, streets and churches, and more people without criminal records are being detained.

Forty-three percent of U.S. immigrants report being concerned about themselves or someone they know being deported, according to previous research.

For U.S.-born workers, East said job opportunities can wither when employers—unable to find foreign laborers willing to do lower paying or more dangerous jobs—are forced to turn down jobs or decrease their production.

This phenomenon has been particularly strong for the U.S. agriculture sector, in which 17% of workers are undocumented, the manufacturing sector, in which 6% are undocumented, and the construction sector, in which 13% are undocumented.

For instance, in the construction sector, recent immigration enforcement surges appear to have had twice the average impact on U.S.-born workers with a high school degree or less, reducing their employment rate by 3%.

“There is a common narrative out there that mass deportations will free up job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, but numerous studies, including ours, have shown that is false,” said East. “If a construction company can’t find laborers, they’re going to take on less work and hire fewer people overall.”

Longer term, the contraction of the labor market could lead to other problems for the economy, reducing supply and driving prices of things like homes and manufactured goods up, said East.

“I hope our study gets people thinking beyond the headlines and rhetoric about the real economic impacts these enforcement actions are having on communities, the labor market and our pocketbooks,” she said.

A new study shows that heightened immigration enforcement reduces employment opportunities for some U.S. born men while shrinking the overall workforce, particularly in the construction, manufacturing and agriculture sectors.

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A fresh take on the 'COVID generation': How the pandemic may have changed young people for the better

Lisa Marshall — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:15:32 +0000

A fresh take on the 'COVID generation': How the pandemic may have changed young people for the better Lisa Marshall Tue, 04/21/2026 - 12:15

Lisa Marshall

At the peak of the pandemic in 2021, teenagers from Sackets Harbor, New York, got certified as ambulance drivers and took over running the local emergency medical service when the usual, much older, volunteers had to step away due to COVID-19 concerns.

Eight members, all under age 21, of the Sackets Harbor EMS Crew in December 2021. Many had to leave high school class when a call came in. (Credit: Amy Feiereisel, NCPR)

In Los Angeles, youth with the nonprofit Teen Line fielded texts and calls around-the-clock from peers struggling with mental health issues amid isolating school lockdowns.

Elsewhere, kids as young as 5 years old assembled care packages for community members in need, while teens fired up their schools’ 3D printers to churn out face coverings for essential workers.

“It is true that the pandemic was a very difficult time for many young people. But there is also a quieter, equally important story that needs to be told,” said sociologist Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at CU �ֲ��ý. “For some young people, it was also an awakening—a realization that they had the capacity to do something in the face of a crisis.”

In a new paper, published in the Journal of Hazard Literacy, Peek and her colleagues tell that story, analyzing more than 115 pandemic-era news articles to offer a fresh take on what some have referred to as the COVID generation.

Having grown up in the shadow of a global pandemic, with increased threats of natural disasters and mass shootings, today’s kids and young adults have often been framed as victims. But through her latest research, Peek—who has spent her career studying how disasters impact children and youth—illustrates the oft-overlooked strengths they bring to bear in times of crisis.

They can relate to young people in ways that adults can’t. They are fluent in digital technologies. And they often have more available energy and free time than busy adults can muster, she said. They’re also, as the paper concludes, more “disaster literate,” meaning they can identify who needs help and come up with creative solutions.

“With the rise in the number of disasters globally, we are growing a more disaster-literate generation,” said Peek. “The question now is, how do we harness what these young people have to offer?”

'Disasters are not equal opportunity events'

"Ring" by 17-year-old Shashank Salgam. "Me and my peers were hit hard by the isolation of quarantine, but we’re rebounding with a resolve to connect beyond boundaries," wrote the young artist in the caption of his painting.

For the study, Peek worked with Zoe Lefkowitz and Melissa Villarreal, both research assistants at the Natural Hazards Center and doctoral candidates in the sociology department, to develop a database of pandemic-related news articles from 2020 to 2023.

Most of the thousands of articles they found focused on kids’ vulnerabilities and what adults were doing to help them. They then conducted a qualitative analysis of 115 stories that included children’s voices, analyzing and coding them.

They found eight distinct ways kids behaved altruistically.

They ranged from making or collecting and distributing supplies, money and food, to creating art and offering emotional support for peers, to participating in vaccine research.

Peek noted that the children featured in the stories tended to, almost instinctively, recognize that some groups—like the elderly, people with disabilities, the unhoused and lower-income families—were hit harder than others.

“Disasters are not equal opportunity events, and kids realize this,” said Peek.

Lefkowitz was particularly moved by the story of 10-year-old Kaylan Park, who stood at a podium before a booing crowd at a school board meeting near Akron, Ohio, to support extending the district’s mask mandate after the omicron variant emerged.

“My teacher tells me when you do something for other people, they can do it back,” Park told the school board that day, wearing a mask reading “masks save lives.” “You’re showing kindness.”

Lefkowitz also pointed to other “micro” acts of altruism. Around the country, children painted rocks with messages like, “The best is yet to come,” and “This will pass,” and placed them along sidewalks around their neighborhood. Another put on a “mini prom” for his babysitter to help her celebrate the milestone she missed during school lockdowns.

COVID-era books written by children

Lasting impacts

Lori Peek works with youth volunteers in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

It’s unclear how these experiences are shaping children’s lives today, but research on adults offers clues.

One study looked at adults who volunteered to help after the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Years later, they reported that the experience had helped them heal from their own trauma and made them feel more connected to their community and empowered to create change.

“I would like to think that these children in our study understand the impact they made and that it changed their opinion of themselves,” said Lefkowitz. “I also hope they will remember the empathy they felt and, as they grow older, that will encourage them to address other inequalities that they see.”

Peek cautioned that she does not intend to "romanticize" the pandemic. It had real, negative impacts on children, their families, their schools and their communities. Oftentimes, kids had to step up because the institutions created by adults failed them.

But, if we overlook their agency, she said, we might undermine an opportunity to build a more resilient generation that is ready for the next disaster. She advises policymakers to create and support youth advisory boards to give young people a voice on pressing community issues and crises.

For parents who may be uncertain how to talk to their children about an ongoing disaster, she offered this advice: Ask them what they would like to do to help.

New research highlights the altruistic acts of youth during the pandemic and suggests that their experiences may have prepared them to respond to future disasters with greater empathy and resilience.

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Teens practice social distancing with masks on during the Covid-19 pandemic. Credit: Adobe Stock Images

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TikTok doesn't change minds—it changes moods

Megan M Rogers — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:47:29 +0000

TikTok doesn't change minds—it changes moods Megan M Rogers Fri, 03/27/2026 - 10:47

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

New research from CU �ֲ��ý political scientist Michelangelo Landgrave finds that watching political influencers on TikTok does not seem to influence young voters on the issues—but does leave them feeling sadder, angrier and more anxious.

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Society, Law & Politics

Only 1 in 3 people arrested by ICE have a criminal conviction

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