In Maurice Sendak’s famed 1963 children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, a distressed and frustrated boy named Max conjures up a world inside his bedroom. After being sent to bed by his mother without supper for misbehaving, Max, dressed head to toe in a wolf-suit, grows trees and vines and sails through oceans to a far-off land. There he encounters monsters. But instead of running away or sailing home, Max chooses to tame them in spite of their scary roars and sharp teeth. He becomes the king of all wild things.
Like Max, our world in 2026 is filled with endless monsters we try to tame. In our rooms, we build our own artificial forests, with phones and blue-light screens stretching across our purviews like redwoods that shield the sky. Online algorithms flood our brains with information, with each wave of dopamine hitting us like salt water swells that inevitably erode rock over time. And the fears of social humiliation, rejection, and failure morph into yellow-eyed beasts in the wild with deadly claws and ferocious growls. Still, we’re made to think that we too can rule this world. That, just like Max, we can put on our own crowns and stare into the belly of the beast. That is to say that in theory we can self-regulate, manage the wild artificiality of social media by force, and leave our siloed rooms in a heartbeat.
When Max becomes the king of all wild things, though, he finds himself trapped in a world of illusions and false authority. He becomes the ringleader of a rumpus he unleashes – and in the process becomes isolated. We too have ceded power by engaging with the monster. We’ve left our communities and journeyed into the pits of high-definition despair as solo warriors.
Take AI, the incessantly buzzworthy topic of Silicon Valley and the recurring thorn in teachers’ sides. AP English Literature and German teacher David Blumberg has wrestled with the ethics of Artificial Intelligence and its ability to foster mindless cheating. “We have to kind of ask the question again to ourselves about what is integrity? If you’re using AI, at what point does it no longer become your work that you’re putting out there…Where do you draw that line between plagiarism and original work?” Blumberg added that AI is also designed to manipulate the human conscience. “What’s interesting is that people seek out those ideas that conform with their own right. They listen to the people who are just kind of confirming what they already believe. And AI actually does a very similar thing in the way it responds to you…or if you catch it in some kind of mistake…It says ‘Oh, of course you’re right’ and it confirms you in a way that is ultimately manipulative.”
Just like AI, social media and a constant stream of information through our phones numbs us to a world of curated highlight reels and rage-bait content. And then of course there’s politics, corporate overlords, Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse, the stress of college decisions, finals week, and – Oh, just when you forget, climate change lurking behind us in the shadows, ticking away like the doomsday clock that’s now just 85 seconds until midnight. No wonder we’re stressed. Ruling a kingdom of chaos that feels like the weight of the world is not the job of a teenager.
As Max sits in sadness though, he begins to smell the distant aroma of food “from far away across the world.” Max decides that his make-believe journey must end and that the “wild” is a place to visit, but not a place to live. So he sails back home.
It’s now our time to leave as well. Today, reclaiming our autonomy looks different than the advice we’ve been sold. It means recognizing the things we cannot change. Instead of just fighting the monsters, we have to find the courage to leave them behind. For many, that means putting down the phone and proactively setting boundaries.
“Just shut it off. I think to some degree it’s as simple as that,” said Blumberg.
Senior Colbie Freese added, “I use social media regularly to communicate…but I can also find it can really restrict the time I want to spend on a lot of activities. So I have this app called Toggl Track, and I would recommend it to any high school student I know, just because it helps you get some autonomy over what you spend your time doing. For instance, it allows me to track what all of my activities are, and I can see a weekly summary of what I’m spending my time doing.”
But beyond simply rejecting the tools that have come to dominate our lives, we must also actively seek out the social institutions and real-world forests and oceans; These are the wild things that are timeless and rooted in human nature and development. Once we finally reconnect, we can find ways as a community to tackle real-world issues fueled by a common good and cooperation. As Blumberg said, “step back, let your eyes adjust to the actual light around you and the reality of the world around you, which includes of course, the people who are around you and also nature.”
Freese, an outdoors-person, who understands that on the surface nature can sound like a daunting hobby, said, “…when people think of someone being outdoorsy, they think of them being some grand rock climber or some guy who likes to climb Mount Everest…I think people will understand the value that just spending 20 minutes outside can do for your mental health. It doesn’t necessarily need to be going for this five mile run or joining the tennis team. It’s just going outside with a friend and saying, ‘Hey, rather than just playing video games or watching this movie, do you want to go for a walk around the Lafayette Reservoir?’”
When we finally return home to a place where we aren’t kings and queens, but simply ourselves, we might just find that the world waiting for us isn’t as cynical and volatile as our screens make it seem. While there are still monsters lurking in the shadows that need to be defeated, life isn’t always a five alarm fire. It’s mostly a lot of routine, conversations with friends, and evening suppers waiting for you when you return…and they’re still hot.
