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For all you naysayers who aren’t so thrilled with the It Gets Better project, here’s something you might find more to your flavor palate of queer social media activism—We Are the Youth, a new photographic journalism project chronicling the individual stories of LGBTQ youth in the United States. Creators Laurel Golio and Diana Scholl, both of Brooklyn (holla!), see the project as fundamentally collaborative—they’re looking to document young queers near and far, giving their subjects the chance to tell their own stories in their own words. No one’s giving any false platitudes here—because they’re not interested in what will happen in the future. This project is firmly rooted in the here & now, giving queer youth the chance to be seen & heard exactly as they are in their own lives, right now. And as a proud New York intellectual elitist, I can tell you that the photojournalism in this project is really high caliber (not like those awful, hyperbolically overwritten uber-pulp lesbian novels you had to sneak home under your sweater in high school).

To start you off, here are a few of the more recent entries: Anna, Age 19, Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Audri, Age 15, Laurel, MS; and Magda, Age 17, Brooklyn, NY. All photos by Laurel Golio, & interviews by Diana Scholl. Are you a young queer, under 21, interested in participating in this project? Get in touch with We Are the Youth at hello@wearetheyouth.org.

Click here to read Anna's interview

Click here to read Audri's interview

Click here to read Magda's interview