Epistemic status: Quite uncertain! A lot of what this post says is anecdotal, and possibly the main thing I'd be excited to see comments on, beyond critiques on the main idea, is whether these ideas are already being taken quite seriously by people in CB/community health!
Executive summary: EA and EA-adjacent programs that deal with young people (under the age of 18) should be more aware of a passive prescriptivism that can overtake their worldview, and about fears of parasociality in this space.
There appear to be a few organisations (Leaf and Non-Trivial are the two most prominent examples) aimed at running programs that are aimed towards teenagers, most often students in sixth form or equivalent.
These courses aren't explicitly about EA, and are closer to courses on specific subjects or skills (such as mathematics, rationality, or research skills). Non-Trivial's inspiration page does a good job of explaining their motivations and their relationship with the idea of EA and its community.
Nevertheless, when in the shoes of a student in one of these programs, I fear that the promises of such a community are often too great not to consider strongly. In my personal experience, EA came at a time in which I was struggling with what my life was going to shape up to be at the end of school, and the idea of a community of individuals doing something impactful sounded like a no-brainer.
It's this no-brainer mentality that I want to gently push back on, both retrospectively in my own life and as a warning-lite to other young individuals who were in my shoes.
I want to highlight two ideas that I think, combined with a higher degree of insight from those who work with young individuals in this space, would help this community to an extent.
Worldview Building
I was quite quick to jump into submerging EA into my identity; a lot of the talking points made sense in my worldview at the time: I wanted to do good in the world, and staring at code all day was fun, but wasn't tangibly going to do anything to help the world on its own.
I fear that this worldview is something that gets deprioritised in conversations about EA to young people, considering a history of being insensitive to different or less WEIRD worldviews.
Holding workshops about this seems like a good start, and it'd be encouraging to see more young EAs engage more critically about their worldview, but without the supplemental material to fill that void.
One thing I wished was that my worldview was talked about more in descriptive terms; a less prescriptivist manner would have possibly done more good for my mental health! This, however, was probably exacerbated more by discussions on AI safety than general EA ideas.
Demystifying Individuals
This section is probably the more hot-take part of this post, but I do fear a celebrity culture in EA.
The idea of parasocial relationships is already quite the messy can of worms, and I don't think I have too much to add in terms of substantive arguments for why, or if, this occurs in this space.
However, I do want to point out my own anecdotal experience that a lot of EA conferences highlight a mystique around certain figures in spaces: those perceived as having takes that are of 'higher importance' almost by virtue of association alone rather than their work.
I fear that even if this is a minor issue, it would only get larger as this space becomes larger, with a higher degree of pressure to be the most engaging in the content culture we exist in, and I particularly worry about what this means to young EAs who are trying to get their head around who or what is worth paying attention to.
EA is deficient in character training. Now, teaching character is best done through interpersonal interactions, but here's a rough summary of some things for young EAs.