Finding Community in a Smartphone Age: How TeenPact Shaped One Young Journalist

Finding Genuine Community in an Age of Digital Connection

High schoolers today inhabit a strange tension: they are endlessly connected yet still searching for places where they can be known in ways that feel real. Text threads and social media feeds offer companionship on demand, but genuine community—the kind that welcomes questions, respects convictions, and grows through shared purpose—often feels painfully out of reach.

For Ellen Reynolds Purnell, that kind of community emerged at the TeenPact State Class in Florida. She still remembers attending in 2014 and being “thrilled to return as a staffer the next year.” The experience didn’t stay local for long. She staffed in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and later at TeenPact’s Judicial Alumni Event in Virginia, each time widening her circle of mentors and friends.

She describes high school as a time when many students “can be lonely,” especially “in the age of smartphone ubiquity.” Even for students with strong support at home, she says, “it will enrich your life to spend time with peers . . . who love Jesus and want to serve His kingdom.” That kind of connection—rooted in shared faith and purpose—became a defining thread in her teenage years.

Lessons, Leadership, and Unexpected Paths

Ellen talks often about TeenPact’s mission, but what rises to the top for her is its focus on spiritual formation. “The most important part of the mission . . . is inspiring participants to deeper relationships with their Savior,” she says. She remembers the program as a place where she was both discipled and given the opportunity to disciple others—an experience that shaped not only her walk with Christ but her sense of responsibility to the world around her.

She is equally clear-eyed about the civic training TeenPact provides. “It seeks to help young people understand the political process, value their liberty, defend the Christian faith, and engage the culture,” she notes. “I’m lucky enough that not only do I get to do that in my personal life, I get paid to do it.”

One of the most formative turns in her story came through a disappointment. She hoped—deeply—to join TeenPact’s traveling internship during her senior year. When she wasn’t accepted, she says, “I was devastated. (Looking back, it was a much-needed lesson in humility!)” But the empty semester it created allowed her to take additional AP classes, which later opened space in her college schedule.

That margin mattered. At Patrick Henry College, where she majored in government, she added a journalism minor almost on a whim. And when internships in Washington, D.C., and New York collapsed in 2020 due to Covid restrictions, the schedule flexibility she had gained years earlier gave her room to accept an internship at The Federalist. “My current career path,” she says, “is actually kind of the result of a butterfly effect that started with not getting accepted” as a TeenPact intern.

“TeenPact is a great laboratory for learning practical and moral leadership lessons, and gives you a deeper opportunity to cultivate friendships in a way that only working alongside each other can.” —Ellen

From Classroom to Newsroom

Today Ellen works as assignment editor at The Federalist, where she has overseen a team of reporters through the 2024 election season, interviewed national political leaders, and covered education controversies—including the Loudoun County Public Schools scandal—on the ground with local parents. She has made appearances on Newsmax and Fox Business and was part of a team nominated for the Dao Prize in 2024.

She traces many of the practical abilities she uses today back to her TeenPact years: the leadership lessons, the experience of working alongside peers and mentors, and the courage to engage culture with clarity and conviction. “I have TeenPact to thank for growing me in lots of different—and all wonderful—ways,” she says.

But even with all the skills she gained, she comes back to one theme again and again: community. What mattered most was the chance to work alongside peers and mentors, share responsibility, build trust, and learn how faith shapes public life. “The most important void TeenPact fills,” she says simply, “relates to community.”

In a world where digital communication often substitutes for real connection, TeenPact continues to offer something countercultural: a place where young people learn, serve, practice leadership, and build relationships strong enough to shape their futures. Ellen’s story is one example of how those relationships continue to ripple outward—into faith, into vocation, and into the public square.

Ellen’s reporting can be found at The Federalist, and her voice continues to influence conversations about culture, education, and civic life. And behind stories like hers stand donors, volunteers, and mentors whose support makes the work of TeenPact possible, year after year.

“Whether through friendships, leadership lessons, or spiritual mentorship, TeenPact gave me tools and experiences that continue to guide me every day,” Ellen says.