How do teens, born after the attacks, relate to 9/11?

Born years after the September 11 attacks, teens like Victoria Sweet only know what they were taught in school about the day America came under attack.

“They just kind of showed us videos of the airplanes hitting, but there really wasn’t much and didn’t go in-depth,” Victoria said.

There is no real attachment to the moments that captured the attention of adults 20 years ago.

FGCU student Liam Borg, born four years after 9/11, learned what happened in school.

The only connection Borg has to the World Trade Center is that his mother once worked in one of the Twin Towers years before the attack.

“I thought that that could have been my mother. That was people’s mothers. That was people’s fathers,” Borg said. “Those were people that had family and friends. and then they were just gone.”

How do students form emotions about historical events like Sept. 11?

FGCU professor of history Jeff Fortney takes his students back to well before the attacks even happened.

“Showing them here is how things were before 9/11, here is how this flashpoint event happens, and afterward, how it is carried over in the world that they live in now,” Fortney said.

For students like Borg, he has an entirely different view of the war in Afghanistan than perhaps someone alive during the 9/11 attacks.

Teens told WINK News it was really up to them to seek out information on the attacks to get the full context of what really happened.