Campaigns

With two active campaigns, Project Unloaded has reached more than a quarter of American teens with a positive, engaging message: We’re safer unarmed. Through these campaigns, we don’t try to chastise or scare young people into staying away from guns. Instead, we aim to activate their own curiosity and empower them with the information they need to choose for themselves not to own or use guns.

Why teens? Because the teen years are a formative period for decision making about guns. While it’s much harder to change the minds of adults, young people are still forming their views and want to learn more. Our research shows that young people are particularly receptive to fact-based information about the risks that come with having and using guns.

Research on young people’s attitudes, knowledge and behaviors toward guns, along with the input of real teens, provide the foundation for our SNUG (Safer Not Using Guns) and Guns Change the Story campaigns, leveraging the power of social media and Gen Z to change the narrative when it comes to guns and gun violence.

You SNUG?

The SNUG (Safer Not Using Guns) campaign educates and empowers teens through simple facts about gun violence absent partisan or polarizing rhetoric. The campaign, which launched in January 2022, reaches teens in the (virtual) places where they spend their time: Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. SNUG reaches young people via native content, influencer campaigns and targeted ads.

of teens shifted against the idea that guns made them safer after seeing the SNUG pilot campaign

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Teens have engaged with SNUG social media content

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More than 80% of comments on SNUG influencer posts are positive

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Guns Change the Story

A walk home from school. A pickup game at the park. Siblings goofing around. When a gun is present, everyday moments can turn dangerous and deadly. Project Unloaded’s second campaign, Guns Change the Story, combines mad-lib style stories with video footage of real teens living their lives to highlight how having a gun around makes life riskier. The campaign is geared at Black and Latino teens in communities disproportionately impacted by gun violence. It launched in December 2023 in select cities.

This campaign followed an extensive research process in which we found:

Teens engaged with campaign content

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Times that campaign videos were watched to completion

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Cities where the campaign reaches teens impacted by gun violence

Engaging Gen Z Content Creators

More than 50 Gen Z content creators have worked with Project Unloaded since our founding, leveraging the platforms they’ve built on social media to reach young people with the message that guns make us less safe. Through this program, we intentionally build relationships with creators who don’t typically talk about politics or engage in social issues to try to reach teens online who may swipe past more traditional messages about guns and safety. And it’s effective.

creators engaged across TikTok, YouTube & Instagram

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audience reached by our influencer partners

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positive comments on influencer partner social content

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Credit: @/itslacymae

Credit: @/beingmylen

Help Stop Gun Violence

To turn the page on gun violence, we must tell a different story about guns. With your help, we can grow our work and save lives.