Emma González is a survivor of the Parkland attack and, in its aftermath, she has quickly become one of the most visible leaders of the new push for gun control in this country. In the last two months she has debated an N.R.A. spokesman on live television and faced a wave of extremist trolls.  And, seemingly overnight, she and her classmates from Marjory Stoneman Douglas forged a national movement, #NeverAgain, which gathered hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country in an event billed as the “March for Our Lives.”

González spoke to David Remnick on the phone from her home in Florida. In their conversation, she explains how her life has changed since the shooting, and why activism comes surprisingly naturally to high-school students: “We know how to keep people's attention on us because we're teenagers, and we have the phones.”