I find it hard to understand those who complain about ‘the youth of today’. So many portray them as lazy, flighty, selfish and irresponsible. Generation Me! In my experience things could not be further from the truth. If I look at my kids, their friends, my colleagues and friends kids what I see is a generation of hard workers anxious to get ahead and struggling with their fears for the future. Maybe I am just lucky with those I know but somehow I doubt that. Here I am referring to the second half of the Millennials and the early Generation Z, a cohort born from about 1990 to 2008.
Personally I find that they are mostly hard working, socially and environmentally aware and if anything a bit serious. I think while my age group peers and I are very hard working, we were certainly more light hearted and less worried about the future when we were first becoming adults. I speculate on why this would be and I would propose that it is a combination of the information deluge available as well as a more protective society making people more conscious of the future.
When it comes to information overload, there has been a dramatic change for these digital natives. What we have seen in the last 30 or so years has been the rise of social media, instant connectivity and mobiles in most people’s hands. For those coming of age in this era, they are overwhelmed with information, some true, much not. And I think this hyper awareness of the world at a young age has in some ways made them anxious about the future for themselves and others. Compare a teenager today with those from Generation X. I know that as a teen I would devour the main TV news at nine o’clock, watch documentaries presented by serious individuals on BBC2 in an an attempt to fill my curious mind. Much of that content was carefully researched and not sensationalized. And there was the library. Today much of the world’s knowledge is available literally at our fingertips. A click away on our phones. There is so much disinformation and plain lying going on that it is hard to weed out the truth these days without serious research skills. We’ve undergone 9–11, the war on terror, high school shootings, market crashes, massive rises in the cost of housing, unemployment surges, now a pandemic among other things that drive anxiety.
While many of these things are not new, they are vividly portrayed in real time omnichannel these days. In many ways those same elements were present and were the same or worse for previous generations. For those of us growing up with ‘The Troubles’ and entering adulthood with 15% mortgage rates and 10% unemployment some of today’s issues don’t seem so bad. Perhaps only the pandemic is a generation defining event for this cohort.
On the other side we’ve seen the rise in helicopter parenting, nanny states, CCTV everywhere, living lives in public on the internet, and a general interference in people’s lives. When those of us from Gen-X and before grew up, we roamed free and wide as young kids. I remember around tea time on a Saturday, you would hear the calls of mothers, yelling ‘dinner’, so their kids would come home. Even having grown up that way I will admit to being much more cautious with my own kids, having grown up in an much more information rich world. So I can only imagine the thoughts of more recent generations. I think this has made us all more anxious about the future and more prone to think about what is going to happen than in the past. We also have longer lives and more leisure time so the future is more important and more ‘real’ for us. And in these days, its not possible to make a mistake in private, as the ubiquity of cameras and the ease of publishing means we are very visible in a way that previous generations were not.
I think all of this leads to a generation that worries more about the future and also their current image than previous generations did. Thus it is mostly hard working, hoping to get ahead of the curve. This is of course a good thing in many ways as key topics such as the environment and mental illness are now front of mind for many. We know we can live longer if we take care of ourselves and we also know we need to fund that retirement. But such anxiety can lead to either paralysis or a burning desire to get ahead, or even both. And it definitely leads to a more serious outlook.
Of course, the definition of a generation is debatable. To some extent it is an arbitrary grouping of people in certain age groups. And I am certain that there are both similarities and differences between individuals that are greater than any ‘generational’ characteristics. Much of the age range I think of is not that young any more and I grouped 2 of the traditional generations together as the digital expansion happened between them.
But my main thesis, that in my experience, the ‘youth of today’ are responsible, hard working, serious and forward looking, still holds in my opinion. Yes there are challenges in life and that has made them anxious, but they are not held back by this.
Please feel free to comment and debate this. Share your own experiences and thoughts. And if you like this please follow me to encourage me to post more in the area of societal trends.
A few references among the many on the topic.
What Are the Core Characteristics of Generation Z? — The Annie E. Casey Foundation (aecf.org)
Parenting Kids With Anxiety — The Atlantic
5 Characteristics of Millennials in the Workplace (lbmc.com)
For the nest 2 pieces of data click on MAX to see the long term numbers.
United Kingdom Unemployment Rate — January 2022 Data — 1971–2021 Historical (tradingeconomics.com)
