What’s It Like To Be Young These Days?

image CC0 from pexels.com from back in the days before AI Each year, a number of surveys are carried out in Europe and North America to assess what today’s youths (defined as those in their late teens and early twenties) see as the major issues facing them, and our world. The “top ten” issues don’t change much over time. You won’t be surprised that I’m more interested in why they say these issues are important, than in an arbitrary ‘ranking’. So I read what I could find about them, focusing specifically on narratives rather than scores. A lot of what I read resonated with my own experiences, and those of my kids and now my grandkids. Most of what concerns them, I think more now than ever, are personal issues. As a boomer, I grew up in a time of hopeful idealism, believing that, with such large numbers, we could change the world. I sense that today’s young people have no such delusions, and really feel powerless, so it’s no surprise that ‘abstract’ issues they see as out of their…