Young People and Politics

[Syt]

... and some youths are interested in nothing much. According to Fortune, anyways. Though they do point out that there might be issues with the work market if people drop out over lack of perspective, which seemed surprising for Fortune.

https://fortune.com/2024/06/21/gen-z-neets-not-in-employment-education-or-training/

Gen Z are increasingly becoming NEETs by choice—not in employment, education, or training

Just like Peter Pan, there's a growing cohort of Gen Zers who are refusing to grow up and embrace life's major milestones to adulthood, like getting some form of qualification or joining the world of work.

Instead, they're opting to become NEETs—which stands for "not in employment, education, or training"—and creating record levels of youth unemployment around the world.

According to the International Labour Organization, about a fifth of people between ages 15 and 24 worldwide in 2023 are currently NEETs.

In Spain alone, over half-a-million 15- to 24-year-olds are neither studying nor working. Meanwhile in the U.K., almost 3 million Gen Zers are now classed as economically inactive—with 384,000 youngsters joining the "workless" class since the COVID pandemic.

The studies don't delve into what's inspiring young people to ditch the rat race and opt for a life under their parent's roof or on public subsidies, but separate research highlights that even if they did start climbing the corporate ladder, buying a home of their own still feels like an impossible task.

Adulthood milestones are seemingly out of reach anyway

Reams of research shows that those in their early twenties are earning less, have more debt, and see higher delinquency rates than millennials did at their age.

Credit reporting agency TransUnion found that twentysomethings today are taking home around $45,500, while millennials at their age were earning $51,852 when adjusted for inflation.

Despite earning less, young people today are being forced to dig deep for basic necessities like food, groceries, and gas, thanks to inflation. Meanwhile, house prices have increased more than twice as fast as income has since the turn of the millennium.

This divergence goes a long way in explaining why young people may feel like saving—or even working—toward the future is futile.

As one Gen Zer noted in Fortune: "I'm just focusing on the present because the future is depressing."

Hustling is so last season

Hustling, girlbossing, or "work hard, play harder" just doesn't quite have the same grip on Gen Z as it did on millennials starting out.

Many young people today would rather protect their well-being than compete their way up the corporate ladder only to not be able to afford the McMansion their parents bought for a fraction of the price.

Even those who do want to work don't want a career. Instead, many Gen Zers are eyeing up easygoing jobs that don't require regular overtime, antisocial working hours, or substantial responsibilities like managing a large team.

Others are avoiding office jobs: The hottest roles right now among Gen Z grads are in teaching, where low pay is balanced with weeks of vacation. Meanwhile, non-grad Gen Zers are picking up tools and taking up trade jobs in record numbers.

Mental health struggles

At the same time as unemployment among the youth is rising, their mental health is in decline.

Gen Z are nearly twice as stressed out as millennials were at their age. More than a third of 18- to 24-year-olds are suffering from a "common mental disorder" (CMD) like stress, anxiety, or depression. And Gen Zers who are working are taking significantly more sick leave than Gen Xers 20 years their senior.

"Youth worklessness due to ill health is a real and growing trend; it is worrying that young people in their early twenties, just embarking on their adult life, are more likely to be out of work due to ill health than those in their early forties," researchers at the think tank Resolution Foundation (RF) previously told Fortune.

Really, is it any surprise that those mentally struggling would avoid joining the world of work when more than half of CEOs even admit that their company's culture is toxic?

It would seem there would be a big potential amongst the young for radical political views, anything to break up the status quo that offers them so little. But I feel a lot of them are just completely disengaging because, "What's the point?" Especially with societies growing ever older, and the old voters outnumbering the young ones easily.

[Sheilbh]

That UK stay is a bit dodgy - "economically inactive" means not in or looking for work basically. But it includes students and early retirees.

So I suspect gap of 3 million economically inactive and the 350-400k in the "workless class" is that the other 2.5 million plus Gen Zers are in some form of education.

You could write a story about the most educated generation in British history, or lazy youths I suppose

Edit: And FWIW that's exactly what the British press did on those stats. The Mail covered the lazy youth angle and the Guardian educated youth.

[Sheilbh]

Fairly grim anonymous article from a teacher about boys. Feels bad that loads of kids seem to be equating entrepreurism and business with scams and crypto (also - tied to politics the one thing those and the far-right have in common: zero faith in institutions).

A teacher friend of mine said they'd discussed banning phones during the school day (admittedly at an all-girls school) and the reaction was "feral". His experience was very much that it was people with a serious addiction:

'Little bitch': the shocking reality of teaching teenage boys
I've taught for 20 years but the level of rude disregard for female staff is unprecedented — and phones and TikTok are to blame
Anonymous
Wednesday August 14 2024, 12.01am, The Times

'What am I meant to do, go and say sorry like a little bitch?" said the 15-year-old boy sitting beside me in a quiet room halfway through the school day. He had refused to apologise to his classroom teacher for his disruption of her lesson. It had been insidious, low-level nuisance stuff: he'd been swinging on his chair, answering back and wouldn't stop talking.

I'm a senior pastoral leader within a comprehensive school in southwest England, so students are often sent my way when there's a stalemate. What was depressingly clear was that this child's refusal to apologise was connected to the fact that his teacher was a woman, and saying sorry would mean that he, a male, would lose face.

I can't overstate the influence of social media influencers in school. TikTok is the worst offender. The nuance of what they're watching is repeated in the classroom. Phrases and memes "trend": it's cries of alpha (dominant), beta (weak), sigma (cool); it's shouting "pussy" in the corridor.

What may surprise you is that the school I work in is highly regarded and serves an affluent community. These are the children of doctors and professionals. Yet there is a huge disconnect between what the parents believe their kids are watching and their actual online lives.

We're meant to be a phone-free school, which should mean that students do not access their phones during the day; phones are in bags and they're not allowed to get them out. But the reality is that they go to the toilets to be on their phones or are quietly messaging under the table while more oblivious teachers are otherwise engaged.

We've got staff who have been at the school for decades and they are shocked by this new defiance, which they're ill-equipped to deal with. We have record numbers of teachers leaving, fatigued by the levels of disruption to their lessons from repeat offenders. I started teaching 20 years ago and I've never seen this level of boisterous uninterest in what female staff have to say.

Recently, I reminded one boy in a larger group of boys to put his tie on at the beginning of the school day. He went to do this immediately, but as he did so, his friend called him "beta" for listening to me, a member of staff with not insignificant authority but a woman nonetheless. When I challenged the second boy on this attitude, his response was one of arrogance, chest puffed and eyes darting about as I spoke to him as he tried to gauge the impact his defiance was having on his peers.

I felt that perhaps, when taken away and spoken to in a quieter moment, he could see reason and half-engaged with my explanation of why this was wrong. But what a difficult line to walk, when I know that he spends up to six hours a day watching shorts of angry men explaining why we shouldn't listen to women, and I am the woman who is reinforcing everything they say by telling the pupil he is wrong.

This is not just typical teen behaviour: boys playing football will step in line quickly when reminded not to tackle hard, the boys in the dining hall will apologise when they are reminded not to raise their voices to unreasonable levels. Instead, this is a sub-group across each of our year groups, performing behaviours that are all the more alarming because of the ways they mirror each other. Video footage of the recent riots across the UK — in which boys as young as 12 were involved — were all the more depressing because they looked so familiar to me: groups of boys egging each other on in damaging ways.

I had a lesson recently where Andrew Tate was mentioned by a boy who remarked on all the cars and money he seemed to have as a reason that he was someone to emulate. One of the girls tried to cut in and say, "But you do understand that he's a bad person?" And the boy said, "Well, you can't say that; he's doing pretty well for himself." At this point I added, "He's also someone awaiting trial for sexual offences. And I think we're going to shut this conversation down." Wealth equals good in class, with little regard for how it is achieved.

In discussions with these specific boys I ask them about their aspirations. Many of them articulate that they want to be "rich and have nice cars" by being entrepreneurs. When I dig into this, they seem to believe that an MLM scheme (multi-level marketing, otherwise known as pyramid selling), drop-shipping or gaming will make this a reality for them. I have quite a few students who say they're trading already. Cryptocurrency, I believe. They simply say they're trading and are as young as 14. The value and necessary endeavour of hard work seems to be lost on these boys. And as for the counterpart girls to this set of boys, their aspiration is simply to have wealthy husbands.

It's not all bad. As kids mature through their GCSE years, many start to engage with a wider range of voices, as students always do. And some do come out the other side as balanced individuals. Most will go to university and are expected to get good grades on A-level results day tomorrow. Inevitably, though, there are students we lose, students whose views cannot be changed.

For most schools, mine included, the problem year group at the moment are the students who are going to be in Year 11 next month. They're the students who never transitioned properly, having started secondary school in bubbles during strict post-lockdown conditions, so never had that sense of pecking order going into a whole new school environment. They weren't socialised in their communities, nor were they policed by adults other than their parents, which young people need. They spent the most time online at a point when it probably had the most impact on them as developing young people.

Now the problem is that most of us adults are two steps behind and not equipped to understand the speed at which TikTok videos trend. By the time we've gleaned what one phrase means, it has been deemed no longer "cool" by Year 8 and we're locked out of the conversation.

"Miss, do you think I am a sigma?" one child asked me recently, to much sniggering from his peers. Sigma, as I didn't know at the time, meant popular but also silently rebellious. In those lags of understanding between students and staff, ideas become deeply rooted, rabbit holes are explored and significant damage is done, for we cannot establish informed discussion.

What I can tell you, from the coalface, is that for young men to succeed through school and beyond they need to believe they can do well, feel a deep sense of belonging within their classrooms and, most crucially, feel respected by the staff in front of them. Too many male students I've spoken to have articulated that the thing that most bothers them about learning is the sense that their teacher does not like them.
The writer has chosen to remain anonymous

And on belonging I've mentioned it before but I think that is the biggest thing gangs, radical ideology or con artists (like the crypto guys) offer.

Edit: Incidentally on this I did enjoy that the Telegraph can still wheel out some bracingly, blustery old colonel in the shires style of reactionary.

Saw a clip of a columnist on GB News recently who said that he thinks social media companies should be treated like publishers or broadcasters (I sympathise). So they are responsible for what's distributed on their platform.
GB Host, exploding: "but that would shut Twitter down!"
Telegraph: "Yeah, that's my point."
GB: "That's just destroying conversation online!"
Telegraph: "So? We can talk in person"

[Crazy_Ivan80]

They're finally starting to talk about making school phone free.
I hope they don't talk too long.

That said: the school my oldest goes to has a no phone policy, but it's an exception among schools AFAIK.

As for social media... I wonder if it shouldn't be classified as a drug

[Valmy]

Shutting Twitter down would save conversation online, Twitter is what destroyed it in the first place.

[crazy canuck]

They're finally starting to talk about making school phone free.
I hope they don't talk too long.

That said: the school my oldest goes to has a no phone policy, but it's an exception among schools AFAIK.

As for social media... I wonder if it shouldn't be classified as a drug

It is becoming policy in this province . All the political parties support phone bans in school.

[Sheilbh]

I think that is DofE policy - the practice is challenging. There are proposals and a campaign for basically banning smartphones for under-16s. Not sure but I can certainly see the argument.

[Tonitrus]

I perhaps don't appreciate enough that my academic institution has military disciplinary standards. 

[Josquius]

I remember back when I was in school, long before smart phones, phones were basically banned.
 you couldn't use them at break time, using them during class would be like standing up and shouting "fuck sticks" .
I wonder when things changed.

But overall aye. Big problems for young boys these days. I wonder if this is an English speaking world thing  or they're seeing it abroad too? I hope/guess it's nowhere near as bad.

As to twitter and destroying conversation - strikes me this is something an academic should have looked into. Anyone heard of any research into the correlation between the rise in social media and decline in old school forums? I wonder when the key tipping points were.
A fair few years after Facebook dropped it's awesome uni link closed network system I'd guess.

[The Brain]

What's the main problem with having phones in school? People just looking at their phones during breaks? Online bullying?

[Oexmelin]

lol, during breaks.

[The Brain]

lol, during breaks.

Why would anyone allow phones to be turned on in class?

[Oexmelin]

Students, whether kids or young adults, engage in all sorts of behavior that aren't allowed in the classroom. Being distracted by stuff, writing notes to your comrades, looking out window are time-honored classroom traditions. What's new is that you do all these things on a small device can easily be concealed from a professors view, is so widespread as to interrupt teaching (at least in high school), and for which previous attempts to ban said device, therefore requiring phones to be left, say, on a teacher's desk or simply out of school, has been ferociously fought by parents.

[Tamas]

lol, during breaks.

Why would anyone allow phones to be turned on in class?

How old are you? This sounds like a question of somebody who never was a student or has dementia or something. 

[Tamas]

<snip>

I'll be damned. A teacher finding the students disrespectful and ungovernable, engrossed in a new cultural phenomenon to the point of self-ruin.

I now have seen everything.