Missed youth?

[mids2019]

Have our young people been denied their youth?

I was thinking of the number of experiences the youth of today are missing compared to the children earlier generations e.g the 60s and 80s.

No parties
No nightclubs
Missed opportunities to socialise
Missed opportunities to form relationships
Disrupted education
A dystopian University experience

When our current 18 year olds look back at their lives at 30 when buried in their careers and childcare will they look back and think....

We really were screwed weren't we?

Can you comprehend that? It's temporary.

Social mobility is declining

• ▪ *Poverty - 600,000 more children are now living in relative poverty than in 2012 and this is projected to increase further due to benefit changes and coronavirus, it says in its report
• ▪ *Schools - At 16, only 24.7% of disadvantaged students get a good pass in English and Maths GCSE compared with 49.9% of all other pupils
• ▪ *Employment - Half of all adults from the poorest backgrounds receive no training at all after leaving school
• ▪ *Health - Life expectancy is falling for women in the most deprived 10% of areas, the commission says, and health inequalities linked to socio-economic background have been exposed by coronavirus.

these issues are temporary?

"Some 38% of 25 to 34-year-olds are homeowners, down from 55% a decade earlier, in part owing to rising house prices.
The average age of first-time buyers has risen from 31 to 33 over the same 10 years"

Temporary?

"The High Pay Centre has clever ways to illuminate the way we live now: the average FTSE 100 CEO earns more in three working days than the average employee in a year. The 1,000 people featured in the 2019 Sunday Times Rich List together earned £771bn: that’s six times the cost of the NHS. There were 151 UK billionaires. To imagine owning a billion, here’s the centre’s best eye-popping fact: if you had earned £1,000 a day since Jesus died and kept it under the mattress, you still wouldn’t have accumulated £1bn."

temporary?

@goggyy

This is a worldwide pandemic I'm commenting on. I think a lot of your data is about the UK. It doesn't exactly help the UK that the income tax is so low (too low) while wanting scandi type healthcare and schooling, and I don't think Brexit will help either.

Yes, I do think that for most of the world this is temporary. Do you really want me to find figures from the rest of the world where the politicians fucked up less? Because I don't really feel spending my saturday like that and I think you are very short sighted to think that the rest of the world has tge same figures.

re: Glastonbury and other festivals

the country's largest supplier of high tech professional audio and stage equipment to festivals and touring artists recently laid off a quarter of its workforce

i know a guy who runs an AV business that's been trading successfully for 25 years. A few years ago he made all 20 permanent staff redundant and made the company dormant. He is heartbroken.

Many venues and theatres and associated businesses such as events and hospitality (which both employ and are used predominantly by younger people) are totally on their knees and are simply not going to open up again even if/when coronavirus is in itself no longer a problem.

We will soon be living in a cultural wasterland.

@rorosemary
well I presumed the OP was talking about the UK?

I mean if the OP was talking about the global youth why would she be mentioning parties, education & university?

I mean if the OP was talking about the global youth why would she be mentioning parties, education & university?

You don't think we have that in the rest of the world? I did put in one of my earlier comments that I wasn't in the UK.

Because I don't really feel spending my saturday like that and I think you are very short sighted to think that the rest of the world has tge same figures.

Was the thread about the youth across the globe? Where did I say my points were relevant to the world? Every economy is different.

If we are going to start comparing to the rest of the world where do we set the bar since 800m are starving so really none of us have anything to complain about do we?

The thread also didn't mention that it was only about the UK.

But apparantly according to you it is.

Well have a nice doomsday (or life) then.

I feel sad that Dd is 17/18 and is missing out on socialising during 6th form. They develop so much during this time and they're are lots of firsts which typically happen during this time, driving, jobs, boyfriends, holidays alone, gaining further independence.

I express empathy for her situation when she's having a low moment, however, the rest of the time I remain breezy and positive as it is not helpful to project doom and gloom to young people. They are amazingly resilient l, and I hope they will look back and remember how well they coped and actually cope better with set backs and adversity in their future years, because they have experience of getting through something that was challenging.

My DD is seeing friends, in small doses, they talk all the time on their phones, she's got a new boyfriend, she's still looking for jobs but if she doesn't get one she knows she'll be able to put all that extra time into her studies. She's early finishing her epq and personal statement for ucas and she knows she'll most certainly pass her test at some point this coming year and be able to enjoy next spring/summer with greater independence.

But yes, it is shit for them and I don't think they'd easily cope with another lockdown.

If you assume people can remover stuff from about 4, and we count "the youth" up to 21 when most students finish Uni, you're looking CURRENTLY at 1 year of disruption.

Those that didn't get to party hard for their 16, 18 or 21 will have other landmarks, or like my nephew will just go big the next year. And plenty of young people don't get huge celebrations for these and cope fine.
It sucks that they'll miss their end of school proms, but of all the young people in schools, you're taking about 3 years max out of 13.

Going off to University will be weird and it's hard to imagine how different it will be not having Freshers week etc in the same way bit it's one year out of 3 or 4 years, be starters can choose to defer if they're able to get a job/be sorted by Mom and Dad.
The exam cockup is obv awful and I'm not minimising that at all, but they need to be encouraged to move forward not hang their entire life failure on this moment.

No one likee is ruined by not being able to go night clubbing, pull randomers, having house parties for a year.

No. They haven’t ‘lost their youth’. It’s been six months. That’s hyperbole.

The thread also didn't mention that it was only about the UK.

So you don't think it's in the least referring to Western countries?

My parents are immigrants, probably only 10% of the population go to university there now & education is still not very accessible to women

But apparantly according to you it is.

So you are saying that the majority of posters on this thread are not posting from a UK centric point of view?

Well have a nice doomsday (or life) then.

Eh? You're the one who brought up the economies of the rest of the world?

Yes. This is one of the first times in my life that I regularly feel grateful to be middle aged. I'd hate to be young and starting out at work or university in these circumstances.

Yes, you really cannot get back the 'occasions' missed by the 17 to 21-year-olds in particular.

Additionally, their financial and social lives will be impacted for some time to come.

To their credit the young people I know seem quite pragmatic about it. No, it is not as bad as war but it hasn't been easy and it will continue to be hard for them.

I'm in Italy.

And have been vociferous at how unfair the youth blaming here has been. I saw (online) 300 kids a week from 9/3-10/6 and there was not one word of complaint from any of them. They weren't breaking rules, or visiting people, or having parties. When the restrictions were lifted, yeah, they went wild. Who wouldn't?

That said,the most stringent restrictions were lifted here on 4/5, so they "lost" two months of socialising. The final years didn't get to have their balls, but have done so since. They didn't have to take their exams either so they kind of see the quid pro quo.

Tests for entry into university are happening now in most cases (as is usual here) so their university careers shouldn't be impacted too much. The only thing is that final marks were definitely inflated so that's going to (I imagine) cause more first year uni fails and dropouts.

It’s not a ‘lost 6 months’, with the new restrictions, it’s at least a lost year.

My big problem is the assumption that if we just don’t socialise for a while, the virus will go away. It won’t, so then what do we do?

There also needs to be some realism about how soon a vaccine will come. 5 years is quick for a vaccine. If you want to be sure if a vaccine is safe and has no long-term effects, how do you do that without monitoring the impact for a long time?

Disagree. Youth lasts for 2 decades at least! Coronavirus won't be around that long. Missing out on going to nightclubs or parties is hardly a hardship. Yes education has had some short-term disruption but it's not going to ruin a young person's life.

To be fair, I wouldn't want to be at Uni at the moment. Partly because of the Covid restrictions but what kind of job market are they going to enter when they finish? That's more of an issue than not going to Glastonbury.

@annabel85

Disagree. Youth lasts for 2 decades at least! Coronavirus won't be around that long. Missing out on going to nightclubs or parties is hardly a hardship. Yes education has had some short-term disruption but it's not going to ruin a young person's life.

To be fair, I wouldn't want to be at Uni at the moment. Partly because of the Covid restrictions but what kind of job market are they going to enter when they finish? That's more of an issue than not going to Glastonbury.

I agree but these won't be the first young people looking for work in a recession and they won't be the only people looking for one now.

This isn't a recession. It's a world wide depression that has seen the service sector economy completely destroyed. There hasn't been an economic down turn on this scale in living memory.

Graduating in a recession has very long-lasting effects on a person’s career. Leading to lower income for at least a decade.

www.nber.org/digest/nov06/w12159.html

Assuming we were going to get a pandemic at some stage the only consolation for me is that this virus isn't killing children and young adults.
I feel sadness for my DC who are missing out on a lot at the moment but things will get better.

I am hoping this will be short lived - a year or 2 - and that there will be a roaring twenties for them after that. The young have time on their side and there will be opportunities in the future.

However, I do remember how urgent everything felt when I was in my teens and 20s, I hope they can persevere past the setbacks.

I feel very sorry for the people hoping for a relationship and a baby etc for whom time is not on their side.

And also for the elderly, whose little time left may be spent apart from their family.

And for those dying alone of course (although I remember that many people have a sense of a comforting presence with them at those times, I hope they have comfort)

Strange times we live in.

Whoever mentioned about the 900K global deaths, that probably needs to be put into perspective. 60 million people die annually each year.

I'd agree it is a miserable experience for young people and they will in many cases have compromised youths and very disappointing lives with a ruined economy. However I also think there is an Anglo American obsession with manically cramming fun into years 16 to 25 as if you then are just expected to have a depressing life. It is so unhealthy and awful pressure to enjoy life. Many people through circumstances outside their control have miserable early lives, with financial struggles, depression, social issues and then there are people tellimg them these are the best years of their lives and they will be "buried" as someone said here with jobs and family responsibilities.
But yes this is a miserable depressing way to live and I hate the undercurrent that somehow enjoyment is suspect or inappropriate. What's the point staying alive if there is no joy in it?

I don't understand how people can possibly think the ramifications of this will be felt for only a couple of years. Sectors that employ high numbers of young people e.g arts, clubs, hospitality, tourism have been brought to their knees. It will take decades for these sectors to recover, if they ever do. That means years of high levels of youth unemployment. Little chance of buying a house, online dating is the only way to meet a partner etc.

These effects wont disappear in a year or two, even if the virus does. Never mind the massive debt incurred from lockdown that young people will be paying for decades. It may all be fine in a year or two for middle class families, already with kids and a career but young people wont be so lucky.