By Suzy Dean
With an economic slowdown looking likely, how will Generation Y, the pampered, shopping-mad, techno-savvy 18-27 year olds cope? With rising unemployment on the cards and no connection with the mainstream parties, how will young adults channel their discontent?
The current instability, for all its negative consequences, seems a golden opportunity for politicians to engage with young adults. Yet there seems to be a remarkable absence of effort from our political elite to start a conversation with young people about their economic concerns, in contrast to their otherwise uber-enthusiastic approach to 'youth participation'.
Politicians take every opportunity to remind young people of their responsibility to engage with politics. Initiatives like the youth parliament, citizenship classes and the proposed lowering of the voting age to 16 are all aimed at engaging young people in politics. After all, a massive two thirds of Generation Y do not vote, and many of are reported never to read the newspapers. In this light, politicians' reluctance to engage young adults with a discussion about the economy seems a little odd.
Instead of initiating a public debate about the crisis, politicians have negotiated the appropriate course of action with the banks, behind closed doors. Generation Y and the rest of the public are reduced to mere spectators in one of the most important political moments of our times.
It is telling what ‘youth engagement schemes’ want us to discuss instead. Recently the public participation NGO Involve teamed up with the Scout Association to organise ‘Scouting Sundays’ debating events at each of the party conferences. These discussions were touted as giving scouts the chance to air views direct to the UK's top politicians and policy makers. But guess what organisers decided the most important topics for discussion would be? Knife crime, childhood obesity, youth participation and volunteering topped the bill, with no sign of debates on recessions or nationalisation of the banks. These choices reflected government concerns and fears about young people, rather than representing a genuine attempt to engage young people, and it is no surprise that they stayed away in droves, with a mere 30 turning up to each session in Birmingham, Bournemouth and Manchester.
Politicians seem only to want the input of young people when it suits their own agenda. Last month, Scottish youth groups organised a petition signed by more than 10,000 people protesting Ysagainst plans to raise the age for buying alcohol in shops from 18 to 21, but the government refuses to reconsider the policy or engage in a debate. They ignored the petition because, as one spokesperson put it, we need to ‘rebalance our relationship with alcohol’.
Never mind that: maybe young people need to rebalance their relationship with politicians. The problem is not that young people are particularly uninterested in politics or economics. The problem is that young people, like the adult population, are cut out of important political debate. Instead, they are at the receiving end of government policy, and are only tokenistically involved, through 'consultation' or focus group, when the agenda has been set and outcome pre-determined.
Generation Y does have a choice. We can either manage our own economic and political dissatisfaction as individuals, or we can start a meaningful discussion about how we think these issues should be handled. We should expect more from our political representatives, but we also need to start a conversation with one another about what we want for our society. This needs to happen away from pre-determined agendas and the whims of the political elite, whose only interest in the young seems self-serving and instrumental. And we should do this sooner rather than later - before disengagement and discontentment become an acceptable part of our democracy.
Suzy Dean is a member of the Battle of Ideas committee and co-organiser of the Manifesto Club. On November 1 she chairs a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival, From the classroom to the voting booth: will youth engagement save democracy? Buy tickets to the festival here
They'll learn and they'll adapt and with luck a better and stronger generation will emerge for the world that is going to change beyond our comprehension. I've a lot more faith in them than I have with our politicians! Especially as not all of them are the spoilt brats many think them to be.
Posted by: flipped | Tuesday, 14 October 2008 at 04:55 PM
I'm a psychotherapist and speaker that specializes in Generation Y. This group comes with unique challenges never seen before. I can not tell you how many Gen Yers I meet who literally get immobilized b/c their boss tells them something like "hey, make sure to get to work on time." Generation Y are the product of their upbringing - a combination of helicopter parenting and a system that awarded them, regardless of whether they did a good job or not. HOWEVER, it is the first generation that is literally revolutionizing our social fabric. If they actually united and started having conversations amongst each other, and channeled their creativity in positive ways, wonderful things can happen.
Posted by: ABS | Tuesday, 14 October 2008 at 05:43 PM
ABS what does immobilized mean in that context?
Posted by: Payno | Tuesday, 14 October 2008 at 09:54 PM
I am sure that any 27 year old precocious enough to have come up with a viable solution would have been listened to. I'm equally sure that no such 27 year old exists.
For now, Generation Y's self-appointed spokespeople appear content to mob the Beeb's TV camera outside the Bank of England, yelling "We don't want the Bank of England privatised" -- something that nobody has mentioned doing even once in the 62 years since it was nationalised!
Posted by: Ian Kemmish | Wednesday, 15 October 2008 at 08:21 AM
ABS.
Did you actually ever "work" with young people as opposed to filling the with psychobabble about their inadequacies? You might learn a lot more about them if you did.
And yes I have met young people who are incapable and they've existed in every generation. The problem you highlighted isn't just about the inability of those "helicopter" youngsters but of the employers (or Personnel/HR) inability to select the best people for the job.
Posted by: flipped | Wednesday, 15 October 2008 at 09:39 AM
Henry Porter “Generation Y gives me hope” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/13/youngpeople.workandcareers “... they do not trust the institutions built by the two previous generations. They are extremely doubtful about our political leaders, and who can blame…? They have not yet made themselves felt politically in Britain, but they will as they get older and it will be intriguing to see how they change things and what the effect will be of their profoundly different attitudes to privacy, their attachment to the present rather than what has gone before…In America, there are 70 million members of the Y generation and they are going to be crucial in deciding the outcome of the presidential race. Those of voting age are for one man - Barack Obama, who represents almost everything that this generation wants. They are engaged and better organised that any time since Robert Kennedy made his bid 40 years ago…It will be thrilling to watch and one wonders if the main parties in Britain have grasped what is happening. Our current leaders look jaded and uninspired. Labour is the baby boomer party/Generation X party and stands little hope of appealing to the Y generation. Cameron and Clegg appear better placed and are making some of the right noises, but they may not yet understand that this generation wants hope and inspiration, not a sales pitch and some suit moving to the sound of 'Things can only get better'.”
There were 124 Peace Corps recruiters in the JFK decade of specifically 1966-67 and I have today 25-year old Y generation British-American sons. I, Charles Butler was a US Marine Corps boot camp instructor and then after my American football quarterbacking and post-graduate degree at Stanford University I served with JFK’s 1960s US Peace Corps. On 28 August 1963 I was at the Lincoln Memorial for Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” / “Now is the time”.
Immediately after that I participated in five of the eight-years of John Kennedy’s Peace Corps that was led in its entirety by the JFK family’s appointed team. First I was two-years with 5-member JFK teams embedded in Venezuelan villages and city-slums – living on the equivalent of $40 a month in corrugated tin shacks with no running water. Then as Volunteer Recruitment Director we had numbers of volunteers never equalled by half in today’s 48-year history of the Peace Corps. JFK's Peace Corps had hundreds of game plans within his powerful yet simple playbook of: "Men and woman will be doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language...sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace." During the summer of 1966 I hired and trained as recruiters more former Peace Corps female than male volunteers, as there were more female volunteers in the corps.
I propose a 21st century David Cameron UK, Barack Obama US, France and German led ‘Special Global Peace Corps Relationship’ with other countries that could evolve into a top item in the next UK election. In the UK it starts with online and offline teamwork activities in mixed ethnic, religion, gender and family income school teams at TEAMWORK-CAMPUSES. My today’s 26-year old British-American twin sons started hearing from me at their age of five that if over half of America had been allowed to vote for RFK in 1968 our 20-something youth of those days would have started in motion a delivery of 20-million former US Peace Corps and VISTA volunteers (Sarge Shriver domestic Peace Corps - Volunteers in Service to America) rather than today’s 200,000 former Peace Corps volunteers. However Dick Nixon had Donald Rumsfeld and youth like Dick Cheney replace Shriver at the War on Poverty and similar types replace former WWII US Marine and then Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn. This closed the War on Poverty and began the shredding of the Peace Corps, e.g. 17 Peace Corps Latin American countries that Vaughn had recruited by 1965 as Peace Corps Director Latin America that compares to 3-Latin America Peace Corps countries today.
Posted by: Charles Butler | Wednesday, 15 October 2008 at 01:35 PM
I'm twenty years old. I vote (so far only in local elections as there hasn't been anything bigger since I turned eighteen), I read the newspapers and I'm very glad indeed to see people such as Suzy Dean and flipped realising that not everyone my age is a criminal or a lazy and useless waste of skin. From my perspective I can tell you that many of us don't get involved in politics because the generations above us, who still have the jobs in advertising and television, in focus groups, in the government and so on, don't seem to want us to play a serious part in the politics of the day. We're asked what we think on trivial matters, or as I think has been said in order to make a point, and then the results are utterly disregarded as though we were little children clamouring for another biscuit - unless, of course, whoever was running the survey has found their point proved. We're encouraged to listen to the politicians so far as to "get off the streets" but not actually to do anything so 'adult' as care about the fact that we can elect the people making and upholding the laws which govern out lives.
There's a lot of bad going on in my generation (I'd argue that some of it is the fault of the generation who raised us, who make the toys, who make and air the brainless TV programmes, the frankly inane school systems and curriculum and so on... but that's another point entirely) but there's a lot of idealism, some extremely good ideas and a real will to make this country and the world a better place to live in for everyone as well. Politics is out of balance and very out of touch, not just with Generation Y, but allowing and encouraging us to get involved too might just help rebalance things. The difficult part would be to allow and encourage without being patronising.
Posted by: Jen | Wednesday, 15 October 2008 at 01:42 PM
Whenever someone talks about David Cameron I keep wondering if I'm the victim of some kind of 'They Live' conspiracy.
I see a fat, chinless bloke whose rich daddy got him into politics, who has never shown any backbone, whose trite soundbites are transparently devious, who looks like he suffers from dysentry and who supported New Labour in most of their dismal decisions (Iraq, double layered private companies in nationalised institutions, CCTV, nationalising banks, surveilance).
Yet from the media I keep reading that this cross between Tom Cruise and JFK is going to lead the Brits out of the wilderness. Have I got the right David Cameron? The David Cameron they keep talking about is apparently very popular with youth, so it must be someone else.
As for the generation Y thing, it makes me chuckle. I'm a historian in this age category (26) and think it's drivel in so many ways.
The Brits have always loved talk of revolution, always like to remark about how speedy change is and they have always loved to think that they are individualistic rebels. In truth the Brits are a bureaucratic, conservative, statist nation with deep class divisions. Always have been, probably always will be. Public school plutocrats will likely be running Britain this time next century.
Personally, I hope to leave pretty soon as do a lot of young people.
Posted by: Gregor | Wednesday, 15 October 2008 at 04:18 PM