The young are lively on digital platforms but not polling booths. Many are too caught up in studies and work and their heads to vote. Maybe their choices signify satisfaction. Maybe hopelessness.
There’s no bigger giveaway of middle age than worrying about the young. Whether or not this is warranted, Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2010, seems to be thoroughly baffling seniors. Adults grouse about the irresponsibility of young people, their narcissism, their wokeness, and so on, while the kids clap back with OK Boomer and WhatsApp Uncle Jibes. The generation gap is beginning to seem like a yawning gulf of incomprehension.
‘Storm and stress’ has been a popular frame for the emotional upheaval and conflict that adolescents face. But young people are divided by region and social circumstance; where you are born matters more than when you were born. It is not easy to generalize or isolate distinctive features of a generation. Still, there are three broad ways to think about generational differences.
LIFE-CYCLE EFFECTS:-
Where you are in the life cycle matters, young people behave differently than retired grandparents. Teenage brains are built differently, they are far more malleable and quick-learning than adults. The prefrontal cortex does not develop till they’re firmly in their twenties, so they have a hard time planning, prioritizing, and regulating their impulses. They take crazier risks. They’re geared towards their peer groups, for better, or for worse.
PERIOD EFFECTS:-
Another way to think of young people today is to see the events that they have lived through. Smartphones and social media, consumer capitalism, social precarity, and political instability have shaped India’s Gen Z, just as living on the threshold of liberation and globalization molded their parents, or the freedom struggle affected their great-grandparents.
COHORT EFFECTS:-
But people of all ages have lived through the same slice of time. So what sets Gen-Zers apart? As sloppy as generational analysis is, there are several ‘cohort effects’ that can be discerned about today’s teens. They are the first generation of digital natives, to have grown up with the internet, to take smartphones, and social media for granted.
While there have been moral panics around every new technology, from radio and TV to video games, studies show that this time, there are valid concerns about their well-being. Attention spans have shortened, and become more fragmented. The link between social media and mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and self-harm is also well documented now. This generation is also more vocal about the struggles, though only the more privileged ones are likely to seek help.
Young people look towards influencers, and struggle with unrealistic images cyberbullying, and toxicity, even as they lose out on in-person interaction and play, which might give them a more grounded perspective. Online multiplayer games, hardcore porn, and hyper-masculinity gurus affect boys, while girls deal with other self-image and popularity issues. Living up to cultural expectations of conformity, and deference to elders, while privately bending these norms in their digital avatars, can be another source of tension.
Another event that unites them is living through the COVID-19 pandemic at an impressionable age, having their schooling and life upended, and living through uncertainty and isolation. While their social background, financial stability, and family situations make for different outcomes, the ‘quaranteens’ who are now adults do have this great disruption in common.
One in seven Indians between the ages of 15 and 24 are depressed. Every fifth Gen-Zer is Indian. As this vast river rolls toward college and the job market, they find themselves under crazy pressure to succeed, for their own sakes and for families that have taken expensive gambles on their education. Returns from higher education have reduced, there is little intergenerational mobility.
PERCEPTION OF PERSONAL FAILURE VS REALITY:-
One in five college graduates was unemployed in 2021, many are not even looking for a job. Each govt job is sought after by thousands of overqualified people. Rural wages have flatlined. In cities, between 10 and 15 million people are gig-workers servicing the elite, with no security or chances of advancement.
Young Indians were once of the most hopeful demographics in the world, convinced that tomorrow would be better than today. But this has been accompanied by a decline in life-chances. So far, young people seem to see this as a personal failure rather than a betrayal by a system that still hoards opportunity for the privileged.
Young people seem socially active and effervescent on digital platforms, but their political impact is dissipated. They have not united in struggle, as students did in 1968 in the West, or the 70s in India. As the recent electoral data reveals, only a fraction of 18-19 year olds are registered to vote. They’re too caught up in school and work and their own heads to care about making a difference through their vote. Does this signify satisfaction or hopelessness? Who knows.
