Youth: not a problem but a barometer

“The youth of today are spoiled” — you can find this phrase in texts thousands of years old. Every older generation says it of the younger. That alone should give pause: if the youth have been going bad for three thousand years running, perhaps the problem is not the youth.

Youth is not a problem but a barometer. With heightened sensitivity it shows what is wrong in a society: where there are no opportunities, where promises diverge from deeds, where adults say one thing and live another. The young do not create these contradictions — they expose them, because they have not yet learned to look away.

The conflict of generations is eternal and, in its way, useful. Elders keep experience and caution; the young bring energy and dissent. A society where the young are only lectured and not heard loses its feedback and ages not by years but in spirit. A society that gives the young work and a voice gains not a problem but an engine.

“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

My opinion: by how a country treats its youth you can predict its future more accurately than by any forecast. Whoever invests in the young and does not fear their dissent invests in their own tomorrow. Irritation at the youth is almost always a sign that the aging fear change — not that the youth are bad.