I was on holiday in South Africa with my family last year when a group of tribal dancers started performing. They were dressed in traditional clothes and wearing elaborate headdresses. My seven-year-old son was fascinated. Within seconds he joined the dance.
After that, we went to look at some shops and for about thirty seconds, he disappeared. Every parent knows that fear. One minute you’re on vacation. Next you’re mentally making a Netflix documentary about your failure.
When I finally found her, she was proudly wearing a headdress. He sneaked away, went back to the dancers and traded his baseball cap for her.
Later, someone explained that headdresses are traditionally a symbol of masculinity and status in the tribe. Young people were not given just one. They have achieved this through a series of achievements.
My son bypassed the entire process through a combination of charm and opportunistic exchanges. Thank God he didn’t do our rental car business!
For most of human history, communities have developed rituals marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. The details varied, but the message was remarkably consistent, you belong, you have a role, and the tribe needs you.
There’s an old saying you’ve probably heard, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. I recently heard a youth worker add a darker twist;
“If a child doesn’t feel part of the village, they burn the village down.”
Sounds a bit dramatic, but there is something psychologically deep hidden inside.
I work with a lot of young people. Depending on who you ask, they are either the most anxious generation in history or the most entitled. Sometimes both before lunch. I have certainly met young people who struggle with confidence, resilience and mental health. I have also met young people who are thoughtful, entrepreneurial and much more socially aware than I was at their age.
There is a grain of truth in stereotypes. Data from NHS England shows that the proportion of 16-24 year olds experiencing a common mental health condition has risen 18.9% Since 2014 25.8% in 2023-24. An increase of more than a third in a decade.
But there is a bigger picture. I don’t see a generation suddenly weakened. I see a generation growing up in circumstances fundamentally different from what their parents experienced.
I was a teenager in the 1990s. Dominated the Britpop charts. Euro 96 made football feel like a national religion. D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ had an overriding sense of optimism. My bedroom had football posters, a CD player and enough Lynx Africa to make Greta Thunberg retroactively angry. But I didn’t spend that much time on it.
Bedrooms were places where you slept, where life happened elsewhere.
You had work on Saturday. You went to football. You are hanging out with your friends. You have personally annoyed your parents through WhatsApp.
Perhaps it’s partly nostalgia. Each generation remembers its youth more positively than it did, but some have been deeply transfixed.
Recently, Alan Milburn’s review of the barriers facing young people highlighted the growing number who are spending large amounts of time disconnected from work, education and wider society. Backing up these numbers, we are now approaching one million young people aged 16 to 24 who are completely out of work and education.
The term “bedroom generation” has entered the dictionary. The phrase seems symbolic of something bigger.
For most of human history, youth were not expected to wait until adulthood. Anthropologists often note that adolescents occupy an important role in tribes and communities. They were strong enough to contribute but young enough to take risks. Older generations have preserved knowledge. Explore the possibilities of the younger generation.
In terms of evolution, young people were the research and development department of the tribe. They challenged assumptions, explored new territory, and sometimes did things that disappointed the elders. They were often the first people to stop working in the village.
Some things never change. What has changed is the root of youth.
Today, many young people face a different landscape. While previous generations climbed the housing ladder, this generation was told the ladder existed, then they found it had been bought by a hedge fund, listed on Airbnb and rented out to them for £1,400 a month.
Entry-level jobs are becoming less secure. Artificial intelligence is starting to reshape industries before many young people even enter them. Nothing boosts confidence like having a performance review with a chatbot already in place to discover your dream career. University often comes with significant debt attached. The cost of participation in ordinary life continues to rise.
Even football tells part of the story.
I recently heard a fan reminisce about how he paid for match tickets through Saturday work as a teenager. Today, the atmosphere at the football ground has changed, as many young fans cannot afford the same experience.
This is important because young people strengthen society.
Throughout history, youth movements have driven political reform, cultural change, music, art, and social progress. Punk emerged from youth unemployment and economic decline. The civil rights movement relied heavily on young activists. Every generation complains about the young, but every generation depends on them.
Psychologists have long understood that hope is not just optimism. Hope arises when people see a desired future and believe that their actions can help them reach it. Remove any one of these things and people start to fall apart. Not that they stop caring. It starts to feel pointless to care that much.
The issue is not whether young people have hope. Most do. The problem is that many are trying to build a future while reading titles that sound like rejected plots from Black Mirror.
For generations, the assumption was simple, your children will have it better than you. Increasingly, parents are no longer convinced that this is true, and this changes the emotional climate of a society.
At the same time, today’s youth are carrying burdens that previous generations did not experience. Before landing their first job or renting their first flat, they’re already navigating climate concerns, global conflicts, social media comparisons and questions about whether entire professions can be transformed by technology.
The whole world comes into their pockets before puberty properly begins. By seventeen, many people knew more about geopolitics than I did at thirty. Unfortunately, they also know the average house price within a fifty mile radius. And yet we often respond by asking why they seem anxious. Perhaps the more interesting question is why we would expect otherwise.
Which brings me back to that quote.
If a child does not feel part of the village, they burn the village.
I don’t think most young people want to burn anything, hopefully not my children, as I am not insured for arson or civil unrest. What I often hear is some quiet, uncertainty about where they fit in, whether the future is attainable, and whether the promises made by society still apply.
Whether young people are resilient enough for the future is not the real challenge before us. It’s that we’re building a future they can imagine.
Because a society can miraculously survive hardship if its youth still believe they have a stake in the future.
When they stop believing, history says there is a problem in the village.
My son traded a baseball cap for a headdress. He wanted a place in the story. By putting the story behind a paywall, we responded to an entire generation asking the same question.
Most young people are not asking for special treatment. They want something much older than that.
A reason to believe there is a place for them in the village.
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