This week, young protestors took to the streets across Spain, setting fire to cars and hurling objects at police to protest mass unemployment. It was just the latest in a string of political transformations -- from Tunis to Tripoli, New York to Santiago -- driven by young men and women trapped without jobs or channels for political expression.
More than 3 billion people under the age of 30 have become a new center of gravity in global affairs. Empowered by new technologies and hit hard by the global economic downturn -- young people are three times more likely than adults to be unemployed -- that demographic is reshaping how leaders engage their populations, and each other.
In a dusty colonial palace on the outskirts of Tunis, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood before several hundred young activists this spring and delivered a message that the United States is refocusing its foreign policy on the so-called "youth bulge." "The fact is today, the world ignores youth at its peril," she announced. "The needs and concerns of young people have been marginalized too long."
Young people face disparate challenges -- but they also share common aspirations and frustrations. Ninety percent of the world's new youth majority is in the developing world. Many have grown up, thanks to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, with a view beyond their own borders, to a world of freedoms and economic opportunities they lack. Denied a way to make a living and be heard, those young people can be among the great challenges to global security -- a ticking time bomb, Clinton argued, of "frustration and instability that can be exploited by extremists and criminals."
But the story of the Arab Spring, and of student protests around the world, is also one of young people as a force for progress.
In many parts of the developing world, young entrepreneurs have proved to be an unmatched reservoir of economic potential, innovating and creating the new businesses that are the backbone for economic growth. Young activists have dislodged repressive regimes and are leveraging new technologies to do so more nimbly than prior generations. Twenty years ago, a Polish trade union took a decade to dislodge a repressive government. In Tunisia, it took a month.
Young people also present a new opportunity to cut through stale thinking and old enmities. In the West Bank last month, in the shadow of the hulking concrete and razor wire barrier that separates Israelis and Palestinians, a 15-year-old student named Doha told me she was studying so she could "see all sides of the issues, not just [her] own. Adults say we can't talk -- I say we can." That thinking has propelled online platforms like the "YaLa" young leaders' initiative -- a network of more than 50,000 young Israelis and Palestinians committed to Middle East peace.
As one Indian official put it, the youth bulge "will be a dividend if we empower our young. It will be a disaster if we fail to put in place a policy and framework where they can be empowered."
For the United States' part, Clinton outlined an ambitious plan to prioritize youth in American diplomacy and development. She announced the Office of Global Youth Issues in Washington, a first in the State Department's history, and outlined a plan in which U.S. consulates and embassies around the world will tap councils of local youth for policy and program ideas. "If there's a problem out there, Clinton said, "I have no doubt that an enterprising young man or woman is trying to solve it." I saw that principle in action as I launched several such councils across the Middle East and North Africa last month. There and around the world, young people convened by the United States have generated innovative projects that benefit their communities, from career training to healthcare.
Harnessing the potential of this moment will require more action from governments, businesses, and young people themselves.
Governments need to create space for young activists to be heard and for young entrepreneurs to find capital. The private sector needs to emphasize youth mentorship, training, and hiring in both their corporate social responsibility activities and their core business practices.
But ultimately it falls to young men and women to defend their rights. Young people, particularly in places where they have long been marginalized, can be justifiably cynical. To make good on its promise, this generation will have to continue to stand up and participate -- not just in the moment of protest, but in the building of sustainable institutions for years to come. As a young Tunisian blogger named Wallada wrote: "negativism and resignation do not build a country."
Nor do they build a world.
Ronan Farrow, a lawyer, journalist and activist, is currently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's adviser for Global Youth Issues.
I also note a somewhat bitter and prejudicial note in many commenters attitudes toward young Americans. Young people are not a monolithic block, they are as diverse as the rest of society if not more so.
Celebrating and encouraging young people to engage in public affairs and public service, as well as bettering themselves through productive work, is not a cynical position to adopt, nor is it politically charged. It's just good sense.
If you are a college kid, you literally have no choice but to take on crippling, life-destroying debt if you want to get a decent degree. Without that degree you have little or no chance of participating in society.
Why are college costs so out of control? To feed the enormous pension plans for professors and administrators and janitors and all the rest.
Older people want only one thing: they want their big fat pensions. They "deserve" them. And they are willing to sell their children and grandchildren into debt slavery to get them.
Of course nobody wants to admit any of this. We are a world that doesn't want to admit to any of these sins, even as commit them.
Imagine Hillery Clinton (or any Secretary of State) at the forefront of a "youth" revolution! How ludicrous is that.
Maybe this generation will learn the two most important attributes of a real adult, cooperation and tolerance. Two characteristics conspicuously absent among our current batch of political "leaders".
This is how we should view this crisis. Economies are not disconnected. The global economy today is more interconnected today than it has ever been before. This makes us today an interdependent species. But thinking that mass growth will conquer our youth unemployment crisis is a fallacy; it is more shortsighted thinking, from the level of the crisis, that threatens to pose worse hardships for us all down the road.
We must learn, as scientists are today stressing more and more, that we live on a planet with finite space and resources. Growth is not ultimately sustainable, and as we can see, population continues to expand. We have a problem here. Economic growth must end and consumption must be curtailed to be geared towards what is necessary.
But past resources and growth, we must realize that we have these huge problems today because we are all interconnected, this is the root of the crisis. It is fundamentally our relationships which must become sustainable if we are to become a sustainable species on this planet.
Several years ago during an anti war protest on the largest college campus in america not one college student joined in the protest. too busy talking on their phones or texting.
The Rome of the past has come to america. but we are better than the roman empire, we will self destruct in 50 years not 200. give us that.
Guess you are wrong.
It's a platform in which:
(1) people submit, discuss, and vote on public policy ideas
(2) popular policies are established and get traction in the debate
(3) candidates adopt popular policies because it's in their interest to do so
(4) candidates are held accountable through monitoring consistency of views during campaign and in office and rewarding those who achieve their aims
It's a common sense way to use the internet to get government working for the people. I just launched this site, and I think it can make a big difference if it catches on. Let me know what you think.
1--> He claims that young Europeans and Americans have no channels for political expression. That's false; they can vote at 18 and many voted in the last elections. Learning that politicians don't always deliver the promised results is an introduction to reality in modern democracies.
2--> Second paragraph, "young people are three times more likely than adults to be unemployed." Those young people ARE adults; Mr. Farrow's phrasing could be careless, but I suspect he doesn't consider them actual adults.
3--> Paragraph 3: "Ninety percent of the world's new youth majority is in the developing world. Many have grown up, thanks to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter..." So young people growing up in the developing world have high speed internet yet lack basic sanitation? This boggles the mind.
4--> "Young activists have dislodged repressive regimes... more nimbly than prior generations. Twenty years ago, a Polish trade union took a decade to dislodge a repressive government. In Tunisia, it took a month." Isn't the murder of Solidarity members by Stalinist goons different than a ruler peacefully leaving? 33 year ago, the Shah peacefully left Iran, butIran's theocracy isn't being dislodged by youth protests today; Mr. Farrow's entire argument is selective reasoning.
Look, I'm a Millennial myself, and I hold out high hopes for our generation. That said, we deserve a better brief than Mr. Farrow seems capable of mustering.
Now, it has come around again, friends.
How will you choose to help my generation? (And, yes, this is my generation — I am a Millennial, although on the younger end.)
Or, rather, shall you choose to hinder the youth, once more?
The choice, in the end, shall not be decided easily; there will be conflicts and disagreements and arguments over how to best help, if help you shall this new generation.
Yet, all in all, if you do choose to foster, the world can change for the better; if not, well, I dare not think of the repercussions.
The choice is in your hands, friends. Choose wisely.
If you actually understood what happened in the 50's, 60's and 70's you might have some insight into how every new generation get's co-opted and eventually inculturated into the dominant mind set. And with that understanding you might be able to do something a little different this time. I'm not holding out a lot of hope.
The problem with youth is that you are too easily distracted with all the bells and whistle (money, food, sex and social relations) that life waves in front of you, you inevitable end up doing the same old stuff everyone else did in all the generations before yours. I believe it's only after you've done all that stuff and understood something about it, that you gain the wisdom needed to creat really effective and substantive change. So you might want to be paying attention to some older and wiser people, if you can find them.
Here's what my teacher taught me, "Cooperation + Tolerance = Peace.