What do young people want?

Interview by Sophie Gherardi.

The generation entering the job market today suffered all the Covid-related constraints during their student years. Does this experience give them any common traits?

Anne Muxel: Covid was an unprecedented experience that marked everyone, regardless of their age. Regarding the younger generations, studies show – and this was already visible during the health crisis – that they have been strongly shaken. The rate of mental suffering is very high, with an increase in cases of depression and mental illness. Young people became aware of aspects of life that they hadn’t always explored before: the question of finitude; the question of fragility in the face of a biological scourge; the fear of losing loved ones, their parents, their grandparents. The other fear that may have seized them, and which we have no doubt underestimated, is that of a return to tragedy. But this awareness could also give them a particular strength.

The second thing that marked them was the deprivation of freedom. In our western countries, the deprivation of freedom, and also of mobility, was an unthinkable thing. The successive experience of lockdowns, curfews, the obligation of social distancing… This all had an impact on younger generations who had to give up, in a very short time, everything that characterised the life of young people: a time of freedom, encounters, exchanges, mobility – including geographical ones –, and student life, with its very special moments of socialisation… All of this was disrupted and prevented.

These two aspects will leave traces in the individual’s biography, and the emotions they aroused will leave a lasting mark on these young generations for whom everything closed down just at the time when their choices were taking shape. The sense of the vulnerability of human life was reinforced in them by the awareness of the environmental danger related to global warming. Many saw a connection between the development of these viral epidemics on the one hand and environmental and climatic disturbances on the other.

Can we speak of a loss of confidence in an entire generation?

Generational entry is always difficult and I try to avoid labels. We can nevertheless see that to the Covid experience has been added the return of war in Europe, with the prospect of a wider conflict. Young people weren’t prepared for this: often overprotected by their parents and grandparents, they were convinced that they lived in a fairly secure environment. Their concerns about the future were further revived and placed them in a position of greater questioning about their lives, about how they could project themselves or not into the future, and about the meaning of individual and collective life on the planet. It’s these fundamentals that have been shaken.

‘I believe there’s also a blockage in the transmission between generations’

This is what is expressed by the spread of the expression “OK boomer”: previous generations are totally discredited for not having been able to preserve a livable world. And as this trust is weakened, I believe there’s also a blockage in the t…