Today society has a wary attitude towards young people. She is accused of being lethargic, apathetic and immersed in the Internet. It seems that millennials are only interested in selfies and social networks, hype and consumption. Why young people don’t want to grow up and become adults, says Doctor of Sciences. Director of the Center for Youth Research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics-St. Petersburg Elena Omelchenko.
The main thing is health
Ksenia Yakubovskaya, website: - Elena Leonidovna, what are the younger generation interested in?
Elena Omelchenko:- We conducted a study in four Russian cities- in St. Petersburg, Kazan, Ulyanovsk and Makhachkala. We studied the types and forms of youth culture in various modern life through companies, groups, communities, and organizations. They surveyed students of universities, colleges, technical schools, and interviewed young active people aged 18-22. We observed them and participated in their activities.The key trend is the popularity of a healthy lifestyle. It develops in several forms - classes physical activity and special food practices. The first is the popularity of natural street sports: workout, parkour, skateboarding, cycling. Fitness, gym, and classes with a trainer are very popular.
- It turns out that this is no longer the “fast food generation”?
Young people are different, but the sample we studied is attentive to their diet. This is the second direction of the healthy lifestyle trend - the popularity of specialized food practices. Eating becomes a professional activity, a hobby. The topic of ecology of health, discipline of mind and body is very popular.
The most interesting thing is that because of this, the percentage of young people drinking alcohol has decreased. In 2011-12, there were three times as many young people in the city who drank beer. The consumption of strong drinks has almost disappeared. Moreover, surveys showed that 30% of young St. Petersburg residents would not accept someone who drinks alcohol into their company, and 58% would not accept drugs.
At the same time, young people began to prefer wine and light alcoholic drinks. Perhaps this is due to consumer culture. For St. Petersburg residents, more than for young people in other cities, it is important where to drink drinks - not at the entrance, in the kitchen or in the gateway, but in a place with a special interior and atmosphere: a creative or hipster space, a loft project or other place associated with literature, music. Gastronomic pleasure is necessarily accompanied by cultural pleasure.
Games instead of politics
Researchers say that young people are infantile and do not want to participate in the life of the country. Isn't that why they love games so much?
- Despite the stereotype that young people have become inactive and apolitical, they are involved in the most different shapes cultural practices. In all cities, only 7% are not part of any community. Many have been working since their second year. However, the labor market is not very favorable for students, so sometimes lack of involvement, immaturity, and existence in uncertainty are not the result of one’s own choice, but simply a coincidence. Of course have different groups of people. However, Generation Z is not interested in politics and parties because they do not trust them. They understand that they are not heard, their opinion is not taken into account, so they do not particularly strive to get into politics. They don’t dream of changing the social system or the whole world. But they are active where they can change something. The opportunity to be heard, to influence something, becomes key when participating in some activity, group, community, subculture. Everything else is boring and “unfun.”Citizenship in small matters, at the level of an outstretched hand, is actively developing. It’s fashionable to be active, help animals, children, elderly people, disabled people. Grassroots civilian assistance practices are developing - volunteer movements, search teams. Both official initiatives and informal ones that do not have government or grant support are popular. New generations have a great desire to help, to participate in something, to be useful.
Post-material era
- What about the accusations of excessive materialism of the new generation - are they really obsessed with brands?
We are entering an era of post-material values. Generation Z focuses more on replicas than real products. Avoiding expensive brands because there is no point in paying more just for the name. They have a calm attitude towards things, brands and corporations. Anti-capitalist ideas are popular. The DIY economy is developing (from the English do it yourself - do it yourself). Its main features are a departure from the mainstream in consumption; young people are involved in the process of creating a product - music, clothing, food, distinctive attributes. This era is also associated with the inevitability of growing tolerance, acceptance of gender, sexual, ethnic and religious differences. A calm attitude towards people with disabilities, towards otherness. Perhaps also because it is now fashionable to be exclusive and special. A striking example - multicolored hair. They are popular among many young people, although previously it was only among representatives of subcultures. Also, the post-material era is associated with the importance of the moral factor and receiving spiritual and emotional pleasure from performing some action.
- Experts are afraid that the Internet and the virtual world will enslave us, but young people are already on the Internet?
Of course, this is a digital generation. However, it can successfully use it - work and study using the Internet, and not just hang out there. Sometimes adults don't see positive trends simply because they judge children by the wrong criteria. In general, new generations are quite rational. They understand that not everything on the Internet is true. They have already developed the skill to recognize fake news and other fake news. They are able to compare facts and filter the information that comes from the Internet.
At the same time, on some issues they have a mess in their heads. This is due to the development of populism in society. Why does devaluation occur? key concepts, such as justice, value, truth, sense, conscience, hope, honor, faith, patriotism and so on. They are used by everyone in different meanings, contexts and purposes. Their value decreases. In the context of this semantic mess, it is very difficult for young people to understand what is true and what is false. You can stage and edit what is happening, present the facts in different ways depending on your goals.In this sense, young people are unhappy. They are forced to form a semantic support in a situation of uncertainty in all areas - from politics to family life. Therefore, they have great difficulty answering questions about their future plans. It is easier for them to express themselves in small things - planting a tree, cleaning up trash, helping someone. It is accessible, close, understandable and brings tangible results.
When working with any age category, it is extremely important to take into account the peculiarities of their lifestyle. Young people are very bright and interesting people, with their own habits and inclinations. In order to effectively work with young people in MLM, I have identified the most characteristic features of this segment of society. You may want to add and expand something, but you should keep in mind that these facts are based solely on my 7 years of experience working with youth and my practice as a psychologist and business coach.
1. Love of parties 
It is truth. Young people accumulate an incredible amount of energy that must be poured into something. The best way for this purpose – communication in your company. Some prefer joint “outings” into nature, some prefer joint “outings” into nature, some prefer going to nightclubs, some like cultural events. Whatever it is, there is only one goal - to have fun together: chat, gossip, show off and look at others.
2. Passion for all kinds of devices 
Has there been a new product in the world of electronics or the world of fashion? The youth are right here! They must have the latest model phones and pants from the new collection. Young people should always be aware of where, what and for how much they can buy. It must be prestigious and stylish, so that you won’t be ashamed to show it to others. That is why for young people it is so important what you look like, what brand your laptop is and what car you drove.
3. Aversion to directions and excessive pressure
Regardless of age, no one likes being forced to do something against their will. But among young people this feeling is heightened to the limit. Children, at approximately 3 years of age, experience a “crisis of independence” when they snatch the hand of adults while crossing the road and try to dress themselves and manage the process. It turns out that such a crisis is typical not only at such a young age. Criticism addressed to them, moralizing conversations and “rolling away” have a completely opposite effect on young people. Instead of causing an action reaction, a reaction reaction is generated. The result is irritation and aggression.
4. A penchant for adventurism
Don’t feed us young people bread - just let us learn something and get involved in some adventure. This passion is explained by an unconscious desire to understand the world and test one’s “strength”, to understand “what am I capable of?” That's why so many young people go to independent travel, try themselves in different types activities, getting a job in one place or another. They really need adrenaline, heartbeat and extreme events. Receiving all this, they feel the “taste of life” and feel happy.
5. The desire to prove to yourself and others
One of the motivating motives for action for young people is the desire to kill 
believe that “I can do this no matter what”, that this new status or a new role for me. And if my achievements and victories are also noticed by someone from among significant adults, such as parents, relatives, teachers, sponsors, business colleagues, my joy and sense of self-satisfaction will know no bounds! Everyone wants to assert themselves and be a significant person. Having recognition is one of the most powerful levers of action for young people.
6. Trace 
addressing inspired stereotypes
It is important for young people to be “in the flow”, to live according to what is being intensively imposed through the media. If today it is fashionable to have plump lips, the girls rush to the plastic surgeon; If today the indicator of success for men is a BMW X6, then it certainly must be there. And if this is not yet possible, it will become dream No.!, which I will tell everyone around. The same goes for fashion, resorts and jewelry. That is why it is sometimes difficult to understand what a young man really wants. We often hear: an apartment in a prestigious area, a house, a car, a family, children... Everything is like everyone else. People, without thinking, talk about some kind of stereotyped, average dream, while in the depths of their souls they dream of a serene village life. But admitting this to yourself means losing your status and your “cool” face in the eyes of others. This is, of course, an example of extremes, for clarity)
7. Flexibility and variability 
The main indicator of the success adult life– this is stability: stable work, stable salary, confidence in tomorrow, minimum shocks. For young people this is boring! That is why they are so changeable, both in their desires and in their actions. Today a young man can assure you that he needs money at all costs to buy a red sports car, and tomorrow, being impressed by the film he saw, he will forget about the car and will be burning with the desire to be on the Cote d'Azur of France. The same applies to your obligations and given words. But this same feature gives their lifestyle mobility and the ability to very easily adapt to any situation. Young people “switch on” very quickly and absorb the latest information, and this process is painless and exciting for them.
Now that you have learned about the nuances of youth psychology, it will be much easier for you to speak the same language with them, because mutual understanding is the key to long-term relationships and the path to achieving goals together.
Today there are almost two billion young people and teenagers living on the planet. This has never happened in world history, and this figure will continue to grow. Moreover, the largest proportion of young people are in third world countries. They can either make their states new world leaders or destroy them to the ground. Apparat studied the UN report on the role of youth in the world and selected the most Interesting Facts and figures showing how the new generation will change the planet in the coming years.
There are currently 1.8 billion people aged 10 to 24 living on our planet.
They are what the UN calls young. There have never been so many young people on Earth before. Not only its number is growing, but also its share in the population. For some countries this will help achieve economic success, for others it can become a huge problem.
Almost 90% of all young people live in the developing world - countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
This will change the landscape of the world globally over the next decades: youth have always been the driving force of economic, social and political change. The quality of these changes will depend on the ability of Third World governments to adequately respond to the demands of the new generation. Along with young people, the demand for education and jobs is growing. The authors of the UN report believe that if the authorities can meet the demand, they will significantly improve the country's well-being in the future. IN otherwise a social explosion is possible. In Egypt, one of the reasons for the revolution that broke out during the Arab Spring was huge unemployment among young people.
India has the most young people on the planet
More than 350 million young people live in India - this could turn it into one of the most powerful states on the planet
This is called the demographic dividend - the benefit that a country can reap in the future due to the huge number of young people. India now has nearly 100 million more young people than neighboring China, although its population is smaller. However, without investment from the government and private companies in education and infrastructure, this dividend will be wasted, the report's authors write.
In some countries, more than 50% of the population is under 18 years of age.
The authors of the report counted seventeen such states. For example, a similar situation has developed in Afghanistan, Chad, Niger and Uganda. In some of these countries average age the population is getting smaller every year. On the one hand, young people will not have to take care of a large generation of older people on their shoulders, on the other hand, in some African countries they have already begun to face serious problems when finding work.
There are about 23 million young people in Russia, there are fewer and fewer of them, and this is a problem
Adolescents and young adults aged 10 to 24 in the United States and China account for 20% of the population. These countries have already benefited from their demographic dividend in the past and are now gradually aging. In Russia, the situation is even more complicated: young people here make up only 16% of all Russians. At the same time, as the authors of the report predict, their share will decline. This means that our working-age population will become less and less, which may negatively affect the economic development of the country.
Nigeria's GDP per capita will rise by a third by 2030 as a result of demographic shifts, the World Economic Forum predicts.
Who will benefit from the global demographic shift?
Developing countries that have last years The economy developed quite steadily. In addition to the already mentioned India, Nigeria and Kenya may also be among the main beneficiaries. Although the proportion of young people in the United States and Western Europe is decreasing, developed world There is still a big trump card - education. Thus, a quarter of students who went to study abroad last year entered American universities. Many of them will remain to work there.
Who will be among the losers?
First of all, countries with a low share of youth in the population, which do not take any steps to change the situation for the better. Russia is among the vulnerable. The country's population is practically not growing, the proportion of youth and teenagers is declining, and the authorities are having varying degrees of success in attracting young men and women from other countries to local universities. Thus, by 2050, the share of people aged 10 to 25 years in the Russian population may fall below 15 percent. This means a gradual reduction in the number of working-age citizens and, as a consequence, a decrease in the rate of economic growth.
Those countries that cannot take advantage of the current situation correctly will also lose. Those at risk are the poorest countries in Asia and Africa, which do not have sufficient funds for quality medicine and the creation of new jobs.
What should countries do to benefit from demographic changes?
Get rid of the main problems identified in the report: poor quality medicine, gender inequality, lack of educational institutions.
In addition, the authors of the report advise the authorities of developing countries to pay attention to the problems that young people themselves indicated during the UN survey. Thus, in sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of adolescents and young adults consider local customs to be the main barrier to development. In Southeast Asia they share the first place with low literacy rates. Gender issues are in second place in most regions. And everywhere there is a low level of support from politicians - in the last place.
Today Russia celebrates Youth Day. According to official data, about 33 million people aged 14 to 30 live in the country. What are modern young Russians like? The answer is in facts and figures.
- 81% of students consider persistence in acquiring knowledge a necessary condition to get a good education.
- 79% of university graduates expect a salary at their first job of 35 thousand per month.
- Russian youth primarily consider trade and the restaurant business as their first place of work.
- Over 45% of young people do not stay in one job for more than one year.
- 30% of young people aged 18 to 24 smoke cigarettes.
- 60% of young people would like to open their own business.
- 57% of young people do not have any idols.
- 75% of 18-24 year old Russians do not approve of adultery.
- In Russia, there are 959 girls per 1000 boys aged 20-24 years.
- According to analysts, by 2021 the number of students will decrease to 4.1 – 4.2 million people.
- Among young Russians, the majority are graduates of economics and law faculties.
- About 54% of students study part-time, part-time and externally.
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Youth is a social group that includes people aged 16 to 30 years. Youth is an independent subject who contributes to social dynamics.
Today's youth are significantly different from previous generations. The crisis in Russian society has given rise to an acute conflict between generations with its ideological, cultural orientations, and value systems. A person’s value system is the “foundation” of his relationship to the world. Values represent a relatively stable, socially conditioned selective attitude of a person towards a set of material and spiritual goods. The values are both traditional and innovative. Among traditional values, which young people are guided by - love, friendship, mutual assistance, mutual support, which is defined as collectivist values.
It should be noted that in modern conditions young people do not inherit the values that are shared by the majority of their parents.
The youth community is characterized by a search for its place in life, perceives the culture of society as a field for self-expression and self-realization, and seeks in it not so much moral as entertaining and relaxing content. Hence the passion for gambling, electronic equipment, spectacular leisure activities, various kinds of stimulants of mental activity - medicinal, chemical, food, etc.
This also explains such a phenomenon of modern culture as youth fashion, which has a pronounced sexual orientation and is characterized by a lack of individuality and sophistication. Adolescents and young men strive to conform to the promoted standards of behavior - in clothing, hairstyles, manners, habits, way of life and lifestyle, choice of methods of communication, types of employment, and in determining the meaning of life.
In connection with the above, youth culture can be considered as a subculture. Its difference from the culture of the whole society is that young people have their own values, norms, rules, customs, fashion symbols, interests and needs, attitudes and ideas. At the same time, youth as a social community is heterogeneous. It contains subgroups of highly educated and uneducated people, with high or low social status, economically wealthy and insolvent, urban and rural, working and non-working, believers and non-believers. Hence the differences in cultural traditions and behavioral strategies of representatives of the younger generation.
It is characteristic that at present the youth subculture is turning into a counterculture, entering into confrontation with society with its ideals, fashion, art, and language. Many social phenomena deviant orientation is associated with young age, including the activities of criminal organized communities, drug addiction, substance abuse, gambling, prostitution, etc. Special attention deserves youth leisure, which for a considerable number social groups takes on an increasingly unspiritual, immoral form.
Consumer orientations poison the soul of young people, force them to compete with each other, and lead to the suppression of the spiritual and moral principles in the individual. The problem that deserves special attention is the development of immoral orientations in young people. Prostitution and sexual promiscuity are being condemned less and less by young people, and in the most intellectual youth environment - students, facts of the use of obscene language, tobacco smoking among girls, drug addiction, beer alcoholism, drunkenness, hooliganism, theft, and racketeering are increasingly common. Humanism as universal value goes further and further, leaving in its place such moral manifestations as rudeness, aggression, indifference, rivalry, idolatry.
Informal youth movements represent a type of counterculture that challenges society. Since counterculture denotes attitudes that contradict the fundamental principles of a given culture, informal youth movements receive the status alternative forms cultures not controlled by society.
It is important to understand that these forms of culture arise objectively, which means they cannot be destroyed, banned, or replaced with anything else. They are caused by dissatisfaction among young people as a marginal, transitional social group with their living and working conditions. Low level wages for the majority of those starting a professional career, an even more modest amount of student scholarships, poor young families, and most of all student families - all this together and on the basis of sharp social stratification in society becomes a time bomb for the socialization of new generations of Russians.
Informal youth movements - musical, technical, legal, sports, philosophical and mystical, environmental, patriotic, fascist, racist, creative - perform certain functions that other social structures cannot assume. Among them are the functions of self-realization, pastime, compensatory, heuristic. Particular attention should be paid to those youth movements that put communication, peace, love, mutual understanding at the center of everything (Hare Krishnas, religious brotherhoods and sects), as well as groups of alternative creativity that unite artists, writers, performers, musicians, etc. who are not recognized by official circles . It is obvious that their activities would not be of a dubious nature if young people could legally obtain everything that they aspired to and that they were looking for in alternative associations among social groups existing in the legal and social space.
Research shows that modern Russian youth are more focused on such types of leisure as visiting cinemas, places of entertainment - cafes, bars, nightclubs, discos, cultural and entertainment centers with show programs, watching TV shows, listening to music recordings or music radio channels, Popular Previously, reading fiction, the press, physical education and sports activities were inferior in the ranking to entertaining leisure activities. Fitness, fashionable in recent years, attracts wealthy young people, as it is a very expensive form sports leisure, although undoubtedly progressive, since it is only compatible with in a healthy way life.
Such powerful channels for transmitting cultural information as theatre, conservatory, exhibitions, museums are not in demand by most modern youth. Interest in them is shown mainly by specialists - current or future, students of universities of culture and art, representatives of pedagogical and other humanitarian specialties. For other social groups of young people, institutions that convey high culture are inaccessible. One of external reasons- the high cost of visiting institutions not subsidized by the state, in addition, their territorial remoteness also affects: not every city has a sufficient number of cultural objects. The internal reasons for indifference to them are the lack of need for contact with artistic values. Since a relatively small number of children and adolescents attend art schools (music, art, sports and others) and just as rarely secondary schools are engaged creative development their students, the latter do not develop a need to accept certain types of art; children remain outside the influence of classical instrumental music, opera, ballet, theatrical art, artistic paintings, classical and modern Russian and foreign literature. The process of forming an emotional and sensory attitude towards life and culture, which is so necessary for the socialization of a mature personality and the self-realization of young people, is hampered.
