The Youth in World Politics

Generation Y in politics and economics – what will it change?

September 25, 2018
Print

First of all, it’s important to stress the difference in marking who would belong to generation Y or to the so called “Millennials” and who would not. It depends upon the differences in political, social and economic environments in different societies worldwide. For example, in the United States this is generally referred to the people born from 1981 to 2000 whereas in Russia and other post-Soviet states it is usually the beginning of perestroika 1987 and up to 2000. Despite the fact that there are such important differences, what’s even more amazing is the similarities that the representatives of this generation worldwide share among themselves. This would be the first observation of a transnational socio-economic pattern related to the whole generation we have ever witnessed in the history of a humankind and it’s critically important that we study this as deep as possible.

millenials.jpg

Source: PaySpaceMagazine

First of all, the millennials are mostly liberal in their views and approaches. There are still some representatives of conservative views among them, but generally they are seen as the liberal generation. This should not be seen as a political orientation, but rather as the flexibility of thoughts and opinions that can be easily affected and influenced both by the authority of the peers and of academics and therefore we may observe the millennials sharing either the far-right views and the far-left views. To my deepest concern, this is the matter of education. I got lucky myself to be educated in the moralities of open-mindedness and the spirit of global citizenship. I am at this moment confident to declare myself able to identity propaganda and expose everything to my critical thought. Don’t trust the easy formulas but always to dig deeper into the subject to find the core value of a discipline. I do represent the spirit of my generation in this regard, I believe. We are definitely the most active generation at this time since we are already in our 20’s mostly and just about the moment to step into our careers and demonstrate the world what we can do, hopefully, to deliver it the best of ours, to make it a safer, a more open and prosperous place. One might argue, that the further generation Z is even more eminent than ours. I would not disagree with this, they are, indeed, in many ways better than us. Just as we are a little bit better than the ones who were before us. Focusing particularly on the political aspect of the millennials and how would they shape the world politically my highest bid would be that this generation will demonstrate a lot more flexibility than the previous generation. We are more open to the world and the new ideas, while getting our education, especially at the latter stage, we have already experienced the immense opportunities that technology could deliver us. Most of us grew up and had interaction with foreign cultures and values with the access to the Internet and the luckiest ones of ours had an unseen freedom of movement across the world. I had a chance to live and study in a foreign country when I was in High School and this was fully provided by the program I participated in. Thus, my opportunity to explore the world never depended upon the financial obstacles. This made me believe that the money is no longer the barrier to implement and achieve things. They are still, of course, but in a slightly different manner. Nowadays we have the access to opportunities worldwide no previous generation has ever experienced. This is why the most important thing nowadays is the potential. Everything can be gained and achieved these days – knowledge is transmitted and passed on easier than any time before. What makes the difference is the potential and the purpose to get something done. This is why I believe that the generation Y would demonstrate loyalty to the globalization process and will act in a more effective way towards the openness of our societies and would prefer to build bridges rather than walls or curtains. But for this education is crucial, I will repeat my thought from the beginning of my narrative. The more deeper is our understanding of the world and its’ ways, the more we realize that its’ mostly the same everywhere, the better we are at finding the ground of common touch with each other.

Studying the economic behavior of the millennials is another point of extraordinary interest. The representatives of this generation are likely to start a family at a later time than their parents did. This is why they would behave as single parts of the society for a little bit longer. This explains the certain economic behavior of theirs. The overall growth in housing prices, unemployment rates and the rapid urbanization makes it challenging to start a family and supply it with the necessary resources. The millennials tend to believe the world is full of opportunities and they prefer to pursue them first. In the more developed and educated areas of the world it is a pattern that a young man or woman would think of starting a family at middle or even late 30’s. And in more rural areas and the less educated parts of the world this age barrier would decrease. Another interesting aspect would be the maturity gap. In the happy world where not so many obligations lay upon a young man or woman he or she would tend to behave in a rather less serious way than our parents would. They would call it immature and childish, but for us this would be freedom and the pursuit of happiness. This is why one would notice a lot of young men and women watch a lot of cartoons and like to be less serious than our parents used to when they were of our age. Generation Y is affected by the social media. Millennials are multi-tasked and are in this regard also easily affected to distraction and less concentration. This would explain their preferences in jobs and lifestyles. This generation would not postpone travelling to the later stage of their life and especially to their retirement. They would see travelling back and forth from all over the places as the inevitable feature of their life and career. They see the world as one big space to visit and explore. Especially keeping in mind than in any major city they would have a Starbucks cup of coffee and WiFi connection. This generation is also less attracted to TV and radio, this is why you wouldn’t see much of the teen stuff sold via the TV commercials. This is why we see the transmission of economy into the Internet space. The desire to be special is represented in the Social Media space and in the online roleplay games. There one would spend money to promote his or her personage for example. This generation is used to having whole access to information and used to cause a lot of damage to movie and music industry. Observing the contemporary condition, I would say that it’s the millennials who still use the illegal streaming of movies and music as well as literature and games. We just believe that to pay for something you can find for free in the Internet doesn’t make much sense in terms of money saving. The World Economic Crisis in 2008-2009 damaged the economic conditions of the youth. I was still in school back then so it never affected me. But unemployment challenge is to return as we can witness the revolutionary robotization of our life. It is not too far away we won’t be considered efficient to work at the classic student jobs as a cashier, waiter, taxi driver, etc. We would mostly value the opportunity to realize our potential in our careers. This is why we are different from our parents who valued economic security the most. We would never agree to adjust our life to the conditions of our work. For us it would be the work that would smoothly adjust into the way we wish to live. We are not quite willing to fit into the difficult hierarchical and bureaucratic systems either. We desire for the professional development of our skills and would not enjoy staying on the same position for too long. As well as that we would change the workplaces more often than our parents did.

To sum up, we see that the millennials bring a totally different approach to life and will inevitably shape the current century in a very special way. We are yet to see the results of this as the generation just steps into the leadership positions in the political and economic spheres of the global community worldwide. On the one hand, this is a more open generation, on the other hand, its’ own openness can injure the millennials. Millennials have to educate themselves well.

Share this article

Poll conducted

  1. In your opinion, what are the US long-term goals for Russia?
    U.S. wants to establish partnership relations with Russia on condition that it meets the U.S. requirements  
     33 (31%)
    U.S. wants to deter Russia’s military and political activity  
     30 (28%)
    U.S. wants to dissolve Russia  
     24 (22%)
    U.S. wants to establish alliance relations with Russia under the US conditions to rival China  
     21 (19%)
For business
For researchers
For students