A generation faced with stress & anxiety

national | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis

Thursday June 27, 2019 22:17

by sp - Socialist Party

At the end of May, The Irish Times released a survey of young people between the ages of 16 and 21 conducted by Young Social Innovators. Sixty percent of those surveyed described their generation as stressed, anxious and depressed, while a mere 11% described it as motivated. With the housing crisis (which currently sees over 10,000 people in homelessness services), precarious work and the constant threat of climate change forever looming over them, it’s not surprising that the majority of young people are not exactly as hopeful about their future as they may once have been.

A generation faced with stress & anxiety

By Heather O’Callaghan

At the end of May, The Irish Times released a survey of young people between the ages of 16 and 21 conducted by Young Social Innovators. Sixty percent of those surveyed described their generation as stressed, anxious and depressed, while a mere 11% described it as motivated. With the housing crisis (which currently sees over 10,000 people in homelessness services), precarious work and the constant threat of climate change forever looming over them, it’s not surprising that the majority of young people are not exactly as hopeful about their future as they may once have been.

Bleak future

For teenagers there is a constant pressure to perform well in school as their entire college career hangs on one exam, which is nothing short of “tell me everything you’ve learnt in 5 years, go!” For young adults there’s the added stress of high college fees and high rent for very limited accommodation which forces many either to live with their parents all through university and for many years afterwards, or not attend the university they received a place in if it’s away from home. As well as this, there is the issue of precarious work, low wages and zero-hour contracts to contend with. Pretty bleak, right?

Inspiring movements

However there is a silver lining to this: in the past year we have seen mass movements surrounding housing and climate change that have either been organised in part or fully by young people. If we take the climate change protests for example, we’ve seen thousands of school students striking and calling for action on climate change not just in Ireland but all over the world. Many people in Ireland would have seen how the government caves when under pressure from the public; you can see this if you look at movements such as repeal, marriage equality and the water charges movement. This proves that there is potential for systemic change when young and working-class people get organised. If 88% of young people feel that they aren’t being listened to by the government now, this will only create the basis for resentment. Young people and the working class need to organise for change now. This means fighting to tear down the capitalist regime and replacing it with complete public ownership of natural resources, public service, businesses and healthcare, and implementing socialism in the place of capitalism.

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Comments (1 of 1)

waste of young energies helping FG neoliberal policies

by lung disease

Fri Jun 28, 2019 19:16

Pity these brainwashed young kid's energies are being wasted on providing ammunition
for FG's nonsense cynical carbon taxes on the poor and nonsense policies
propping up the auto industry and undermining Irish small agriculture

Meanwhile the EU happily continues it's Mercosur deal which will result
in more of the rain forests being cut down.

Nothing ireland does will influence climate change one bit.
It's money thrown into a pointless quixotic black hole
which will have absolutely no effect on the Irish weather
or the sea levels of the planet.

apart from water vapour which we can do nothing about, all of the greenhouse gases amount to a mere 1% of the atmosphere.
Of that 1% CO2 amounts to 400ppm or 0.04%

That 0.04% is what remains in the atmosphere due to all the emissions of all the countries in the world
plus all the volcanoes, coal seam fires, termite farts, forest fires, etc etc etc.

Mankind's entire contribution to this 400ppm or 0.04% is estimated to be a mere 3.4% of the total after all those other natural sources which we can do little or nothing about are taken into account.
Ireland's contribution to this tiny 3.4% of 0.04% can barely be measured in amongst the noise.
If Ireland suddenly had zero emissions tomorrow the weather would not change one bit here
as people on the streets and especially their kids have been led to believe through relentless repetition
of climate change propaganda. However the carbon taxes will have very real effects indeed on the Irish poor.

The only imperative here is threats of huge fines from the EU.
And for this the poorest in our society will be squeezed,

The EU needs to fund it's excesses and the eye watering salaries and pampering of it's bureaucrats so they constantly need to be devising schemes that allow them to extract fines from the member states to pay for it all.
Climate change is a real money spinner for them.

We never hear where all this fine money goes of course.
And to date the EU has been rather bad in producing credible transparent accounts
for citizens to examine!

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A generation faced with stress & anxiety

Bleak future

Inspiring movements

Comments (1 of 1)