POLL: Teeenagers and Young Adults Are Increasingly Pessimistic About America’s Future
Jose Nino
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Although it has never been easy to be a teenager, the current generation of young Americans feels particularly apprehensive, new polling shows — anxious about their lives, disillusioned about the direction of the country and pessimistic about their futures.
According to a poll published on January 29, 2024 by Common Sense Media, an organization that advocates children, only one-third of individuals polled in the age range of 12 to 17 indicated that the country’s overall economic and political climate was going well for children and teenagers in present times.
Below half of those polled believed that they would be better off than their parents once they became adults. In an another poll carried out by Gallup and Walton Family Foundation, respondents from Gen Z — individuals from the age range of 12 to 17 — are less likely to give their current and future prospects a good rating than their millennial counterparts when they were of the same age.
Of those in the 18 to 26 age range, 15% indicated that their mental health was excellent.
“The data is pretty stark: Our kids are not all right,” proclaimed James P. Steyer, founder and chief executive of Common Sense Media.
The same Common Sense Media poll discovered that roughly two-thirds of respondents in the age range of 12 to 17 indicated that politicians and elected officials were not acting on the concerns and needs of young Americans. Boys and white responders were slightly more likely to have hostile views towards the political class.
Just 7% of teenagers stated politicians represented the will of the young people very well.
As for education, over half of teenagers stated that public K-12 schools were doing a mediocre or poor job in educating the youth. Just 8 percent said they were doing an excellent job.
60% stated that the learning loss the Wuhan virus pandemic brought about was a major issue. When the Gallup poll asked teenagers for three words that best encapsulated their school experience, the most common answers they provided were ” bored, tired and pressured” per a report by the New York times.
With respect to mental health, the Common Sense poll found that 65% of respondents noted that the mental health of children and teenagers in their respective communities were poor or fair.
When it comes to companionship, children in the age range 13 to 17 are somewhat less likely to indicate that they have a friend they can confide in compared to their millennial predecessors. This trend also holds for regular exercise routines or plans to attend college or university.
Overall, America is in for some rough economic times. The fiat, regulatory system that has dominated American politics for over a century is finally running its course and rendering millions of Americans in a state of economic stagnation. On top of that, millions of Americans are effectively “bowling alone” and no longer have the social capital and networks like their forefathers did throughout the Gilded Age up until the 1960s.
This is a major problem that has to be sorted out if the US is to remain a coherent civilization for the rest of the 21st century.
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