The "Now Generation" Vs. Waithood and Wasted Youth

In 1966, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year was an entire generation: The Man and Woman under 25.

It was a couple of years ago that I came across this article, and for some reason I keep going back to it. Perhaps because over the past… I don’t know… five years – Youth have come under the spotlight in the Arab region. Youth have become the favorite subject matter of development programs, NGOs, policy makers, and donor groups. “Youth constitute an overwhelming majority of the population” almost became a buzz statement. “Empowering Youth” is the trendy objective on project grant proposals.

Not that there is anything wrong with that, per say. It’s just that I look around me and try to figure out how my generation of young people in Jordan and the region are doing, and to what extent we can be “not just a new generation, but a new kind of generation.”

In the closing third of the 20th century, that generation looms larger than all the exponential promises of science or technology: it will soon be the majority in charge. In the U.S., citizens of 25 and under in 1966 nearly outnumbered their elders; by 1970, there will be 100 million Americans in that age bracket. In other big, highly industrialized nations, notably Russia and Canada, the young also constitute half the population.

Interesting – we can definitely say the same for the Middle East now, right? Unfortunately, in that 11-page article, this is where the similarities start, and stop. I don’t want to sound pessimistic and negative, but reading on, it becomes clear why the generation of Arab men and women under 25 is nowhere near taking over the steering wheel in their societies and achieving what their counterparts in 1966 achieved in the industrialized world.

Never have the young been so assertive or so articulate, so well educated or so worldly. Predictably, they are a highly independent breed, and—to adult eyes—their independence has made them highly unpredictable.

Cushioned by unprecedented affluence and the welfare state, he has a sense of economic security unmatched in history

Reared in a prolonged period of world peace, he has a unique sense of control over his own destiny

Science and the knowledge explosion have armed him with more tools to choose his life pattern than he can always use: physical and intellectual mobility, personal and financial opportunity, a vista of change accelerating in every direction.

Never have the young been left more completely to their own devices. No adult can or will tell them what earlier generations were told: this is God, that is Good, this is Art, that is Not Done.

This is a generation of dazzling diversity… Its attitudes embrace every philosophy from Anarchy to Zen; simultaneously it adheres above all to the obverse side of the Puritan ethic—that hard work is good for its own sake.

Ok, so perhaps I exaggerated – there are a couple of other parallels that can be drawn, like this; today's youth is most accurately viewed through the campus window: nearly 40% of all American youth go on to higher education.

Or this: At the majority of colleges and universities, there have been no student demonstrations against anything.

But, back to the contrasts:

From Columbia to U.C.L.A., the shift is away from specialized subjects such as engineering and business administration and toward the humanities: English, history, political science. In particular, engineering, once a burgeoning discipline, is in sharp decline as a major subject: last year nearly a third of the engineering openings in the U.S. went unfilled.

Unlike the rebels of the '30s, who knew where they were going, the New Lefter today rejects ideologies—he's issue-oriented, not ideology-oriented.

It goes on, in attitudes towards religion, relationships, and more, but the sentence that sums up the contrast is:

The young no longer feel that they are merely preparing for life; they are living it.

How many of young people in their 20’s here feel that they’re waiting for life to happen? That they’re sort of stuck in a limbo? I can’t help but remember Hal’s brilliant post on this, about how "those years in an Arab girl's life, between the time she has gained a college degree and embarked on a career, up until she decides to get married, are sort of like being in limbo; A probation of sorts."

This brings me to the idea of “waithood” – a term coined by the Middle East Youth Initiative, a study conducted by the Dubai School of Governance and the Wolfenson Center at Brookings.

What they’re saying is that the transition to adulthood can be fulfilled through two things, employment, and marriage (isn’t about time society re-examines why marriage is a pre-condition for independence? But that is another topic). Now, because of high unemployment rates and a number of different factors, young people today are unable to make a smooth transition to adulthood. So they’re undergoing what the study calls “waithood.” It emphasizes the fact that while the Middle East has a demographic gift of youth bulge – where the percentage of people in the working age bracket outnumbers those who are dependent - the opportunity presented by this demographic is being wasted.

In the form of an unemployment spell, waithood can last for several years. The young person lacks information about where he or she is heading and is unable to have a clear sense of what the future might hold. When waiting is accompanied with uncertainty, waithood causes young people to waste their time instead of making the most of their transition periods.

At this, I will pause and leave the rest of my thoughts for another post. Meanwhile, read the Time Magazine article, and check out some of the research done recently in Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and Iran on youth exclusion and waithood.