“Let’s give our youth the opportunity to really make themselves heard and provide them with answers”

Lhe mobilization against the pension reform won high school classes and student campuses, rejuvenating the processions of demonstrators, a few days before the 55^e anniversary of May 68.

If their watchword remains opposition to the reform, it is doubtful that this mobilization of part of the youth of France is exclusively directed against a postponement of the legal age from 62 to 64, a horizon as distant as abstract for them.

As always in youth movements, the reasons for anger are protean. They are above all the expression of an anxiety that no generation had felt before them: for the first time in the history of humanity, a majority of them think that their future will be darker than that of their parents’ generation.

The causes are numerous: traumatic confinement with its share of social and psychological consequences, search for meaning, eco-anxiety, desire to reconcile professional and personal life, distrust of political representation, paradoxical feeling of loss of freedom at age of all possible…

Time bombs

These subjects of concern carry heavy consequences: massive abstention, overconsumption of social networks, claim of a right to laziness and disconnection, diversion of classic associative commitment in favor of sometimes violent militant actions… So many bombs delayed that it is up to “us” to demine tomorrow by integrating this new deal.

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” We “it is the community of those they consider to be “boomers”, those who were brought up in the idea that a successful life was synonymous with professional ascent, setting up careerism as a model, with its famous corollary which has become foil, the “metro, work, sleep” triptych.

Have our children lost the taste for effort, the sense of the value of work?

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What if, rather than stigmatizing an entire generation, we seek to associate them with a social project in which they feel fully involved?

A digital consultation

This requires trust, listening, dialogue, then action.

Let’s open a huge digital consultation with all the youth of France, bring up the new aspirations of 16-25 year olds by asking them about all aspects of their lives. Let’s not be afraid to tackle all the subjects to understand the expectations of a youth who are growing up faster in such an evolving world.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers “The pension reform must offer the opportunity for collective reflection on the place that leisure should hold in our lives”

Right to vote from 16 years old? Removal of Parcoursup? Right to break during studies? Consideration of artificial intelligence in the school context and in the potential it offers in terms of jobs? Universal income? Youth loan? The ideas are many. They may not all be relevant, but let’s give our youth the chance to really be heard and give them answers.

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