Question 2 - Why are young people so apathetic about serious issues these days?

Young people, especially in today’s modern society, are viewed as apathetic and disinterested in serious issues. Examples of this can be seen in the political sphere and also in matters regarding global warming, economics and recent financial downturn regarding the value of the British Sterling post Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/
london-rioters-2011-anger-inequality-distrust-police

One reason why I think young people are so apathetic about serious issues these days is because of the amount of different type of media we have and the debate about whether we can trust them and everything that they say. Media in today’s society and even many years ago from today, have a way of manipulating information to portray a chosen feeling or certain representation of a person, culture or a situation.  One example of this is in the 2011 riots when groups of people across the United Kingdom went onto the streets to protest about the innocent shooting of Mark Duggan in London. Many of the media’s coverage, whether on television, in newspapers or online over exaggerated the amount of violence and people involved or injured in the riots. The media focused on one incident which was the worst and most violent out of them all to cover. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14434318) They ignored the fact that there was thousands of people peacefully protesting about Duggan’s death but instead focused on the smaller number of people who were setting fire to houses, cars and stealing goods from retailers. Because of this, many people believed that all the protests across the country were extremely violent and that they had all gotten out of hand however this was not the case. Many places across the UK had peaceful protests and no violent incidents occurred. But because of the large media coverage on violence only partially associated with the Mark Duggan killing, many people believed the media’s representation of the protester which had been portrayed as violent, angry and disruptive. Because of this I feel that young people do not listen to what the media has to say as much and instead think that they are over-exaggerating the events occurring.

Another reason I consider to be why young people are more apathetic these days about serious situations is due to the type and lack of education that young people are getting. In schools, pupils are taught maths, English, science but they do not touch on life skills enough in my opinion. Many young people come out of education not know what a mortgage is or how the exchange rates will affect them, most of them couldn’t tell you who the main political parties are. Knowing how to do maths and write eloquently is very important however, young people also need to be taught about things they will encounter in a daily basis once they have grown up and decide to leave home. Because they haven’t learnt about most of these topics, they cannot understand or make judgments on the issues that are appearing in our modern society. I feel that teaching has lost its track and has become more about getting good grades in desirable subject like maths and English rather than setting young people up to be able to exceed in life and have the life skills they need to be able to manage their finances. I feel that OFSTED do not help either as they rate school whilst mainly looking at the statistics of the amount of pupils who passes their exams rather than the range in styles of teaching to suite each child and the ability of the school to give them an education to not only give them qualifications but to also help them with general life skills to better them in the future so they can understand serious issues that could occur in today modern society.

Although we, as young people, are often described as apathetic there are some serious issues in which we showed great interest. First and foremost the 2016 Brexit vote, the voter turnout amongst young people was the highest it has been in recent times. (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/young-people-referendum-turnout-brexit-twice-as-high)  The reason for this, I believe, is the fact that this vote would nevertheless effect our futures, in economic and social areas. Young people have also shown great concern in areas such as Terrorism.  The reason for this is due to the rise of ISIS and recent attacks across Europe in the past 12 months, we as young people showed interest and sympathy in this area because it was a real threat to us as individuals but also our loved ones. So using the examples of Brexit and terrorism you can see how we are not always apathetic to serious situations especially when they have the ability to affect us directly.

To conclude, in some ways the mind-set of young people these days do give off the impressions that they are not apathetic to serious situations, however, there are contributing factors in their life which have made it harder for them to actually understand the background and topics of which these situations are based. The medias representations also confuse and mislead the general public and younger people so they cannot always be trusted. This means that younger people do not know what they can and cannot believe and have no other source of information that they can turn to, to get help and facts when deciding on an opinion; so instead chose not to have one and ignore the situations.