{"id":718,"date":"2011-02-05T17:53:12","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T00:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=718"},"modified":"2011-02-06T08:33:58","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T15:33:58","slug":"misspent-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=718","title":{"rendered":"Misspent Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have one of these.\u00a0 A misspent youth, that is.\u00a0 A lot of us would confess to one and that’s ok.\u00a0 Too late to reconstruct, excuse or otherwise rehabilitate it.<\/p>\n

The more pressing question is whether we are ‘misspending’ the youth of today?<\/p>\n

This goes beyond the fact that my three children are all twentysomethings.\u00a0 But they’re having the same struggles that millions of other young people are facing today – finding their way amidst a severe economic crisis, a tectonic demographic shift, sclerotic government, and a fiscal calamity that would make Old Mother Hubbard’s dog feel fortunate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Our youth are our future.\u00a0 A trite saying but nonetheless a tautology of the first order.\u00a0 They are what the world will be.\u00a0 And they’re not feeling that great.\u00a0 Tamar Lewin of the New York Times<\/a><\/strong> writes about stress levels of college students being at an all time high while an annual survey of college freshman suggests the emotional health of our nation’s youth is at an all time low.\u00a0 According to the survey:<\/p>\n

Campus counselors say the survey results are the latest evidence of what they see every day in their offices \u2014 students who are depressed, under stress and using psychiatric medication, prescribed even before they came to college.\u00a0 The economy has only added to the stress, not just because of financial pressures on their parents but also because the students are worried about their own college debt and job prospects when they graduate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The anxiety isn’t confined to Americans.\u00a0 In another New York Times piece, Martin Fackler<\/a><\/strong> writes about the plight of Japan’s youth.\u00a0 They are the next generation who have grown up in ‘the lost decade’.\u00a0 They don’t see much light at the end of that tunnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a feeling among young generations that no matter how hard we try, we can\u2019t get ahead,\u201d said Shigeyuki Jo, 36, co-author of \u201cThe Truth of Generational Inequalities.\u201d \u201cEvery avenue seems to be blocked, like we\u2019re butting our heads against a wall.\u201d\u00a0 An aging population is clogging the nation\u2019s economy with the vested interests of older generations, young people and social experts warn, making an already hierarchical society even more rigid and conservative. The result is that Japan is holding back and marginalizing its youth at a time when it actually needs them to help create the new products, companies and industries that a mature economy requires to grow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a global phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Look around.\u00a0 Tunisia.\u00a0 Egypt.\u00a0 Around the world we’ve been short-changing the next generation.\u00a0 We — the boomers and Xers — have made a lot of bad decisions.\u00a0 The next generation is figuring it out.<\/p>\n

We can still change but time is running short.<\/p>\n

And whatever changes we refuse to make, our young people will make for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have one of these.\u00a0 A misspent youth, that is.\u00a0 A lot of us would confess to one and that’s ok.\u00a0 Too late to reconstruct, excuse or otherwise rehabilitate it. The more pressing question is whether we are ‘misspending’ the youth of today? This goes beyond the fact that my three children are all twentysomethings.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[155,104,19,106,105,107,103,102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}