No, it’s not how many followers we have on Twitter, and no, it’s not whether our eyebrows are looking their best. Young people, despite what some media outlets would have you believe, really do care about the big issues.
In 2018 the results of the 2017 World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Survey were published (the most recent survey), and it found that, for the third year in a row, climate change is the number one issue which millennials are concerned about. The survey involved more than 30,000 individuals aged 18-35 from 186 countries around the world.
Almost half of the survey participants (48.8%) put climate change as their top concern, and 78.1% said that they would be willing to change their lifestyle in order to protect the environment. Over 90% of young people agreed that humans are responsible for climate change.
The environment wasn’t the only serious concern which its participants had. The next largest concern was large scale conflict and wars. This was listed as a concern by 38.9% of participants. After that the greatest concern was inequality – of both income and in terms of discrimination (30.8% listed this as a major concern).
The rest of the top ten of most serious global issues were as follows:
- Poverty (29.2%)
- Religious conflicts (23.9%)
- Government accountability and transparency/corruption (22.7%)
- Food and water security (18.2%)
- Lack of education (15.9%)
- Safety/security/wellbeing (14.1%)
- Lack of economic opportunity and employment (12.1%)
Never let it be said that the younger generation has no idea about what’s going on in the world- the vast majority of us do.
