Respondents had a lot to consider when asked by Epoch Times reporters from Italy to Islamabad, “Does today’s younger generation have it easier or harder than previous generations?”
Bucharest, Romania
Stefan Manzararu, 60, Security Guard
They have it harder. Why? Can’t you see what is going on in the country, the mess in the government, in the Parliament? Young people today don’t go to school anymore and they don’t have money, so they steal and end up in jail ... They definitely have it harder.
Anne Marie, 50, Medical Sociologist
It’s the nostalgia of old folks as they get jealous and grumpy. They say “Young people have it a lot easier than I did, I had to walk 10 kilometers in the snow in my day.” No, of course they don’t have it easier, they have different kinds of pressures. The older generation doesn’t necessarily understand the pressures of the younger generation, so they think it’s easier. Distractions would be a big one but I think there is a lot of anxiety, it’s a very anxious time with global warming, job prospects, and whether or not you can get yourself through university. Because, it’s not a free ride.
Tania Spinello, 30, Beauty Shop Owner
The questions is not if is easier or not because the situation is dramatic for the new generation. In general, the young generation does not have values in their lives. They have lost their values—their parents are not present, or are separated or neglect their children. The result is they live in different places and now we can see the young generation go out and return home without limits. They have lost the limits in all that they do, the limits that normally our parents taught us in the past. They do not have values in their lives ... will not do anything if it is difficult. To achieve or do something in life, we need to work hard and they don’t like this. I think their situation is dramatic and much more difficult every day.
Alfred Meyn, 72, Retired Public Official
It´s not easier or not so easy, it is different. There are different problems now. For example, for my generation, in the beginning there were not many jobs—this is the same as it nowadays. But after the war [World War II] the economy was rising and therefore there were more chances and more jobs. There was a lot that needed to be rebuilt and consumption was booming. Today the work time is shorter but the workload is not, this means you have to do the same but have less time to do it.
Michale Amereskere, 49, Banker
I have a mixed feeling because certainly its has become easier and certainly it has become tougher. The education system has become easier, the Internet and lots of things for people to learn and the libraries and everything is there at their finger tips. The tougher world has become more complex. People have become more weird. If you look at the number of evil things that are happening around it has increased, so people have to get used to a different society. Especially there is so much violence, drugs, if you look everywhere there’s conflicts, you’ve got wars, people are fighting each other. Life has become faster. Life has become a rat race. People go to work, come back, and there’s no time for the family. In one sense people have become more like robots. In some ways it has become easier because if you want to study something there is [the] Internet, you can have anything you want. I grew up in a different society and a different time. Life was a slower pace.
Fatima Matos, 57, Geoprocessing Analyst
I think the new generation has things easier. Today there are more tenders and more employment opportunities. Youngsters are being hired right after graduating from university. In many cases, they are being hired after a few months of internship at the companies. They can have things easily as they earn salaries while still very young. I remember that I was the only 18-year-old girl in my neighborhood to be employed. People used to think that that was very strange. It was rare for somebody so young having a job at that time.
Michael James Fry, 45, Astrophysiotheologist
Well right away the musical Sweeney Todd comes to mind when Sweeney says, “These are desperate times and desperate measures must be taken.” Every generation makes this claim so in one respect we all have it the hard way, and we all have to find a way of balancing that out. The flip side of that is technology has raised awareness, it’s raised crime, it’s raised as much evil as it has raised good, to say the very least. So in that respect, this could be considered a much more frightening world and a more difficult time than for old people like me.
Saeeda Rafi, 62, Housewife
No, I think they have it harder because so much is going on in the world nowadays. These kids are exposed to so much more with computers, the Internet, and television. Children are much more demanding; it is hard to control children. It takes a lot of wisdom to raise kids now. The world is more complicated and it takes a lot more effort and know how to parent. In particular women have a tougher job.
Jennifer Irwin, 44, Manager
Well, certainly in South Africa the younger generation has it harder than previous generations because of the crime and the violence there; they can’t live like normal teenagers or young adults as in catching taxis or catching buses. There is no infrastructure for that sort of thing there. So, if they don’t have a car they’re pretty much stuck; they have to rely on other people. When they go out in the evening they have to go out in large groups. So I think, in that respect they do have it harder.
Schooling is easier because with the schools being integrated now, they’ve dropped the standards completely. For example, in South Africa, spelling is not an issue anymore as long as they get it right phonetically.
With work, they have a policy that most of the huge companies and corporates work as the country’s demographics work. So, if the majority is black, then black, Asian, colored, and then white, that’s how they employ in those percentages. So a large portion of the country, it’s called a BEE—Black Economic Empowerment Policy—they don’t employ whites anymore at all. So that’s why a large contingent of South Africans is all over the world, England, Australia, everywhere, because they can’t get jobs there.
Clive Dyson, 64, Hairdressing Shop Owner
I think in some ways the younger generation have it easier, and in a lot of ways they have it much harder. I think they are better educated than we were at the same time in life. They have more information available to them. They have far more stresses put on them as far as the drug culture of young people today. We didn’t have that. They are better prepared for going into the workforce, but jobs are probably not as easy to get as they were when we were younger. I was born immediately after the war; there was plenty of work. There were far less choices of work you could go into when I was younger, which really didn’t make it a difficult decision as to what you were going into. As today, younger people, one of the hardest things is choosing, because the smorgasbord is so great ... So yes, in some ways they have it easier, and in a lot of ways they have it much much harder.
Razali Kastari, 27, Technician
The younger generations have a much easier life in school. Equipped with electronic gadgets, information can be transmitted at the touch of their finger tips, thus when it comes to group projects and normal assignments, information can be retrieved, processed and submitted very quickly. During our times, we had to visit the library and borrow piles of books, manually copy down the text and collate bits and pieces of paper to be typed out using the typewriter (which can take three weeks to complete).
Look for the Global Q&A column every week, when Epoch Times correspondents interview people around the world to learn about their lives and perspectives on local and global realities. Next week’s global question: “What’s your concept of a fruitful day?”
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