What matters most to young people? "Flexible Collectivism" and Consumption Attitudes

This series explores hints for the future by revealing young people's aspirations from the Future Prediction Support Lab's "Reiwa: The Future Young People Want Survey 2019." Part 1 explained the "disconnect between society's expectations and young people's aspirations," while Part 2 introduced young people's social consciousness, characterized by a "flexible collectivism" that values maintaining a firm sense of self while prioritizing cooperation with others.

This final installment delves deeper into the insights of young people exhibiting "flexible collectivism" characteristics through their attitudes toward interpersonal interaction and consumption, examining hints for how companies can approach them.

Do SNS increase "friends"?

Young people with "flexible collectivism" traits. How do they use the SNS they use daily for interaction with those around them? Figure 1 summarizes the results of a question about the number of friends young people have.

[Figure 1]

The largest group (41.5%) has 1 to 10 friends. Including those with zero friends, about half have 10 or fewer friends. When asked about friends met online or via SNS, about half reported having none. For young people, friendships seem to start with real-life relationships with people they can meet face-to-face, not online.

Real-life relationships motivate young people to take action

So, what are their respective attitudes toward real-life face-to-face interactions and online relationships? Among various questions asked, "online relationships" were particularly dominant in the following three areas.

[Figure 2]

It shows they expect convenience for themselves from online relationships, such as "killing time," "not worrying about time," and "casualness." In contrast, the three most prominent expectations for "when actually meeting face-to-face" were as follows.

[Figure 3]

They value the emotional experiences it creates within themselves, such as "creating lasting memories," "conveying feelings," and "keeping promises." Particularly interesting is that responses related to actions like "keeping promises" ranked highly. Face-to-face emotional exchange seems to have the power to motivate young people's actions.

Let's also look at some statements from the June survey.

<Image of Self/Society They Don't Want in 10 Years>


＜Desired Self-Image in 10 Years＞

It reveals that young people desire deeper mutual understanding between people, at a distance where you can feel the warmth of human touch. This includes "close relationships with local people," "relationships where you consider and understand each other's perspectives," "direct communication between people," and "the presence of family."

While young people seem adept at freely expanding their networks through SNS, the core of their interpersonal interactions remains the people around them. They value the tangible experience of emotional exchange through face-to-face contact. This "flexible collectivism" may be one characteristic of today's youth.

What is the sense of crisis young people feel toward society?

So, what does human value mean to these young people?

To understand this, we asked questions in two stages: first, we asked them to list what they considered "important elements for humans," and then, from those they selected, to identify which elements they felt were "in danger of being lost from society." Figure 4 shows the results plotted as a scatter diagram.

[Figure 4]

The horizontal axis shows the percentage who answered "important for humans," and the vertical axis shows the percentage who answered "likely to disappear from society." To interpret the data, we divided it into four quadrants using the average score for each category.

The most noteworthy area is Quadrant 1, representing elements perceived as "important but at risk of disappearing." Concepts like "mutual support" and "consideration/hospitality," embodying a spirit of mutual aid and reciprocity, are plotted with high scores. This contrasts sharply with individual abilities like "decision-making" and "creativity," which fall in Quadrant 4, the "not important but unlikely to disappear" area.

This truly highlights the essence of young people embodying "flexible collectivism." Yet, it also suggests they perceive the human values they hold dear as not aligning with prevailing societal trends.

In Part 2 of this series, we touched on young people who, despite being mindful of others and wanting to be useful, "cannot find their role in society." This may stem from a disconnect between young people and society regarding human values.

The meritocratic and results-oriented trends of the Heisei era may be perceived by young people less as opportunities for self-realization and more as a form of pressure. At the very least, to better integrate these "flexible collectivists" into society, we need to present a vision of the future that incorporates the human values of mutual aid and reciprocity they hold dear.

What is the number one reason young people spend money?

How should companies approach young people who embrace "flexible collectivism"? We asked them why they want to spend money and graphed the top 10 reasons.

[Figure 5]

"Wanting to be healed" ranked first, followed by "dreams and romance," "a world beyond the everyday," and "playfulness." The disconnect between young people and society, evident in the first and second surveys and again here, seems reflected in this top-ranked desire for healing.

Rankings beyond second place feature youthful curiosity and adventurous spirit. Addressing young people's stress could lead to positive consumer activity.

Furthermore, we conducted a cross-tabulation analysis targeting respondents who answered "important but likely to be lost" regarding "caring hospitality" and "mutual support"—located in the first quadrant of the scatter plot (Figure 4) shown earlier. These are individuals among the "flexible collectivism" youth group who are thought to exhibit particularly strong tendencies in this direction. By examining the difference from the overall average, we sought to identify the "reasons for spending money" characteristic of this group. (Shaded areas indicate +5 points or more)

[Figure 6]

While differences exist among respondents for "consideration/hospitality" and "mutual support," overall, personal desires showed higher scores across a wide range of items: "Want to experience the unknown/novel," "Want to live safely/securely," "Want to feel dreams/romance, experience emotion," and "Want to explore." Regarding interpersonal desires, "Wanting to be healed" and "Wanting to be liked or loved" scored higher than average. For social desires, "Wanting to be useful to others" and "Wanting to do what is right" were above average.

Synthesizing these findings, the image emerges that young people with "flexible collectivism" perceive spending money as worthwhile when it involves "contributing to others," "supporting a social cause," or "embarking on new challenges connected to their ideals" – and from these actions, they can "gain a little goodwill from others."

Initiatives Starting with "Wanting to Help Others"

To support local restaurants struggling due to pandemic-related stay-at-home requests, young residents of Sumida Ward launched the weekend-only delivery service " Sumida Local Food Delivery " this past April. Their social media posts show

We want to restore the connection between shops and individuals that began to fade due to stay-at-home requests.
We want to deliver delicious food to those who can't easily go out and make everyone happy!
A community-focused delivery service by Sumida shops and volunteers.
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The service's founding purpose is described as above.
The impetus came from a personal acquaintance who owns a restaurant seeking advice. A single-minded desire to help those in need led to this initiative.

This initiative aligns well with the characteristics of why young people, embodying the aforementioned "flexible collectivism," want to spend their money. While "Sumida Local Food Delivery" isn't conventional "consumption," it's full of various hints for getting young people to commit to action.

Face-to-face relationships with neighbors, the desire to help others, connections forged through shared activities, the joy of solving problems together, and the resulting smiles of those helped—all fuel further motivation... It is crucial for companies to view young people not merely as consumers, but as equal partners who share emotions and engage in activities together.

The pandemic has prompted questions about the nature of society in this new era. Young people today embody a "flexible collectivism"—individualistic yet possessing collectivist aspects. The way of being among young people explored in this series may hold clues for shaping the future of Japanese society.
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[Survey Overview]
Survey Title: "Reiwa: The Future Young People Want Survey 2019 - June Survey"
Conducted: June 2019
Survey Method: Internet survey
Survey Population: Men and women aged 15 to 29 living nationwide (10,000 samples)
Survey Company: Dentsu Macromill Insight, Inc.
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Survey Title: "Reiwa: The Future Young People Want Survey 2019 - December Survey"
Survey Period: December 2019
Survey Method: Internet survey
Survey Population: Men and women aged 15 to 29 living nationwide (600 samples)
Survey Company: Dentsu Macromill Insight, Inc.
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*This report is based on a survey conducted prior to the spread of the novel coronavirus. Therefore, new attitudes and perceptions may have emerged since then that differ from those reflected in this report.