Ten years on. What about young people these days?

Noriyoshi Furuichi × Mihoko Nishii: Part 1 "Is Anxiety the Default? Reflections on Youth in the Age of Connectivity" (January 8, 2014)

Web Dentsu Inc. News 10th Anniversary Retrospective Series: This time, we look at the changing youth!

Web Dentsu News featured a highly anticipated exchange between researcher Mihoko Nishii of Dentsu Inc. Youth Research Department and sociologist Noritoshi Furuichi, discussing youth without pretense (?) in a real-world context.

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Living with anxiety as the default

(Excerpt)

Nishii: That said, I feel changing that mindset—including institutional structures—isn't so easy. So what can young people do to overcome anxiety in their lives?

Furuichi: Right now, the only thing that can really alleviate anxiety is probably your peers. In the past, you had family, community, company—various things. But those no longer feel like entities you can entrust your entire life to. Yet, peers can actually be fragile, right? So ultimately, anxiety never truly disappears. In fact, it might be better if more people could live with anxiety as the default state—learning to live alongside it.

Nishii: I see. A new way of dealing with anxiety, then?

Furuichi: Society stabilizing is simply not going to happen from here on out. If that's the case, then I think we just have to accept that anxiety is the norm and live with it.

(Excerpt from " Noriyoshi Furuichi × Mihoko Nishii: Part 1 'Is Anxiety the Default? Reflections on Youth in the Age of Connectivity'" )

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This conversation took place in 2014, a time before the term "Generation Z" had become widespread and before "COVID-19" existed. Ten years have passed since then, and the environment surrounding young people has changed dramatically.

Dentsu Inc. Inc.'s lab, the Dentsu Inc. Youth Research Department (hereafter Dentsu Wakamon), has viewed young people as "the first to embrace the new" and examined them from various angles to find hints for the future of companies and Japanese society.

What do young people look like in 2023? Mr. Nishii answers the question "What's up with young people these days?" by exploring their mindset, career design, and more.

〈Table of Contents〉
▼The values of young people become the values of society at large

▼Can they choose the optimal solution from many options using their own judgment criteria?

▼An era where the forms of happiness and success are changing

 

The values of young people become the values of society as a whole

Since formally launching Dentsu Inc. Wakamon in 2012, we've explored various insights about young people. In Web Dentsu News, from 2013 to 2016, we examined youth from multiple angles in a 56-part series titled "Everything About Wakamon." The dialogue article with Mr. Furuichi was published in January 2014, shortly after the series began. Looking back at the discussion, I feel there are values and mindsets that resonate with the current era.

It's not uncommon for young people's values to later spread to other generations and become mainstream in society. One symbol of this is "Taipa" (Time over Money) winning the Buzzword of the Year award in 2022. Even back then, the idea of "prioritizing time over money" was gaining traction among young people.

Dentsu Inc. works with various companies. While many corporate inquiries revolve around questions like "How can we get young people to buy our products?" both in 2014 and today, young people represent a relatively small market segment. With the declining birthrate accelerating, this segment will likely shrink further.

However, if we view young people not as a "market," but as "entities possessing new values and creating the future," and consider "engaging with young people = engaging with the future," we find many hints for "the future of companies and society." Indeed, over the past decade, more companies have begun thinking, "We want to understand young people's new values and transform our company and business."

Can they choose the optimal solution based on their own judgment criteria from among many options?

A defining characteristic of young people's mindset around 2014 was "living with anxiety as the default state." Amidst the collapse of a stable society and widening disparities, many young people felt "not dissatisfied, but anxious." Their peers became the source that alleviated this anxiety, and their happiness hinged on the "connections" with those peers.

This coincided with the rapid rise of Twitter (now X) and Instagram, where connections suddenly became transparent and the groups one belonged to became visible. There, the value of "what everyone else thinks matters more than what I think" spread. We described this shift in mindset as "from I to We."

In consumption too, if you bought something different from everyone else, you needed to justify why you chose it. The popularity of phrases like "deliberately doing something" likely reflected this mindset of "feeling anxious unless connected to others."

Ten years have passed since then. According to Dentsu Inc. Wakamon's survey, the percentage of young people feeling anxious about their future remained almost unchanged: 63.9% in 2012 and 64.1% in 2021. However, the nature of that anxiety has shifted.

Today's youth grew up in an environment where relationships are naturally visualized through social media. Consequently, the "We" in "I to We" is beginning to dissolve, triggering a swing back toward "I." The mindset that "being different from everyone else causes anxiety" – a core driver of reason-based consumption – is diminishing. Conversely, differences between oneself and others are becoming more important, leading to a prioritization of one's own sensibilities.

The pandemic significantly influenced this swing back toward the "I." Without real-world interaction, passively waiting for information—whether for studies or anything else—became ineffective. Consequently, the value placed on "doing things together simultaneously" has diminished, and an active, self-driven approach is now required.

Additionally, the shift in family environments compared to a decade ago cannot be overlooked. Parents of young people around 2014 were largely from the bubble generation, characterized by an "optimism" that enjoyed things together like friends, as seen in trends like matching parent-child outfits.

In contrast, many parents of today's youth experienced the employment ice age. They struggled to find jobs during the recession, faced high rates of non-regular employment, and lived with the constant uncertainty of "not knowing what tomorrow will bring." Many of these parents are seriously focused on equipping their children with the ability to think independently and survive. The overheated investment in education over the past five years or so is a clear manifestation of this.

Now, amidst this swing back toward the "I," today's youth face anxiety stemming from increased choices. You don't have to go to a top-tier university. You don't have to join a major corporation. It's an era where being the "top star" isn't valued as highly as before. Of course, if you're going to school or a company, a good one is preferable, but that "good place" isn't defined by test scores or size; it's where you feel it aligns with your own values.

Other options exist too: choosing to start a business instead of joining a company, or even launching a venture while still in school. Job hunting has also changed – some get offers from companies as early as their freshman year, while others participate in long-term internships. Whereas the transition from student to working adult used to be a clear switch, it's now becoming more of a gradient shift from learning to working.

In this era where the notion that "what everyone else thinks is good is good" has truly lost its meaning, we now have numerous choices. We must select the optimal answer for ourselves and establish our own criteria for making those judgments. This pressure weighs heavily on today's youth, and I feel it will only intensify.

It's often said that "young people today prioritize efficiency," but interpreting this simply as "they dislike taking detours" is a bit of a leap. There are countless possible correct answers, making it hard to choose. Yet, they must make their own decisions to navigate life. In such circumstances, rather than hesitantly moving toward the future, I feel they are increasingly adopting a "backcasting" mindset: first envisioning the future and then efficiently doing what's necessary to reach that goal.

An Era Where Forms of Happiness and Success Change

While feeling pressure to choose the optimal solution for themselves based on their own values, today's youth also seem to enjoy this situation itself. In short, they appear to be pursuing a "Win-Win Balance Approach," maintaining a bird's-eye view of society while exploring how to find the "just right balance" for what makes their own lives enjoyable.

In this sense, it differs in nature from the "era of the individual" Japan once experienced. That era emphasized a "personal optimization" value system where one prioritized their own thoughts without considering others. Before that, it was an era where everyone was forced into uniform conformity, but changes like the revision of the National Curriculum Guidelines finally ushered in a time where independent thinking was permitted.

Today, however, the mainstream mindset is to prioritize oneself while also desiring a community where everyone feels comfortable. This likely stems from the lingering "I don't want to compete" mentality carried over from the "yutori" education era. Young people seem to be searching for "themselves within the context of the greater good."

Finally, I believe the definitions of happiness and success will change going forward. The capitalist values that defined happiness—like "getting into a top university, joining a top company, and living in the city"—will diminish. For example, living a spiritually rich life surrounded by abundant nature in the countryside will be considered happiness, and succeeding in the metaverse by playing games continuously will be seen as success.

In this context, whether others perceive it as happiness or success becomes irrelevant. Instead, a dichotomy will emerge: "whether one chose it or not." Happiness will depend on whether one possesses their own criteria for judgment. Consequently, we might see young people who were previously unhappy under traditional notions of happiness finding happiness instead.

Around 2014, the term "work-life balance" became popular, establishing the value that while work is important, personal time is also important. Now, this is shifting towards the value of "work-in-life." Work and private life are not separate; it's the value that "it's all life, isn't it?" People are starting to think about how work should feel comfortable within their own time and what they need to do to grow. This also feels like a precursor to changing definitions of happiness and success.