Last week was tough for the Berlin bubble. First, young people did not unanimously vote for what was expected of them. Then Federal Youth Minister Lisa Paus wrote a very long guest article for the FAS. The title: Young people are withdrawing their trust from us.
No shit, Sherlock, one could write as a cheeky almost-teenager (31). The results of the European elections clearly show that young people are not as green as the media-chosen voice of the youth, Luisa Neubauer, suggested.
According to the research group Wahlen, the Greens are no longer as popular among those under 30, reaching only twelve percent. The CDU and AfD, on the other hand, each have 17 percent. In the last election five years ago, the Greens were still at 33 percent in this age group, making them the strongest force. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, i.e. young and first-time voters, they only got eleven percent a week ago.
That is precisely why Paus’ “State of the Youth” is now being published. Anyone who suspects self-criticism from the title will be disappointed. Instead, she has a revolutionary proposal that is intended to bring young people back: she wants a new generational contract. That may sound sexy to Berlin politicians and political science students who are just reading Rousseau for the first time. It sounds rather off-putting to everyone else who makes the effort to read what she means by it.
Point 1 states: “Under special circumstances, it is permissible to disadvantage individual generations.” By this she means the young who had to sacrifice their youth for older people during the pandemic. In the second point, she explains with acrobatic political rhetoric: “The debt brake is fair to all generations if it does not endanger young people’s right to a future.” What does she mean by that? The debt brake does not cover “climate debts” in the future. She therefore simply calls more money, i.e. more debt, for climate protection “investments in the future” for society as a whole. And what is good for everyone is also good for young people.
As touching as these contortions are, they also show that the Minister for Youth has not understood what is at stake: young people no longer do what their teachers, parents or bosses want them to do. Young people experience the world around them independently, see problems and vote.
This is of course a shock. The public broadcaster has shaped the image of young people with its 45 million euro youth program funk: nose-ring-wearing, city-dwelling twenty-somethings with blue hair who talk about sustainable wooden sex toys, the benefits of the four-day week or the feminist significance of the headscarf. Then there are the same old TV young people in talk shows who demand that life be subordinated to climate protection.
It’s comfortable to look at people under 30 with such a one-dimensional view. They may be a little exotic with their tattoos, messy hair and ripped jeans, and their demands a little extreme. But somehow political, just the way you like it. The opposite of youth culture.
The world out there is rather uncomfortable. There is no such thing as “youth”; their interests are fragmented. One reason for this is that media consumption is no longer focused on Bravo, NEON and Marienhof. Instead, social media displays individualized content that no longer has to be actively selected. Algorithms and individual behavior decide what each user passively consumes.
Anyone who watches one of the countless reality TV formats or scrolls around on YouTube and Tiktok will quickly notice: materialism has never gone away. Prada, Balenciaga, Goyard instead of Fjällräven backpacks. Mykonos and Dubai instead of riding a racing bike to South Tyrol. Pumped-up breasts and upper arms instead of asymmetrical short haircuts and thoughtful hipster moustaches.
And yet there are apparently basic values that many can agree on. According to the current Sinus study, these are: social security, tolerance, self-determination and willingness to perform. The largest group of young people are the “adaptive” ones: “They are not making plans for a better world, but rather trying to find their place in the middle of society,” says the report.
This includes a promise of advancement that no longer exists: those who work hard enough must at some point be able to afford the lifestyle that they freely choose – not the one that the policy of climate-friendly coexistence has planned for them.
If you really want to know what concerns young people, you should not wait for elections, but start talking to them. It could be uncomfortable, however. The much-criticized youth of Prenzlauer Berg could talk about how they don’t want to live in a district with the highest “youth group violence” in Berlin. Nowhere else in the capital are there more robberies and assaults committed by young people.
Usually – as the unsuspecting Tagesspiegel writes – the perpetrators have a migrant background from the neighboring Wedding and are taking their peers away. Those who grow up like this usually want more security and not a one-sidedly negotiated generational contract from Lisa Paus.