Six Potential Challenges Facing Youngsters Now and Beyond
By Dr Goh Seh Kai
12 Sept 2021
The pandemic has triggered my thought on current and future challenges that would potentially affect youngsters.
It is worth reflecting on this issue since young people have greater exposure to the impacts than others due to their long future pathway.
By adequately preparing to respond to these influences, youngsters would adapt well to be more viable in their current study, future work and life.
The following share my views on the six potential challenges — social-media influences, digitalized transformation, technological innovation, economic uncertainty, environmental changes and social isolation — that youngsters should understand to cope with during the current and post-pandemic.
Six Potential Challenges Facing Youngsters
Social-Media Influences: Although social media plays an essential role in satisfying people’s social needs, it has also affected young people’s lives.
The news and information on social media have constantly enticed young people and could positively and negatively impact them.
On the one hand, it is suitable for businesses to leverage social media to enhance their product and service awareness during the current and post-pandemic because online shopping behaviour has become a norm.
However, on the other hand, people, especially the young, might be overexposed to it, resulting in information overloading, negatively affecting their study and work.
Although not everyone agrees with the notion of minimizing social-media usage, it would be best for young people to refrain from indulging in it.
Parents and educators should also regularly advise youngsters on the appropriate amount of social media usage to minimize its negative impacts.
Moreover, since it is easy and convenient for anyone to advertise or publish information on social media, the viewers must identify false news.
This notion is especially for youngsters who are generally immature enough to differentiate between genuine and fake information.
As a result of the long-term and pervasive influences of social media, they might constantly and unconsciously mislead young people with some false information, which would gradually teach them with a bad or inappropriate attitude and belief.
Hence, it would be crucial for the young to minimize overexposure to social media’s adverse effects that could adversely affect their study, work, and influence their belief and attitude in the long run.
Digitalized Transformation: Digitalization could simplify business transaction activities to reduce cost and uplift marketing and advertising capabilities to attract customers.
Enterprises can understand what customers want and how to serve them well through customization, enhancing customer retention and improving organizational performance.
During the pandemic, more and more retailers have leveraged e-commerce to counterbalance the decreased footprints. As a result, online sales have increasingly contributed to more percentage of their overall sales than before.
Increasingly, more businesses have engaged information technology and system talents to speed up their digitalized processes to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
The upward trend in the talent quest globally has resulted in intensified job market competition among job seekers and job incumbents who must continually upgrade their digitalization skills to stay relevant.
As more and more companies offshore jobs due to digitalization, the upward jobless trend would be foreseeable. Because of this, unless young people could continually upgrade their digitalization skills, they would face increasing challenges in their job hunt in the future.
Therefore, they shall constantly equip themselves with the appropriate digitalization skills to stay viable.
Technological Innovation: Driven by the initiatives to stay competitive through productivity and quality improvement and innovation during the current and post-pandemic, enterprises have been relentlessly developing or adopting new technologies to uplift their performance.
Technological breakthrough has enabled product and service innovation in enterprises. 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), 3D-printing, blockchain, robotic manufacturing and servicing, driverless vehicles, drones, etc., are examples of technological breakthroughs.
These technological innovations and future developments will positively affect people’s work and life, especially youngsters, since they will have more opportunities to apply them in life and work.
As more and more enterprises engage technical experts to enhance their competitiveness, these professionals will command higher remuneration than those without such skills.
Moreover, youngsters will better their career advancement if they apply technologies for work improvements and innovation.
But the only challenge for the young is how they can continually acquire technical and innovative skills through formal education pathways and lifelong learning.
Besides governmental efforts in supplying technological talents through the education system, enterprises shall also take the initiative to help develop their workers to cope with the technological changes.
Youngsters must again continue to seize the learning opportunities to keep up with the pace of technological developments.
Hence, lifelong learning shall continue to be part and parcel of youngsters’ lives to adapt well to be viable in the new wave of technological evolutions.
Economic Uncertainty: The frequent lockdowns for curbing the Covid-19 virus infection rate in many countries have disrupted worldwide business and supply chain activities, which have caused business failures, efficiency reduction and income and job losses.
According to the latest news, although the vaccination effort in some countries has shown somewhat encouraging results in reducing the infection and fatality rate, the emerging new variants have upended the promising trend.
Many countries have now seen their disease and fatality rates escalating again due to the new variants’ onslaught.
As most countries have a low vaccination rate, the new wave of high infection and fatality worldwide is imminent.
Hence, we can foresee that the pandemic would not run its course shortly since many countries, especially the undeveloped countries, have yet to obtain vaccines and get their people vaccinated.
Although the pandemic has negatively affected almost every country’s economic activities, each has dealt with its impacts differently.
For example, some countries permit more business activities to resume than others due to frequent protests despite their high disease and fatality rate.
However, most countries want to lower the infection and fatality rates and improve economic performance, which is a pretty challenge to balance.
The pandemic impacts will continue, and nobody can exactly know when the pandemic will run its course or the endemic will materialize.
And the future economic uncertainties might cause stress and worries to people, especially the young who will be graduating and looking for jobs soon.
However, pessimism will undermine young people’s fighting spirit and morale during the gloomy economic outlook.
Therefore, youngsters shall stay optimistic as it will help them tide through the current challenging period.
Climate Changes: Although industrialization and urban development have boosted economic performance in many countries, they have also generated many wastes and carbon emissions, resulting in environmental issues.
During the pandemic, the worldwide pollution issues causing erratic climate change seem not lessening, as evident from the recent forest fire and heavy flood in many countries.
The disasters have endangered agriculture harvest, safety and health risks of living creatures, etc., which incurred tremendous losses to the affected habitats.
Some countries’ governors are now even concerned over their country’s gradual rise of sea level, although the issue is not imminent but can potentially become a disaster in the future.
Due to a much longer future pathway, the current youngsters have become much more concerned over environmental issues than their prior generations.
For example, there have been frequent protests in many countries recently to urge their governors to minimize environmental problems.
Therefore, all countries’ governments shall provide living creatures with a safe and healthy living and working environment now and beyond.
Likewise, every entity — governors, enterprises, people, especially the young — shall now play a more crucial role than before to protect the earth from natural disasters caused by pollution and climate change.
Social Isolation: Due to limited social gatherings and community events, and frequent lockdowns to curb the virus spread during the pandemic, they have somewhat weakened human bonding.
In many countries, people can participate in large-size social events and dine in eateries only if they are fully vaccinated.
Also, the number of diners sitting together in a group is limited and different groups are also distanced by at least one metre apart.
Moreover, they are restrained from mingling during their dining activities. As a result, diners could not socialize with their friends while dining.
The anti-social phenomenon has somehow opposed the human rights to social interactions.
Some people resent and protest social isolation in some countries even though they are not inoculated, which causes social unrest.
Likewise, schools, colleges and universities have moved their daily classes online during the pandemic in many countries.
As a result, youngsters have to study from home, which minimizes their socializing activities in schools and on campuses.
This arrangement has minimized their social interactions and affected interpersonal relationships.
Many workers need to work from home to minimize safety risks in companies, which has changed their physical face-to-face to virtual communication style.
Hence, this plan has dampened the social relationships and cohesiveness among workers due to infrequent workplace socialization.
In family, people are concerned more over their next-of-kin than others, such as friends and relatives.
People are worried about their and immediate family members’ safety since they can infect each other easily at home.
Youngsters feel isolated due to restricted freedom to meet with friends for social activities.
Generally, if the pandemic continues, it will exert a long-term impact on social interactions and relationships among people, especially the young, who will live in a very different world from their previous generations.
Hence, youngsters shall interact virtually with friends and relatives more regularly besides immediate family members to minimize the feeling of social isolation caused by the pandemic.
In conclusion, the following briefly summarizes the six potential challenges youngsters shall beware of and cope with now and in the future.
· Social-Media Influences: Refrain from overexposure to social media to minimize its negative impacts, such as information overload, fake news and misleading information.
· Digitalization Transformation: Continually upgrade digital skills to stay competitive in job hunts.
· Technological Innovations: Constantly acquire technical and innovative skills to adapt to the new technological developments.
· Economic Uncertainty: Stay optimistic to tight over the economic uncertainty.
· Climate Change: Play a crucial role in minimizing pollution to prevent climate change which might cause natural disasters.
· Social Isolation: Interact virtually with friends and relatives more regularly to minimize the feeling of social isolation caused by the pandemic.
Thank you for your reading, and your feedback is welcome and appreciated!
