I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard this before, because this is what they call us, the young people of the 21st century. And when I say “they”, I mean the older people that were also at our age in the nineteen seventies and eighties.

They call us the nineties babies, born-frees and call themselves Apartheid babies. Of course, I guess we can’t really protest the fact that we are nineties babies (being born in ’91, I guess I definitely can be considered a nineties baby). That’s not my point. That’s not what I want to talk to you about this week. What matters is whether we’re a lost generation or not, and that’s what I want to talk to you about this week.

Usually, in my experience, this name-calling happens whenever people start talking about the heroics of the 1976 generation, youth unemployment, pregnancy rates, drug use and the use of money. And that’s where I wanted my focus to be in trying to understand why we’re being called the lost generation.

I can remember being told from as far back as grade ten until I finished high school, that the 1976 generation of young people was willing to push the boundaries in order to make a difference in their communities, schools and country, most importantly. I remember being told about the importance of following political news so that we could know what our politicians were doing to make our lives better.

This, I was told, was because the country’s votes would soon be led by us and we would play a huge role in the way the country was run, just like the 1976 generation did. I was excited and scared at the same time, because I had always thought that voting was for grown-ups and I wasn’t ready to be treated like an independent adult yet.

Next, I was told about youth unemployment, pregnancy rates, drug & alcohol use and the use of money. I was told that this generation is lazy and will not even try hard to get the most basic qualification a person can have in South Africa – a Matric certificate. This, as they explain, increases youth unemployment. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they also say that young people are obsessed with partying even though it leads to drug & alcohol abuse and the waste of money on buying party outfits and other stuff like that.

Personally, I think calling sixteen-year-olds or even eighteen-year-olds and twenty-two-year-olds for that matter, a lost generation is giving up too soon. Life has ups and downs that you learn as you progress through it, and, because of that, sometimes it takes a mistake you make when you’re eighteen to prevent you from failing when you’re twenty-three. So, ultimately, I don’t agree with what the older people have to say. I think there’s still hope for this generation of young people.

But what do you think?

#ChatBack: Do you think that today’s young people know what it takes to be good citizens in South Africa?

Do you think they care about their communities and about this country?

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