Society is failing our youth

In recent posts, I’ve touched on how young people today are getting a raw deal. I’ve written about the mess that is modern dating, the epidemic of loneliness, the death of the modern education system, and the escalating mental health crises.

And while this blog promotes self-improvement and focusing on what you can control, we can’t ignore that, objectively, today’s youth are facing a societal environment stacked against them.

Frankly, the more I reflect on these issues, the more frustrated I get. Change is badly needed.

But let’s be real — change doesn’t just materialize out of thin air. Many people are either unaware of what’s going on, willfully blind, or too apathetic to act. That’s why conversations like this matter — we need to shine a light on what’s happening.

Let’s try to understand why our youth are struggling.

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

This generational cycle sums up our moment in history. Young people today are born into a time of economic stagnation, cultural fragmentation, and a global order entering decline. Compared to older generations, they are at a disadvantage in nearly every tangible way.

After WWII, the Western world experienced a historic boom — one built on immense sacrifice, collective hardship, and massive public investment. Soldiers came home to robust support systems like the G.I. Bill, job guarantees, and public housing. Taxes on the wealthy were high, and governments actively worked to ensure prosperity for younger generations.

But instead of preserving this system for future generations, older cohorts — starting with the Baby Boomers — dismantled it. Public goods were privatized. Taxes for the rich and corporations were lowered, and currency was devalued to limit wealth redistribution. Family and community values were eroded in favor of hyper-individualism. And worst of all, the mindset shifted from generational stewardship to hoarding wealth and privilege.

Now, younger generations are paying the price.

While Boomers and Gen Xers were able to buy homes, raise families, and build careers in their twenties, Millennials and Gen Z are struggling to afford rent, much less property. Real wages have stagnated for decades. Meanwhile, the price of essentials — education, housing, healthcare — have skyrocketed.

Governments tell us the economy is strong, citing low unemployment and solid GDP growth. But the truth is more uncomfortable: stable, full-time jobs with benefits have been replaced by precarious gig work, contract roles, and part-time positions. Youth employment is falling even as immigration increases and older workers delay retirement. Jobs are outsourced overseas or automated entirely. Careers are unstable, career ladders are disappearing, and job security is increasingly rare.

Despite working longer hours and taking on multiple side hustles, many young people are still falling behind financially. And most of the economic gains over the past two decades have flowed to the top 1%, widening the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.

Many older generations like to claim that the youth today are lazy. However, this isn’t about laziness — it’s about systemic barriers that no amount of “hustling” can fully overcome. The game is rigged.

When housing prices and cost of living rise faster than wages, when good jobs are out of reach, when the bills eat away every paycheck, the problem isn’t a lack of work ethic — it’s a broken system.

Many youth are simply giving up or “lying flat” in the developed world, not because they lack ambition, but because the return on effort is simply not worth it. Why keep grinding when there is no reward? Why chase dreams when the ladder is pulled up and the ground beneath you is unstable?

We’ve also failed our youth by selling them a lie: that a college degree guarantees success.

For decades, young people were told to follow the academic path, regardless of cost or outcome. As a result, higher education has become a debt trap. Universities operate more like businesses than institutions of learning. They push overpriced degrees — often in low-demand or oversaturated fields — because more enrollment means more tuition revenue, not better outcomes for students. Degrees are mass-produced, while real-world relevance is an afterthought. Even academia has become a Ponzi scheme.

Meanwhile, practical life skills like personal finance, critical thinking, carpentry, electrical work, or even basic cooking are no longer taught in schools. Young people graduate knowing how to analyze postmodernist literature or write identity-focused essays, but not how to file taxes, apply for a mortgage, or fix a leaky pipe. Students are encouraged to obsess over identity politics and theoretical activism, while being left utterly unprepared for the real world of work, relationships, and self-sufficiency.

They graduate with tens of thousands in debt and few employment prospects. Worse still, they’re often too overqualified for blue-collar work, yet underqualified for high-skilled white-collar jobs. Meanwhile, the skilled trades — once honorable, stable, and well-paying — are stigmatized or overlooked entirely.

As a result, we now have an overabundance of college degrees with diminishing value, and a generation drowning in student loans. For many, the pursuit of higher education has led not to opportunity, but to financial bondage and disillusionment. The path they were promised was a dead end.

Dating, Marriage, and Delayed Adulthood

A few decades ago, young people could realistically expect to find a stable and good-paying job, be married, own a home, and start a family by their mid-20s.

Today, most can’t even imagine affording a child, let alone buying property, even well into their 30s. Many are still living with their parents in their late 20s, not being able to afford to move out. Entry-level jobs are few and far in between and pay pennies compared to the cost of living.

The economic pressure alone has delayed nearly every milestone of adulthood — marriage, home ownership, and family formation.

It’s no wonder anxiety and depression are soaring among young adults. There’s a deep cultural expectation that each generation should live better than the last. But now, that social contract is broken.

And nowhere is this clearer than in the dating market.

A particularly stark example is the crisis facing young men. Over 60% of young men are single — far more than young women. Birth rates are plummeting in every developed country. Divorce rates are skyrocketing while marriage rates are at an all-time low everywhere. Why?

Because a growing number of young men are undesirable — emotionally and financially unviable. They’re under-educated, under-employed, and struggling with mental and physical health. Many lack basic social skills or emotional intelligence. They fall behind in school. They don’t have role models for healthy masculinity. They don’t know how to be good partners, fathers, or leaders.

As women continue to break barriers in education and career success, men are falling behind — and falling into despair. Many are turning to nihilism, extremism, or anti-social behavior. The rise of toxic influencers like Andrew Tate, and the surge in far-right politics among disillusioned young men, are not random — they’re symptoms of systemic neglect.

We saw this throughout history: societies with large populations of aimless, single men tend to experience more crime, violence, and political instability. The same storm is brewing now.

This isn’t about blaming women or opposing feminism. It’s about balance.

We’ve invested heavily in uplifting girls and women for decades — rightfully so — but we have not done the same for boys and men. Now, we’re seeing the fallout. True gender equality means ensuring both sexes are equipped for the modern world.

A healthy society supports all of its people, not just half of them.

Furthermore, we must also question globalization. Exporting jobs and importing cheap labor may boost GDP and corporate profits in the short term, but it weakens local economies and puts downward pressure on wages.

Young people now compete against a global labor force that doesn’t play by the same rules, while many domestic industries are outsourced or replaced by precarious gig work or part-time roles.

This trend erodes our social fabric. Instead of building self-sufficient, resilient communities, we’re accelerating toward the global historical mean — one defined by overcrowding, strained infrastructure, and rising inequality. Many parts of the developing world are not models we want to replicate, yet by importing their conditions, we’re slowly becoming them.

Immigration is also part of this equation. While immigration has been vital to building North America, current policies have become completely reckless. We’re importing huge numbers of low-wage workers from cultures that exploit and refuse to assimilate, while our own youth struggle with underemployment and a lack of opportunity.

This creates social tension and racism, increases crime in some areas, and weakens national cohesion. In some ways, we are literally importing the third world and turning into one ourselves.

This isn’t an argument against immigration — it’s a call for smarter and fairer immigration. We need a merit-based system that fills genuine skill gaps and supports integration, not one that overwhelms public resources and undercuts local workers. Immigration should benefit the whole society, not just serve as a tool for lowering labor costs for the corporate elites.

Prioritizing opportunity for our own citizens — especially the young — is not anti-immigrant or racist. It is common sense. A society that neglects its future workforce is one destined to decline.

At the end of the day, every generation of youth has complained about how they are mistreated by society — it is not a new topic.

It’s true: every generation thinks they had it the worst, and each generation has faced unique challenges. Today’s youth are no different.

Still, blaming others only gets us so far. We need both personal responsibility and collective action.

As a young adult myself, my advice is this:

• Be the change you want to see. Don’t wait for the system to save you. Take action. Improve yourself. Develop useful skills. Build community.
• Be adaptable. Be willing to take the path less travelled — live in a smaller city, explore a different career, or move where the opportunities are.
• Support your peers. If you’re a parent, save for your child’s future. Be a good role model. Teach your children what it means to be emotionally healthy, hardworking, and responsible adults rather than complaining all day and wasting time on social media.
• Uplift each other. Share knowledge, encourage one another, and help your family and friends grow. Life is hard enough — don’t make it harder by being competitive or cynical. We rise together by lifting others around us.
• Demand better. Don’t fall for divide-and-conquer narratives that pit young against old, men against women, or “eating the rich”. This is a systemic failure — not a generational one. It’s about how power is distributed, and who benefits from a broken system. Vote for real change, not for slogans.

We have more than enough resources to create a thriving society. Trillions are made and moved in financial markets every day. We could create jobs, fund healthcare, education, and affordable housing with a fraction of that wealth. It’s a question of priorities, not scarcity.

And truthfully, we have it better than most generations in the past. While we may not have it as good as the Baby Boomers and Gen X in some aspects, few of us had to fight in wars, struggle with poverty without a roof over our heads, or constantly worry about dying from illnesses, starvation, or violence. We also have better technology, more convenience, and are better connected than ever. Be grateful and consider yourself lucky.

And for any policymakers reading this, there are some realistic solutions that can be implemented.

If we’re serious about supporting our youth, then we need more than slogans — we need structural change. The issues facing Millennials and Gen Z aren’t just about bad luck or individual failings; they’re the product of flawed policies, broken systems, and decades of neglect. Here are some real, actionable solutions:

1. Fix Higher Education — Make It Affordable, Practical, and Accountable

Higher education should empower students and teach them the skills to thrive in modern society, not burden them. We must:

• Rein in tuition costs: Public colleges and universities should receive increased federal and provincial funding tied to tuition affordability, not administrative bloat. Cap tuition or offer income-based repayment systems that scale with earnings.
• Fund vocational and trade education: Bring back respect and investment in skilled trades. Electricians, plumbers, mechanics, nurses, and techs are desperately needed and should not be seen as “less than” university graduates.
• Cut useless degrees and align with market demand: Schools should offer fewer degrees in oversaturated or low-demand fields and instead expand training in areas that are in short supply, like healthcare, AI/tech, and renewable energy.
• Teach life and financial skills: Every student should graduate with real-world knowledge — how to manage debt, save, invest, parent, and participate in civic life.

2. Rethink Globalization — Protect Local Workers and Industries

Globalization has benefited corporations more than citizens. It’s time to prioritize the people:

• Bring back critical manufacturing and infrastructure jobs through tax incentives and public investment. Encourage companies to reshore essential production — from steel and semiconductors to medicine and green energy.
• Introduce fair trade, not free trade: Don’t allow domestic workers to be undercut by countries with exploitative labor practices. Trade deals should protect environmental, labor, and wage standards at home and abroad, not senseless tariffs or outsourcing.
• Encourage local entrepreneurship by cutting red tape for small businesses, especially for youth and first-time entrepreneurs, while offering tax breaks and startup grants for critical sectors.

3. Reform Immigration — Quality Over Quantity

Immigration must serve both newcomers and existing citizens. Right now, it’s failing both.

• Implement a merit-based immigration system: Prioritize skills that fill urgent labor shortages — such as healthcare workers, engineers, and construction workers — rather than flood low-wage service sectors and suppress entry-level wages.
• Limit temporary foreign labor programs that displace local workers or exploit migrants. If labor is needed, employers should be required to first offer competitive wages and training to locals.
• Better integrate newcomers: Immigration should come with strong support for language training, civic education, and job placement, so new arrivals contribute meaningfully without stressing local systems.
• Enforce manageable immigration levels: We need to pace immigration in line with infrastructure, housing availability, and economic absorption. Mass immigration without planning leads to social fragmentation, overburdened services, and growing resentment.

4. Invest Directly in the Youth

Stop treating young people as a burden and start investing in them as the future.

• Offer housing assistance and co-ownership programs for first-time buyers. Expand social housing or public-private partnerships to build affordable homes.
• Subsidize youth employment programs and apprenticeships — paid internships, job guarantees, and green infrastructure jobs can ease the school-to-work transition.
• Provide universal healthcare and mental health services — especially for youth. Remove financial barriers to getting therapy, addiction treatment, and preventive care.
• Reward good parenting and family support through tax credits, paid parental leave, and free or low-cost childcare to ease the burden of raising the next generation.

These aren’t radical ideas — they’re common sense. We’re at a tipping point: either we reinvest in our youth and create a future worth building, or we keep squeezing them until there’s nothing left to give.

Our future depends on whether we choose short-term profits or long-term stability. Let’s choose wisely — and act now.

Change won’t happen overnight, but it will never happen unless we speak up, act up, and organize.

Start small. Lead by example. Become a force for good in your family, your friend group, and your community. Voice your concerns to your local politicians and vote for action.

Because when enough individuals take initiative, that’s when movements begin — and when movements begin, real societal change becomes possible.

Society may be failing our youth right now, but that doesn’t mean we have to fail ourselves or keep the status quo.

Let’s build the future we deserve.