The knitting revolution. After three years spent living through crises (health, climate, inflationary, Ukrainian and social), one would have thought that 18-30 year olds would have burned life at both ends. Happy aquoibonists way, not Amy Winehouse way. The latest #MoiJeune study conducted in partnership with OpinionWay contradicts what we would have liked to read: almost three years after the first confinement, young people are not happy. In the “next world”, so much vaunted by Emmanuel Macron on the evening of March 16, 2020, 78% of them assess the state of mental health of their generation as “not good”.
In October 2022, the #MoiJeune unit of 20 minutes has started a series of surveys in order to take the selfie of this generation at the end of the health crisis linked to Covid-19. “In order to find out why this age group has been more affected than others,” explains Katja Tochtermann, marketing and research director for your favorite website. 20 minutes asked them, among other things, this question: “give us three adjectives to describe your generation? “And the answers are enough dark, says Katja Tochtermann. We have the words ”lost, tired, depressed, sacrificed, disillusioned”, etc. If need be, the only positive word could be ”connected”. Except that these 18-30 year olds, plugged into the screens, take the full brunt of all the news that doesn’t really make you want to “celebrate” over an aperitif.
The cat-book-herbal tea combo to escape worry
And that’s why we were talking about knitting. Because the 18-30 year olds who are fed up with the threatening world, because the young people “who are bathed in with a whole lot of uncertainty bathed in a gloomy social climate” have chosen the house, notes Eléonore Quarré, director consulting (opinion center) at OpinionWay. The purring cat-book-herbal tea combo to escape worry. “Faced with crises, what is reassuring is what happens in the home, in the intimate sphere. We know that there is less room left to chance. There are the little pleasures of life: meeting around a table, eating good things”, our OpinionWay expert who evokes the confirmation of a “Slow life” trend. “Take quiet time, just for yourself, without doing anything in particular”, 42% of 18-30 year olds say they do it more than before Covid-19. They are 38% less to go out in the evening, 33% to see shows less, to go to the cinema. Above all, we notice a need to create a “positive bubble”. An important prioritization while 71% consider that life as a couple is an ideal.
After four confinements where everyone expressed their desires for skin, body and love… the young people would therefore have chosen the couple (note the disappointment), “the norm”. Knitting, we tell you. “Between 18 and 30, you go through a lot of life stages. We are in the construction of identity. We finish our studies, we may take a long trip, we sometimes buy our first apartment, etc. As many projects as the Covid-19 has delayed”, analyzes Katja Tochtermann. In figures, this translates as follows: the first long trip was delayed for 27% of 18-30 year olds, the first job for 21% of them, the first purchase of housing for 20%, the installation as a couple for 15% and the child project for 10%.
“We are far from the youth of 1980 who thought of money and career”
Those who missed the mark of the so-called “classic” route would then have skipped the “adventures and recklessness” stage. Exit on binge drinking which makes you forget that the Earth is burning, hello “this cocoon side which preserves from the violence of the outside world”, says Eléonore Quarré. “They need to be reassured. We are far from the youth of the 1980s who thought of money and career. They, what they want for their future, is health, no financial difficulties, to start a family, to have children”, abounds Katja Tochtermann.
Let us remember that at the end of the lockdown, there were two teams: the one who wanted to go quickly to the bar and the one who, vigilant, did not want to get carried away, fearing a new disappointment. The latter won. Admittedly, young people have reoriented themselves (a change of job for 27% of them, a retraining for 23%). Others have nevertheless played the Romain Duris abroad. Still, some are now ensuring that “the company does not encroach too much on their personal life, which matters above all,” notes OpinionWay again. Thus, only 11% of 18-30 year olds think they find the meaning of their life in work and 73% claim to “save money on leisure in order to prepare for the future”.
finished on Carpe Diem on the backpack, the big trend is “to see young people doing leisure for old people, who are passionate about scrabble or puzzles, adds Eléonore Quarré. It is a real symptomatic refocusing of periods of crisis: this distrust of everything implies a real withdrawal into oneself. “A withdrawal encouraged by the all-screen. So fortunately, they said “bye-bye” to the zoom aperitifs of confinement, the French (young people above all) kept teleworking “which does not make them want to go out in the evening”, distance meetings which “prevent the social bond”, Netflix evenings or even home delivery. In other words, this “laziness”, loose Eléonore Quarré who wants to do “board games at home is more rewarding than getting cooked over cooked”.
“Undeniable losses from a social point of view”
Here is an older study 20 minutes and OpinionWay. On the scale of cool, how much would you put to alcohol? Well, with regard to the “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” trio, it would seem that it would no longer be “what young people aspire to today”, notes Eléonore Quarré with a smile. The expert then evokes “a neutrality of relationship to the world which can be disturbing”, when Katja Tochtermann speaks of a “disengagement, a disillusion”. Faced with an exploding world, our 18-30 year olds would have dropped the case, showing the collective that their revolution goes through the “slow life”, the best consumed and health first.
In short, three years after this March 16 which swung France into confinement, “we note among 18-30 people the benefits of personal enrichment but losses from a social point of view which are undeniable”, summarizes Eléonore Quarré . Young people are doing badly and “there is a form of polarization with, on the one hand, young people who are very ‘plan plan at home’ and, on the other, those who plunge into very worrying mental distress”.
It is she who, post Covid-19, was already consuming anxiolytics or drugs and who consumes even more of them today. “There are very few of them, but the urgency is strong. Hence the implementation of reforms, admittedly still unfinished, such as the reimbursement of psychiatric consultations. However, they had the merit of saying “we know that you are not well”. Did they need us to find out? Spoiler, no. 31% of 18-30 year olds believe that being young in 2023 is much more difficult than three or five years ago.
Do you want to participate in the “#MoiJeune” project? If you are between 18 and 30 years old, you can take part in the “#MeYoung” project, a series of surveys launched by 20 minutes with OpinionWay, by registering HERE.