"Being young in 2025," written by Sara García Martínez and published in the newspaper El País of Madrid.
Last week, a letter titled “Being young in 2025,” written by Sara García Martínez and published in the newspaper El País of Madrid, began to circulate. In it, a sentiment widely shared by today's youth is expressed: the anxiety of growing up in a context filled with uncertainty.
This feeling invites an inevitable reflection: why is youth still conceived as a stage of vitality, growth, and success when, in reality, young people are developing in an environment of constant precariousness, not only in labor but also emotional and social? Why do we continue to analyze youth with the parameters of the past, when we know that challenges change over time? What represented a future of solid possibilities for our grandparents or parents has today transformed into an unstable scenario, where everything is fluid and mutable.
In this analysis, two fundamental dimensions come into play: one emotional and the other structural. From a sociological perspective, I will focus on the structural factors that condition the development of this social group, while still recognizing the importance of the affective aspects in constructing youth experiences.
The multiplicity of youth and the impact of the crisis
It is essential to understand that there is not just one youth but multiple youths, each shaped by particular social, economic, cultural, and geographical conditions. Being young is not a homogeneous experience: social class, gender, ethnicity, access to education, and employment are variables that configure profoundly disparate youthful realities.
From this perspective, youth should be understood as a category in constant construction, molded by the historical and structural changes of each society. However, in the case of Argentina, precariousness and uncertainty affect an increasing number of young people, as a result of an unstable economic context, a labor market that expels more than it integrates, and a State whose response has been limited and partial in the face of the complexity of this social group. As a result, youth demands are rarely met effectively.
In the face of this landscape, the impact of the crisis is not the same for everyone. While instability is a constant, social class continues to mark deep differences.
On one hand, young people from privileged sectors face the transition to adulthood with a range of opportunities. Those who finish high school can access higher education without this posing a threat to their economic stability, and those with university training often find alternatives, even abroad, to develop their careers.
In contrast, those with university degrees but without sufficient social and economic capital face the paradox of being overqualified for poorly paid jobs while simultaneously underemployed or directly unemployed. Overeducation and lack of opportunities generate growing frustration in a system that fails to effectively integrate its youth.
But the hardest hit are the young people from popular sectors. According to data from the Monitor of Popular Neighborhoods from the Research Center Fund.ar, 60% of people between 15 and 29 years old live in poverty. In this segment, uncertainty is not just an abstract feeling, but a material reality that determines their life possibilities. For many, finishing high school is a challenge that collides with the urgencies of the present: the need to work from an early age to support themselves and their families forces them to abandon any long-term educational project. Without support networks or access to formal jobs, they become trapped in cycles of informality and structural exclusion.
Thus, although uncertainty is a generalized condition of today's youth, its effects are not the same for everyone. While some can cushion precariousness thanks to their family context and support networks, others are left exposed to a much deeper vulnerability. The crisis of stability affects all youth, but not everyone has the same tools to face it.
The dilemma of the future: thinking about tomorrow when the urgency is today
In the face of this scenario, an unavoidable question arises: How can young people project a future when urgency forces them to focus solely on the present?
In a context where access to basic rights becomes uncertain, where education is no longer a guarantee of social mobility, and where stable work is an exception rather than the norm, the challenge is not only to think about youth but to think with them. The open question is not just what kind of future young people can imagine, but what kind of society we are building if that future becomes unattainable for the majority.
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