Experts encourage young people to regain hope in the future

Young people need to be listened to, accompanied, united in community and encouraged to have face-to-face conversations to have the necessary strength to change reality and their future. This was the main conclusion of the XX Conference of the Spiritual and Religious Care Service (SAER), which was held today at the Sant Joan de Déu Health Park under the title Youth in search of meaning: from suffering to active hope.

The economic and environmental crises, and the fact of being a generation that has experienced a pandemic, generates a social context in which young people continuously question their place in the world, and live with hopelessness about the future. Epidemiological data warns that younger generations are suffering intensely from the characteristics of an era full of changes, which makes it difficult to enter the world of work, delays emancipation and the beginning of the life cycle, and which especially affects mental health, which is increasingly manifested at earlier ages.

“Expectations around the new generations are changing and different educational services are asking us and other entities that work in mental health for support to address their discomfort,” said Dr. Sebastià Santaeugènia, managing director of the SJD Health Park.

What worries young people?

During the inaugural conference, Fernando Vidal, sociologist and researcher at theUniversity Institute of the Family, has mentioned the existence of four areas of great concern among young people: job insecurity, with 46.4% of young people in precarious jobs with low salaries; the difficulty in starting the life cycle, with emancipation delayed in Spain until the age of 30; mental health, where 62% of young Spanish people have anxiety, 42% have problems sleeping and there is a high incidence of self-harm and suicidal ideation; and the serious impact of social networks, the use of screens (with an average of four hours of daily exposure) and the habitual consumption of pornography before adolescence. “Young people are the main force for transformation in society. "If there is a time to act, it is now," Vidal declared.

Based on the data presented at the inaugural conference, the round table on Multifactorial discomfort, led by the professor of Biological Anthropology Ramon Maria Nogués, by the philologist Albert Soler and by the psychologist Francisco Villar, has debated and identified the four reasons that can cause this discomfort. This table discussed the lack of values ​​offered by modern European societies today; of how technology has hijacked the interiority of young people, who flee loneliness, and of the need to cultivate the inner world of the younger generations; the lack of bonding groups, which are very necessary from an anthropological point of view; and the increase in eco-anxiety in the new generations.

Daniele Bruzzone, professor of General and Social Pedagogy, and member of the board of the Viktor Frankl Institute, spoke next to talk about hope. For Bruzzone, hope is one of the fundamental pillars of education from a phenomenological and existential perspective, influenced by Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. According to Frankl, the main motivation of human beings is to find meaning in their own lives, even in situations of suffering.

Young people's experiences, shared vision

The table Living with meaning has collected the voices of three young people of similar ages who have spoken in the first person: they have discussed the pressure they feel as a generation, the unwanted loneliness they suffer; the high expectations of life generated by social media as if “real life isn't enough” and how this affects their mental health; as well as the need to find trustworthy people with whom to share this discomfort. "We are not a generation of glass, but now we can name the discomfort we suffer and express it, and we need to have a voice and be heard," they said.

The SAER has organized this 20th edition of the annual conference focusing on the suffering of young people with the aim of identifying a significant correlation between spirituality and health, and improving and promoting more appropriate and respectful support for the needs and sensitivities of young people.