Importance of youth in demographic dividend

     Today's youth are tomorrow's wealth for any country. It is this young generation that will build up a nation by deciding the political, social and economic factors and will be ultimately responsible to the growth of a country. What will happen if this youth of the country are mired with addictions and problems? How will it affect the country?

    Today's generation is very different. They are growing up in an era of information and technology explosion. The view of the whole world is in their hands. Everything is so easily available without any effort. This easiness comes at a cost of their cognitive and emotional health. The huge amount of data available online confuses the youth. The ones that are adolescent fall into this trap of virtuality and start looking from that unrealistic perspective.

    Film culture has penetrated into almost every corner of the world. By showing a certain trend in dressing, makeup, behaviour, attitude or values; the youth are being passively hypnotised to believe that trend to be real. Film stars are role models to them. Yes of course there are some who really qualify as a role model, but the decision of whom to follow is individualistic. This individualistic aspect in the adolescents often tends to deviate them from what is right.

    Social media has become a platform to show off and to vent out their insecurities. The insecurity arises out of low self confidence. The temporary self confidence that develops in the individual through social media gives false hope to the youth. The practical world has many factors that are not accounted in social media platforms. For example a person might accuse another person online in some part of the world because he/she is sure of not getting slapped. Now imagine the same situation offline when both the parties are physically present. These changes in behaviour pattern often lead to emotional instability leaving our youth vulnerable.

    In todays digital internet era, many of the youth are addicted to playing games and watching videos. Slowly as time passes, they develop their comfort zone around it and they do not want to come out of their comfort zone. They have in fact been enslaved digitally ! There are lesser useful content creators than viewers. Content creation is a cognitive and technical process while viewing is just a mechanical process. It's just like a mobile manufacturer and a mobile user. Most of the videos available online are actually reducing the concentration span of the youth. Usually every 5 to 10 seconds, the camera angle keeps on changing to constantly keep the viewer's concentration on the video. Over a period of time, it becomes a habit and the concentration of our youth gets confined to 10 seconds. Today most of the videos online are crafted to keep the viewer watching. Practically there are not much videos in one angle continuously for 45 minutes or 1 hour. It has become a trend for short videos to become viral on internet. This slowly degrades the patience of the youth. Today if you question their preference of choice between reading and viewing, most of them will choose viewing as it is an easier choice. The reality of how many have read to this point in this article proves the fact !

    Now coming to digital war, we as a country have to be careful in nurturing the youth. If our youth are addicted to games and videos and wither away all their youthful time in it, how will a country develop? What if other countries use this strategy to purposefully degrade our youth? Wasting of youth is a very serious problem. India's demography is young and it will remain so until 2045. If the youth are nurtured properly, then it will be a demographic dividend else it will be a demographic disaster. What if some country is targeting our youth through online by consuming their time? If their youthful age is wasted online without any skills, how will these youth cope up with the competition in this crony capitalist world? If the trend of online and digital addiction continues, then in 2045 we will have a SPINELESS population which is less empowered, less skilful and less competitive. If the youth are truly patriotic, then they will strive towards individual development in all spheres of life and work hard to be better every day. Finally a country cannot progress with its youth mired in ignorance.