The Legacy of Our Generation

Every generation tends to ask the same question: What will become of the next one? What kind of people will they grow into, and where will society ultimately end up? Yet today we are facing more than an ordinary generational divide. Young people are under unprecedented pressure from a digital world that shapes their identity faster than they can mature. Anxiety, loneliness, and burnout are becoming the new normal for many of them. It is therefore time to ask ourselves honestly: What kind of world are we really handing over to them?

I remember how my friends and I were often asked by our parents: “What kind of youth are you? What will become of you?” As it later turned out, my parents had heard the very same question from their own parents. And truth be told, I often find myself wondering the same thing about today's generation.

It seems as though this cycle has continued throughout history, and perhaps there is nothing to worry about. After all, every generation is unique in its own way. It re-evaluates old norms and becomes the new driving force of society.

Yet then my conscience speaks up, and I ask myself: Is it really that simple?

Could something be happening that has never happened before? Why is the number of young people struggling with serious mental health issues rising so dramatically? Are we facing more than ordinary generational differences? Could this be a genuine crisis, one for which the human mind is not evolutionarily prepared?

In the past, the boundaries of what was considered normal were shaped by faith, school, family, local communities, and a direct connection with nature. Today, those boundaries are increasingly defined by a global digital environment. Young people no longer compare themselves with the classmate sitting next to them, but with a carefully curated reality presented on social media. The standards of success, beauty, and happiness have been elevated to unattainable heights. What was once regarded as an ordinary, average life is now often perceived as failure.

The Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti once remarked: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

But it is not only generations that are changing. The very definition of what we consider normal is changing as well. All the disturbances we see on the surface are only a pale reflection of what is happening underneath, within young people themselves. Anxiety and loneliness are becoming collective experiences.

What, then, is our legacy? The legacy of those of us who allowed this to happen?

We have created a world in which we taught machines to think, while forgetting how to feel ourselves. A world in which we expanded the boundaries of what is possible, but lost our sense of what is right. Let us admit it: our legacy is often one of confusion and emptiness.

The way out of this trap does not lie in mechanically switching off the internet. It lies in switching on our genuine presence.

More than ever before, young people need a community of people around them who will not judge them by the number of likes they receive, but who will support them when they fail. The solution is to return to real relationships, to have conversations without screens, and to give them moments of silence in which they can once again hear their own thoughts. We must teach children that their worth cannot be measured by any algorithm, but by the richness of their inner life.

Within the next ten or fifteen years, the helm of society will gradually pass to a generation that has never experienced that extraordinarily ordinary world without modern technology. Yet I believe that through their own experiences and struggles, they will discover for themselves what truly matters.

And we, the older generation, can and must continue to help them along the way.