Summary
Young people today drink and smoke much less than previous generations. The rates of teenage pregnancy and youth crime have fallen dramatically. New Statesman editor Jason Cowley talks to experts to find out what is shaping the attitudes and choices of young people today. He grew up in Harlow in Essex during a time of particular social unrest. He returns to his former sixth-form college where he meets a group of students who are markedly more conformist and disciplined than his generation, but more anxious too. So what accounts for this change in young people's behaviour? Is it economic pressures, government policy or the fear of transgressors being shamed on social media? Will we continue to see the rise of a generation of New Young Fogeys? Producer: Katie Inman.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thanks for downloading analysis from the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | This week is the debut program for the editor of the New Statesman magazine, Jason Cowley. |
| 0:08.0 | And he has a question about a weird phenomenon. |
| 0:11.0 | Why are young people so well behaved? |
| 0:14.0 | Picture the scene. |
| 0:17.0 | We could be in any town send to a market square. |
| 0:20.0 | It's Saturday night, it's late, young men and women are spilling out of a bar. Many have |
| 0:25.4 | been binge drinking. There's a lot of shouting. A fight breaks out. The police |
| 0:30.2 | get involved. We've all seen images like this, but what do they tell us about young |
| 0:35.1 | people today? In the run-up to the 2010 general election, David Cameron spoke repeatedly |
| 0:41.9 | about Broken Britain as if he believed something fundamentally had gone wrong. |
| 0:47.0 | The suggestion was that Britain was in a state of social disrepair. |
| 0:51.0 | I was never convinced by this argument. |
| 0:53.0 | As editor of the New Statesman in the office I worked with a lot of young people. |
| 0:58.0 | I read their columns and listen to their ideas in meetings. |
| 1:01.0 | And through talking to them about their lives I've begun to understand |
| 1:04.4 | something important about how they differ from the baby boomers and generation exers |
| 1:09.6 | who came before them. Here are some of the young people I work with. |
| 1:13.0 | I think of myself as drinking a lot because I think perhaps some people in the office think |
| 1:18.3 | that I drink a lot. But then I think about the fact that I can't remember the last time I woke up and couldn't remember what I've done the evening before and I think so maybe I am quite boring. |
| 1:28.0 | I think this is not really a comment about myself, but so many of my friends are so health conscious in a way that I don't know if previous generations of young people have been there. |
| 1:38.0 | It goes beyond dieting into a whole like just wellness thing where everyone eats good food and drinks good smoothies and that kind of thing. |
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