Loneliness one of the top five worries for 21% of young people

A good deal of our recent polling here at YouGov has centered on the notion of ‘young people’ as a specific group within society. We have tackled the issue from the perspective of the young themselves (here and here), and from the viewpoint of adults’ opinions of them (here and here).

Young people have the worst employment prospects for a generation. They will spend their adult lives paying back a government borrowing deficit and funding the hole in the nation’s pension pot.

Today we learn that, on top of all this, loneliness is one of the top five worries for 21% of young people aged 18-24, compared with only 8% of people aged 55 and over.

Brighter Times

However, there is some better news.

One Young World, a ground-breaking initiative that the Economist has billed as one of the most important events to take place in 2010.

The project will see 1,500 delegates all aged 25 or under, meeting in London in February 2010 to discuss, debate and propose solutions to world issues as identified though a YouGov study.

34% of Adults think the young have no respect for others

Almost one in four adults (24%) aged 26 or over say they feel uneasy when they see young people (those aged 11 to 25) on the street and cross the road to avoid them, according to a new report out today.

According to the YouGov research, which was commissioned by youth charity the Jack Petchey Foundation,  34% of adults (aged 26+) believe young people have no respect for others.

Why is Life Harder for Young People?

49% of adults aged 26 or over said they think life is generally harder for young people today than it was when they were young (i.e. 11 to 25) and only one in ten (10%) agree that they would want to be young in today’s society. Around two thirds (64%) put this down to the fact that young people are expected to grow up too fast, while 54% blame a lack of positive role models, and 53% say it’s because there aren’t enough places for young people to go (i.e. socially).

Where do young people get advice? Where should they?

It is clear from some optional questions that we ran that family structures are very important in people’s opinion of where young people should get advice on careers, relationships, and life decisions.

93% of respondents said that they should get advice from parents. 57% thought it should come from friends, 33% from government services, and 29% from non-religious charities.

Only 16% thought that young people should turn to religious sources for guidance on these important issues.

When we asked where people thought young people actually were getting their advice from, the results were very different. 78% said they were getting it from friends, while only 52% thought it was coming from parents.

Government sources (22%), non-religious charities (13%), and religious sources (11%) were deemed even less relevant.

‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’

We have been thinking about advice and mottos, and ran some optional questions on the end of a survey to investigate the advice that people think is true, and that they would give to other people.

59% of the respondents thought that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wisdom in his 1933 inaugural presidential address, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’, is generally true. Exactly half thought the same of Nietzsche’s assertion that ‘We are franker towards others than towards ourselves’.

In light of the self-flagellation following the MPs’ expenses scandal, it is perhaps unsurprising that 47% agreed with Charles De Gall’s words, ‘In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.’ Also with possible associations with the expenses scandal, only 16% saw truth in Disraeli’s dictum, ‘Never complain. Never explain.’

However, when it came to instructing future generations, only Roosevelt’s line was thought particularly worthy of being passed on, with 49% of respondents citing it as something they would give as advice.

Young People Interested in Politics and Want Better Political Education

It appears that young people are not happy with what they are being taught, and are far more interested in politics than the media impression of the ‘apathetic youth’ would suggest. 64% of 14 to 25-year-olds said they intended to vote in the next election or as soon as they were eligible, according to a YouGov survey carried out for the Citizenship Foundation.

Of the 3,994 young people questioned, 73% planned to vote after considering a political party’s position on particular issues, with 35% citing international problems as the issue they would be most interested in. One in four considered local issues to be the most important, and 22% ranked national problems the highest.

The survey found that 43% of young people thought the school or college they go to, or the school they used to attend, should spend more time teaching about politics and current affairs. Just under half (49%) thought more attention should be paid to banking, mortgages and personal finance, while 36% wanted more education on the economy and 26% wanted to be taught more about the law.

Schools to teach online protection and reputation management?

Schools should introduce lessons to teach young people about protecting their online privacy and reputation, according to a survey. (Also covered here)

Almost seven out of 10 adults (69%) said compulsory lessons should be introduced as part of the national curriculum, amid fears children could be jeopardising their future with posts on sites such as Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Twitter.

Nearly half of respondents (48%) were concerned that children could damage their university or career prospects by posting inappropriate photos or comments, according to the YouGov poll of 2,050 UK adults. But just four out of 10 adults (40%) checked what their children or younger relatives were posting online at least once a week, the survey found. The survey was commissioned by the digital communications agency Halpern Cowan,  for its Digital Literacy Report 2009.

The survey also found that 31% of 18 to 24-year-olds had posted pictures or comments online they would not want their bosses or colleagues to see. And a similar number (32%) had posted something online which they later regretted. Many of the adults in this age group had also posted potentially sensitive information such as date of birth (67%), telephone number (26%), and address (7%). Asked whether they researched people online ahead of meetings or interviews, 5% of adults across all age ranges said “always” while 9% said “regularly” and 19% said “sometimes”.

2 in 3 Teachers say there is too much emphasis on pupils getting a degree at a traditional university

According to a new study from independent education foundation, Edge, two thirds of teachers think there is too much emphasis on pupils getting a degree at a traditional university, while over a third (39%) of teachers feel their institutions still offer too little practical and vocational learning. Involvement with local businesses is seen as widely insufficient with fifty-nine per cent stating that their school or college does not offer enough opportunity for students to learn with local companies.

The majority of teachers (59%) believe practical and vocational learning often leads to a good career, but they also recognise their knowledge of the qualifications available falls short when compared to their understanding of academic routes.

The study was conducted by YouGov, who interviewed over 1,000 teachers and FE lecturers in the state and independent sectors.