Kate Hawkesby: Why I'm feeling sorry for our young people

These are awful times globally, aren’t they? I mean there have been darker periods in history, but for young people living through a pandemic and now witnessing what’s unfolding in Ukraine right now, awful.Horrific for all of us actually, not just young people. But we have record levels of anxiety amongst our young people in this country at the moment – exacerbated by the pandemic, and I do worry how much worse it’s going to get for them. Young people are seeing this war unfold in real-time, this is not black and white grainy footage from times gone by, they’re watching civilian videos on TikTok and across social media as people literally fight for their lives in front of them. A phone in their hand is broadcasting all the action live for them to witness. And without a wider context of history, or any real memory of conflicts like the Balkans, Crimea, Chechnya, they will be rightly worried and freaked out. Mainstream media puts its own narratives on what they’re witnessing, politicians do too, but confusion still abounds. There’s terror of a World War 3, which I don’t believe will be the case, but I can imagine how frightening it must be to hear, see and read that everywhere. Young people these days are used to hearing things from the horse’s mouth. they get their news from Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. So they’ll be glued to those sources — often bereft of any analysis — just scary war-torn pictures and stories raining down on their feeds. It’s a lot for them to digest off the back of two years of a pandemic and all the fear messaging that went with that.If you think about it, our young people are surrounded by fear these days. It’s hard to imagine them being able to be light of foot, optimistic, planning OE’s, relaxing with friends without a care in the world like we did at the same age. Many of them have missed landmark moments at school or University, unable to do the usual rites of passage like prizegivings, graduations, sports finals, Uni orientations. They’ve been masked up, mandated, vaccinated, sanitised and sent home. Usual pomp and ceremony curtailed. Stood down from school for lockdowns, restricted from sport, jobs lost or changed. Parents under stress or financial pressure. Grandparents isolated. And now they’re seeing division and protest across their own country, while also absorbing an all-out war in a far-flung one. I’m not arguing that young people in other decades didn’t go through worse, I’m just saying it hits different when it’s your own young people. And when it’s a digital generation who’re seeing it all unfold right in front of them, in full colour, the murky bloody desperate horrors of war.I feel for them, and I hope they’re able to build resilience, find gratitude for what they have here, and focus on that. The irony of Kiwis marching for freedom this past weekend, when you see what’s happening in Ukraine — I mean, it’s embarrassing.I hope despite all of this, we can keep perspective on just how lucky we actually are.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.