Independent Perspective News - Imperfect Future

At least 20% of 15 to 24 year-old Argentines neither study nor work. The majority is not interested in politics or in reading. What is going on with the kids who seem to care about nothing?

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Anguish, unwillingness, lack of enthusiasm, apathy... There are many diagnoses, more or less scientific names, but the truth is thousands of Argentine kids have it. Old-youngsters under 25. Kids without dreams who see the future as an imminent nightmare. Who do not want to change the world, or the bed sheets. Who live their lives shielded by an ironic face, withered, not feeling to do a thing.

The figures of apathy

1. According to data from the Indec, of the 6,5 million Argentine youngsters between 15 and 24, 1.300.000 are neither studying nor working (needless to say that many of them would like to do one of them or both).

2. 78% of people that age is completely uninterested in politics, says a study by "Demoskopia".

3. 56% is not interested in reading, and they do not even leaf through the paper (Catterberg y Asociados).

4. According to a piece of research published by dean of the UBA Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry, 86% of secondary school students would drop their studies if they could and 68% gets bored stiff in the classroom.

These are statistics, but also an unequivocal sign of the direction many kids are heading these (bad) days.

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Psychologist Claudia Messing is an expert on the field; she has seen thousands of disoriented kids, although today she is surprised by the lack of enthusiasm she finds in every interview. "Rather than talk, teenagers express their apathy by making gestures of tiredness, of disinters, of stress". (...) She was so struck by this new problem that she decided to carry out a profound study. (...) The result was shocking. To start with, 85% was not able to build their career project, 43% dropped their course of study before the second final exam. But the worse was that seven out of ten suffered from apathy and were unmotivated, and 56% had learning difficulties in spite of being intelligent kids.

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Martín - 24 years-old - is no longer looking for a job. He got tired of reading the ads, he says, "There's nothing anyway". He sleeps a lot, anesthetize himself with a cocktail of TV and beer (...) "I guess one day I'll grab my backpack and go travel Latin America. (...) I've wanted to be a shaman since I read Las Enseñanzas de Don Juan, by Carlos Castañeda (an initiation book whose protagonist seeks to widen his conscience states by several means, including taking hallucinogenic fungus)"...

There are few chances he will make it. Reason number one: he will hardly reach Central America if he rarely leaves his home. Reason number two: even if he does not know, it is highly probable that he suffers from the "Snow White Syndrome".

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Helena Lunazzi, a psychologist from the University of La Plata, has studied the reach of the "Snow White Syndrome" among 18 to 25 year-old kids. She analyzed 506 kids using the Rorschach test -a technique in which there are no correct answers. The result: 20% has the syndrome, which describes people who give priority to their fantasies instead of using realistic ideas to solve problems. (...) The phenomenon, according to the experts, is global, but its incidence here is greater than anywhere else.

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Alejando Rozitchner, a philosopher who usually talks to kids on the radio program "Cuál es?", works to deconstruct certain excuses some youngsters use to justify their idleness. "Freedom is not about getting rid of oppression. For instance, you were fed up with your old folks and so you left home. You got rid of them. Now what? Full freedom is the use of that new space for the sake of something, of a plan of one's own. What we call the system is really ourselves, setting our own limits, or else accepting as definitive the limits set by the circumstances. There are always choices. Every idler likes to think that his limitations are given by the system that stops him from spreading his wings and flying, but the responsible for his wings not being able to lift him is probably himself.

More data:

The conclusion reached by a report from Equis, elaborated on the basis of official data in May, points out that the youngsters in such situation are 19,1% of that segment of the population. This also reveals that in 12 months 127.000 new people came into this scenario, and that the tendency has grown 38, 4% in the last four years.