Mexico City, December 11, 2023.— What kind of future do young people want, and how are they preparing for it? Generation Z shared their hopes, fears, and dreams through Youth Talks, a project in partnership with the Universidad Panamericana.
For this study, a collective survey supported by artificial intelligence was conducted, which helped gather the opinions of more than 45,000 young people aged 15 to 29 from 212 countries and territories around the world.
The survey was conducted by the Swiss foundation Higher Education for Good, a nonprofit organization, of which the Universidad Panamericana the strategic academic partner for Mexico and one of the three Latin American universities that participated in this project.
Education in Values and Virtues
When young people are asked what they want the future to look like, the answer is clear: their top priority is peace. Mexican youth were no exception. For this group, peace is their greatest aspiration, followed by the desire to protect the environment and promote human values and virtues.
The results provide a snapshot of the hopes, fears, commitments, and educational needs expressed by young people around the world. “For those of us dedicated to educating young people, it is a pleasant surprise to see that nearly a quarter of respondents are calling for schools to foster education in values and virtues,” said Dr. Teresa Nicolás, director of the Institutional Center for Educational Innovation at the Pan-American University.
He adds: “Young people are telling us that they want us to educate them so that they can acquire the interpersonal values necessary for social relationships: respect, solidarity, and empathy.”
Debunking Traditional Polls
For her part, Marine Hadengue, a researcher and director of Youth Talks, states: “Youth Talks sets itself apart from traditional surveys by adopting an innovative approach based on open-ended questions. Conventional methods, with their closed-ended questions and predefined answers, fail to capture the nuances of our societies.”
“Thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, we have been able to harness the power of open-ended questions to overcome this obstacle. By analyzing more than a million diverse contributions, Youth Talks has succeeded in revealing a rich and varied panorama of young people’s opinions and aspirations, challenging stereotypes about youth,” he notes.
He also explained that the results of the survey provide an accurate and nuanced picture of the complexity of our societies, allowing us to identify the underlying tensions that hinder collective action.
An Unfiltered View
In addition, the responses to the survey show that young Mexicans want to understand how political institutions and systems work, so that they can collectively prepare for the future and become well-informed citizens.
“For the first time, we have an unfiltered view of young people’s aspirations and fears, regardless of their geographic or socioeconomic background. The open-ended questions encouraged honest and unbiased responses, allowing them to express themselves freely,” says Hadengue.
The Universidad Panamericana, in partnership with Higher Education for Good, is analyzing the views and requests of young Mexicans in order to present the findings for Mexico and issue a series of recommendations to improve the country’s education system.
For more information about the survey, visit https://youth-talks.org/.
