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Today’s Mobilized Generation XS
Some 60% of the people in the Middle East are under 30 years of age, and many of the restless young are understandably angry, wired only with cell phones and feisty determination, with nowhere to go but to the streets, nothing to do but rebel. Today’s mobilized Generation XS have uncensored access to Facebook, Twitter, satellite cable TV, internet networks, Blogs and iPods, which empower individuals to wrestle control, often at the expense of disempowering the State, which has virtually lost chokehold control. There’s no rewind, only fast-forward, with Rebels, Rage and Revolution challenging the autocratic rule of corrupt regimes that once seemed firmly entrenched.
In the Middle East, Israel has by far the most internet users, followed by United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Noting the wwworld in transition, 55% of users in the UAE are female, who access the internet more than 7 hours a day. As the blogosphere has expanded, youth have more access to information, contrasting the lack of transparency in their own country with the relatively openness of liberties enjoyed elsewhere. Social media enable young men and women to share their wants, desires and frustrations in ways they couldn’t have in the past. No longer feeling isolated or alone, they feel connected to likeminded allies, empowering self-confident growth. Like young people everywhere, young spirited entrepreneurs have lofty ambitions, too often thwarted by lack of political connections (wasta) or state patronage cronyism.
Opinion polls show that the increasingly distrusted US has fallen out of favor. Most Middle Eastern youth are more pragmatically concerned about personal well-being than abstract issues such as democracy, feeling better off now and more positively optimistic than previously. Priorities include creating jobs, fair pay, stabilizing the cost of living, improving educational opportunities, offering better health care, ensuring social justice and expanding individual freedoms – of speech, expression, assembly. A wide divisive gap separates youth from older generation mindsets which remain out of touch with the need to implement change. The unresponsive elites have done little or nothing to prepare disillusioned, disenfranchised and disaffected youth for the future or to provide them with viable career options.
The extent to which the quietly desperate young, struggling to get involved and take ownership of their own futures, will become healthy and productive members of the global community, effectively depends on how well foreign governments, international monetary institutions, humanitarian agencies and progressive civil societies invest in economic initiatives and political advances. For now, there’s just waiting and waiting and waiting with low expectations – for decent jobs, better education, marriage, family, liberty, the right to vote freely and to have a voice.
Charles Frederickson is a Swedish/American/Thai impassioned observer, daring experimentalist and progressive visionary who has
wandered intrepidly through 206 countries, an original sketch and poem for each presented on http://www.imagesof.8k.com. A member of World Poets
Society, based in Greece, his unique poetic style has been featured in: Ascent Aspirations, Auckland Poetry, Blind Man’s Rainbow, Both Sides Now,
Caveat Lector, Contemporary American Voices, Cordite Poetry Review, Dance to Death, Decanto, ESC!, Feelings of the Heart, Flutter Magazine,
Greatworks, Green Dove, Indite Circle, International Poet, Listen & Be Heard, Living Poets, Madpoetry, Melange, Newtopia, New Verse News, Peace
Not War Japan, Planet Authority, Poetics, Poetry Canada, Poetry of Scotland, Poetry Stop, Poets for Peace, Poetry Superhighway, Pyramid, Sz, T-Zero,
Ygdrasil, Ya’Sou! and Zafusy.
Email: Charles Frederickson
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