Youth Fear Family Breakdown and Being Alone

This is an interesting report:

Family breakdown tops the list of concerns for young people when discussing their futures, while getting married and having children are overwhelmingly popular life goals, according to a survey.
The findings were released this week by New America Media, in cooperation with the University of California Office of the President and Bendixen & Associates research company.

Young people have a "fear of winding up alone," said Sandy Close, executive director of New America Media, an association for 700 ethnic news organizations that was founded in 1996 by the Pacific News Service.

Members of the new generation, who spend much of their time on cell phones and text messaging, and "who we think of really as the connected generation is, in a way, most afraid of winding up without intimate connections," she said. There is a "deep yearning for traditional structures and values."

Another hallmark of this generation is its embrace of a cross-cultural "global society," said Ms. Close. Fifty-three percent of white youths and Asian youths say most of their friends are of a different race/ethnicity, while a smaller 41 percent of blacks and Hispanics say the same.

Sixty-five percent of those ages 16 to 22 said they had dated someone of a different race, and 87 percent said they would be willing to marry someone of a different race. "So this is a generation that has worked through, in their own experience, problems their parents are still wrestling with," Ms. Close said.

The survey asked the 601 youths, 80 percent of whom were born in California, 7 percent elsewhere in the United States and 12 percent outside the United States, to identify "the most pressing issue facing your generation in the world today."

Twenty-four percent chose "family breakdown" as their biggest concern, followed by violence in local communities (22 percent), poverty (17 percent) and global warming (14 percent).

War and government issues ranked low on the list; drugs, "environmental issues in general," "economic issues" and "racism/discrimination" barely registered.

I think I have a few problems with the methodology and sample, but the results are none the less interesting. If this survey is in any way indicative of how younger people think, most political leaders are making the wrong appeal to them.