YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  49 Brendon adds the following important observation. “This is more the domain of racists. When I go to town, I do not feel [discrimination] among young people. […] For example, I am strolling through the town and an older lady sees I am walking in her direction. As soon as she sees me walking on the right side, she switches her bag from her right arm to the left. What is she afraid of – that I am going to rob her?” Indeed, recent research shows that young people, especially contempo- rary ones, are less and less discriminatory, while having ever more liber- alizing attitudes especially with regards to social and migrant issues (Caughey et al., 2019). Moreover, we should not jump to the conclusion that, because the youth reports having many fears about various issues, they are basically pessimistic about their future. In fact, the reverse is true. A large majority of young people in 2010 and 2020 estimates that their personal situation will either significantly or somewhat improve in the future. Ten years ago, 68% thought so, while today 76% thinks so. Figure 1.7: Youth visions of personal future, 2010–2020. What do you think the future of our society will be? 90% 80% 60% 40% 30% 10% 20% 70% 50% A lot worse 2010 2020 6.0 23.5 49.1 19.3 7.7 17.0 46.0 27.5 Somewhat worse The same Somewhat better A lot better 0% 100% 1.8 2.1 Sources: Mladina 2010, Mladina 2020. Interestingly, the share of young people that think their future personal situation will remain the same has significantly shrunk. This suggests viewpoint polarization: in 2020 there are more optimists and more pes- simist. This polarization, however, is asymmetric. The share of optimists