YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

46 First, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic forced most countries, including Slo- venia, to enact long-lasting lockdown measures. Because the economy was shut down, unemployment – especially among young people – in- creased sharply. This would partly explain why this demographic has increasing economic anxiety. Moreover, the same lockdowns severely reduced normal everyday interactions, public gatherings, familial and friendly visits, etc. Schools were shut down for months on end. It is not surprising that feelings of loneliness concomitantly increased. Second, despite significant economic growth, governmental social poli- cies intended to redress youth issues did not manage to accomplish their goals. The main issues that were not resolved due to a lack of political will were those related to housing access and flexible markets. Even though the share of part-time employment among young Slovenians fell between 2015 and 2019 by more than 10 percentage points (to 62%), it nevertheless remains significantly higher than it was in 2000 or 1996. Third, the last decade has seen an enormous increase of young people joining online social media, whichmany researchers (see, e.g. Vannucci et al., 2017; Haidt and Lukianoff, 2018) tie to increased levels of anxiety and worriedness. We performed additional analyses on our own data, which revealed a correlation between spending more time on social media and being more worried; especially prominent were worries about school and job failure (r = 0.12; p < 0.01) and money worries (r = 0.10; p < 0.01). Today’s young people are experiencing much more unease with regards to their future. There are more worries about a lack of money, irreversible damage to the environment, and success in school and at work. These are primarily the worries that have significantly increased in the past decade. Loneliness accounts for the single largest increase, which is undoubtedly the result of specific pandemic conditions in 2020. Feelings of discrimination can also be thought of as an important youth issue.