Confidence a comfort amid carnage
Alice Thomson of The Times hails the calm response of young people to the Manchester bombing.
This was an attack on the young: girls with kitten and bunny ears, braces and glasses, boys wearing dungarees, daughters with their matching mums or proud dads at their first gigs. More than 20,000 of Ariana Grande’s fans were packed into the Manchester Arena, waving glow sticks and pink balloons when the bomb went off. The gut-wrenching pictures of those who have died, are missing or have finally been found, show happy young people, relaxed and at ease.
‘‘Olivia was wearing blue skinny jeans, thigh-high boots, black top, hair up with glasses,’’ posted one mother. That could be so many of our daughters dressed up for a big school night out. One girl in the video footage of the attack is still in her uniform, with her tennis racquet swinging from her shoulder.
For parents the images are horrendous: becoming separated from your child when a bomb goes off, sitting at home waiting vainly for their call or cradling their mutilated body in your arms is almost too unbearable to contemplate.
Yet the response of the young to this slaughter has been extraordinary – calm, supportive and dignified. This Snapchat generation found each other on social media, and gave love, advice and practical help. Students opened up their bedsits with the hashtag #RoomforManchester and queued to give blood; messages of solidarity from the millennial generation came from around the world, accompanied by images of rabbit ears drawn in black against pink. At breakfast I didn’t mind that all four children were on their phones. Then many pupils, including my goddaughter in Manchester, went off to face their GCSEs.
They are called the snowflake generation but this cohort are proving grounded and resilient. Often accused of being soft and melting under pressure, they are showing a stoicism similar to their great grandparents during the Blitz, keeping going in an uncertain world even when the smiley emojis now have halos as they pay their respects to their peers who died.
The targets seemed deliberately chosen, teenagers and families having fun. Ariana may sing about relationships with her ‘‘Arianators’’, but with her clean, swishy hair, she is pretty wholesome entertainment for eight to 80-year-olds, an older sister who is a bit of a friend, a bit of a feminist, the popular girl who stands up for LGBT children, with 46 million Twitter followers.
This is now becoming a pattern. In Paris, the Isis killers targeted the young’s favourite haunts: a pizzeria, a football stadium and a concert. Next it was a fireworks display in Nice, where my daughter’s friend found herself running from a careering truck while on a French exchange. The Christmas market in Berlin was full of teenagers when it was rammed by another lorry.
My generation had the vague threat of the Cold War; we can remember the bombing of Harrods, the death of Sefton the horse and the shadow of the IRA, but it didn’t feel directly aimed at us. The main targets on 9/11 were the financial district and the White House, positions of authority; 7/7 was about commuters and London’s infrastructure. As Amber Rudd, the home secretary, observed on Tuesday, these new attacks are deliberately focused on the most vulnerable.
Nervous parents may increasingly start tracking their children on their iPhones, but the young aren’t changing the way they live. They are slated for being pampered and soft but this generation is quietly impressive. On Westminster Bridge on Tuesday, just feet away from where a car ploughed into a mother on her way to a school pick-up in March, a young couple from Croydon were posing for wedding photographs, one a Muslim, the other Christian. ‘‘We wanted to make a point,’’ the bride said. ‘‘It’s all of us against a handful of them.’’
The young can appear overly sensitive but are also more altruistic than their parents – 35 per cent of 16-24-year-olds say they volunteer at least once a month. They tend not to be racist or homophobic and are less likely to drink, smoke or take drugs than previous generations. In the mid1980s, 55 per cent of 11-15-year-olds had smoked a cigarette, and 62 per cent had drunk alcohol. Today, 18 per cent have smoked and 38 per cent have drunk, while the proportion of 11-15-year-olds who have used an illegal drug has halved since 2001. Like Ariana Grande, they are more likely to be vegan than anything else.
They are accused of being spoilt and pampered but their financial futures are precarious. If they go to university they are likely to leave with debts that average £44,000 ($NZ81,000) and the majority will end up back home with their parents. Dubbed ‘‘Generation Rent’’ when they finally do move out, they are accused of frittering away their disposable incomes but very few can afford the deposit for a home.
Yet the young don’t seem narrow-minded or fearful. Teenagers now are constantly having to adapt to circumstances. They have no idea of the lives they will lead, or what jobs technology and robots will leave for them, but most take this with good grace rather than whingeing.
They cope with the massive political, economic, technological, social and sexual changes thrown at them, and terrorism will not destroy their confidence or their tolerant views. Despite the terrible scenes in Manchester, their confidence should make us feel optimistic about the future.