Young people around the world are more worried about climate change than they were a decade ago and are overwhelmingly using artificial intelligence (AI) in daily life, yet two in three still expect better economic prospects than their parents’ generation, according to early findings from the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Youth Pulse survey.
Natalie Pierce, head of the WEF’s Global Shapers Community, unveiled the data in Dubai at the opening of the Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders 2026.
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The survey revisits a 2016 study of 20,000 young people. Then, 45 per cent named planetary resilience as their top global concern. Today that figure is 52 per cent, and nine in 10 say climate change is affecting their daily lives.
“Climate disruption is very much a lived reality for young people,” Pierce said, pointing to retreating glaciers in the Himalayas and the Alps, wildfires across North America and Southern Europe, and floods and droughts intensified by a strengthening El Niño.
Jobs gap looms
On personal futures, economic uncertainty ranks highest.
Over the next decade, 1.2 billion young people in developing and emerging economies will reach working age, but only about 400 million new jobs are expected, leaving a shortfall of 800 million, she said, adding that one in five young people worldwide is already outside employment, education and training.
“For millions, that first rung of the economic ladder is already hard to reach,” Pierce said.
In 2016, the survey found, young people identified AI and robotics as the technologies that would define the decade: 86 per cent believed AI would create jobs, and 64 per cent expected their own careers to be affected.
Today, 91 per cent have embedded AI deeply into their daily lives, and 62 per cent feel positive about its impact, said WEF report.
Young people still expect AI to be the technology that most shapes the decade to 2036.
“In 2016, AI was a prediction. In 2026, AI is a practice,” Pierce said.
The question for young people has shifted from what AI can do to what they will do as it reshapes work, she added. Making human capabilities more valuable alongside AI is the area where they most want business and government to innovate.
Despite the anxieties, two in three young people expect better economic prospects than the previous generation. The picture varies by geography: an overwhelming majority in sub-Saharan Africa are optimistic, compared with a little over half in Europe and Eurasia.
“For young people, opportunity is still geographic,” Pierce said, calling their outlook “courage and a belief in the positive future that they can build”.
Young people want to shape change
Alois Zwinggi, President and CEO of the WEF, said the meeting comes at a complicated moment for the region and the world, with geopolitical uncertainty reshaping security, trade and trust.
He said the Youth Pulse showed a generation of “ambition and agency” that is “not asking to be protected from change” but wants to shape it “with dignity, agency, and purpose”.
Zwinggi thanked the UAE government for hosting the meeting despite the challenging geopolitical circumstances, adding that dialogue and cooperation are “essential precisely when the world is under pressure”.
Source: Khaleej Times