Asean must repair its fraying bargain with the young
The region’s economic future hinges on a generation that still believes upward mobility is within reach
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WITHIN the first eight months of 2026, a spate of school violence has sent shocks across South-east Asia.
The incidents began in Hat Yai, Thailand, where an 18-year-old student fatally shot a school official in February, followed by another fatal shooting in the Nonthaburi province on Aug 7.
In the Philippines, a shooting in Tacloban in June was followed by a tragic attack in Zamboanga on Aug 18, where a Grade 9 student killed a peer, wounded others and livestreamed the violence before taking his own life.
These remain rare and extreme events, each with its own immediate circumstances, including bullying, academic pressure and personal grievance. They do not, by themselves, establish a regional youth crisis, still less a generation on the verge of violence.
But they prompt a wider question about Asean’s youth and a broader, mostly non-violent unease – expressed in protest, political disengagement, workplace dissatisfaction, delayed adulthood and changing consumption.
For businesses and governments, these events are a reason to examine more closely the environment in which Asean’s young people are coming of age.
For decades, Asean has assumed that education, economic growth and urbanisation would produce a generation able to enjoy steady upward mobility.
What happens when a better educated and more connected generation becomes less convinced that this bargain will hold?
Social and political signals
Most youthful dissatisfaction has been expressed peacefully. Thailand’s youth-led protests of 2020-2021 challenged established institutions and fed into strong support for Move Forward and now the People’s Party.
A 2025 survey by Thailand’s 101 Public Policy think tank found that about three-quarters of Thais aged 15 to 25 identified most closely with the ideas of the People’s Party.
The significance goes beyond voting. It suggests a willingness among younger citizens to reject political arrangements inherited from previous generations.
Elsewhere in the region, young people have featured prominently in anti-corruption and anti-establishment protests. Political loyalties are becoming less traditional while frustration with entrenched elites is more visible.
This is not simply politics and youthful rebellion. It is driven by deeper pressures.
More education does not always produce better jobs with better pay. More graduates are competing for attractive white-collar work.
Housing, a marker of adult independence, is increasingly unaffordable in many dynamic cities.
Secure employment is harder to take for granted. Young workers are less inclined to accept rigid corporate hierarchies simply because previous generations did.
Artificial intelligence adds a new uncertainty, reshaping entry-level jobs and raising questions about how long skills acquired through expensive formal education will remain valuable.
Social media can magnify these frustrations, as constant exposure to richer peers, influencers and seemingly unattainable lifestyles reinforces a sense of falling behind.
For many young people, such exposure occupies a significant part of daily life.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong noted that one in six aged 10 to 24 in the country shows signs of problematic social-media use, with some spending six or seven hours a day online.
These platforms can quickly turn private frustrations into shared discontent, amplifying pressure on companies and political leaders.
Despite respectable headline growth in many Asean economies, surveys point to a more unsettled mood.
In Malaysia, an Ipsos survey in 2024 found that 68 per cent believed the country was in recession despite positive economic growth, while only about one in five said they were living comfortably.
In Indonesia, Ipsos’ generational research in 2026 highlighted uncertainty about the future, fear of falling behind, loneliness and the intensity of online life among Generation Z.
In Thailand, Deloitte’s 2025 survey of Gen Z and millennials found younger workers increasingly rejecting traditional workplace structures, while placing greater weight on well-being, learning and meaningful work.
None of these indicators amounts to a regional crisis. Yet taken together, they suggest a widening distance between Asean’s macroeconomic progress and how some young people experience their own prospects.
Business impact
Asean’s social and economic model has rested on a simple proposition: Each generation would be better educated than the last, leading to better jobs, housing, marriage, children and greater consumption.
The bargain is no longer automatic, and in some areas, it is fraying.
The result is not necessarily outright hostility. Often it looks more like disengagement: postponing marriage and children, changing jobs frequently, or opting out of traditional career ladders – what is termed “lying flat” in China.
In politics, some protest while others withdraw, distrusting traditional political and social institutions.
This shift directly affects both business and investors because two of Asean’s most attractive propositions have always been its young workforce and rising consumer class.
The labour proposition is changing. Employers can still draw on a large young population, but workers may be harder to retain and less willing to exchange long hours and hierarchy for the promise of advancement later.
Companies that cannot show credible progression, skills development for an AI-enabled economy and better pay may face higher turnover, weaker engagement and growing demands for flexibility.
The consumer proposition may also become less straightforward. Asean’s middle-class story assumes young people move predictably from employment into household formation and steadily higher consumption.
If secure work, housing and marriage are delayed, that consumption curve is delayed too. Spending does not disappear. It may shift towards travel, technology, entertainment, experiences and affordable forms of status while larger commitments are postponed.
That poses a strategic risk for sectors built around household formation, from property and cars to weddings, childcare and consumer durables.
Restoring the ladder
Some may dismiss youth anxieties and aspirations, sneering at a “strawberry generation” for bruising too easily. That attitude is unfair and unhelpful.
For governments, the answer is not to “manage angry youth” but to restore confidence in upward mobility.
Education reform and strengthening links to employment are key, so that classroom learning remains relevant to productive work, including through technical and apprenticeship routes. Governments must also improve housing affordability and create more credible pathways into secure adulthood.
Singapore’s recent National Day Rally offers a current example. PM Wong acknowledged the challenges young people face as they marry and start families, and announced further housing support, including higher income ceilings for subsidised public housing and greater priority for first-time families with children.
Even in one of Asean’s wealthiest societies, policy increasingly reflects the need to sustain confidence that work and advancement can still lead to a home and family.
Mental health and social isolation should also be addressed as economic and social priorities, particularly in schools.
The recent shootings make this urgent, but the wider concern is the much larger group who will never become violent yet may disengage from education, work or society.
In politics, there is also a need to revitalise legitimate channels through which younger citizens can participate and press for change. Heavy-handed, top-down control – or worse, closing those channels – does not remove the underlying dissatisfaction.
For business, the response is similarly practical: make career progression visible, invest in skills that lead to higher wages, improve management and working conditions, and recognise that young employees increasingly expect more than deferred rewards.
Asean can remain young, growing and increasingly affluent while becoming more demanding and politically fluid.
This is not a reason for pessimism. But it is a warning against assuming economic growth by itself will continue to produce a confident workforce and an ever-expanding consumer class.
Asean’s growth has generated hope and aspiration. The challenge for governments and businesses now is to ensure there are credible pathways and ladders for the majority of its young people to get there.
The writer is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. His 2025 book is Island in the world: Singapore’s geopolitical DNA
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