In 2025, the decline in youth is no longer mere rhetoric or projection. South Korea’s birthrate hit a historic low of 0.65, signaling a crisis that goes beyond mere population issues to threaten the entire social system. Japan already has twice as many elderly people as youth, and China has entered a phase of negative population growth with more deaths than births.
The same trend is evident in parts of Europe and North America. The decrease in young population is a global phenomenon, and countries are beginning to recognize it as a structural problem affecting finance, defense, industry, culture, and more.
However, this crisis is not simply about numbers.
The deeper issue lies in society’s failure to establish structures that support the next generation. The decline in youth is not just a phenomenon, but the result of this failure. Marriage and childbirth have drifted away from life’s choices, not simply because of lack of money or housing.
In a society where planning for the future is impossible and taking responsibility is seen as a loss, dreaming of the next generation no longer feels natural. Housing insecurity, precarious employment, competitive education systems, lack of public caregiving, distrust in politics, and fractured relationships all play complex roles.
All these trends converge on one message: “This society is not prepared to embrace the next generation.” A society losing its youth is a society losing its hope. Population is a statistic, but within that number lies the foundation of community—relationships, solidarity, meaning, plans, memories, and legacy.
When youth decline, it’s not just a labor shortage; it’s a weakening of the energy that creates culture, resists, questions, loves, and cares. Youth are vitality and life force; they are not just an age group but the social pivot. Without them, a nation’s form can remain, but its warmth fades.
There are measures, but they are limited. Most policies focus on encouraging childbirth, creating jobs, or tax cuts. Yet they overlook one premise: today’s youth do not merely want “basic conditions to live” but a “society worth living in.”
Before policies, trust must be restored, and more important than childbirth subsidies is the structural recovery that expands life’s possibilities. Without building a structure where youth can stay, numbers will continue to decline.
What is collapsing is not just numbers but trust. Youth are not disappearing; the places where they can hope and belong are vanishing. This era is not about youth ignoring society but society having long neglected its youth.
Today’s choices will manifest as the population 20 years from now, and today’s neglect will return as the nation’s structure in 30 years. To reverse this trend, youth must be invited back into the structure. Only then can the future be secured.
It is not just people who disappear.
A society losing its youth loses relationships, memories, and weakens its future. A society unable to design the next generation stagnates and loses vitality before competitiveness. What is needed now is not merely how to increase youth numbers, but structures that make youth want to stay.
A society that fails to make room will naturally lose its people. This crisis is not one that time will fix but a structural turning point worsening with time.
What is needed is not just new policies but a new direction. If society cannot embrace the next generation now, no one has the right to speak of the future.
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Maeil Scripture Journal | Today’s World, A View Through the Word
