I mean, at least on the surface, things seemed pretty optimistic in the late 1980s through the 1990s, from what I remember. It wasn’t a utopia, but it’s easy to see how there would be less pressure for young people to be involved in politics.

The Cold War ended and the USSR peacefully dissolved, democracy was ascendant, the Good Friday Agreement ended The Troubles, East and West Germany reunified, the Schengen Area and the Eurozone were established, the International Space Station opened an era of international cooperation in peaceful space exploration, life expectancy was up, disposable income was up, new and amazing technologies were developed at record pace, substantially improved treatments for fatal conditions like HIV and cancer were entering the market, we’d nearly cracked the human genome, we’d made great progress in eradicating infectious diseases, people around the world were being lifted out of poverty, crime was down, the Western economy was strong. The world seemed less divided and closer together than ever.

Today, tensions between superpowers are up. Russia and North Korea have renewed the threat of nuclear armed conflict. The UK exited the EU. There’s an obesity crisis. Many of our amazing technologies have turned out to be terribly unhealthy and destabilising. Authoritarianism is on the rise, along with domestic and sectarian terrorism. The Western economy was shattered in 2008 and now there’s a global pandemic. Immigrants fleeing instability in other countries have led to political upheaval and conflict. The US became an unreliable ally. And, above all, the existential threat of climate change looms over their entire future.