61.5% of S’pore youth want to get out of S’pore

Survey: 61.5% of S’pore youth want to get out of S’pore

January 17th, 2014 |  Author: Editorial

Singapore Polytechnic (SP) released the findings of its Mass Media Research 2013 survey on Wednesday (15 Jan), which indicate that the top three aspirations of youth in Singapore are:

attain financial stability

strong family relationships

work-life balance

The Mass Media Research survey is an annual exercise that serves as a platform for SP’s Diploma in Media and Communication students to better understand current social issues and media trends. Past survey topics have included cyber-bullying, social media and citizen journalism.Some 825 participants, aged between 15 and 35 years old, took part in the quantitative survey that was held over a three-week period in June last year.

Nearly 100% of youth surveyed expressed Financial Stability, Strong Family Relationships and Work-Life Balance as the top three aspirations. They also believe that determination, passion and self-discipline are the most important qualities that can help to realise their dreams.

They also hope to see Singapore in 5 years’ time become:

an affordable place to live in

a society that defines success beyond academic and material achievements

a society that places emphasis on work-life balance.

However, a total of 61.5% of those surveyed have considered looking beyond Singapore, or have actually done so, to achieve their aspirations.

In its statement, SP noted that those who locate their aspirations in Singapore tend to be more family oriented and prefer traditional media over social media and the internet. Those whose aspirations lay overseas (i.e. 61.5%) tend to value the freedom to make their own decisions and to pursue a passion not directly related to their job or studies. The latter group also tends to spend more time on social media, as well as substantially more time online, SP’s statement said.

From the SP survey and its conclusion, it certainly looks like social media and the internet are crucial in molding the mind of youth. More youngsters are reading online news than not. It is no wonder therefore that the increasingly unpopular PAP government is attempting to set new rules to control online news media.

Last year, the Media Development Authority (MDA) came up with a new online licensing framework to regulate news websites. Sites that report regularly on issues relating to Singapore and have significant reach among readers here now have to be individually licensed by MDA if they:

(i) report an average of at least one article per week on Singapore’s news and current affairs 1 over a period of two months, and
(ii) are visited by at least 50,000 unique IP addresses from Singapore each month over a period of two months.

When MDA deems that a site has met the criteria to be individually licensed, it will issue a formal notification and work with the site to bring it under its licensing framework, a move that has attracted much criticism and condemnation from the very people they seek to police – netizens, bloggers and news websites.