Trendsspeaking topic
Student loans, rent, credit card debt: a generation born into debt before life has even begun. Are these young people 'lazy,' or were they dropped into a game set to a difficulty no previous generation has played?
— online discourse
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- The anti-ambition movement: young people refusing to climb the career ladder, saying 'enough is enough'. Is this wisdom, or the resignation of a generation that noticed the system stopped honoring its promise of upward mobility?
- The return to shopping at physical stores and markets: when everything arrives at our door with one click, why do some people deliberately choose the inconvenient option?
- Being deliberately unreachable: turning off notifications, replying late, airplane mode as a new boundary culture. But after normalizing constant availability, why does saying 'I'm busy' create so much guilt?
- Is the normalization of ambiguity a freedom or a new captivity? In a culture where nobody states their intentions and everyone performs being 'chill', why has being honest become so risky?
- 'As long as the result is beautiful, it doesn't matter how it was made' versus 'the process is what matters, not the product.' When we look at a painting, what do we actually love: the image in front of us, or the invisible hours it took to exist?