Young people want to create, contribute and be heard

A 2025 Deloitte survey found that around half of Gen Z and millennial audiences feel a stronger personal connection to the creators they follow on social media than to television personalities or actors. It reflects a generation drawn to spaces where they can respond, participate and create, rather than simply consume. Young people are already reshaping how ideas are shared, how creativity is expressed and how communities connect.

What social media understood early is that participation creates connection. Young people are not passive recipients waiting to receive information. They want to respond to it and add something of their own. That expectation does not disappear when they step away from the screen. It increasingly influences how they learn, experience culture and engage with the world around them.

For cultural institutions, that shift matters. The first generation to grow up fully immersed in the digital world is accustomed to information that is immediate, interactive and shaped by choice. Nearly three-quarters are already using AI tools in their daily work and learning. They are moving easily between physical and digital environments, looking for opportunities to test ideas, make things and learn through experience rather than instruction alone.

International Youth Day this year carries the theme ‘Different Contexts, Common Aspirations’, pointing to a shared desire for a meaningful say in the future. Young people do not want a future designed for them. They want a hand in designing it.

Cultural institutions cannot afford to stand on the sidelines of that change. When information is available almost everywhere, access alone is no longer enough to define their value. Libraries, museums and other public institutions must do more than provide access to knowledge. They must create the conditions to question it, test it, interpret it and turn it into something new. An institution’s relevance is no longer defined only by what it holds, but by what it enables people to do.

The risk of standing still is not that young people will stop seeking knowledge or culture. It is that they will seek them elsewhere, in spaces that give them greater freedom to participate, create and be heard. Institutions cannot assume relevance simply because they have history, expertise or authority behind them.

None of this diminishes the value of books, history or traditional forms of learning. Preserving knowledge is only part of responsibility. Knowledge becomes more powerful when it invites a response. A book can lead to an experiment, history can inspire invention, and a poem can open a conversation that continues well beyond the page.

Sharjah has long recognised that investment in young people cannot be separated from a commitment to knowledge and culture. Each generation carries a responsibility to make that legacy relevant to the next. Institutions need to continue evolving, creating the conditions for young people not only to access knowledge, but also to question it, contribute to it and use it to shape what comes next.

Our experience has made one thing clear: giving young people a meaningful role also requires institutions that are willing to evolve alongside them.

International Youth Day offers an opportunity to renew that commitment. Celebrating young people and their ambitions matters, but our greater responsibility lies in building institutions that give them a meaningful role in shaping the future they will inherit.