New Dream Evolves: The Future Beyond Overconsumption

New Dream has some exciting news: Over the next few months, we’ll be ramping up our collaboration with young people to engage them more directly in our efforts to tackle excess consumerism, build community, and improve overall well-being. By engaging youth in our issues in a more direct and meaningful way, we can support their perspectives, voices, and actions as neighbors, consumers, and as future leaders in our communities.

Join our Youth Advisory Council and help shape New Dream's future work >>

Why Youth, Why Now?

• Put simply, young people are our future. They will shape the trends in our society for decades to come. If we do not elevate their voices directly, and understand and authentically respond to their needs and motivations, we can not positively influence trends for the coming decades. 

• Today’s youth are under siege by advertisers and marketers, who recognize that they are the consumers of today and tomorrow and are using whatever means available (especially online and social media channels) to shape their preferences and purchasing habits. The more we can respond to the genuine needs of youth, the more influence we will have together, to shape a positive future for everyone.

• Excess consumerism is taking a toll on young people’s mental and physical health. Many trends among youth are sobering, including increased time interacting with screens, social media, and video games, and less time interacting directly with their peers, their families, and their communities. The outcomes are visible across our cities, towns, and communities and include rising rates of depression, cyberbullying, obesity, and even suicide among our youth.

• Surveys of young people indicate that they long for connection and community, but they feel pressured by peers and advertisers to “keep up” on social media channels and with rising trends and technologies or risk being left behind or isolated by their social groups. It is important to support youth in their desire and efforts to develop healthier habits and alternatives.

• At the same time, a small but growing group of millennials (and younger) are less interested in traditional “consumerism” (new cars, houses, luxury goods, etc.) as previous generations and are seeking out alternative, community-oriented means to meet their needs. They are looking for authentic support that can meet these needs and affirm these choices. Many are becoming powerful advocates of the changes that they wish to see for themselves and their peers.

• The time is now to give young people the power to inform our work. Our political, economic, and social structures are in crisis. The health of our planet is in a heightened state of decline. Young people are directly impacted by these forces, and we need to give them a say in how we re-envision and recreate these systems, for the benefit of all.

Above all, the engagement of young people needs to be authentic and inclusive. While older generations of adults can work alongside youth to help create a future they envision, adults cannot truly speak for today’s young people or fully know their experience. 

Young people of all kinds and backgrounds — considering class, race, ability, gender, faith, and other dimensions of difference — must participate to consider possible solutions, with the ability to express their own voices, desires, needs, and concerns. We need to listen to them and meet them where they are, and serve as allies in building the future they hope to create.

Many organizations are committed to supporting youth. However, few are authentically guided by youth leadership, and none are focused on consumption and normalizing a “less stuff, more meaning” way of living.

That’s why New Dream will be collaborating directly with young people over the coming months. 

Starting this July, we’ll be hosting a series of visioning sessions with youth leaders (ages 16-25) from across the U.S. to get a better sense of how our rapidly changing world is affecting their ability to tackle some of the most difficult challenges of our time, including the problem of ever-growing consumption of resources, which is driven increasingly by advertising and commercialism.

This evolution of New Dream’s work builds on our core competencies around kids and commercialism, while going deeper to equip youth to lead.

Our Goals

By equipping young people to become the leaders of New Dream's future—and all of our futures— we hope to:

• Authentically understand the future that young people want to build and shape, and our service to the world they will inherit.

• Repurpose New Dream's significant assets to center youth—while reinforcing our interconnectedness—to drive meaningful multi-generational engagement toward long-term behavior change.

• Give young people real agency and decision-making power over where social and financial capital are directed.

• Create opportunities for significant change and media exposure for youth stories by centering their voices.
  

We’re excited about the many strong reasons to refocus our work in this way; namely, we’re in a moment where youth voices are both incredibly marginalized and more important than ever, and we recognize the potential of engaging youth in reimagining the systems that are responsible for so many of our ecological, spiritual, and social declines. And, we’re excited to build on our past work in engaging and inspiring young people to effect change.

What does a youth-centered New Dream look like? We’re currently developing a goal-driven 12-month plan that leverages partnerships; creates thought leadership around youth and consumption; and pilots youth-centered resources.

How You Can Participate

We’re seeking committed young leaders and visionary funders to co-create a vision and move toward it, together. Want to be involved? Great! Please email us at mydream@newdream.org.

Join our Youth Advisory Council and help shape New Dream's future work >>