Young leaders from Asia, Africa, and beyond are at the forefront of civic innovation. This session examines how they're reshaping democracy in an interconnected world.
At Davos 2026, “Next Generation Social Movements” examined how youth are reshaping legitimacy amid economic stress and institutional distrust. Drawing on the Youth Pulse 2026 report, moderator Taylor Hawkins noted that 48% of young people see inequality as the defining trend and 57.2% cite financial pressure as their top stressor—yet “36%…are likely to run for political office,” signaling ambition rather than apathy. Yale’s Hélène Landemore challenged electoral assumptions, arguing that elections privilege the “charismatic, connected and empowered” and render “the shy…invisible.” Her remedy: lottery-based citizen assemblies to surface “quiet voices,” decouple “confidence and competence,” and reduce charisma-driven politics. Democracy practitioner Eden Tolesa described trust as increasingly local and peer-based, rebuilt through transparency measures like nonpartisan election observation and strengthened when leaders “co-create democracy with young people.” Bangladesh envoy Lutfey Siddiqi framed youth-led uprisings as “revolutionizing” legitimacy, driven by “old fashioned sheer courage,” and urged governments to see movements as opportunity, not only risk—embedding safeguards (e.g., limits on internet shutdowns), performance metrics, and inclusive meeting design. Technologist Joon Baek argued privacy is “the bedrock of building trust,” highlighting both decentralized resilience (mesh networks) and misuse (youth-led cybercrime). Panelists converged on a both/and strategy: change from outside and inside, with collaboration “always trump[ing] domination.”
Hello, my name is Taylor Hawkins and it is a pleasure to welcome you here to the World Economic Forum Annual meeting. Grounded in this year's theme, Spirit of Dialogue. For those joining us in the room and for the community of 10,000 global shapers joining online, thank you for joining for this incredibly important conversation. The spirit of dialogue invites us to look beyond polarization, beyond the tensions that we're all feeling in the world right now and allows us to lean in, to trust building, to listening, and to our shared responsibilities. This is exactly what today's session is all about as we dive into next generation social movements. I'd like to ground our discussion in a few insights from the Youth Pulse 2026 report, which has recently come out, and there are some fantastic insights in here that really capture and tell the story of structural pressure that I know our panelists today have both lived and deep research experience and understanding how this is playing out in the ground, but to give us a few quick insights, 48% of young people identify growing inequality as defining economic trend of the coming years. We see that this inequality will shape our lives. 57.2% cite financial pressure as their top source of stress, so we can see that will be impacting their ability to engage effectively. However, this does not mean that they are disengaged or apathetic. What we are seeing is energy. We are seeing commitment. One of my favorite stats from the report is that 36% of young people say they are likely to run for political office. That makes me a little emotional just saying because that tells me there's hope. That tells me that people still see the opportunity in investing in these institutions. Their priorities are rooted in lived and economic realities that shape our lives, centered on jobs, education, housing, and financial independence. And when it comes to trust, 60% place their confidence not in distant institutions, but in community leaders in proximity, in those that they feel are held truly accountable through that close relational connection and the tangible results that they see on the ground. In other words, we're seeing a generation under pressure but ready to lead. And that's exciting to me. So what we're going to unpack today is how is trust built? How is it eroded? Where do we need to invest? How are we defining legitimacy today, and how must we define it in the future to create the future that we want together? I am joined by an exceptional panel who I can tell you, and I spent far too many hours last night reading. I would be a little bit more rested had I not, but who really cover off the many different dimensions that shape this conversation. We're joined by Elaine Landymore, who is a professor of political science at Yale University whose work on democratic theory, collective intelligence and open democracy challenges how we think about participation, authority, and who has a right to contribute and shape the conversation. Lütfiye Siddiqui serves as the special envoy to the head of the Interim Government of Bangladesh, bringing insights from inside governments navigating systems that are being shaped by youth movements. Edentulism is a global shaper from the Albuquerque Hub, and she is a democracy consultant at the Carter Center, working at the front lines of civic engagement. So was really going to be able to share those on the ground signals for how young people are engaging with our democracy. And June Beck is a global shaper from the New York Hub and co-founder of youth for privacy, working at the intersection of technology, digital rights and civic participation. And as we all know, the online landscape is where so much of this conversation is playing out. And together we will explore how leadership and legitimacy are shaped and should be shaped. But with that, Elaine, I'd love to kick off with you. Your work challenges quiet but powerful assumptions about authority, about legitimacy. I'd love to know from what you've seen and based on your work with citizens assemblies and other open democracy initiatives, what design choices help to convert short term bursts of energy into long term, durable and institutional change?
Thank you so much. So my question is representation and legitimacy and how do we make our institutions, the places where decisions are made more representative, in particular of the youth? And you you quoted the statistic that what did you say 36% of the U.S is likely to run for elections? It gives you hope. Well, it gives me pause because, that 36% only and how many of them are likely to actually win elections? And who are those people? Those 36%? I guarantee you they're already quite charismatic, connected and empowered. So the ones that are not like that, the ones that are, I call them the shy right category that I create to reference people who just don't feel capable of running for elections, who don't feel represented, who don't have maybe the self-confidence, whether it's a sort of natural introversion or an acquired one to, to, to to basically make a difference in the world, those, those are worried about a lot because they're made invisible in our system. So I think I'm skeptical that the current order, which is based on elections, because this is what we associate with democracy, can do justice to the youth at this current juncture. So what I propose instead is rethinking representation to, send to power a a demographically representative sample of the people through lottery, you know, through lot based juries. So, so think of juries on steroids, basically, because at the very least, when you do that, you don't even need to oversample for the youth, you will at least get your quorum of youth in proportion to your, to your population. And so that would be particularly useful in countries where the youth is half the population. But even in aging countries like France, you would get some of them, at least in the room. And that made a huge difference to the kind of conversation we had in the climate convention in 20 1920, where you had a sample of 150, French people from all horizons, from from overseas territories, but also young people in the room. So we had an age bracket from 16 to 86, and they they were very active. They had chaperones, as you can imagine, you cannot bring young women and young men without some, some support. So it needs to be structured and and crafted the right way. But they were very active and they, they, they talked peer to peer with older people, more more advanced people. And they shaped the conversation. So I think that's what we need to to rethink how we bring in the youth, including the ones who are not likely to run for elections.
I think it's always a sign of a great panel when you already have these bits of challenge against each other. We're not all singing from the same song sheet, but honestly, I'm completely compelled by what you've said, and I would like to adjust how I positioned it, because you're right, it is hopeful. But we will just recreate the systems we already have if we're not challenging how we define authority. And I guess that leads me to my second question. So much of what shapes these conversations are our internal biases, how we define authority, legitimacy. Who has the right to speak? What are your thoughts on how we reshape the definition of credibility, competence, and authority in the political landscape?
I thank you for that question. I, I think we should disconnect confidence, and competence, it's not always correlated. I mean, sometimes it is, but often it's not. I'm sure you know, that. And, and on the contrary, we should try to be, you know, listening for the quiet voices. Again, those are called the shy because they have things to say, and sometimes they don't have the courage to say it, but it enriches the conversation. And often it's surprising. And you can get a different kind of leadership from it. There's an experiment that was run in in Bolivia by, an activist for lotteries called Adam Cronkrite that I thought was really enlightening. He he went to Bolivia. I don't know why Bolivia, but he and he got a high school to replace elections for student representatives with, lotteries and people who would never have thought they had it in them, found out that they had leadership qualities. And the nature of the leadership changed. So when people were elected, they went for popularity enhancing proposals like, oh, I'm going to throw a great end of year party and, you know, cool things, right? The ones who were selected through random selection, they didn't need to do that because they didn't need to earn votes. Right? So they went for the substance. They went for, okay, how do we get a computer in the library? How do we make sure everybody has a as a card that allows them to take the bus for free to get to school? So all I'm saying is that there are different kinds of leadership. Some are based on flamboyance and charisma. We have too much of that, if you ask me. And we need and we need to to look at the the leadership that comes from the quiet people in the room, I call them the bees. And same thing in the citizens assemblies have observed. You have these people who are not seeking the limelight, who are not, you know, hogging the microphone in plenaries, but they work well with others, they do the work and they're rewarded socially for for that. So this is I just would like to decenter our gaze from, from the politician type to, the shy.
And you make such an excellent point that it's so baked into our political systems. The beauty of Davos I was speaking with a minister yesterday who shared the the art of politics is overpromising, and it's something that we really have to sit with. And Eden, I think that brings us really closely to your work because you see on the ground the impact of trust or the lack of it, the role of accountability and how it thrives with transparency or the factors that really influence it. So I'd love to know how a young people experiencing trust today, what's eroding it, what's rebuilding it.
Yeah, and that's another great question. But and and to frame this discussion so young people like you mentioned are not apathetic. We are some of the strongest voices in the room. If we had a chance to sit in some of these rooms. But, a lot of my work centers around mobilizing nonpartisan observers to be involved in their own, democracy. So if there's election mistrust, like, how do we rebuild it? By sending people in there to actually watch the process from concept to completion. And so as far as young people go, there's, like you mentioned, there's a lot of institutional mistrust. So we have a lot of an array of politicians who, you know, promise a lot of really bold things and ideas and really get us excited. But, yeah. So overdeliver or not overdeliver. Under-deliver a lot of these overly promised things. So, you know, we're, we're hoping for a lot of these big changes, but we're not seeing them. So there's a lot of we're experiencing a fragmented democracy. So, and really, the only place I see young people rely on is each other. So our only hope, like I, even from my own personal experience and the cohort that I came with, I'm seeing them ask questions to world leaders that are stumping them, you know, and so and we rely a lot on mutual aid and, a lot of our engagement is in local government. So people we have access to in my home state, New Mexico, is a great example of that. So both by need and desire, you know, New Mexico government employs a lot of young people. So some of the most monumental changes in my state are done by young people and some global shapers. I mean, we just passed a semi-open primary, my state with a fellow, not me, but her. And so that's really amazing. And so many people before her have done that. So when we give youth voices, I mean they do instrumental things, right? So it's not a lack of voices or ideas or ambition. It's it's we have a system that constantly fails us. And so, but I'm glad to say a lot of the conversations I've had with a lot of ministers and world leaders is that, you know, they want to co-create democracy with young people, and that is the smartest thing you can do, because that is how you ensure you have a healthy democracy. It's, you know, a lot of people look at youth as somebody that could delegitimize their government or that we're archaic, and that is true. So, you know, and if we mobilize and our, you know, given the avenue to mobilize in the right way, that is for the benefit of our society, because we are the ones who are experiencing a lot of the downfalls of leadership. So, a lot of us, you know, worry about whether we can afford children, whether we can afford housing and, you know, basic, fundamental things that we need for life. So if you employ us, if you give us voices, if you, you know, fund social entrepreneurship and things like that, you will have something that will endure for a really long time.
And you've already touched on it a bit there. But what I'm hearing from what you're sharing is there's a lot of misunderstanding and potentially and evidenced by, you know, myself, June Eden being here, there's investment into bringing young people into spaces, but maybe a misunderstanding as to how young people want to be engaged in democratic processes. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that leaders often have for how young people want to engage in democratic life?
Yeah, I think a lot of people probably think that we're rambunctious. And, you know, all we do is like protest in the street and, or, you know, that we're really apathetic and, okay, so we don't vote or we don't, we don't engage with a lot of these, you know, businesses or things because we're a apathetic and B, you know, like, we we don't care or, you know, all we do is kind of just demand change and quick change. And so I think a lot of young people understand that change is not overnight, but like we are plugged in to some of the most important things. So like again, I'm going to shout out the people I came here with. You know, like some they're leaders in their own, and they're innovators in their own, little spaces in their communities, in their businesses. So, you know, I don't know if when people or world leaders think young people do automatically think innovators. Pioneers, maybe not, you know, so I, I think when we frame the discussion of like young people, I think and so I was in a meeting that mentioned, for example, Asia and Africa will have the youngest population in the workforce in society. And so we talked about how that could either be a really since youth are restless, that could be a really good thing or a really bad thing for your society, depending on what you do with that, you know, and so this idea that, you know, maybe that we're lazy or we're apathetic is, is kind of really misguided. And it will and it's kind of dangerous because if you if you kind of fall into that trap of not, you know, looking at some young people as really, you know, people that you need to bring into the room, people who have a lot of great and innovative ideas to share. Then, yeah, you you might experience the downfall of your legitimacy or your leadership, in the years to come.
Absolutely. Thank you Eden. And we're incredibly fortunate that one of our panelists, I think, can speak more closely to the realities of internal government and policy operations, the impact of youth movements and how that shapes, challenges and forms ideas of legitimacy and authority. Loutfi I'd love to pass to you and pose that question how are youth movements reshaping ideas of legitimacy, especially in the context of Bangladesh, where youth led movements have played a significant role in recent political dynamics?
I think reshaping is not a strong enough word. Revolutionizing is probably more like it. Thank you very much for the invitation, particularly with so many global shapers here. You know, I used to be young once and, it's, it's, encouraging and energizing to be in such company. I think the I would like to though, mention that, it's still the key ingredient is still old fashioned sheer courage and bravery. There's no substitute for that. If you look at what happened in Bangladesh in July and early August of 2024, a mass awakening, a student led uprising, at its core, where young people who put their lives at risk, people who were not activists in the traditional sense of the word. I think of Abu Sayeed, the gentleman. He just stood bare chested in an iconic pose to be to be shot dead. And then you have a video of the policeman saying to his boss, I don't know. I don't know what to do, sir. I shoot one and more come in my direction. They just do not go back backwards. I'm thinking of, Mr. Mir Mukhtar. He's a freelancer. He was a university student. He has a five star rating on Fiverr. He used to do a freelance software work, and he was just distributing water to the to the other protesters. And you see the video of the tear gas hitting him, and he's trying to wipe his eyes and asking, who needs water shot dead? You should look up, if you can, a letter. A school student on us, Shahryar Khan and us wrote to his mother saying, mum, I'm sorry, I cannot stay at home. I know you've asked me to stay, but I can't. They're killing my brothers and sisters. I may not be directly related to the cause, but I have to be out there. And if I don't return, please forgive me. But please also feel proud of what I've done. Anas did not return. All of these are documented. Well documented. We invited the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, all other independent, the foreign media to come and just document what you see and write it down. Because we don't know. Our perception may be contaminated, we may be misremembering things, but go and look up and read the documentation of these people. And and I think you'll realize that that is the reason. When we talk about a social movement, it is about emotion. And the emotion that courage can trigger is incredible. What started as a movement by a small group of people in a public university, the contagion effect of emotion. Private universities joined in, parents joined in. In the end, diaspora joined in. So that is how a movement flares. So it's a little hard for me to stay intellectual on this topic, but that's basically the backdrop on which we find ourselves in. I am a member of an interim government. We're handing over to an elected government next month. Government led, extremely fortunate to be led by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. And he's taken a very deliberate, measured approach to the transition. And, maybe I can talk a little bit about how we're responding is I don't want to take too much time. So first, my first message to governments around the world is, I know most of you are thinking of this topic as a risk issue. Oh my God, if I don't pay attention, how do I manage and control and contain this risk? And that is true. This is a risk that you ignore at your peril. But there's also an enormous positive opportunity here to harness the zeal and the zest and the energy that you mentioned, the commitment that people have into the day to day functioning of government. Because that is what government should be about. And the core, the response, how should we response? Again, going back to the old fashioned tenets of good governance, what do we mean by that? Let me just number a few of those. First of all, we need to make sure laws and legislation, there are safeguards built into them so that the extremes and excesses of bad governance do not flare up. You don't have an elected government turning autocrat afterwards. So we have as part of our reform measures, we've enacted ordinances and laws. For example, you can never shut down the internet again. Government can't do that. The police commission, which puts a layer in between the Prime minister and the chief of police so that it's not so easy to say shoot on site or the police commissioner is an independent grievance mechanism where if the politicians ask the police to to do something that's politically motivated, they have somewhere to go if they get fired or if there's reprisals against them. So a whole lot of independent judiciary, all the other distributed powers, we've packaged that into a referendum question and it will be put to the vote next month alongside the parliamentary election. So that's number one. Laws and and regulations. Number two is the practice of transparency and accountability in the day to day functions of government. Many governments are afraid of information. They're afraid of creating a firestorm. If I divulge too much information, the antidote to that is even more information. So accountability. And, really having almost corporate style KPIs, every ministry should be like a publicly listed company publishing their annual reports and develop a culture of information sharing in peacetime so that when there is a crisis, people don't start questioning the credibility of your information because you've contaminated your credibility earlier on. So that's important. Third point is, my understanding is that young people are fed up of slogans and motherhood and apple pie statements. You've got to have some KPIs, measurables, outcomes and hold yourself accountable for where you're headed. And I see countries that have vision 20, 30 and other, goals. And I really like that. And I don't think we have had the chance to do that. So if you have a North Star and then some intermediate milestones, I think it can really rally people in an inclusive way. Related to that, as civil servants are governments run by civil servants, public administration, you need a proper appraisal performance appraisal systems of for civil servants, and you'd be amazed how many of them do not have that, and how many of them wish they had it, so that they're not held hostage to the whims of their bosses in the day to day, that they can really point to objective performance metrics? Fifth, the tone matters. It's the tone that makes the music. You cannot gaslight or talk down and not give dignity to to people when they come to you. And so I think if you patronize, you've lost whatever the, the, the merit of your message. Many of these movements that started small and flared up actually flared up because someone in a position of authority has just insulted people, insulted the intelligence of people related to that. And I wanted to touch on representation. You mentioned, so clearly we wanted representation after the uprising. And we had Professor Yunus made sure that members of the student, leaders, at least three of them were members of the cabinet running ministries, which was incredible. You imagine the shock to the system. 20 somethings running, you know, massive, ministries with permanent secretaries reporting up to them. And we have done that with the reform commissions, many of the reform commissions, the Labor Commission, the Women Affairs reforms, commissions, judicial, constitutional. You've got members of of youth in there. But I think representation did not always result in inclusion of their voices. I see good cases and I see bad cases. I see the bad cases where they are sitting around the table. But we fell back on the old norms where the older people speak first. I think they should speak last, they speak first, and then they kind of ossify the agenda, and then everyone else feels compelled to agree with them. And if you disagree with them, then you are the impolite young upstart and you have no shot at getting no chance at getting hurt again. I've discovered that age is inversely correlated with listening skills, so the older you are, the less you want to listen. Because I've seen it all. I was 30 years old once, so there's nothing that you can tell me that I haven't already seen that kind of an attitude. So we need deliberate ways of designing meetings. How does the chair work? And behavioral science has a lot to offer in that field because. And then the other risk is that young people come in and then they get used to the trappings and structures of office, and they start behaving exactly like the previous generation instead of, the new one. On the positive side, you should look at one particular commission in Bangladesh. It's the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances. And there is one young woman in that committee, Nabila Idris young, PhD, now an academic doctor, Nabila Idris. My God, she's now one of my heroes. You should look her up online. Look at the report that she's written. And if there's ever a definition of speaking truth to power, going to generals and basically saying, we think your people may have been involved in enforced disappearances. Can I ask you some tough questions? Can I check? Was this the room where people were detained in the way you get it done? Unbelievable. You know, a real role model. I guess. The last thing I would say is that, digital platforms, governments should, should welcome them. And we are still squeamish about it. I'm toying with the idea. Don't hold me to it that when I go back, rather than do a press briefing on Davos, why don't I do it on a digital platform? Every citizen can put in questions and I talk to them about what I've seen here. I don't know how safe or unsafe that is, what I'm thinking about it right now. But, it's a double edged sword because you also need to build literacy amongst people on how to deal with misinformation, disinformation, weaponized disinformation, particularly in the world of AI. And for that, you need deliberate movements. I would hope that you guys, global shapers, would self-organize and really build that muscle amongst yourselves so that you are not exploited. Your energy and your, your zest is not exploited by polarizing politicians through online platforms. Sorry for the length that I've taken with that.
But it was robust and I think we all just received a bit of a masterclass and very structured. So thank you for that. And because I have such esteemed panelists, I feel that we can all tolerate me taking a slight tangent before we move to June to talk about digital platforms, which was I felt so deeply struck by the story that you shared so much. So I was nervous you were about to stop. So I was actually very grateful that you gave me a bit more time to regather myself, because I wouldn't have been able to speak in any sensible way. I'm I'm struck by the question of the role of emotion in social movements and in politics. So firstly, just for those in the room who felt incredibly struck by that story. Yeah. And I've had several experiences like that this week, and I think it's a beauty of the curation this year. So absolute hats off to the team at the forum. I would love to do a quick lap around the group of what is the role of emotion in social movements and in politics, because we see it play well, we see it powerful, we see it be challenging. There's the moral judgment on what is good or bad emotion. I'm how do we grapple with this? There's no simple answer. So amusing rather than an answer is very welcome. June, I'd love to start with you.
For all the emotions and social movements. I think that when I, I saw one of my part of my job is I teach cybersecurity, I teach data privacy, and emotions in these kind of. And I get I have to get involved in a lot of online discord channels, a lot, a lot online telegram channels to see what are the conversations, what are the signals of a lot of cybersecurity actors, a lot of groups? What are they doing? And to be honest, funny enough, it's humor. I think in terms of crises, even in terms of really dark times, people post memes about it. And I think that sense of levity in terms that brings people together because you could laugh at it and then do something about it. And no, I think that the humor seems to bring people together.
Ellen.
It's a very deep question. I spent my career focusing on, you know, the knowledge aggregating properties of politics and how, you know, arguments and information can be, you know, coming from different corners of, of the, of society. And then when I went to study citizens assemblies empirically, I was expecting to focus on that. Right. The role of information relationships to experts. The thing that surprised me the most, actually, was the love between participants. The the tenderness, the friendship, the consideration, the respect, all positive emotions that I wasn't expecting to be possible in politics, to be honest. And I'm still trying to figure out why it is that in these very specific fora. And I think it's true of social movement as well. But in a randomly selected assemblies, I think it comes from the fact that, people don't have to compete. For one thing, they're not here because they want over other people. They they come with no entitlement. They're not trying to assert themselves, but also because it's a more balanced, again, sample of the population, it's 51% women. It changes the nature of the conversations in the room. You go from I hate to say this, but toxic masculinity, you know, including by women, when they are the minority, they adapt to that dominant culture in to a culture of like, you know, uncertainty, open mindedness, deliberation and tolerance. So I do think it's really important that our, our representative institutions are inclusive of all the voices because it changes the nature of the emotions that are expressed or allowed, nurtured.
Eden.
I think this is a really great, kind of inclusion of emotion because to me, all of it is emotion. Like it's the social movements are a convergence of emotion and logic. So like when we talk about social movements at the forefront of his humanity, like, why are we you can pick any topic, whether we're talking about women's rights, access to education, all of these things, like if there's no emotion or like the desire to uplift each other. Like, I don't understand the point of any of it. Like whether you're a politician, world leader, or you're a young person protesting in the street, like all of it is emotional. And like you mentioned, I mean, a lot at the forefront of a lot of movements. There's a lot of death. There's a lot of, yeah, so many things. I mean, there's people meeting in dark rooms. There's people, you know, on hunger strikes, there's people in jail, there's people who have died. So like to me, like emotion and humanity is at the forefront of it all because it without it. Like, why are we doing any of this really. So yeah.
Okay.
Should I take that? So first of all, on the levity, on the humor issue. I'm really glad you brought that up. So there's all sorts of emotions and I think, you can't stay angry all the time. You know, I look at mayor of New York, Mamdani and some of the issues he talks about are really painful issues for people in society. But he's got this smile on him all the time. And maybe excessive, I don't know, but it's a there is something to be said about, you can sustain humor and levity a lot longer than anger. It just can be consuming. But emotion is very important for me. So first of all, at inception, after the uprising, new interim government myself, the first person to fly in into the country at the invitation of, of Professor Yunus to try and help and lots of others have have stepped forward, virtually none of us with any experience in government. And it was purely driven by emotion. But the emotion I feel now is also it's strong and the emotion is really around the fact that we mess up every day and therefore we fail. Those the martyrs, those who killed themselves, who were injured, through that process. And who am I betraying them every time I fail? Because you do. And you can't change systems overnight. If you start with a system that is, let's say, 80% corrupt and you manage to make it 60% corrupt, do you feel good about the fact that you've doubled the space of non-corrupt space, or do you feel really bad that you're still presiding over a 60% corrupt system?
That's an excellent point.
What do I do? People come to me and say, you know, this is going on, that injustices happen right now under our government at the moment. I hope it happens less. I hope it doesn't happen because of the government, but I can't change society overnight. But I'm responsible for it. And that emotion is a combination of guilt and frustration. And I don't know what, but it is something that that I grapple with all the time, and I hope people will realize that it is, an uprising can be overnight, but changing a system is a process. You have to stay focused on the direction of travel, and if you're lucky, you have an inspiring leader like I do. But, it can get on an emotional front. It can be quite draining and energizing and all of those things.
Such great points. Thank you. And you've referenced this idea of sustaining and scaling. And I think, June, your area of work is so relevant to this. The online space is where we are scaling, sustaining, maybe skewing a lot of political discourse. I'm curious from your vantage point, how does platform design data practices, AI systems either strengthen or undermine social movements?
I think that I could start with a story of how I got interested in data privacy. So I'm Korean, and every Korean male has to serve in the mandatory military service. So I serve between 2016 to 2018. And during that time, we don't have access to our cell phones. So the only way we could actually access internet was through a government monitored workstation, which logged everything you type, every website you visit, etc.. And it made me really wonder that, okay, then they know what kind of messages I'm sending to my friends, what kind of websites I'm visiting, what am I interested in? Who am I talking to? And that requires a sense of trust for the organization. And when the report from a human rights organization came in 2017, that the Korean Army chief of staff actually ordered an investigation to root out sexual deviance, LGBTQ members inside the Korean army, then you don't have trust. There is a lack of trust when you feel the data that they collect could be used against you. And I think the fundamentally privacy in a digital world is the bedrock of building trust. It is so that you could express yourself. You could talk about issues without fear of retribution. And in online spaces, that is where conversation and social movements happen. Now, when it comes to young people, we have a lot of creativity and innovation on using technology to make these kind of social innovations happen. So case in point, in a lot of youth movements in Madagascar and Nepal happened, government in Bangladesh, they cut down the internet because they don't want people to speak. They don't want information to flow. They don't want these videos of brutalities to be shown. But because young people are innovative, they could use technologies. They could bypass those restrictions with a thing called mesh net. So I have a phone, you have a phone and internet mesh networks so that if I want to communicate my phone with somebody over there, my phone information goes to you, to you, to you, to whoever that person may be. So you don't need internet to communicate on a mesh. Matt. Young people are using these kind of technologies, these decentralized technologies that bypass oversight, bypass authorities to make those social media, those social movements happen in real life. I do have to say that these decentralized models, whether it be on discord forums or telegram channels or in mesh nets, they provide a very unique governance structure than traditional modes of governance. And I think I'm very curious if these decentralized modes of governance will continue if they were to be in power. And I do have to also note that it brings a question of. Just because. I do have to admit that not all youth movements are. Mobilization is good in this. In the discord channels and roadblocks, platforms where a lot of these movements happen, I could see a lot of good use cases where people collaborate, bring exposed corruption, expose a bad practices in the government. But I also in cases where those same platforms are used to create cyber criminals led by young people, there's a cybercriminal group called Scatter Spider. These are mostly 20 somethings, teenagers based in the US who like to hack for fun. And that is a community of them on discord and those kind of channels where they would have companies that would have organizations just for the thrill of it. And I think that when it comes to these emerging technologies, if governments don't have a way of directing young people's innovation and zeal and their interest in legitimate interests, then they will go to illegitimate interests like these kind of hacking groups. And since I'm from Korea, I'll give an example where a case where government can incorporate these kind of, young people's interests. So the professor mentioned about e-governance, where you can use internet for governance. And Korea offers a very unique model where I can join a political party in five minutes on my phone. You know, I just verify myself, pay the first dues, and boom, I'm a member of that party. And whenever Korea, with their.
Single platform where all the parties are.
Each party has their own platforms, but they are very, very easy to do and they made a lot of investments doing that. So for example, if you are dissatisfied with the direction of party or if you are dissatisfied with the want to get involved in voting for the leadership, a lot of people in in forums just post, okay, this is a link to sign up to be a party member so you could vote for the upcoming leadership election so that you, your favorite candidate, could win. So it's a very easy way of directing young people to proficiency in technology with their political interests into a very systematic way of having them express through legitimate means. So I think this is a very unique way where you could leverage the technologies and young people's zeal to do something better.
Fantastic. Thank you, Jin, and you've prompted me with so very many follow on questions. But as is the way with the annual meeting, there is a countdown timer that I must heed to and make sure that we respect everyone's time. So there's a couple things I'd like to do before we wrap up. Number one, I'd love to hear from at least one person, the audience, a question you have, and we'll use that as our prompt for final reflections from our panelists. Who has a burning question? Yes. Is there a mic? There is one moving towards you rapidly. There you go.
Hi everybody. I'm Joey Wilson from the Munich Hub in Germany, and I really enjoyed hearing from everyone's perspective. And I think one thing we think about as young people is what is the way to bring the change we want to see? Is it moving into the inside of a system and changing it from within, or is it challenging from the outside, or are there different instances where one is better than the other? So I'm curious on the panel's perspective on this.
And my invitation and challenge to our panel is answering that very complex, far reaching question in a rapid fire format. So, June, you're already warmed up and ready to go. What is your response?
I am I've never been part of a government ever since I left the Army. So yes, I think you can do a lot of things outside because you have the leverage to flexibility and because, you know, you could approach them on areas where they need help. I'm a young person who focused on cybersecurity, and if they care about youth and cybersecurity issues, we could collaborate.
Ellen I would say both, but.
Most promising to me actually is actually start outside, do good work and get co-opted. That happened to me in a way. I ended up being on the governance committee of the Second Citizens Assembly on end of life issues in France. I was a theorist working on crazy ideas. I had to replace government with lotteries. Right. Happened to Audrey Tang? The hacker turned digital minister of digital affairs in Taiwan during the Sunflower Revolution in 2014. She was literally starting something that was meant to be an alternative to the government. It's called gov zero. Check it out. The idea that you know what? This system is not working. It's not listening to us. We're going to start from scratch. We're going to fork the government as she says. We're going to try and take it in a different direction. But then because the government was so desperate, they had to look for solutions, you know, in her and her peers. And so she became minister of Digital Affairs. She completely reformed the system from the inside out. So I think that's that's one way that I think works.
Eden.
Yeah, I would say I mean, absorption of young people and their expertise is not always the answer. But, you know, like June mentioned. So going to so if you have like a climate policy, you're trying to, you know, establish or whatever you're looking at meeting young experts and talking to them about, you know, like what what their ideas are, how they see this policy being enacted and how it could help them in ten years. So, both as the foundation or the government, you have to ask yourself, is it absorption that will help, you know, like your country or whatever succeed? But, I think that's very open ended. But good question. Yeah.
And rapid fire.
The short answer is, I don't know, but I because, I'll have to root for one side. I will say I have a lot of respect for entrepreneurs who work within large organizations and large institutions. Little things they do can have massive impact because of the reach that they have, but they are not authorized to do Ted talks so they don't get the limelight. So I'll say, don't give up on those who change from within.
And we're also very fortunate to be joined by Andre Hoffman, who is co-chair of the board of trustees of the forum. If you don't mind, may I put you on the spot for some closing remarks?
Well, thank you very much. Of course, the clock runs for me just as much as it does for everybody else. I feel incredibly grateful to have been invited to this, to this, to to this particular meeting. Maybe three points I'd like to make. Point number one is that we are in dire trouble. You know, the status quo as it is at the moment is driving us towards the wall or inside the precipice, whichever image you want to have. And we need to change an enormous amount of things. And at the moment it is not you, the youth, who are making the changes. It's us. You are not represented at a way in which you should be. We, the old people, are proposing solutions to a situation that we have created. You are not represented into the decision making bodies. And you know the simplest statistic? The 50% of the population is less than 35 years old is something that should really encourage us to sort of speak more often. So this is not about succession, it's about integration. We need your voice. We need your way to talk to to, to, to the thing. I'm not sure if I'm talking to the panel or to the audience, but I mean, everyone here, you know, we need to, to, to make sure that we sort of have this dialogue going through Intergenerationally. And I think there is a I love the concept of reverse mentoring. I like the concept of being able to, well, I am responsible for a family company and our family company. We are trying to make sure that the new generation has a voice. How do we do that? Not by telling them what to do, not by, but not by having them telling us what to do, but by trying to bring things together. And maybe I will just finish on the fact that we've had this quite exciting, couple of days here, and I hope you all had an opportunity to really enjoy our world, our annual meeting this year, because I thought it was particularly ripe. One thing sort of reminds me is that, quite clearly, collaboration will always trump domination. And I think that's something we need to remember. We we don't have a single model. We have an opportunity to exchange. And I think we need to do that. So thank you very much, everybody, for coming. Maybe one final word to say to say a retrospective thank you to Klaus Schwab, who's created this community of young global leaders and and of global shapers. I think this was an insight which we need to continue to make the World Economic Forum successful. So thank you very much to everybody and see you next year.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So much, Andre. You have proven to be true something that I already knew, but you've demonstrated that you're an ongoing champion of intergenerational collaboration, as is the forum with the Global Shapers Community Network as well. Thank you for those who joined online. And thank you, everyone in the room and wishing you a wonderful final day of Davos. Thank you.