Japan Is Dead. The 2.8 Million Shut Ins Tell The REAL Story.

Kind: captions Language: en Police entered the home of an 83year-old woman in Togane City, Japan, and found she'd been dead for over a year. Her body was badly decomposed, but she hadn't been reported missing. She'd simply been left where she died. She wasn't alone. There was one other person in the house, her 46-year-old son, Hissataka. When police asked why he had hidden his mother's death for more than a year, his answer was chilling. He didn't know what to do. This wasn't a murder case. Isotaka was a hikomore, [music] a person who had withdrawn from society for decades, living almost entirely inside his childhood home while his mother cared for him. When she died, the only world he'd ever known died with her, he was arrested for improperly handling a corpse. But his case exposed a far bigger question. [music] What happens when an entire generation has no idea how to survive after their parents are gone? It's a sad fact of life that most of us will outlive our parents. Eventually, there comes a day when the people who raised us are no longer there. For the most part, parents pass on, knowing that their child's future is well secured, except when they're not. Across the world, more young adults are living with their parents than ever before. Rising housing [music] costs, insecure jobs, and the cost of living have turned adulthood into a much longer [music] transition. But for others, the launch didn't just sputter out, it crashed. It's estimated that 1.46 46 [music] million Japanese people are currently living as hikomi, spending almost all their time in their homes interacting with the world only through computers. It's estimated that half of this grim number are between the ages of 40 and 64. That means time is running out. For many, that safety net has simply snapped and they have little hope of building a meaningful life for themselves. But that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you don't use a skill for a long time, it starts to atrophy. The skill in this case is social interaction. The Hikomori have seen their ability to interact with the outside world deteriorate with every year they spend in their [music] rooms. Now their only link to the world is starting to pass away one senior citizen at a time. These aren't just kids playing video games. They are fully grown adults with no ability to survive in the outside world without help from others. So how did millions of adults become so scared to step outside that they let their life pass them by? Simple. [music] Society let them down. For generations, people were told there was one way to success. Work hard in school, get good grades, go to college. When you're done, a fruitful job awaits you, and you can ideally keep it, and keep advancing through your career. Boomer and silent generation parents would often tell their children how they got their first job by knocking on an office door, and one quick interview and a handshake later, they had a job they kept for 45 years. To those just starting out in the job market, it sounded like the American dream. For this generation, that's all it was, a dream. Millennials and Gen Z were hit with one crisis after another. And while some were localized, several hit just about everyone. It didn't matter whether you were trying to find a job in New York or Tokyo, the 2008 recession devastated everyone's prospects. Many people lost all the progress they had made and had to move back home. And they started crawling their way back up. And then history repeated itself just under different guises. [music] The 2020 CO9 pandemic led to more massive job losses that many industries have never recovered from. So many people just gave up. Some millennials moved back home and never left. Many Gen Z just never moved out at all. Economic stagnation meant that buying a house seemed like an impossible dream and rent would eat up half of their monthly budget, even if they had a decent job. If they had loving parents who weren't rushing them out the door, they had little motivation to trade in a comfortable living arrangement. But this led to a general sense of stasis. Many millennials and Gen Z found work online allowing them to stay home and earn money. They didn't have the money or the motivation to go out and date. Gen Z in particular replaced old social vices like drinking with online gambling and screen time. And all the time a ticking clock was hiding in the background. For the older generations, there would be a standard path that they would follow. You work until it's your retirement date and then the combination of savings, social security, and a private pension carry you to the finish line. But that requires a job with pension benefits and the ability to save. Those are some things that the younger generation often lacks with freelance work becoming more common. It might pay well, but it has little safety net if the company shuts down or chooses to outsource its work to a call center or a robot. And that means a lifeline is running out. The boomer's pensions are getting thinner and thinner. They're done working, but many of them are still supporting their grown children. Not only do they have to save money in their golden years, but the inheritance that their children were counting on might wind up being depleted. It's a widespread crisis. Hundreds of thousands of young men [music] could be facing a future of poverty with no skills to fight their way out of it in less than a decade. But it's not just the men. Not even close. The stereotype of the nerdy adult son living in their childhood bedroom is so widespread that it's become a running joke. But there is no equivalent stereotype for women. That's why it surprises so many people that nearly half of Japan's Hikomori population are women. This is a significant [music] break from the stereotype of techobsessed young men with no social skills. It's all about how we view them. If you talk to the average parent of a female Hikumori, you might be surprised by what they say. They'll probably start talking about what a beautiful daughter they have and how she's so willing to help around the house. For aging parents, this can actually be a blessing. As their body slows down, the person they trust the most is there to care for them, cook for them, and make sure that they aren't alone if they take a fall. In fact, the fastest growing demographic of Hikomori is women over 40. But as far as media goes, they might as well be invisible. To the outside world, they have a job helping their aging parents, but they're no less isolated than male hikomi. With the exception of them potentially having more life skills as chores are a bigger part of their life. However, their social isolation is just as complete. And when the parent they've dedicated themselves to passes on, they'll be just as alone. Surprisingly, some of those female Hikomori are actually married. They transition from serving an elderly parent to serving an often older husband who provides for [music] her. That means the actual number might be far worse. The estimated 1.46 million Hikomori relies heavily on self-reported numbers. But how many women who live as near total shutins would classify themselves as such? How many would instead call themselves a beautiful daughter or a devoted housewife? These women may be more financially secure than their male counterparts, but they are not more socially adept. The lost generation could be larger than anyone knew. Is there a way to get them out of their isolation? To find out, we might have to look across the ocean. As bad as this crisis is in Japan, it might be even worse in the West. The United States and the United Kingdom have been facing economic headwinds for the younger generations since 2008. In the United States alone, one in three adults under 35 live with their parents. In 1960, it was only 20%. And if you take the men [music] alone, that is the equivalent of the entire population of Florida living in their old bedrooms. The United Kingdom isn't much better. The UK has always been proud of its robust social services system, but that could be a double-edged sword. Critics have often argued that it's too easy to live on benefits instead of working, but the stereotype has changed. It's no longer just the image of a middle-aged [music] man avoiding work. Across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, countless [music] young people are looking at the rough job market and seeing no hope. They're simply [music] opting out. The UK currently has 2.8 million people listed as economically inactive due to medical conditions with long-term illnesses that are not expected to change. That is larger than the combined population of Manchester and Birmingham, the second and fifth largest cities in the country. They usually have to do frequent check-ins with the public welfare authorities to ensure their condition hasn't changed. But while many of these people are older and struggling with chronic illnesses or injuries, there's a growing number of young people who are claiming mental health related issues keep them from working. This number has skyrocketed since 2020. The traumas of living through a pandemic as well as the still not fully understood phenomenon of long co knocked many people out of the workforce. Now we might be falling into the same trap as Japan. If you still live with your parents, the odds are you get to hear their strong opinions pretty often. But there's one big area where they might have been right all along. They warned that screen time could rot your brain. There's growing evidence that it might be the single biggest contributor to the Hikomorei Foundation and its Western counterparts. Millennials were the first generation to be inducted into the digital world when they were young. While Gen Z [music] were digital natives growing up with smartphones and tablets. Gen Alpha, meanwhile, has been immersed in screens [music] since they were babies. The wonderful thing about tech today is that it can be used to do just about anything. And that means there is little reason to do anything else. Many of the traditional work paths have been closed off to a large number of millennials and Gen Z. The bluecollar careers and factories were heavily moved overseas. [music] White collar jobs are often incredibly competitive and require a long expensive college education. The easiest way to make ends meet and build a resume was often remote work. It was easy to fit around your schedule. But for many, it became the center of their life. They would log into their online job, complete their assignments, and then log into their Steam account and play some video games to de-stress. Slowly, the computer became a digital cage. In the past, screen time was more passive. We all remember sitting in front of that television for hours on a Saturday morning watching cartoons before being told to go out and play by our parents, but now it's entirely possible to build a whole life through the screen. Millions of people have a network of friends they've never even met, a job where they've never gone into the office, and a host [music] of interests that exist entirely in the digital space. The thought of going without access to the internet makes [music] people uneasy. As the internet only gets more immersive, the isolation from reality will only get worse. Video games now incorporate VR elements that offer a more emotionally intense experience. The advent of AI has led to countless people withdrawing [music] from human interaction even more, preferring to chat with AI chatbots rather than with real online friends. After all, no AI chatbot has ever cut off a friendship over a dispute over a video game. And no AI girlfriend has ever demanded you meet her parents. When the outside world is this unappealing, [music] who can blame them? The world their parents grew up in just doesn't exist anymore. It's been replaced with a world where everything is too expensive. There are no well-paying jobs to be had. There's no way to effectively save up for big purchases. Not when the small everyday ones eat up a huge percentage of your savings. The grim truth is the [music] facts back them up. What's the most important part of moving out of your parents house? Having somewhere to move to. But that's increasingly impossible [music] as rent to income ratios frequently exceed 50%. That's been shown to be a psychological threshold that sociologists point to as the point of withdrawal. When you're paying the majority of your income just to have a roof over your head, the psychological motivation of working [music] starts to disappear. It just feels like you're in a trap that there's no way of escaping from. [music] Among the alternatives, living at home sounds okay. As long as a young person has a good relationship with their parents, it's a safe, easy, and sustainable place to live [music] with no major downsides. The alternatives include paying through the nose for a mediocre apartment with no way to save long-term or finding a living arrangement with roommates. If you're going to have roommates anyway, why not have ones that you're already used to living with for 18 years? If there is one word that many millennials and Gen Z would use about the future, it [music] is demoralized. But the current status quo isn't sustainable. Time is running out for the baby boomer generation. As they age, the lives they've [music] spent supporting their adult children are nearing an inevitable end. For some, there may be a lifeline, an inheritance, or a family home. They could provide the financial security needed to finally begin an independent [music] life. But for Hikomori and other shutins around the world, the death of a parent often isn't an opportunity. It is the moment everything falls apart. As the baby boomer generation enters old age, governments are facing a problem they've never had to confront at this scale. More retirees need pensions, healthcare, and long-term care, while a relatively smaller working age population is left to fund it all. That's led to people fearing that systems like Social Security, Medicare, and the UK's National Health Service could go bankrupt. Someone has to make up the shortfall. Boomers have been forced to tap into their savings to pay for the retirement expenses or unexpected healthare costs. Some have decided that it's time to sell the house they raise their families in. What happens when a dependent child becomes a dependent middle-aged adult? When they've spent decades living in their parents' home, never building a career, never learning to live independently, and then one day their parents are gone. If the family home has to be sold to pay for long-term care, there is no inheritance, no backup plan, no second chance. For many, it's a question too uncomfortable to ask. But the problem is becoming impossible to ignore. To Westerners, the Hikomori phenomenon in Japan seems like a unique cultural artifact caused by a society that's known for hiding its secrets. A society deeply afraid of being publicly shamed. But that's only the most extreme situations, like the middle-aged man who was so scared of being alone that he cohabited with his mother's corpse for over a year. But for many, they're not choosing to isolate themselves from the world. It's just something that happens as they slowly live out the only life they knew. The cost of anything else is too much to bear. Societies are realizing they have a real problem on their hands. The problem is at its most acute in Asia where South Korea has recently recognized almost 538,000 reclusive youth in a recent government study that led them to pioneer a new program offering a government stipend where the government offers 650,000 Korean Juan around $500 US to those shutins. If they sign up, they'll need to leave the house for counseling and programs. Some say this is a good idea to solve a real problem. Others compare it to a government paying ransom in order to have enough people to staff the workforce. But resocializing people may be trickier than it sounds. If South Korea's solution is desperate, Japan's is bizarre. In 2019, the Hikomori problem made international news when the rent a sister program was announced. Organized by the company New Start, it allows isolated young men to sign up for visits from women who visit the shut-ins. At first, they talk with them through doors and they try to coax them out of the house. The goal is to get these Hikomori to potentially move into communal housing where they can make friends and take steps toward part-time work. These programs have shown some progress, but they're also just band-aids on a gunshot wound. It's easy to look at Japan's bizarre phenomenon where millions of young people simply decide not to engage with the world and assume it's a specific problem. But the Hikumori aren't a uniquely Japanese issue. They are the canary in the coal mine. And we are deep in the mine. The time to get the next generation of shutins to embrace society is running out because eventually there will be no one left to tell them about it. So what'll happen when the luckiest generation in history are gone? Check this out. This will happen after baby boomer generation dies off to see what the future holds for the rest of us. Or click on this video.