Youth

Young people in Myanmar are growing up in a period of social transformation, faced with an influx of foreign goods, including music, cars, clothes, art and alcohol. Underlying this profusion of goods are more significant considerations: identities, morals and values. Where previously Myanmar was isolated and insulated from foreign influences and cultures, since 2010 the outside has flowed in. Young people are largely embracing change and choice. Older generations are less unanimously welcoming. Young people have less reason to distrust the country’s elite-led political transition: they have not lived during the country’s brutal and violent repression. Instead of facing an omnipresent and controlling state—as their parents and grandparents did—they confront the wider Myanmar population. Through decades of military rule, the Myanmar population grew increasingly distrustful, suspicious and intrusive. In the context of pervasive scrutiny from their parents and communities, young people in Myanmar are navigating the transition to adulthood. Despite burgeoning opportunities for young people to redefine themselves, the ways young people are adapting alternative identities and lifestyles reveals some persistent features in Myanmar that endured through the social transformation of Myanmar: virgins, virtue and vice.