August 12th is World Youth Day. On the surface, it may seem like just another commemorative date tucked between a dozen others on the calendar. But pause for a moment, and you’ll realise—it’s more than a date. It’s a mirror. A mirror reflecting not just the youthful faces of today, but the anxieties, contradictions, and invisible battles they carry.

In a corner house in Alwarpet, 17-year-old Krithika scrolls through Instagram before brushing her teeth. She double-taps a reel on productivity, skips a video about dopamine detox, and lands on a story of a friend vacationing in Santorini. Her fingers are swift. Her mind was restless.

“I want to be a psychologist,” she told her mother. Two weeks later, she was researching Korean language courses. And last week, she dreamt of building an AI startup. The choices are endless. But the certainty? Elusive.

A City and Its Children in Transition
Once upon a quieter Madras, children grew into their identities gradually, like how summer ripened mangoes—slowly, patiently, predictably. Life unfolded within well-known lanes, careers were inherited, and rebellion meant joining the theatre club instead of engineering. But today’s Chennai is no longer content with the familiar. It pulses with ambition, chaos, and contradiction.

From Perambur to Pallikaranai, Chennai’s youth live in two parallel realities. One is shaped by their physical surroundings—temples, metro stations, and college campuses—and the other is by an invisible web of digital influence. A reality where YouTube tutorials dictate beliefs, Instagram aesthetics inform self-worth, and TikTok trends define personality.

Vignesh, a college student from Triplicane, puts it simply: “Every week, I feel like I have to become a different version of myself to keep up, to be liked, to be noticed.”

What should have been a time of exploration has become a crisis of fragmentation. The youth are not exploring themselves—they’re assembling themselves, piece by piece, app by app.

The Burden of Too Many Choices
When choices multiply beyond imagination, they don’t create freedom. They create paralysis.

Older generations in Chennai were often locked into rigid choices—law, medicine, banking, or, at best, civil services. While that rigidity carried its burdens, it also gave a sense of clarity. Today’s Gen Z and Gen Alpha are told they can be anything—creators, coders, YouTubers, digital nomads, NFT artists, and AI engineers.

And yet, this explosion of possibility has led not to confidence but to a strange sense of inadequacy. “I’m 19 and I already feel I’m behind,” says Ananya, an architecture student from Besant Nagar. “Everyone else seems to be doing something cooler, faster, better.”

Comparison is no longer local. It is global, relentless, and unforgiving. The mirror is no longer the neighbour’s child or the class topper—a 22-year-old millionaire from another continent.

AI and the Disappearing Self
Amid this whirlwind of identity confusion, Artificial Intelligence has emerged as both a muse and a menace. While it promises personalisation, productivity, and creativity, it also silently shapes the sense of self.

Recommendation algorithms push content that reinforces narrow identities. If you watch three videos on minimalism, suddenly you’re in a bubble of “intentional living.” If you click on fitness, the next day you’re sold masculinity hacks and testosterone boosters. Slowly, AI doesn’t just serve you what you want—it teaches you what to like.

Even more worrisome is the creeping loss of economic identity. With AI beginning to displace white-collar jobs—writers, designers, coders—the ground on which many young people hoped to build their future feels unstable.

Vikram, a recent graduate from a software training institute in Guindy, says, “I studied Python for two years. Now my professor says AI can code faster than I. What’s left for us?”

It is not just jobs being taken. It’s dreams being edited, silently, line by line.

The Language of Loneliness
Despite being more connected than ever before, young people today are unimaginably alone.

From Saidapet to Sholinganallur, bedrooms glow with late-night screens, but inside them, youth battling isolation sit. Digital conversations have replaced heartfelt ones. Memes have replaced emotions. Even therapy has become content.

“I feel like I’m always talking, but no one hears me,” says Harini, a law student from Kilpauk. Her parents are proud of her achievements, her peers envy her CV, and her Instagram looks radiant—but inside, she admits, “I don’t feel real anymore.”

This quiet dissociation—a loss of inner anchoring—is becoming more common.

Social media, meant to help them connect, has taught them instead to perform.
And in performance, the person often disappears.

Schools Teach Algebra. Life Teaches Amnesia.

For all its academic rigour, our education system still teaches little about resilience, self-awareness, or emotional strength. No subject is “How to Fail and Get Back Up.” No textbook titled “How to Be Okay When You Don’t Know Who You Are.”

In many elite schools across Chennai, you’ll find students who can solve calculus problems but cannot cope with rejection—teens who can write flawless essays but crumble under loneliness.

The system equips them with degrees, not direction, and with marks, not meaning.

So, they turn to YouTube for advice, listen to podcasts for therapy, and seek identity in what others project instead of who they truly are.

The result? A generation that knows a lot, but feels very little of it deeply.

The Cultural Tug-of-War
In Chennai, the struggle is compounded by a unique cultural tension. With its deep Tamil roots, spiritual spine, and classical rhythm, this city now also throbs with Amazon delivery boys, crypto traders, and Korean pop fans.

Today’s youth must navigate the impossible:

1. To be proud of their culture, but not “too traditional”

2. To be global in thinking, but not “too westernised”

3. To be ambitious, but humble

4. To be expressive, but not loud

It is a tightrope walk on an increasingly unstable bridge.

Hope in the Cracks
And yet, within the smog of self-doubt, there are glimmers of clarity.

I met Ajay, a 15-year-old from North Chennai who built a simple AI chatbot to help elderly citizens access government schemes. His code was rudimentary, but his purpose was powerful.

Lavanya from Thiruvanmiyur teaches Bharatanatyam to orphaned children every weekend—not for a certificate, but because “it makes her feel real again.”

Amidst the noise, there are still notes of music.

Amidst the confusion, there are still quiet revolutions. The youth of Chennai are not lost. They are wandering. And that’s okay. Every map begins with a bit of disorientation.

A Letter to the Youth
To the young person reading this on a bus to Taramani, waiting at Ashok Nagar metro, or curled up on your Besant Nagar balcony—this is for you.

You are more than the number of followers on your profile.
You are not a glitch in the algorithm, but a spark of something vast and untamed.
You are not your productivity. Not your GPA. Not your highlight reel.

You are a story still unfolding. A character is still deepening.

Don’t be in a hurry to become something. You are already someone.

Learn to sit in silence, question what the screen tells you, laugh without posting, cry without apologising, and dream without Googling its viability.

You don’t have to know your purpose by 22. You only need to stay open enough to find it, in due course, under the tamarind tree or behind the glowing screen—wherever your truth decides to meet you.

– Dr. K. Jayanth Murali is a retired IPS officer, ultramarathoner, and author of Chasing the Lost Gods and Quantum Creation. A passionate advocate for youth empowerment, conscious leadership, and inner transformation, he blends his diverse experiences in law enforcement, spirituality, and storytelling to explore the human condition in a rapidly changing world. He lives in Chennai and continues to mentor young minds toward purpose, resilience, and self-discovery.