The Kids Are Watching.

I had Yum Cha for lunch today with one of my oldest and dearest friends, one of the wisest women I know. A mother of a spectacular young woman in her early twenties with the world at her feet. My friend told me what I am hearing almost every day. Something my friend Maggie Dent and I discussed at lunch this past week.

The kids are scared.

Yes, they are.

They are watching a world that feels like it’s unravelling. Every day, there’s something new. Fires raging, floods, ecosystems breaking, economies trembling, institutions stretched to their limits, even The Pope's illness. In my old rock chick mind, the timing of all of this unravelling uncannily started when David Bowie died, and it hasn't stopped.

Kids are not just hearing whispers of it in the background. It’s in their online feeds, all day, every day. They scroll through their feeds, and it’s relentless. Endless discussions about collapse, not from conspiracy theorists or doomsday preppers, but from some of the most intelligent, most informed people alive. Researchers. Scientists. Economists. Historians. People who understand patterns, who study cycles, who can see what’s coming before it arrives.

And the kids are asking amongst themselves..........Just as I did during the Cold War and we did not have devices in our hands connecting us to it 24/7

Is this it? Is this how it all ends?

And the answer?

Maybe.

Because collapse isn’t a singular, cataclysmic moment. It isn’t an explosion that leaves nothing but dust. Collapse is a process. A slow-motion breaking of the old, a crumbling of systems that have outlived their usefulness.

It’s unsettling. It’s terrifying. It’s real.

But we need to get educated and get talking to them. Now.

Because here’s the part no one tells them…

Collapse is also a door. And doors swing both ways.

One way leads to deeper chaos. To panic. To fighting over scraps instead of planting new seeds. If we let fear dictate our response, if we cling to the old ways just because they are familiar, we risk losing the opportunity that stands in front of us.

The other way? Reinvention.

Because what we see isn’t just destruction it’s the clearing of space. The failing systems were built for a different time, for a different world. They have been failing us for a while now. Maybe, just maybe, they were never designed to last forever. Maybe they were never meant to.

And the online world, the same one feeding the fear is also proof that we are already rewriting the future in real-time. Ideas spread in seconds. People connect across borders, sharing knowledge faster than institutions ever could. The internet has fueled a broken attention economy, amplified division, and gamified outrage but it has also given us direct access to some of the greatest minds alive. To new ways of thinking, new ways of working, and new systems of value.

Yes, some of what we’ve built is broken. Some of it needs to collapse. But not all of it. There are brilliant minds already working on solutions, proving that innovation doesn’t come from institutions, it comes from people willing to think beyond them.

If we accept that collapse is happening, then we must also accept that we have a choice:

We don’t have to rebuild what was. We don't have to do what we have always done. We can build something better. If the structures around us are failing, let them. Burn them down. Let something new take their place, something more sustainable, just, and more human.

We don’t have to wait for permission to create change. Communities are already forming new ways of living, working, and supporting each other. Change does not come from the top it comes from those of us who are bold enough to see what could be instead of clinging to what is or was.

We are not just witnesses to this moment. We are the architects of what follows.

And let’s talk about money for a second. Because, yes, people need to be paid. But how much do you really need? At some point, wealth stops being about survival and starts being about hoarding. If you’re a billionaire.....congratulations, you’ve won the game. Now start giving it away.

Invest in people. In ideas. In solutions. Share knowledge, fund innovation, fund a teen with a great idea to change the world for the better before they end up somewhere and are taught to think another way. Hire free-range thinkers. Because power and wealth aren’t in how much you accumulate it’s in what you help create.

The future isn’t written by those who panic it’s written by those who prepare. Learn. Innovate. Organise. Shift power to the people who will actually build what comes next. Those who aren’t so caught up in their own egos that they refuse to share what they’ve learned.

This is the moment to rethink everything from how we grow food to how we power our homes, how we care for one another, and how we define success.

To the kids who see what’s happening and feel the weight of it all. I won’t tell you not to be afraid. I won’t tell you that everything is fine. Because it’s not.

But fear is not the final word.

Fear is a signal that something is shifting. And when something shifts, that means there is space to create something new.

Look around. The old world is trembling, but the new world is waiting.

And it belongs to you.........the ones who are brave enough to build it.