Graduates today face an uncertain future. The economy is faltering, jobs are disappearing and hope may not be too far behind.

And yet, some say what they hear from young people is the exact opposite.

“It’s easy to take a doom-and-gloom view, but I see that a lot of young people are quite optimistic and that in some ways they’ve got more choices than their parents did,” said Barbara Mitchell, a sociology professor at Simon Fraser University.

Mitchell’s 2006 book The Boomerang Age explores the challenges and opportunities young people face as they negotiate the transition to adulthood.

Her research included interviews with close to 2,000 young people from the Metro Vancouver area. And if that’s not enough, she can always consult her own daughter, who’s graduating this year and heading off to university in the fall.

The class of 2009 was largely born in 1991. They were potty-training when the Internet revolution began, but, as teenagers, have incorporated Facebook, YouTube and now Twitter into their lives as though the social media websites belonged there all along.

A 2005 survey of young people’s computer access and habits in Canada found 94 per cent had access to the Internet at home, with 37 per cent having their own computer with Internet access. Like everything to do with computers and technology, one can safely assume the numbers have advanced in the years since.

“Young people are seeing that they need to keep up on the latest technological advances and that the kinds of jobs available to them in the future are going to require those kinds of skills, so I definitely think it’s influencing the choices they’re making,” Mitchell said.

While the impact of technology on young people increases, the pressures to settle down, have children and gain financial independence from their parents seems to have decreased.

“In previous generations, young people didn’t have that luxury to find themselves because they were so busy getting married and establishing their own families and careers at a younger age,” Mitchell said.

“There wasn’t this lengthened period of young adulthood that young people are able to enjoy right now.”

Just because they’re enjoying their youth doesn’t mean today’s young people are behaving badly.

The 2008 volume of Project Teen Canada, which surveyed about 5,200 teens from across Canada, found young people are drinking less, smoking less and having sex less.

That led Maclean’s magazine to dub them “Generation Tame” in an April cover story.

Tame or not, today’s youth have unprecedented opportunities to travel. The worldwide web has, for many, opened up just that — the world wide.

“There’s many, many different paths and many new opportunities for them to cultivate their own garden, really spend time fulfilling their own interests and following their own bliss,” said Jason Price, a University of Victoria professor who teaches in the faculty of education’s curriculum and instruction department.

Achieving that bliss, however, may not always come easy.

Both Mitchell and Price agree the weakened economy poses challenges for new graduates. But Price said it also provides them an opportunity to rely on their creativity and entrepreneurial skills, as well as becoming self-motivated, to get ahead. “I think the future’s incredibly hopeful,” he said. “I see some really exciting times for these young people.”

Mitchell said many young people see the value of a post-secondary education and will invest in one, in part hoping the economy will have rebounded by the time they complete it.

But, she added, some also realize it costs a lot more now and might not get them as far as it once did.

“I think they feel previous generations may have had an easier time — that they could go to university and get that career job as soon as they finished,” she said.

mpearson@tc.canwest.com