Can social software help reducing youth unemployment in Europe?

There is no doubt that Europe faces three major challenges;

1. The growing unemployment among European youth
2. The increase of old people getting older
3. The structural and economic difference between north, south and east, west Europe

We have to face these challenges and find solutions in order to save our democracy, or we could have the same situation with social unrest they have in North Africa and Middle East. We in Western Europe have used a lot of means to save banks from collapsing – this has been wise to a certain point – now we need to solve the underlying problems. In the following I will try to look into how the new social culture and use of social media can help the European youth.

The growing unemployment among European youth!

 One of these problems is youth unemployment, which is a derivative of the banks' lack of lending to businesses who want to increase their business, compare also to potential entrepreneurs. Banks' reluctance has caused problems for society's growth and thus indirectly contributes to increasing youth unemployment. When a country as Spain reaches an unemployment rate among youth on 

56, 1 %[1] we are starting to loose a generation.

Europe needs to have some quick solutions and start to think out of the box to be able to recover from such a crisis situation of loosing a generation. The south European countries – Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal are in a massive danger zone where unrest and instability are causing trouble for democracy and creating possibility for extremist political fractions.

How can Social Media help to create new jobs?

Social Media and the social software used by the enterprises generate new opportunities of where a person should be situated and make it possible to have young people working in teams on a virtual basis. The Social Software market generally supports people working in teams, communities or networks which is ideal for cross boarder working and even with different cultures. The Social Software is not product or market specific, it is used to support a variety of collaborative activities within the enterprises, used by their employees and also by external costumers and suppliers and partners to create value for the enterprise.

With the collaborative social software it is possible to have employees present in various regions as the software is designed to be shared among teams and groups who are not forced to be situated in the same office or even region. The purpose of this virtual environment is to engage participants across the whole organization to create, organize and share information, as well as find, connect and interact with each other. This will in the long term secure that enterprises will be able to engage employees where the costumers are without creating expenses that can not be covered by the revenue that the social software creates. Social software includes both applications, which deliver specific functionality out of the box (functionality such as shared workspaces or communities) or platforms, with capabilities that can be used as a basis for contextual collaborative applications.  Where it is most interesting for the enterprise companies is when the social software are used in communication and information sharing and project  coordination within small teams or homogeneous groups. The social software gives the enterprise companies the possibility to the sharing of best practices within a business unit as well as the encouragement of communication, networking and information exchange among employees across the whole organization or with external participants in other organizations. These possibilities make it possible to engage people in other time zones and abolish physical borders which can prevent youth from getting a job in an enterprise company in another country. The social software gives the enterprise the freedom to engage people where the market is or where the most qualified people are. This new social world creates possibilities for creative enterprises to secure a highly qualified workforce without having any boundaries and helps in general the enterprise and their users to:

• Mine their networks of contacts and acquaintances for advice, references and referrals.
• Form teams, communities or informal groups and invite external participants from other organizations.
• Work together on the same work objects – could be engineers working on an new construction – time zone and borders would not have any importance
• Discuss and comment, sharing their work.
• Organize work from their perspective
• Identify relevant work – this will be of Hugh importance for the many unemployed in southern Europe.
• Discover other people with common interests.
• Alert users to information or events that might be relevant to them and can help them in getting their next assignment
• And last but not least be able to learn from other expertise which can help in the specific region

It is important that we start getting this new social software in use to prevent a whole generation from getting a work and be part of the society both in own country but also abroad. We need this to happen fast to stop this evil circle of youth unemployment.

---

[1] The Guardian
September 2, 2013