At a family lunch, a familiar conversation came up—the kind that happens at thousands of tables. A feeling that something has broken. That the younger generation doesn’t respond, doesn’t commit, doesn’t seem engaged. The phone rings and no one answers. Messages take too long. Working with young people feels difficult because they simply don’t seem to be there.

It’s not a malicious criticism. It’s confusion. And it’s understandable.

Those now in their sixties grew up in a world where work had clear rhythms and visible signals. The phone rang and you picked it up. A task took time, but it had a beginning and an end. Being busy was tangible. Presence was proof of commitment.

From that perspective, the question makes sense: how can it be that today—when technology saves us from tasks that once consumed hours—people still say they have no time?

The answer, I believe, is not a loss of values, but a deeper transformation: we don’t have less time; we have far higher expectations.

Contrary to the pessimistic intuition that dominates so many conversations, the world is not worse. In many essential ways, it is better. We live longer than ever before. Infant mortality has fallen dramatically. Extreme poverty declined sharply over recent decades, with the obvious exception of the shock caused by COVID. These are not opinions. They are facts.

That doesn’t mean everything is solved. Inequality remains a massive, unresolved debt. Wealth is concentrated in extreme ways, and the benefits of growth are far from evenly distributed. But acknowledging that debt does not require denying progress. On the contrary—it requires understanding it clearly.

Something similar happens with work and productivity.

It’s true that, at an aggregate level, productivity growth has slowed in many economies. But that macro view doesn’t fully capture daily reality. At the individual level, a person today can coordinate more projects, process more information, make more decisions, and generate more impact per hour than thirty years ago.

Technology didn’t give us leisure. It gave us capacity. And that capacity was immediately absorbed by new demands.

The time once saved by sending a letter was reinvested in sending multiple messages. Meetings that once filled an entire morning are now fragmented into calls, voice notes, shared documents, and constant follow-ups. The day didn’t empty—it became layered.

That’s why someone can take time to reply to a message and still be deeply committed to their work. It’s not disinterest. It’s saturation. It’s not irresponsibility. It’s asynchronicity. In an environment where everything interrupts, prioritization becomes a necessity, not a sign of disrespect.

The generation now watching this with concern was formed in a world of scarce interruptions. The current generation lives inside a permanent stream of stimuli. Measuring commitment using the rules of the previous world leads to the wrong conclusion.

Perhaps the mistake is not moral, but interpretative.

A phone that goes unanswered no longer means what it once did. A delayed reply does not signal a lack of vocation. Very often, it signals the opposite: an attempt to protect focus in a world that constantly attacks it.

The world faces enormous challenges. Inequality, anxiety, uncertainty. But it is also true that never before have so many people lived so long, with so many tools and possibilities at their disposal.

Perhaps we are not facing a lost generation.

Perhaps we are facing a world that changed faster than our criteria for judging it.

And understanding that doesn’t mean giving up.

It means updating the lens.

At a family lunch, a familiar conversation came up—the kind that happens at thousands of tables. A feeling that something has broken. That the younger generation doesn’t respond, doesn’t commit, doesn’t seem engaged. The phone rings and no one answers. Messages take too long. Working with young people feels difficult because they simply don’t seem to be there.

It’s not a malicious criticism. It’s confusion. And it’s understandable.

Those now in their sixties grew up in a world where work had clear rhythms and visible signals. The phone rang and you picked it up. A task took time, but it had a beginning and an end. Being busy was tangible. Presence was proof of commitment.

From that perspective, the question makes sense: how can it be that today—when technology saves us from tasks that once consumed hours—people still say they have no time?

The answer, I believe, is not a loss of values, but a deeper transformation: we don’t have less time; we have far higher expectations.

Contrary to the pessimistic intuition that dominates so many conversations, the world is not worse. In many essential ways, it is better. We live longer than ever before. Infant mortality has fallen dramatically. Extreme poverty declined sharply over recent decades, with the obvious exception of the shock caused by COVID. These are not opinions. They are facts.

That doesn’t mean everything is solved. Inequality remains a massive, unresolved debt. Wealth is concentrated in extreme ways, and the benefits of growth are far from evenly distributed. But acknowledging that debt does not require denying progress. On the contrary—it requires understanding it clearly.

Something similar happens with work and productivity.

It’s true that, at an aggregate level, productivity growth has slowed in many economies. But that macro view doesn’t fully capture daily reality. At the individual level, a person today can coordinate more projects, process more information, make more decisions, and generate more impact per hour than thirty years ago.

Technology didn’t give us leisure. It gave us capacity. And that capacity was immediately absorbed by new demands.

The time once saved by sending a letter was reinvested in sending multiple messages. Meetings that once filled an entire morning are now fragmented into calls, voice notes, shared documents, and constant follow-ups. The day didn’t empty—it became layered.

That’s why someone can take time to reply to a message and still be deeply committed to their work. It’s not disinterest. It’s saturation. It’s not irresponsibility. It’s asynchronicity. In an environment where everything interrupts, prioritization becomes a necessity, not a sign of disrespect.

The generation now watching this with concern was formed in a world of scarce interruptions. The current generation lives inside a permanent stream of stimuli. Measuring commitment using the rules of the previous world leads to the wrong conclusion.

Perhaps the mistake is not moral, but interpretative.

A phone that goes unanswered no longer means what it once did. A delayed reply does not signal a lack of vocation. Very often, it signals the opposite: an attempt to protect focus in a world that constantly attacks it.

The world faces enormous challenges. Inequality, anxiety, uncertainty. But it is also true that never before have so many people lived so long, with so many tools and possibilities at their disposal.

Perhaps we are not facing a lost generation.

Perhaps we are facing a world that changed faster than our criteria for judging it.

And understanding that doesn’t mean giving up.

It means updating the lens.