The Future Game is a learning game in action through which young people explore the most important trends and challenges of this century in order to create visions and prototypes for the emerging future with an impact in their environment.
Having the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, the young people will be guided by a multidisciplinary team of voices of the future, playing a key role in disseminating a sustainable and ethical economic development as well as creating new inclusive and civil commitment cultures. The first edition has been held successfully with a registration of more than 100 young people and selection of the 30 inspiring young people who have developed solutions for the challenges of Bizkaia in just one month.
Seeking agents of change
The aim of BBK Kuna’s ‘The Future Game’, is to harness the entrepreneurial potential of the upcoming generations who “will play a key role” in disseminating ethical and sustainable economic development, as well as creating new inclusive cultures.
“The Future Game” has three goals:
- Promoting new ideas and businesses where the positive social and environmental impacts are just as important as their economic feasibility.
- Training young people with skills and tools to become the agents of change.
- Creating an ecosystem of organisations prepared to address the challenges the future holds.
CHALLENGE: 21 DAYS OF TESTING
Over the course of three weeks, the participants sought, through 21 challenges, to find answers and imagine possible futures for technology.
During the challenge, the future gamers received a box with 21 envelopes to experience tests such as the following: Living without a smartphone for a whole day: Quantify your anxiety peaks; What does it mean to be in flight mode today; Establish intergenerational dialogues about the pre-internet past: What is an offline youth like, what tools have we lost from those experiences, what superpowers have we acquired? Write a letter to your future self: What things from today would you like to keep?; Share the strongest experience you have had with technology: Did you meet your partner online, did you suffer cyberbullying, or REAL Vs FAKE: Can you tell if the information you receive is real or not?
Using these tests, they have reflected on the anxiety caused by new syndromes such as FOMO (Fear of missing out); the influence generated in them by the digital content they see on their social networks; the loneliness they felt during the pandemic; or their feelings of relief at being challenged to live 24 hours without technological devices. They also sought to answer questions such as the impact of algorithms on opinions, what technology brings to their daily lives and how it has changed the way they relate to each other, and whether they are really themselves on social networks.
MACRO-SURVEY “YOUNG PEOPLE AND DIGITAL HUMANISM IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY”.
In 2022, ‘The Future Game’ launched a representative survey of a thousand young Basques aged between 18 and 30, to find out how they imagined the future that awaits us, completed with a gamified experience and the creation of a digital community that today has reached 16,000 participants.
This collaborative process has been continued in 2023 with another macro-survey, entitled “Young people and Digital Humanism in the Basque Country”. This morning, Braulio Gómez, Professor of Political Science at the University of Deusto and director of the Deustobarometro, presented the results of this survey, from which the following main conclusions can be drawn:
69% would like to erase their entire digital past.
Their connection and technology are essential to maintain their relationships and lifestyle. Young people are terrified of disconnection: 85% would find it impossible to put their mobile phone on aeroplane mode for an extended period of time.
Young people want a fair redistribution of the benefits their data generates. The majority (52%) want financial compensation if they use their data for commercial purposes.
They need Wi-fi “to breathe”. 76% believe their lives would be worse if the internet disappeared.
Most young people are digital castaways asking for help. 54% believe that time spent on digital devices is time stolen from their real life and 60% report feeling mental/physical/mental fatigue or anxiety related to their digital life every day.
The digital city feels more dangerous than the real one. They feel that they are more likely to be impersonated, insulted and robbed in the digital world than in the physical world.
60% believe they would lose the opportunity to meet new people or lose contact with their less intimate relationships if they left social networks.