S'pore youths are far cry from 'strawberry generation' stereotype, want to find success on their own terms: David Neo

A Former Soldier Reframes a Cultural Punchline

David Neo is an unusual pick to lead youth policy. The 48-year-old spent three years as Chief of Army (2022–2025) before taking the acting minister role at the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and his framing of young Singaporeans leans on a military register of resilience rather than the hand-wringing that often accompanies youth discourse. In a Jul. 20 interview with Mothership, he argued that the youth he has met on the ground are eager to "go deep in whatever they are doing" and to find "a deeper sense of meaning and purpose" — a portrait that deliberately cuts against the older "strawberry generation" trope of coddled, brittle young people unable to handle pressure. The reframing matters because the stereotype still circulates in Singaporean public life, and ministers rarely address it so directly. Neo's counter — that ambition, curiosity and self-direction are now the defining traits he has seen — gives the SG Youth Plan an explicit ideological anchor.

Loneliness, Not Just Opportunity, Is the Headline Finding

The most concrete evidence in Neo's remarks comes not from anecdotes but from a National Youth Council survey. About 8 per cent of Singaporean youths report having no close friends, one in three are not part of any social group, and the average number of close friends has dropped from 7.7 in 2013 to roughly 6 today. Half of those surveyed told the Council they wanted deeper, more meaningful relationships with the friends they already have, and around a third wanted to make new ones. These are not marginal figures: a one-third drop in average confidants over a decade suggests a structural shift in how young Singaporeans form ties, not a passing mood. The Plan's response — 12 new "youth spaces" and a revamped Somerset Belt youth precinct — is a physical-space strategy aimed squarely at the bonding problem. Neo was careful, though, to draw a line: the government can build the venues, but "the youths will have to step up" and exercise their own agency. It is a pointed reminder that the state is funding infrastructure, not manufacturing friendships.

Curiosity Credits and the Politics of Access

The Plan's most novel instrument is Curiosity Credits, a scheme modelled on Finnish practice that lets young people spend credits on hobbies and interests outside academics. For the first phase, eligibility is narrow: secondary school-aged youths from the four Self-Help Groups — Mendaki, Sinda, the Eurasian Association and the Chinese Development Assistance Council. Neo framed the targeting as a matter of "democratising" opportunity, so that a disadvantaged student can have the same shot at a skydiving trip or a ceramics class as a peer from a well-resourced family. The example he chose was telling: a young person who, through a partnership with Access Singapore, was able to try skydiving and returned "feeling that it opened up his horizons". Whether Curiosity Credits can be scaled beyond the Self-Help Group cohort is the open question, and Neo left the door open — "further scaled up" if the pilot works. That conditional language signals the government is treating the scheme as an experiment, not a permanent entitlement, and the real test will be whether the credits meaningfully reach the lonelier, more disengaged youths the survey identified.