Burke County's challenge: Rebuilding civic life

Nearly half of America’s young adults say they would rather live in the past than face the reality and the challenges of the present.

That should stop us cold. Especially if we are relying on young adults to lead the path into the future.

An NBC News Decision Desk Poll of 3,009 adults ages 18 to 29 found that 47% would choose to live in the past if they could. Only 38% said they would choose the present.

They are not saying the past was perfect. They are saying the present feels exhausting.

A Harvard Youth Poll, recently released by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, makes the same point in harder numbers.

Its spring 2026 survey of 2,018 young Americans ages 18 to 29 found a generation under intense economic pressure and losing faith in the political system.

Young people, these surveys tell us, are worried about rent, groceries, insurance, student debt, wages, housing prices, politics, war, technology, and the future itself, and many are concluding that “The System” is rigged against them.

But if that’s the case, who is going to fix it — if not young leaders?

A case in point: All five members of the Morganton City Council are eligible for both Social Security and Medicare.

Young adults are right to be angry about housing, inflation, wages, debt, Buddy-System politics, and the hollowing-out of community life. But anger is not leadership and complaint is not service.

In times past, in this community and in thousands like it across the nation, clear pathways existed for young people to learn the intricacies of community service.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the N.C. Jaycees, which limited its membership to those ages 18-40, helped finance the building of the UNC Burn Center and the Duke Cancer Institute.

Locally, the Jaycees were a ubiquitous, working presence at fairs, festivals, and a plethora of other community events.

That organization provided a template for civic clubs, churches, both political parties, and public service organizations such as the Heart Association and the Center Society.

Civic life has always required apprenticeship. People learn leadership by showing up before they are in charge. They learn it by joining the club, serving on the committee, volunteering at the church, coaching the team, attending the hearing, reading the agenda and discovering that public work is usually slow, imperfect and full of people who see the world differently.

In the past, young professionals with young families, people building roots in communities, were involved in local governments. They learned the ropes, engaged in the system, enabling deeper civic commitments later.

That is not glamorous. It is not emotionally satisfying in the way a good complaint can be. But it is how democracy is actually built.

The question before us now is this: How do we ignite the spark of interest in young people in joining the oftentimes messy business of leading and of governing?

One way is to remind today’s young people of the extraordinary role that young people have played in our nation’s history:

Teddy Roosevelt was 23 when he began serving in the N.Y. House of Representatives.

John Kennedy was 29 when he entered the U.S. Congress.

Bill Clinton was 32 when he was elected governor of Arkansas.

Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he authored the Declaration of Independence.

In North Carolina, Jim Hunt was elected lieutenant governor at age 35.

In Burke County, Sam J. Ervin Jr. was elected to the N.C. House at age 23, and a young Morgantonian named Roger Sharpe was elected to the N.C. Senate in 1976 at age 29.

And in January a young woman still south of age 30, Victoria Taylor, was appointed to the Drexel Board of Aldermen.

Another way is to remember that those of us who are older, who have positions of leadership, have a responsibility to open the doors wider. To share responsibility. To mentor, to coach, and to share the satisfactions that public service brings.

But if the elder generation has a responsibility to open those doors as widely as possible, the leaders of tomorrow have the responsibility to step through them.

Burke’s youth are right to demand a future they can afford. They are right to question leaders who seem more interested in power than public service. They are right to be skeptical of institutions that have too often treated them as an audience, a market, or a voting bloc.

Here in Burke County, the question is not whether Gen Z is too sensitive, too tied up on social media or too nostalgic.

The better question is whether Burke County can build a community where a young person can imagine a life with purpose, friendship, work, family, and hope?

Can a young adult who works hard afford to live here?

Can a young family buy a house here?

Can a high school or college graduate find meaningful work here?

Can a young voter believe that the local government is listening?

Can a church, civic club, school, newsroom, business or neighborhood give young people something more durable than another account, app or password?

The past that young people miss was not perfect. But it did teach one lesson worth recovering: community is not something we inherit fully assembled.

It is instead something we build, repair, argue over, fund, volunteer for, and hand off, a little battered, to the people coming next.

If nearly half of our young adults would rather retreat into the past than invest themselves in the present, then America does not merely face an economic problem or a political problem. It faces a civic problem.

A free society survives only when each generation decides that citizenship is worth the effort. The task before Burke County — and communities across this nation — is not to recreate some imagined Golden Age, but to build places where young people once again believe their voices matter, their work matters, their future matters, and they feel a call to serve.

Because the future will not be rescued by nostalgia. It will be built by young men and women willing to claim ownership of their communities and by older generations wise enough to welcome them into the work.