Young People and the Future of Scotland: participatory horizon scanning engagement

Executive Summary

The Scottish Government is building its foresight programme to anticipate the risks, opportunities and challenges that will shape Scotland’s future over the coming decades. A core part of this is the Scottish Government’s ongoing Horizon Scanning project which aims to identify key trends, risks and opportunities over a 10–20-year period. This can be used to inform policy, strategy and embed this work into policy development processes to improve longer-term planning, resilience and preparedness in the public sector, and with partners in the voluntary and private sectors in Scotland.

The purpose of futures work

Horizon Scanning is a strategic foresight method that enables policymakers to systematically identify emerging trends and signals of change in order to assess their potential impacts and develop proactive responses.^[1] Foresight is a systematic way of thinking about the future with a view to influence its course of development based on potential threats, risks and opportunities. Strategic foresight integrates methods such as Horizon Scanning into decision-making, shaping strategies and visions. By taking a long-term perspective, governments can move beyond short-term reactions and build resilience, adaptability, anticipate issues and shape change.

The value of engaging young people in discussions on the future

A crucial dimension of this work is ensuring that young people’s perspectives are meaningfully incorporated. Around the world, strategic foresight often focuses on contributions from technical experts, which can overlook perspectives from different segments of society, including young people. Young people are often described as ‘the future’ but they are also already shaping Scotland’s present. Their lived experiences and expectations provide valuable insight into ongoing transformations, from digitalisation and climate action, to shifts in work and education. In general, futures research highlights that engaging diverse perspectives strengthens governments’ ability to make decisions which steer towards a desirable future, as different groups identify risks, opportunities and emerging shifts that traditional foresight processes may overlook.

Given this, embedding young people’s perspectives into Horizon Scanning is a strategic necessity. Recognising this, the Scottish Government has taken initial steps to involve young people in its foresight work, ensuring that their voices contribute to long-term strategic thinking. This forms a key part of ‘anticipatory governance’^[2] which equips governments with the means to balance between short-term needs and long-term vision: driving transformation by embedding futures thinking into structures, culture and practices.

Background of the work

To explore how best to integrate young people’s views into Horizon Scanning, the Scottish Government commissioned Demos Helsinki and the Scottish Youth Parliament to run an engagement with young people about Scotland’s future in order to understand their views, perspectives and priorities. The UK Government Office for Science partnered with the Scottish Government and co-funded this project. This offered an opportunity to develop and apply a methodology for engaging young people meaningfully in foresight work. This work aims to set a precedent for youth engagement on futures issues within the Scottish Government, demonstrating to other organisations in Scotland what this engagement can look like and the value of this work. An engagement workshop was held in Edinburgh on 22 February 2025, bringing together a small group of fifteen young people aged 14-19, and three members of the investigation team. This engagement was co-created and co-facilitated with a group of four Members of Scottish Youth Parliament that formed what we called the ‘Investigation Team’. This report documents the methodology and insights from the engagement to feed into current work in government and for further exploration. It concludes with recommendations for strengthening the integration of young people’s views in Scotland’s strategic foresight work.

The three parts of the report

The first part of the report focuses on the methodology developed to engage young people in structured discussions about Scotland’s future. This includes:

• The process of co-creating the engagement approach including involving the ‘Investigation Team’.
• A summary of the recruitment and make-up of the participant group, and the management of research ethics, safeguarding and data protection requirements.
• The structure, methods and materials of the workshop itself which was designed to gather insights and equip young people with futures literacy, strengthening their ability to think critically about long-term change. This included:
  • Trend cards – where participants explored key societal, technological, and environmental trends, categorising them as exciting, concerning or neutral, and identifying areas requiring urgent action.
  • Future states – four alternative scenarios for Scotland in 2040, which helped participants examine how different policy and societal choices could lead to different futures.
  • Future artefacts – creative exercises where participants engaged with imagined future objects, media or narratives to make abstract trends more clear and real.

An overview of these elements are included in the main report. For those who wish to understand the design in greater depth or conduct a similar exercise themselves, a more detailed version is in Appendix 1 in Young People and the Future of Scotland: A Participatory Horizon Scanning Engagement – Methodology Appendices.

The second part of the report presents findings from the engagement, structured around the key themes that emerged from young people’s discussions:

• Climate and Environment – Young people emphasised the need for systemic climate action and saw Scotland’s leadership in sustainability and green jobs as both necessary and promising. However, concerns remained about climate injustice and uneven impacts across communities.
• Economy and Jobs – Economic inequality, the rising cost of living and housing affordability were key concerns. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation were seen as forces that would fundamentally affect many areas of life. However, young people were very concerned about whether these changes would create new opportunities or deepen inequality.
• Politics and Governance – There was strong support for improving political education and digital literacy to combat misinformation and strengthen democratic engagement. While young people valued Scotland’s democratic institutions, they also expressed frustration that their voices are often overlooked in decision-making.
• Society and Community – Discussions covered cultural change, identity, and digital life. While many valued inclusivity and social progress, some worried about increasing polarisation in public debate. Young people discussed the balance between online and physical life, including how people interact within and across each, and how this could develop in the future. Some were concerned about how digital interactions are changing or even replacing physical interactions, and the need to improve real-life connections.
• Health and Habits – Mental health was identified as a top priority, with concerns over long NHS waiting times for young people and the impact of social media on body image and self-esteem. There were calls for greater investment in health services in general, and especially youth mental health services. Technological change was also often linked to health and wellbeing in many ways, with young people discussing better regulation of digital spaces, education on misinformation and disinformation and potential safeguards on technology. Other health topics were also concerns, such as vaping and drug use.

These insights are not presented as fixed conclusions but as starting points for further exploration. They reflect initial suggested explanations of young people’s concerns, hopes and expectations that can inform future foresight work.

Finally, the third part of the report reflects on implications and next steps for strengthening and scaling this work. It considers how to broaden engagement with young people to capture a wider range of perspectives and ensure that young people’s insights lead to meaningful action.

A conversation starter

This report has been produced by Demos Helsinki, with the support, supervision, and contributions of the Scottish Youth Parliament and the Scottish Government. Young people have also been key to its development – both the Investigation Team and participants were given the opportunity to review the report’s draft and provide comments, and their feedback has been integrated. This report represents the views of a small group of young people in Scotland. We consider these to be valuable to decision makers as indications of some of the themes and issues that are important to young people; nevertheless, it does not aim to be representative or definitive of all young people’s views on Scotland’s future, nor does it claim to offer final conclusions.

The core successes of this methodology and engagement lie in its strong foundation of co-creation with young people themselves; the development of research-based trend cards as a core material to prompt discussion in an accessible, engaging way; and utilising creative, experiential and unexpected approaches to collective dialogue. This tested example highlights the insights and value that can be gained by engaging young people in strategic foresight with a purposeful methodology. It highlights key themes for further investigation, and outlines ways to embed young people’s perspectives into Scotland’s long-term decision-making processes.

By continuing to expand and refine this work, Scotland has the opportunity to ensure that young people’s insights, priorities and ambitions are meaningfully reflected in the country’s long-term strategic thinking.

Acknowledgements

Together, Demos Helsinki and Scottish Youth Parliament would like to thank all contributors to this project. First and foremost, we would like to thank the young people who deeply engaged in discussions on the future, bringing great insight, energy and dedication to the process. A significant thanks also goes to the Investigation Team members: Daniela Onyewuenyi MSYP, Jack Anderson MSYP, Matthew McColm MSYP and Skye Morgan MSYP, whose expertise, commitment, leadership and advocacy for young people’s voices formed a key part of the project’s contents, workshop and ultimate outcomes.

Secondly, we would like to thank the Scottish Government, especially the Foresight and Capability Unit, Strategy Analysis Team and Children’s Rights Unit who worked closely with us to ensure this work achieved as much impact and ambition as possible, both by leveraging their expertise and analysis from the wider Horizon Scanning work, and by being dedicated to prioritising young people’s voices, leadership and agency throughout this process. Finally, we would like to thank the Government Office for Science for partnering with us to deliver this project as part of their Futures Procurement Framework co-funding initiative. Without their support this project would not have been possible.

Background: Demos Helsinki and Scottish Youth Parliament

For contextual background, Demos Helsinki is a globally-operating, non-profit and independent Nordic think tank, based in Finland but operating globally including within the UK. Demos Helsinki is specialised in strategic foresight, public sector innovation, policy and governance, strategic experiments, co-creation and human-centric design. Demos Helsinki has successfully served hundreds of ministries, universities, companies and NGOs globally, and their work on anticipatory governance and policy making has been recognised by leading policy makers and international organisations.

In this project, Demos Helsinki led the futures work including the design and delivery of the process and workshop, and the development of the project outputs including this report. This was done in close partnership with the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), a youth-led, politically-impartial charity with the vision to be the democratic voice of Scotland’s young people by providing a national platform for young people to discuss the issues that are important to them, and campaign for changes to the nation that they live in. SYP’s work includes supporting Members of Scottish Youth Parliament (MSYPs), young people aged 14-25 who are elected every two years to represent every Scottish Parliament constituency and nine national voluntary organisations.

In this project, SYP led the recruitment and engagement of young people, supported the delivery of the engagement and ensured all ethical and safeguarding requirements were met. A group of MSYPs were also key members of the project Investigation Team and co-creation process, as detailed in Part 1 below.