A segment of a Japanese documentary entitled NEET introduces us to the life of Suzuki (not his real name), a 28-year-old graduate of the literature department of Greater Tokyo's Saitama University. Suzuki spends his days in front of his computer, drawing comics, looking at online Cosplayer fanzines, and watching downloaded TV shows. Though he lives at home and eats the dinners his mother prepares, he chooses to have them in his bedroom to avoid the awkward silence at the dinner table. Later, he may have some instant noodles as a midnight snack.

Uehara is 22 and unemployed. He stopped going to school when he was 14, choosing to hide out at home instead. He hasn't worked or attended school since, and has completely cut off contact with society. With the exception of the one day a month his mother takes him to see a psychiatrist, he has spent the last eight years in his parents' home, playing video games, watching TV, reading magazines, and eating pizza and cake. He has no friends and doesn't speak to people. In fact, before he got a computer for his 22nd birthday, he didn't communicate with anyone at all. But the computer has changed his life.

Uehara isn't his real name, of course; it's what he calls himself online, where he met a group of people that share his interests. They're known as the Parasites. The information he gathered about them online says that they--like him--harbor parasites and are born with the right to kill others. Noted author Ryu Murakami describes these kinds of withdrawn youth in lurid detail in his 2000 novel Parasites.

Such youth exist in mainland China as well. Xiao Hu, a 30-year-old graduate of Shanghai's Fudan University, shares an apartment near the university with younger students from the school. She splits her time between fretting that she needs to prepare for next year's graduate school entrance exams, and looking for work. Many of her former classmates knew where they were going with their lives even before they graduated, but Xiao Hu is still looking for a direction. She has mailed more job inquiries than she can count, but is exceptionally finicky about what kind of work she'll take. She has little to fill her days while she mulls her options, so she wanders around the familiar confines of the campus, hiding from the world, living the carefree life of a student, and pretending to enjoy herself. She and those like her call themselves "drifters."

The NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) phenomenon has historical precedents. The Han-Dynasty strategist Han Xin, who idled away his youth, and the Jin Dynasty's Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, notorious for frittering away their families' money on drunken indulgence, spring to mind, as do semi-autobiographical characters such as The Dream of the Red Chamber protagonist Jia Baoyu, the "mama's boy" who spent the better part of his life fooling around in the family compound.

Unofficial data place the number of Japanese "freeters" and NEETs at 5.4 million. Neither of these kinds of young people earns much money, which is reducing both the tax revenues and the competitive edge of the countries in which they live. The photo shows a Tokyo street scene.

Depending on their parents

In modern China, these kinds of people are known as "drifters" and, more vividly, as "eaters of the elderly." In Japan, they are called NEETs or hikikomori, "caged youth." (Some translators in Taiwan have jokingly explained the term as "home-squatting wastrels" and "cocooned kids.") In the US, meanwhile, they are known as "boomerang kids." Accustomed to cutting the umbilical cord and going it alone from the age of 16, American young people find the label hard to take. In Hong Kong, they are called "the twice failed" (because they've failed both in school and at work) or "hidden youth." Perhaps the most cutting terms in use are those in Taiwan, where puns on "NEET" yield "the wallowers" or "the drowned."

Generally speaking, NEETs come from comfortably off families, and are more highly educated and more "worldly wise" than others of the same age who are genuinely looking for work but have so far not found it. But this by no means indicates that they are more mature. Their doting parents pay their living expenses, and give them extra money for classes in areas of interest. Most have the skills to hold down a job, but choose instead to squat at home because they don't need to worry about their parents cutting them off. Their parents simply pay their way, never thinking about the consequences of such a course of action.

Multiple causes

What is driving this global trend toward dependent youth? In the US, socioeconomic conditions are changing. In Japan, there are cultural and psychological factors. In the documentary NEET, Suzuki responds to the question why he doesn't go out by saying he always had the sense that people behind him were giving him unfriendly looks, and that people talked about and criticized him behind his back. Over time, he just stopped interacting with others; his parents' home became his cozy fortress of solitude.

Similarly, more and more young people in Chinese-speaking regions are coming to prefer isolating themselves in their homes like modern-day recluses. They spend all day doing nothing but surfing the Internet, playing video games, and sleeping. They know they aren't accomplishing anything and that they lack drive, and are critical of themselves for it. But, lacking any real interests, they eventually they become so-called "hidden youths." Actually, the phenomenon isn't limited to young people--even the middle-aged and elderly are hiding themselves away.

The Hong Kong Christian Service website says that in Hong Kong "hidden youth" are defined as those who have not been in contact with or participated in "external systems" for three months. These external systems include social networks such as work, school, friends or community. In more serious cases, such youth lack even contact with internal networks (i.e. their families).

They don't know how to make friends, and have trouble even greeting people normally. In addition, they don't fit into ordinary social categories--they aren't students, they don't work and they rarely belong to clubs. Over time, they stop interacting with others, lose direction, lose the motivation to work, and even lose the will to live. One difference between these Hong Kong youth and Japan's NEETs is that they are poorly educated. Because they also have few skills and little motivation, they are sometimes known as the "three lows" youth in Hong Kong.

"I'm shy and introverted, not to mention generally slow," reads the blog of a young Hong Kong man calling himself "A-lun." "When I was working, I was given a really hard time for the way I am. Because of that, I'm even less willing to interview for work now. I'm afraid I'll fail. I'm probably dwelling on it more than I should, but I really am frightened. I guess I'm just fated to be good for nothing. I want to buck up... but I don't see that happening anytime soon."

Ideas about treatment vary

Why do young people withdraw from society? Is it an "illness"? What can be done to get them over "NEET Syndrome"? How do you help NEETs when the vast majority won't admit that there's anything wrong? At the end of NEET, the filmmakers interview the parents of NEETs, all of whom say they have no idea how their children ended up this way.

Japanese families find it embarrassing to have a NEET child, and most try to keep it quiet. Recent media attention to the issue hasn't made parents more aware and inclined to seek help, but instead more ashamed to face the problem and more likely to postpone seeking outside assistance for their kids.

When you've diagnosed an illness, you can prescribe the appropriate treatment. But there are two schools of thought on how to treat an unwillingness to grow up. Japanese experts generally recommend remaining calm and not putting too much pressure on these kids. They say that when such children figure out what they want, they'll emerge from their cocoons and reenter society of their own accord. Western doctors, on the other hand, recommend that parents act before the situation worsens. They say parents should ask (and, when necessary, force) their children to engage with the world outside their homes.

Over the last several years, the concept of support for socially withdrawn young people, as well as actual support in various forms, has caught on in Japan. Psychological and psychiatric treatments are now available, and 16 NEET support centers have been established nationwide. These centers take kids out of their parents' homes and place them in communal living situations that teach them to live independently and to interact with others. By living with others who suffer from the same problem, they learn that their problems are not unique and that they needn't face them alone. Their doting parents, meanwhile, are compelled to learn the lesson of the mother eagle--if their chicks are to learn to be independent, they must be pushed out of the nest. The evidence shows that the method works.

As Taiwanese director Edward Yang commented after receiving an award for his film on youth, A Confucian Confusion: "If you don't want to go out into society, society isn't going to come looking for you."

When evaluating maturity, the social side of the equation is more important than the physical. Today's young people can perhaps argue that they have withdrawn from society simply to have a moment's respite while they seek their true selves. But however you choose to make your way in the world, the first step is your own. If you are to live without regrets, you must march boldly forward and give as good as you get.