Ah, youth. Young people, fresh out of high school or college, have a different view of the world. They have a high-energy to tackle new challenges. They are generally excited about what’s to come, and the unknown, though slightly anxiety-inducing, is more exhilarating than terrifying as it brings the possibility for new adventures and new lessons learned. That is why taking the digital nomad route as a young person might be the most suitable time to try the lifestyle out! Digital nomadism should be for everyone willing to give it an honest try. Young people have many of the tangible and intangible characteristics that enable a successful attempt of the lifestyle.
So, what are the main advantages of being a digital nomad when you are young? They are:
• The right time in their phase of life
• Resilient – ability to bounce back
• An open mindset for exploration and discovery
• Prefer freedom and willing to work to stay free
• Technologically savvy to use digital technology
This article will discuss some of the advantages of being a young digital nomad, as well as some of the mindset shifts young digital nomads can strive for. Knowing your potential as a young digital nomad can help you approach the world with confidence, which makes life just a little bit easier.
The Right Time in Their Phase of Life
Young digital nomads jump into the workforce with a fresh perspective and zest for life that comes with inexperience. This lack of experience should not be viewed as a weakness, but rather a strength. It’s quite a beautiful place to be in life because the world is their oyster to learn from and take lessons from to help shape their future career endeavors and personal convictions. There are no “painful lessons learned” to dull their energy force.
Young digital nomads have a certain power that helps them hit the ground running with enthusiasm. They have little expectations, so they are willing to say yes to nearly every opportunity. It can help them land their next gig or find their next professional stepping stone. They are eager to find inspiration from multiple sources and are ready to travel nearly anywhere in the world with this excitement. They are quite often fearless.
The working youth population is often in personal positions in their lives that allow them the freedom to move around. Most of the time, young professionals just out of school or looking for work are very career-focused, and are not yet married or have children. They are not required to be bound to one place to work, and they generally don’t have to take care of anyone else but themselves.
Trying out the digital nomad lifestyle is most ideal when people are young and have more room to take risks and try new things without severe consequences. Nobody depends on young people for emotional or financial care. The worst thing that can happen to them as a young digital nomad is that they fail or find out the lifestyle is not for them. It’s better to be young, take risks, make mistakes, and know the outcome rather than to be wondering “what if I had taken that leap?”
Resilient – Ability to Bounce Back
To be resilient, which means the ability to bounce back even stronger after setbacks or failures, is one of the things that a digital nomad needs to have. In the course of their travels, moving to another country, and especially in establishing their digital business and making it enough money to continue their lifestyle, there will be setbacks. It is here that resiliency plays a vital part. For young people, this is an essential skill and mindset to acquire, and the good thing is that youth often have the energy to push this skill forward.
Some of the elements that youth and being resilient need to have when facing setbacks is confidence in themselves and the belief that they can do the things that they set out to do. Committing to new goals when they are a digital nomad is vital because when the setbacks come, you need to reaffirm that commitment. It is part of being resilient.
Two other elements may give youth an advantage when pursuing a digital nomad lifestyle. The first is a mindset that seeks to grow and learn from mistakes. Once a mistake or setback happens, one needs the energy and the mindset to grow from it. By growing, I mean that they need to learn from the mistakes and decide not to make the same mistake again. In this way, the setback becomes a lesson.
The second thing is that when you are trying something new, and trying to find a way to make it work, you must allow yourself to feel faster and learn those lessons. It is especially true in building, for example, a freelance business where you are continually working on new projects. For young people, feeling faster to find out the best way to serve the customer is one of the healthiest mindsets you can have.
An Open Mindset for Exploration and Discovery
Youth want to explore new things all the time. They get bored extremely fast, and sometimes never want to do the same thing twice. They have motivation and mindset to explore ideas and to discover new things as soon as there is even a hint of things being repetitive or not exciting enough for them.
This type of motivation and mindset can be a very positive thing for a young digital nomad. It is this character trait that can push them to discover new cultures, new sights, new sounds wherever they are. They’re open to doing new things and want excitement and look eagerly for things that they have never done before. It often happens when we grow older that this motivation and an open mindset for exploration and discovery tends to take a backseat to other pressing responsibilities. It is this area that youth have an excellent advantage to use their natural motivation for exploration.
Prefer Freedom and Willing to Work to Stay Free
Youth often feel the need to break out of the norm and pursue freedom. They want to break out of the status quo. Young people don’t have too many responsibilities to be thinking about daily. They have the freedom and quite literally, the room to think about one thing at a time. They yearn for new experiences, to get out of their old routine, their old house, their old school, etc. As we have explored in other articles, you can manifest so much in your life based on the mindset you bring to the world.
If you visualize success and freedom, you are that much closer to achieving it in real life, and so many young people have dreams they visualize for themselves. Though some cynical people might say these dreams are due to naivety, young people will say these dreams are worth going after, and no dream is too big for them!
Young digital nomads can become location independent and travel the world all while building their careers. Young people often express a sincere desire to travel and see as much of the world as they can before settling down with a family at a home base. Young people have abounding energy to hop from one place to another as they build their careers and see the world.
They can kill two birds with one stone- traveling the world before they settle down all while drawing career inspiration from the many different places they discover and people they meet along the way. Not to mention, young people can be more flexible and adapt to the physical demands of travel a bit better than older folks.
In addition to physical freedom, young digital nomads, if they make smart career moves, create financial freedom for themselves. Their flexible work schedules allow them to adapt to new places and find ways to make money in whatever way they want from wherever they want. They don’t have to rack up vacation days at the office to take time off for a trip. They can choose to work as much or as little as they want.
They can often build a high financial safety net by working more than one project at a time. Finding their side hustles and allowing themselves to make their own hours and structure their lives to focus more on making money or more on the joys of traveling. It’s all up to them what they choose to do with the digital nomad lifestyle.
Of course, if they are not self-determined enough, then they might not be very successful. If they are truly hard workers and know how to put in the right amount of time, effort and make wise decisions, they have the potential to have a booming career entirely on their terms. Working up the ladder as they go and becoming their own bosses from an early age.
Technologically Savvy
If you are a digital nomad, by definition, you use digital technologies to sustain your lifestyle while you are traveling and moving from country to country. To do this, you need to be comfortable with cloud and mobile telecommunications technologies.
It’s a common known fact that younger people are very comfortable with the digital side of things. Generation Z, those who were born between the years of 1995-present, are the first generation to grow up with the internet. Therefore, their comfort zone in life, whether that be via communication, the way they travel, or the way they work comes from the use of technological platforms and less face-to-face communication.
Younger people are more used to communicating via text or video chat than older generations. Therefore, the transition to working this way full time might be easier for someone comfortable with these techniques more so than someone coming from an office lifestyle, which depends more on face-to-face communication.
Mentally, they are simply more equipped to handle this transition, which can be tough and lonely for someone not used to this way of communicating. Young digital nomads are less likely to look at digital work as isolating or lonely, which can take a huge emotional toll on someone and ultimately affect work output.
Because the internet of things and the digital speed of the world around us demands immediate gratification and the general simplification of everything, it makes sense that young people look for that same convenience in their professional lives as well. If they can simplify their lives even more by working from their computer or phone from anywhere in the world, then it makes a lot of sense why they would jump on that opportunity.
For young people looking to build their digital nomad career, the learning curve when it comes to technologically based work is not as high for them as it might be for older generations. It allows young digital nomads to be competitive job candidates and very desirable to employers looking to hire from anywhere in the world.
Young people, when starting their digital nomad career, should leverage this. Though they might start inexperienced, they learn extremely fast, and they might very well be the generation with the most untapped potential.
Final Thoughts
More and more young people are yearning for a location independent lifestyle that allows them more time for productivity, helps them build their confidence, and enables a life full of freedom both mentally and financially. The decision to hop into the digital nomad lifestyle as a young person might seem unreasonable or impulsive to some people, like family members and friends. However, the youth are some of the best, most capable people to achieve the digital nomad lifestyle dream.
They are in the best positions in their lives to do so, with little to no responsibilities in terms of being responsible for others. They don’t have many ties to specific people or places, so they have the freedom to move around. They have little to no experience in the professional world, and so they are eager to build their career visions through the cultural and professional experiences they can cultivate abroad.
Regardless of whether the digital nomad lifestyle is right for a young person or that person’s business takes off, trying out the lifestyle is mostly low-risk at a young age. It can help a young person realize they desire more stability and a more traditional lifestyle or help them realize they are made to wander.
They will quickly learn whether they are confident, independent, and mentally and physically capable enough to do so. It’s best to learn these things at a younger age so as not to waste future time.
It takes a particular type of young person to go for their dreams. Regardless of what the outcome is, these young people that attempt the digital nomad lifestyle can be sure they continue to lead their lives without regrets.
I’m the owner of Digital Nomad Explorer. I’ve traveled to over 50 countries and been an expat in Scotland, Finland, and China. I was a digital nomad while having my own robotics company and traveled throughout Europe and China working remotely. Currently, I’m location independent with a home base in Kirkkonummi, Finland.
