The Osservatorio Giovani & Sostenibilità by Angelini Industries explores the expectations and behaviours of under-30s. Join us in Turin on 8 October to discuss the findings.
Young Italians know full well that technology and the natural environment are not separate worlds. And that, inevitably, even the digital realm carries an environmental cost: 46 per cent of under-30s consider it as serious as that associated with fossil fuels or deforestation. That said, artificial intelligence is still very much an ally for them — now an integral part of daily life: around seven in ten use it often or occasionally, while just 15 per cent make an effort to go without it. Awareness, in short, does not translate into an outright rejection of technology, but rather into the conviction that one must play one's own part in shaping its evolution. Indeed, 42 per cent expect the strongest push towards sustainability to come from young people themselves, while around 30 per cent assign this role to businesses or politics. This tension between awareness and pragmatism can be read between the lines of the third edition of the Osservatorio Giovani & Sostenibilità, conducted by market research firms Csa and Quorum/YouTrend for Angelini Industries.
Founded over a century ago in Ancona as a family business, Angelini Industries is today an international group operating across three areas: health, industrial technologies and consumer goods. The Osservatorio Giovani & Sostenibilità launched in 2024, with a first study — presented that year at the Festival dell'Economia in Trento — exploring the expectations and behaviours of under-30s. The 2025 edition, in addition to tracking how the data evolves, delves deeper into the relationship between sustainability and wellbeing through the One Health perspective. The third edition continues along this path and offers an in-depth look at the topic of the moment: the impact of artificial intelligence.
"For an industrial group like Angelini Industries, the perspective of young people represents far more than a snapshot of emerging social sensibilities: observing, analysing and understanding it in depth helps us grasp today the expectations of those who will be, tomorrow, workers, consumers and, more broadly, citizens," Isabella Falautano, Group Chief Sustainability & Holding Chief Communication Officer of Angelini Industries, tells LifeGate.
The Osservatorio Giovani & Sostenibilità 2026 is the result of multiple surveys. In the first, a panel of 1,713 people — comprising 975 adults aged 18 to 74 and 738 under-30s — completed a digital questionnaire, supplemented by six ethnographic monographs exploring individual experiences and behaviours. The second survey, also conducted online, covered one thousand young people aged 14 to 29 who are registered on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. For the first time, the voices of under-14s from Generation Alpha are also included.
"The new generations have grown up as digital natives. Above all, they experience sustainability not as an optional extra, but as a dimension increasingly integrated into everyday choices, consumption behaviours and expectations towards businesses. They are, in every sense, sustainability natives, and they are redefining the very meaning of sustainability — with a significant impact on the world of work, since they ask companies not only for economic results and clear processes, but also for responsibility, transparency and positive impact," Falautano continues.
Unlike their parents, young people of Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) grew up during a period when sustainability-related issues were already an integral part of public debate and shared experience. It comes as no surprise, then, that 56 per cent of the under-30s surveyed say they keep themselves informed on the topic — a figure that drops to 43 per cent among Generation Alpha teenagers. Furthermore, 76 per cent believe that their own future wellbeing depends — entirely or to a considerable extent — on sustainability; that is ten percentage points more than the overall sample.
Studies like this are particularly interesting because they allow declarations of principle to be compared with actual behaviours. And it is here that a tension emerges. More than half of under-30s are so disillusioned that they believe sustainability targets will not be met and that the degradation of the planet and communities is therefore irreversible. Yet this disillusionment does not translate into a generalised disengagement, but rather into a more selective and pragmatic attitude.
Over the past three years, the percentage of respondents who have already made, or are willing to make, demanding changes — such as adopting a vegetarian diet (down from 14 to 8 per cent of the one thousand under-30s selected via social media) and purchasing organic products (down from 38 to 28 per cent) — has fallen slightly. What "holds up" are primarily actions that combine environmental and social benefits with economic ones, such as reducing water consumption (up from 31 to 35 per cent of the 1,713-person panel) and energy use (up from 21 to 24 per cent). Against this backdrop, young people nonetheless remain willing to pay a slightly higher price (all else being equal) for a genuinely sustainable product: almost 60 per cent of the sample say so — a figure far higher than the 42 per cent seen across the general population. Moreover, one in two under-30s says they are ready to boycott companies deemed insufficiently responsible.
According to Isabella Falautano, this is an important signal. "For businesses, this means investing in products, services and operating models capable of making sustainable choices increasingly accessible, easy to adopt and competitive in terms of the value they offer. At the same time," she adds, "the quality of communication is becoming ever more important. Promises are no longer enough: what builds trust is concrete evidence, verifiable metrics and transparent reporting of the impact produced. For companies, this entails a major commitment to being consistent with the motto walk the talk — that is, do what you say — but I would add: say what you do, with authenticity and genuine dialogue."
The pursuit of a sustainable lifestyle permeates countless choices — large and small — in daily life: commuting by public transport or by car? Throwing away a coat gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe or reselling it? Buying an electric car or a petrol one? Less straightforward is questioning digital technologies: services that may appear immaterial, yet are built on physical infrastructures that consume energy and resources.
On this front too, those surveyed by the Angelini Industries Osservatorio Giovani & Sostenibilità appear well aware. The one thousand young men and women aged 14 to 29 place reducing the energy consumption of technologies at the top of their priorities (45 per cent), followed by an ethical and responsible adoption of AI and innovation (36 per cent), design considerations (27 per cent), the protection of user privacy and rights (27 per cent), and curbing digital overexposure (26 per cent).
Giving up artificial intelligence, however, is within the realm of possibility for just 15 per cent of the sample. In fact, under-30s use it more intensively than the general population on average, particularly for study and work (68 per cent of the sample). Young people do not fear that AI platforms will end up replacing workers, but they do recognise the need to update their own skills in order to collaborate effectively with these systems.
"The new generations adopt artificial intelligence naturally and rapidly, harnessing its potential to access information, produce content and solve problems. But this transformation brings with it questions we cannot avoid: how do we ensure that speed does not replace depth? How do we preserve critical thinking, autonomous judgement, the ability to question complexity? How do we prevent young people from falling into cognitive delegation?" Falautano adds. "We do not believe the challenge is to choose between technology and human skills. We believe the challenge is to make them work together. To that end, through our corporate learning company, Angelini Academy, we promote training programmes, research and dialogue with international academic institutions, to help shape new educational models in the age of artificial intelligence — so that it becomes not a substitute for human intelligence, but an amplifier of it."
The observatory's data will serve as the starting point for a debate on "Sustainability and new technologies: what do under-30s really think?". This is the title of the event scheduled for Thursday 8 October at 17:00 in the Mirror Room of Villa Sanquirico, in Turin. It is one of the events of Tech Villa, the official fringe programme linked to Wave by Vento (the event previously known as Italian Tech Week).
The research will be at the centre of a conversation between Isabella Falautano, who will explore its key themes and the role of Angelini Industries, and Lorenzo Pregliasco, director of the web magazine YouTrend, who will interpret the results in light of current affairs. Joining them will be Giulia Gambini, Alumna Aiesec (the world's largest student association), and Piero Carloni, co-founder of Aura System, a startup that develops breathing green walls for air quality and is part of the LifeGate Way ecosystem.
The event will be hosted by Giovanni Mori, environmental engineer, science communicator and host of LifeGate's daily podcast News dal pianeta Terra. Entry is free. For those who cannot be in Turin, a special episode of News dal pianeta Terra will also be recorded on the occasion, subsequently available on the main streaming platforms.
Sponsored article