By Katia Yasmine, Managing Director, TRACCS Lebanon
Lebanon is awakening to a fragile but promising new chapter. After years of economic and social turbulence, the nation is inching toward reform, politically, economically, and culturally, with renewed momentum and the promise of elections in 2026. Yet as the country begins to rebuild, one question looms large: who will tell its story?
At TRACCS Lebanon, we believe that answer lies with its young people; the dreamers who stayed, and those still daring to believe. They are the generation capable of reimagining not only Lebanon’s future, but also the way it communicates with itself and the world.
Renewing the Narrative: From Survival to Possibility
According to Information International, an estimated 875,000 people left Lebanon between 2019 and 2022, compared with 600,000 in the previous 26 years. Among them, a disproportionate number are educated, digitally fluent youth; the very generation needed to rebuild.
For many young Lebanese in the past six years leaving felt like the only option. African News Agency reports that 61% of college-educated Lebanese want to emigrate, compared with 37% of those with less education; a staggering figure that reflects a loss of faith in the future.
Yet communicators and citizens alike must resist this fatalism. Young people have always been the first to challenge the status quo, to ask “what if?” and to imagine alternatives. They are not passive message-receivers but message-creators, shaping stories that can shift collective energy from endurance to renewal.
In the communication field, this means empowering independent voices such as digital creators, grassroots movements, and social-impact startups to tell stories of progress rather than paralysis. When youth imagine a Lebanon worth staying for, they help the nation do the same.
Rebuilding a Communication Culture
Communication is more than sending messages; it defines how a society connects and builds trust. Lebanon’s communication ecosystem today is fractured: sectors talk past one another, media trust is low, and digital spaces are noisy but often unreliable.
A 2023 UNDP report on youth in Lebanon cites “unemployment, informality, brain drain, and lack of government support” as barriers to participation. Yet these same young people, already skilled in digital communication, can become bridges across social divides.
Their strengths include:
- Authentic digital fluency: With internet penetration at 86.6% and social-media use at 90.5% (DataReportal – Global Digital Insights, 2023), youth can turn online engagement into meaningful dialogue.
- Narrative-shifting voices: They question authority and tell stories from the ground up, restoring credibility through authenticity.
- Hybrid competence: Digital natives blend creativity, analytics, and community insight; skills critical for modern communication.
- Social cohesion: As UNDP notes, youth already use networks to mitigate crisis. Empowering them to lead communication strengthens civic trust.
In short, young people must be seen not as audiences of communication, but as its architects.
Why Stay and Build?
For TRACCS Lebanon, and for the country, staying is not naïve, it’s strategic.
- First-mover advantage: Those who stay and act now will shape the post-crisis narrative. Early voices often become enduring ones.
- Leapfrog potential: With nearly 5 million internet users in a population of 5.4 million (DataReportal, 2023), Lebanon’s digital ecosystem is primed for innovation and social-impact storytelling.
- Competitive communication culture: Transparent, networked, purpose-driven communication is now a national advantage and youth bring it by default.
A Message to Lebanon’s Dreamers
Lebanon’s challenges are immense, but so are its assets: digital connectivity, creative energy, and a generation of youth fluent in both. This is not blind optimism, it is strategic hope.
Young people are not peripheral to rebuilding; they are central. Communication is not a luxury; it is the foundation on which trust, economy, and society are rebuilt.
To those still dreaming in Lebanon: staying may feel like swimming against the tide, but that is how new currents form. Your creativity and fluency are exactly what the country needs to move from crisis to renewal.
At TRACCS Lebanon, we are ready to build with you, not for you.
Because staying is not standing still, it’s shaping the story of what comes next.