NEET-Youth: Interdisciplinary research

The article continues a series of articles on the NEET youth published in the journal in 2020-2022. The article aims at summarizing the results of scientific research on NEETs and identifying new trends in the study of this special group, whose representatives are poorly integrated into society because they do not work, do not receive an education, and do not care about developing their personal qualities. The author selected forty-five scientific articles on NEET issues in different countries and regions, published on the ResearchGate platform in 2022-2025, and information on hikikomori in the academic databases Scopus and Web of Science for 2021-2025. The articles were sorted according to their headings: typology and nature of NEETs; hikikomori as a specific identity of NEETs; factors of the NEET group growth; search for new approaches to study the NEET youth. The author identified the following new trends: recognition of the need for interdisciplinary research on the NEET youth (by sociologists, psychologists, economists, psychiatrists and biologists); BRVrification of the typology of NEET by studying its heterogeneous strata; identification of the youth with the NEET group; spread of the hikikomori phenomenon beyond Japan; deepening understanding of the biological roots of NEET (discovery of hikikomori biomarkers); expansion of the NEET group beyond the age limits of the youth (adult NEETs); study of NEET problems in relation to social disintegration and isolation. The article concludes with issues for further research and the author’s position that a unified concept of the NEET youth is possible if such unifying features as a dependent mindset and a consumer attitude toward society are recognized.