WASHINGTON — The United States may soon go to war there, but only 13 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find Iraq on a map, according to a National Geographic survey released Wednesday.
The United States has been involved in a yearlong war in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime and al-Qaida terrorists following the Sept. 11 attacks, but 83 percent of those surveyed could not find Afghanistan on a world map, the survey found.
“If our young people can’t find places on a map and lack awareness of current events, how can they understand the world’s cultural, economic and natural resource issues that confront us?” asked National Geographic Society President John Fahey.
The National Geographic study was conducted by the RoperASW organization in June and July among 3,000 respondents ages 18 to 24 in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Sweden.
An average of 19 percent of young adults in the nine countries were able to locate Iraq. In Britain, America’s closest ally in confronting Iraq, only 10 percent could, while the more nearly neutral Sweden had the top showing of 30 percent.
American youths were the least able of those surveyed to identify Afghanistan as the base of al-Qaida and the Taliban, the study found.
“This is not the fault of young people, but the responsibility of the culture that has reared them,” Fahey said. “These are children born of the Information Age. Their lives are spammed with information and entertainment alternatives. As a result, this generation is highly skilled at tuning out that which they feel they do not need to know. Unfortunately, that seems to include knowledge of the world they live in.”
Other findings of the study were just as startling. More American respondents knew that the island in last season’s “Survivor” television show was in the South Pacific — the Marquesas Islands — than were able to locate Israel, which has been a center of conflict for a half-century.
Fewer than half of American youths could identify China, Great Britain or Japan on a map. Less than a third of all nine countries’ respondents could find the Pacific Ocean.
Fewer than a quarter of the young adults of France, Canada, Britain and the U.S. could name four countries that have nuclear weapons.