I'm very confused about how to correctly refer to individuals in a group. For example, which one is correct?
The correct verb to use with a collective noun is often confusing. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether your statement is mostly about the individual members of that group, or if it mostly concerns the group as a single entity. Respectively, these uses would take the plural and the singular.
Today's youth have begun to ignore what is happening around them.
Today's youth is the most technologically knowledgeable generation ever.
The second and third ones sound more natural to me. However, for the sake of consistency, I would go with the second one, "Today's youth have begun to ignore what is happening around them".
This is a bit of a tricky subject.
I believe the first is more grammatically correct, however the third is likely more common in speech.
"Youth" is a singular noun, therefore it takes the pronoun "it" and conjugation "has."
For example, "Youth" should be treated the same as "apple":
"The apple has not rotted yet. However, it does smell bad"
The fact that "youth" in this case refers to a collection as opposed to a single person plays no part.
However, in common practice, you would likely see the last case. The reason for this is that on a case by case basis, when using a pronoun, we cease to refer to "youth" as a unit, and instead refer to them as individuals. For example:
"Today's youth smells bad" --> Here we could replace "Today's youth" with "it".
However,
"Today's youth should shower more often" --> Here we could replace "Today's youth" with "they".
I would absolutely never say "Today's youth should showers more often", even though "should showers" is the singular conjugation.
Even to my ears, the third sounds the most natural.
