good-for-nothing

BBCの日本の引きこもりについての記事です。

Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

As many as a million young people in Japan are thought to remain holed up in their homes - sometimes for decades at a time. Why?
＜中略＞
Job-hopping Japanese were called "freeters" - a combination of the word "freelance" and the German word for "worker", arbeiter. In political discussion, freeters were frequently bundled together with "neets" - an adopted British acronym meaning "not in education, employment or training". Neets, freeters, hikikomori - these were ways of describing the good-for-nothing younger generation, parasites on the flagging Japanese economy. The older generation, who graduated and slotted into steady careers in the 1960s and 1970s, could not relate to them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23182523

good-for-nothingは名詞で「〈軽蔑的〉役立たず者、かい性なし、ごくつぶし」形容詞で「〈軽蔑的〉役立たずな、かい性がない、能なしの」という意味になります。（英辞郎 on the WEB)　Merriam-Webster Dictionaryにも"of no use or value"と簡潔に定義されています。

記事に"hikikomori"がOEDに載っているとあったので、ODOで調べてみると、"(in Japan) the abnormal avoidance of social contact, typically by adolescent males. "とありました。また、記事によるとヨーロッパでもこの"hikikomori"に似たような問題が起きているようです。引きこもりは日本だけの問題ではなくなってきているのですね。(Hatahata)