I’ve been reflecting on a passing conversation I had at the Jersey County Fair this year. A man I was speaking to made a comment about how kids are soft nowadays. It bothered me for reasons beyond my usual dislike of conversations with strangers out in public. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on why it irked me at the time. Later I found an article about the tendency of older generations to criticize younger ones that addressed some of the things I was having trouble putting into words. The current generation of young people* are labeled as lazy, overly sensitive, and materialistic. We criticize them for being glued to their phones, but I think in doing so we’re often forgetting that we were the ones who put those phones in their hands.
I also started thinking of all the social media memes designed to appeal to 80’s kids like me. They usually make reference to how our parents never knew where we were, we drank from the garden hose, rode around in the bed of trucks, and found unique/weird ways to entertain ourselves. Many of these posts also tend to mock today’s young people, saying, “They couldn’t handle life the way we grew up” because we tend to think of ourselves as pretty tough. I decided to ask my parents what stereotyped things were said about 80’s kids while we were growing up:
“You can’t understand the words to their songs and that rap music is just terrible.”
“These kids can’t count change and they’re helpless without a calculator. They can’t even read the time on a clock”
“They require instant gratification and can’t learn without Sesame Street.”
“They’re too soft. They didn’t have to walk a mile to school in the snow both ways.”
“They’ve got it too easy and they’re privileged. They don’t know the meaning of hard work.”
Older generations definitely didn’t think that we were cool, tough, and “just so above it all” the way we thought of ourselves. She also let me know that many of these were typical comments made about kids who were growing up in the late 50s and 60s as well. In fact, some of the common statements about the baby boomers when they were children were that they were* dirty, immoral, lazy kids who didn’t want to work.
In other words all of the “these kids today” comments that we make (perhaps while shaking our fists in the air) have all been made before…about us…all of us. I don’t care if you’re reading this at the age of 25 or 95. When you were a kid, older people probably said your generation was going to be the downfall of civilization. Interestingly, this just hasn’t happened.
So where does this negative view of young people come from? Studies suggest* that it comes from faulty memories and bias. In fact, one study from 2019 found that the higher that participants rated themselves in the areas of respect for authority, intelligence, and enjoyment of reading, the lower they rated the current generation of kids. The conclusion was that people carry their own biases as they reflect on themselves. They determine that they grew up in a way that is superior, and then they look down on the youth and see them as flawed and inferior.
There might actually be some really good news about this current generation of young people. It turns out that the youth today are engaging in underage drinking and partying significantly less than their own parents. Their teen pregnancy rate is 77% less than teen Gen Xers. Overall, they’re also more focused on their grades. It could be that they are actually making some choices that are much more positive than we did.
I think it’s important for us adults to remember that the kids today are doing exactly what we were doing when we were kids: doing the best they can to grow up in the world that has been created for them by older people. Jeff Foxworthy faced some eye rolls in his Netflix special for a joke that’s a bit of a cliche. He joked about young adults who grew up in an era where everyone who played a sport received a trophy. The part about this where people rolled their eyes is that those kids didn’t give themselves trophies…they were provided by their parents. As for the worry that the kids today will be the downfall of civilization, I’d just like to gently remind readers that those who hold power don’t tend to be young people. Many of the people who make big decisions in our country tend to have gray hair. If we want this and future generations of young people to have the best chance at growing into adults of strong moral fiber, it’s our responsibility to create a world that allows that to happen instead of complaining that they don’t figure it out on their own while they’re still young.
*https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/6/23649003/every-generation-has-been-doomed-yet-were-still-here/