Are today's youngsters really worse?

[Simon_Jester]

Well I say if its that old who are we to break away from tradition?

Sane people? Smart people? Historically literate people?

At least, "we" would like to be such people, for certain definitions of "we."

[Falarica]

Clearly you have never seen the students at my university. Aged 18-25 or so and about 30% of them are never going to amount to anything. They freely admit that and plan to have as many parties as possible before their student loan runs out.

This is also my experience, but enough of them get it into their heads about now that they need that they need to do some work so they don't fail the year that it isn't ~30%. There will always be some that drop out, but is this number any different from 20 years ago. I doubt it. That being said going to university was a massive culture shock for me as I'm not such a party animal, but that's part of the point in going (aside from getting your degree etc) so that you meet that type of person.

To address the OP. I cannot give a completely unbiased opinion as I am part of the demographic you describe. But I wonder if the reaction of our parents of 'youth culture' of today (whatever that means) is all that different from their parents to 'youth culture' of their time (miniskirts or rock music or 'hippy culture' or whatever).

[RogueIce]

I think it's been said that as time has gone on, teachers have had fewer means to enforce discipline in their classrooms.

So is it that kids these days are really worse in their general mindset, or that they can just get away with more than kids of old could? IOW, kids "back in the day" may well have been as 'bad' as kids today, but they just couldn't get to that point before getting curbed by teachers and the administration (in school), parents, police, etc.

Of course, many of the means in question frequently involved arbitrary 'discipline' such as "I will beat you for doing things I don't like," and were often applied disproportionately to students who stood out for any reason other than "is teacher's pet."

We moved away from that for a reason.

Well, I'm not talking about those extremes. But I've heard it vented by various teachers I know that when you send a kid to the office for being disruptive, the Office doesn't back them up. The kids figure this out and act accordingly. I know I saw plenty of that during my high school years as well.

Now I'll admit this is probably not always true, and depends on who the administrators are (in my days, amusingly enough, one of the APs was more likely to punish than the principal herself).

[Elheru Aran]

It's not just school, though. I see examples often enough of parents who literally just let their kids fend for themselves every day. Most aren't that bad, but when it comes to disciplining kids, there's a ongoing issue, I think, of parents simply not caring enough to tell their kids to stop being little fuckheads. Yet if some adult gets on to those kids, their parents get all up in that adult's face about leaving their kids alone...

I don't know how high the teen pregnancy rate is either, but every day when I used to work at Taco Bell (less than a year ago), I'd see mothers who couldn't have been much past 16 or 17 with their babies. How do you think those kids are going to turn out? Do you think those girls really thought about at least packing a condom or two in their purses before going out with the guy that fathered their kid? Do you think *their* parents were concerned enough to advise their kids to use protection, knowing well that if they fucked and they got pregnant, odds are the girl's never going to go through college if she keeps the baby?

Note that I think there's a certain class divide in this regard. Kids that come from a more well-off background tend to go to better schools and have a slightly better upbringing *on average*. I don't know how true that is, though, so...

[Broomstick]

It's not just school, though. I see examples often enough of parents who literally just let their kids fend for themselves every day. Most aren't that bad, but when it comes to disciplining kids, there's a ongoing issue, I think, of parents simply not caring enough to tell their kids to stop being little fuckheads. Yet if some adult gets on to those kids, their parents get all up in that adult's face about leaving their kids alone...

Nothing new. 30 years ago the man/boy who tried to rape me, and who did rape several other girls, among other criminal acts, had parents exactly like that. Little wonder he and his older brother are serving lengthy prison terms in a State Pen.

My mother used to always say that the kids on her block either became cops or criminals, about equal numbers of each. That would have been... 65-70 years ago. Neglect was as common as ever, and abuse more frequent and worse.

Nothing new there.

I don't know how high the teen pregnancy rate is either, but every day when I used to work at Taco Bell (less than a year ago), I'd see mothers who couldn't have been much past 16 or 17 with their babies. How do you think those kids are going to turn out? Do you think those girls really thought about at least packing a condom or two in their purses before going out with the guy that fathered their kid?

How many teenage girls do you think have the mental gumption to insist on a condom when their boyfriends don't want to wear one, or when the kids use going bareback as an expression of Tru Luv 4eva?

Do you think *their* parents were concerned enough to advise their kids to use protection, knowing well that if they fucked and they got pregnant, odds are the girl's never going to go through college if she keeps the baby?

When I was that age it was still common for girls not to be told about menstruation - this lead to all sorts of "hilarity" in girls' bathrooms from time to time. In my day, the shower room scene from Carrie played out more than once (well, minus the telekinesis).

When my older sisters where that age the Pill was almost unavailable to girls under 21 - even with parental permission. In some states it was not legal to give the Pill to unmarried women of ANY age until 1972.

When my mother was that age the Pill didn't exist. The only birth control was the condom.

This is an area where things have improved.

Also - even in MY day it was common for a girl to be expelled from school for pregnancy. A classmate of mine who got pregnant had to go before the school board in order to finish high school, and even then there was a petition passed around by some parents not to permit her to attend graduation ceremonies, and calling for the explusion of both her and her boyfriend. This was considered entirely normal and appropriate. Prior to the 1970's girls got pregnant at that age were not only kicked out of school permanently but forced to give up their kids. Now, while offering the kid for adoption might be a good option snatching the baby away from a mother before she ever sees it, having no say in losing that child forever (a lot of the secrecy around adoption involved, essentially, punishing young, unwed mothers) is questionable at best.

In my mother's day such a girl was often sent to "reform school" - essentially, juvenile prison - for the "crime" of pregnancy, and suffered severe social shunning the rest of her life.

Again, I think, despite some serious on-going problems, this is another area that has become more humane. Having a baby does not forever bar a girl from finishing high school or going to college. I had several college classmates my age who had had children in their late teens (one as early as 14). This is more and more common, as there are fewer social obstacles to girls continuing their education after giving birth. Note I said "giving birth" - until the latter half of the 20th Century girls permanently lost access to education after giving birth even if they did not keep the children. Nowadays the option to continue education is there. It's tragic more don't exercise that option, but realizing her mistake in dropping out of school 5 or 10 years down the line she can at least try to rectify that mistake. In my parents generation that was impossible.

Note that I think there's a certain class divide in this regard. Kids that come from a more well-off background tend to go to better schools and have a slightly better upbringing *on average*. I don't know how true that is, though, so...

As school funding in the US is tied to property values that is quite true in the US.

[Tritio]

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.

That's 2700 years ago. And they still complain about the same thing today. Yet if we look at progress, the world has progressed a great deal indeed.

[Korvan]

Clearly you have never seen the students at my university. Aged 18-25 or so and about 30% of them are never going to amount to anything. They freely admit that and plan to have as many parties as possible before their student loan runs out.

This is also my experience, but enough of them get it into their heads about now that they need that they need to do some work so they don't fail the year that it isn't ~30%. There will always be some that drop out, but is this number any different from 20 years ago. I doubt it. That being said going to university was a massive culture shock for me as I'm not such a party animal, but that's part of the point in going (aside from getting your degree etc) so that you meet that type of person.

To address the OP. I cannot give a completely unbiased opinion as I am part of the demographic you describe. But I wonder if the reaction of our parents of 'youth culture' of today (whatever that means) is all that different from their parents to 'youth culture' of their time (miniskirts or rock music or 'hippy culture' or whatever).

I attended university about 20 years ago and now, pushing 40 I find myself back in college. I now find myself surrounded by a bunch of slackers who leave assignments till right before the due date, hardly study at all, and waste time like nobodies business. Pretty much exactly how it was 20 years ago, the only difference this time is I'm not slacking off as much having learned some hard lessons the first time around.

[Elheru Aran]

The running thought I see here is that not a whole lot has changed; this attitude of "these damn kids nowadays" is a human universal for the most part. How do you think this came to be, then? What makes older people think that, even though they know perfectly well they went through the exact same treatment when they were younger?

[Simon_Jester]

I think what Broomstick's saying is very cogent- in many cases, we assume things are different and worse now, ignoring how they were far, far worse in so many respects a few decades ago because they were worse in different ways.

Clearly you have never seen the students at my university. Aged 18-25 or so and about 30% of them are never going to amount to anything. They freely admit that and plan to have as many parties as possible before their student loan runs out.

This is also my experience, but enough of them get it into their heads about now that they need that they need to do some work so they don't fail the year that it isn't ~30%. There will always be some that drop out, but is this number any different from 20 years ago. I doubt it. That being said going to university was a massive culture shock for me as I'm not such a party animal, but that's part of the point in going (aside from getting your degree etc) so that you meet that type of person.

Main difference? Twenty or thirty years ago, a lot of those kids wouldn't be going to college, because there was more cultural awareness that sending unmotivated people of average or lower aptitude into higher education was a waste of time.

If you'd sent these kids' equivalents of one or two generations ago to college, they'd probably have made fools of themselves then as now, but outside the upper class*, they wouldn't be there in the first place.

*For the elite, college educations were more common, but as a direct consequence you saw a lot of average-aptitude students with rich parents getting the infamous "Gentleman's C." You also saw curriculum tailored much more extensively to the things upper-class children were statistically more likely to master, such as Latin and Greek. A lot of average-aptitude people in those days learned Latin because it was the hallmark of the upper class, and their parents could afford the tutors to teach average-aptitude kids a new language.

[dworkin]

Observer error. People typically view the past through rose-tinted glasses. They gloss over the rough bits and actions they'ld prefer to forget. The current generations misdemenors are more in-your-face however.

[Big Phil]

There are some generational differences, however; for example, communication styles. Today's teens and early 20-somethings speak in shorter sentences than people 10 or 20 years older. The use of texting language, for example. There are also serious debates about the value of teaching cursive in schools.

The one thing I have noticed is the sense of entitlement in teens and early 20-somethings (Gen Y and its successor), but I doubt that's a whole lot different from the sense of entitlement that the Baby Boomers possess...

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect that our generation (the now ~20ish people) will grow out of that. The next few decades are going to get a good deal worse before they get better, and it's the people who are now young who will wind up having to bear that burden whether they like it or not.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Thank for that cheery prognosis Simon.

As for why every generation feels the sucedding generation is worse than they were, could it be jealousy?

I mean, as Broomstick pointed out, things have gotten better in terms of "conditions" for the youth. The older generations didn't have that, and so feel envious of their children for the access to things they take for granted?

I've heard my dad complain at me so many times about spending ages playing games ("we never had this stuff back then..."), whilst I take it for granted that I can play games and such.

Also, if conditions have improved but behaviour etc remains the same, could it be the older generations feel we should be working harder to earn these better conditions? In other words, whilst behaviour is the same, they have moved the bar higher for us?

[someone_else]

I suspect that our generation (the now ~20ish people) will grow out of that.

You mean when we get older we quit saying "Damn Youngsters Get Off My Lawn"?

Since we have proofs that since the beginning of written history this crap was afloat, I don't think it is something we can "grow out".

As always, smarter ones see through the bullshit and don't reiterate it, but dumbasses will still exist, and they will still think like all other dumbasses of the last 10 millenia.

The only way to grow out of that completely is your favourite version of Transhumanism.

[Simon_Jester]

Thank for that cheery prognosis Simon.

Around here that is cheery; the gloomy people tend to just assume it's all going to go irreparably to crap.

I suspect that our generation (the now ~20ish people) will grow out of that.

You mean when we get older we quit saying "Damn Youngsters Get Off My Lawn"?

Since we have proofs that since the beginning of written history this crap was afloat, I don't think it is something we can "grow out".

You missed what I was talking about- I'm referring to the (claim that our generation has an) entitlement complex. Most people have an entitlement complex when times are good and any really serious social problems can be deferred through various temporary measures. It takes time for people to get away from that when the party ends and the hangover sets in.

[Broomstick]

I think the origin of some of this is that when you get older you realize just how fucking stupid some of the shit you did when you were younger actually was - and there's an impulse to let the kids of today know it's fucking stupid, even though there is no way they're going to listen to you, because they just aren't adults yet.

Another slice of it, at least for the last few generations, is that every generation comes up with a new way of "rebelling" - in the 1920's it was the "flapper girl" with her daringly short hemline, bobbed hair, lack of corset, and dangling cigarette listening to jazz music. During the 1930's and 40's, well, the 30's everyone was too poor to rebel, and during the 40's everyone was at war - although "Rosie the Riveter" in any context but war would have been seen as rebellious youth, and my parents told me that their parents (my grandparents) were simply appalled at music like swing and big band. In the 1950's you had the rise of rock'n'roll, with "Elvis the Pelvis" being seen as the spawn of the devil singing "n----- music", not to mention all that weird-ass "abstract" art by the likes of Pollack and de Kooning (earlier generations' parents had been outraged by the Dadaists and Surrealism). By the 1960's you had men growing their hair "long" (basically, anything longer than a crew cut - some of the "long" styles for men would be considered short these days), women having sex before marriage openly, everyone doing drugs and that damned British Invasion music thing along with "Acid Rock". During the 1970's the hair got longer, youth discovered heavy metal music, and the selection of drugs changed. The 1980's saw the rise of punk music, hair even stranger than what had gone before, and safety pins through the cheek. And by then I grown up and less in touch with "the youth", but at some point shaving one's head became radical in some places (I guess long hair was no longer shocking enough) and suddenly everyone was getting tattooed and their various body parts pierced. One generations revolutionary innovation becomes the next's "boooooooor-riiiiiiing!"

And some of it is changing social values. I'd say 40 years ago there was more tolerance for violence than there is now. Certainly, there was more racism and sexual bigotry. Those who grew up in an era when "real men" had occasional fistfights and played football may see today's non-violent video game addict as a "sissy-boy". There are still plenty of people around who were raised to think people who look different than them are inferior, and not to marry outside of one's tribe, and they're going to have a hard time with interracial people and interracial marriage. To someone who is a holocaust survivor raised in an era when only sailors and criminals had "body art" a trend towards tattooing oneself may look incomprehensible.

It tends to generate a feeling of "oh god, what are they going to do next?"

[bobalot]

I don't see any actual evidence that today's generation are significantly worse than previous generations. If they were, it would be borne out in crime statistics and attitudes towards race, sex and sexuality (all of which can be tracked through polls).

None of these things indicate that current generations are worse in a meaningful way than previous generations.

[Iroscato]

It seems the overwhelming opinion that it's a myth, as I suspected. I think it's a combination of being nostalgic about the past (hell, even I'm nostalgic about secondary school, probably the worst 5 years of my life), and the change of the mental zeitgeist that adults undergo. I saw my dad's reaction to a home video of him at 12, he was stunned. He had ADHD, as I did and still do have, and all the comments he used to make about how calm and well-behaved he was as a child collapsed in seconds.
I often used to think of myself as a calm child, until I saw video evidence to suggest otherwise. We're just naturally shit as a species, and individuals, at remembering our own pasts.

[Knife]

I think the origin of some of this is that when you get older you realize just how fucking stupid some of the shit you did when you were younger actually was - and there's an impulse to let the kids of today know it's fucking stupid, even though there is no way they're going to listen to you, because they just aren't adults yet.

I think that's a good portion of it, but there is a physiologic component to it. Adolescences just don't think the way adults do. They physically don't have the same thought patterns as adults, and thus think totally different than adults. Hence, while adults can remember what they did and so forth as a kid, they no longer think that way, and only see their actions and the actions of kids today. Their own tom foolery they remember they rationalize, while today's youths indiscretions they don't and no longer think the way a kid does and can't relate. So they then assign a negative aspect to today's youth they don't assign to their own memories.

My two cents anyways.

[ArmorPierce]

My current job (which I'm leaving thankfully) I make outbound calls over issues that come up with account applications. I thank my lucky stars whenever I am going to make an outbound call to someone in their 20s or younger. I never have any problems talking with them and never have them blowing up over the phone. I cannot say the same for the older crowd, like 40 and over, whom I dread making the outbound calls to. The sense of entitlement from the older crowd is painful.

Just sayin.

[RazorOutlaw]

I don't understand this sense of entitlement that the "older crowd" is supposed to possess. How old are these people? 40? 50? Did they grow up in the 70's when it was supposedly "all-about-me" (I suppose the same went for the 80's?)

I ask this question because I've been lectured before about how my generation is angry, impatient, and entitled by someone who was in his 40's. But everything he'd done with his life he'd done by working hard. And then I look at my parents, who were born in the late 1940's, and they don't act entitled.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's just easy, and intellectually lazy, to stereotype groups of different people negatively around some negative stereotype without considering why the situation is so. It's easy to do this to foreigners, to people with different beliefs, people of different races, and even people of different ages.

[Simon_Jester]

My current job (which I'm leaving thankfully) I make outbound calls over issues that come up with account applications. I thank my lucky stars whenever I am going to make an outbound call to someone in their 20s or younger. I never have any problems talking with them and never have them blowing up over the phone. I cannot say the same for the older crowd, like 40 and over, whom I dread making the outbound calls to. The sense of entitlement from the older crowd is painful.

Just sayin.

Let's see, applications for what?

I know over-40s who don't really have a "sense of entitlement" in general, but in their formative years the world was a very different place. The Internet hasn't just changed the way we communicate, it's changed the way we spend money, the way we file our taxes, the way we do things that impact practically every aspect of our lives. And almost all this change has happened in the past ten years.

Is it any wonder some of them don't adapt, and grow irritable when they can't just say "make it so?" If they're depending on your company for a service that they secretly wish they didn't need, it's no wonder they're short-tempered about it. What they'd really like is to be able to get shit done with paperwork and snail mail, the same way they did back in the '80s and '90s.

[ArmorPierce]

In this case it is online applications for self directed online brokerage accounts.

From the older crowd I'll get all kinds of threats (do this or else we will pull our account, if you are no who you say you are you going to jail) and name calling (Take this application and shove it up your ass, are you stupid?) which I've never encountered with younger people. Younger people I call and tell them what they need and they either give a neutral 'okay' or that they won't be opening the account, usually it's 'okay.'

Not to say all or majority of older people flips a shit, but a good amount does.

[Simon_Jester]

Projecting from the people whose behavior I know best, you're dealing with the ones who are not comfortable with the whole "online" thing, and are deeply, deeply paranoid about the idea that anything online is a scam or an attempt at identity theft.

So a certain percentage of the over-40s will automatically distrust you purely because you're affiliated with a service they dislike and distrust and (in all probability) wish they didn't need.

When you tell them that setting up the service will require work and make them remember things, rather than just waving their hand, filling maybe two lines of text out, and saying "make it so," a certain fraction of them get cranky and flip out on you.

It's not pleasant, but to me it's not surprising.