Discussion Every generation thinks it's better than the next

[R. A.]

...and it's been happening for thousands of years. It's been dubbed the "Kids These Days Effect", and studied as a psychological phenomenon:

Why We’ve Been Hating on ‘Kids These Days’ for Thousands of Years

There are underlying psychological explanations for why adults so consistently think that kids are deficient.

www.discovermagazine.com

For those of you interested enough in this to read the post but not open the link,
1) shame on you, don't believe everything you read on a suicide website; media literacy has been a crucial skill for decades already and is only becoming more so,
2) the article sums up the bias uncovered in the studies thus:​

"First, we tend to judge others more harshly in areas where we excel. An ardent reader, then, will be more likely to deride someone else's reading habits. Second, our memories of what we were like as children can't always be trusted ... we're likely to assume that our childhood selves had the same abilities that we do today, though in reality we may have spent a lifetime honing those skills. The kids of today, in comparison to our falsely praiseful memories, have a hard time measuring up."​

People continued to hold the false belief after being informed of the effect, assuming it must have been true only in eras before their own.

Want a shorter funnier read? The above piece linked to a good one from the usually-garbage BBC of a list of examples of then-current (mid-2010s) comments disparaging millenials, compared them to nearly-identical sentiments expressed decades, centuries, or millennia before. A personal favorite was "The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money." - Horace, 1st Century BC

People have always whinged about young adults. Here's proof

Older people love to gripe about the entitled, lazy millennial generation. But it's nothing new – by delving into the archives, we found plenty of parallels stretching back 2,000 years

www.bbc.com

​

Of course, at least in certain areas, the obvious counter-argument is that age begets experience, and youth are inherently less knowledgeable than their elders. This isn't a blanket statement but is sort of self-evident; someone who's lived 10 years has only had 1/5th the potential for life lessons as a 50-year-old. Age is not the only vector for experience - especially not in a world as diverse and connected as today's is - and this retort is a non-starter for old farts ragging on young people for being distracted/corrupted by [modern thing x], considering in the late 1800's, novels caused a moral panic due to their escapist nature and "were blamed for basically just about everything, from increasing promiscuity in young women to encouraging suicide and self-harm in young men."​

 

[amerie]

Informative post.

I've always wondered why millennials and gen X complain about Gen Z looking older and oversexualized, but if anything it was a lot worse and less restricted back then. Didn't Brooke Shields pose for some men's magazine as a 10 year old?? And all the Romeo and Juliet type movies of tweens falling in love with grown ass men?

 

[R. A.]

Didn't Brooke Shields pose for some men's magazine as a 10 year old??

Coincidentally enough I just recently learned about the Calvin Klein ads, but wow, this is something else.

Truly we live in hell.

 

[DarkRange55]

 

[MrCasella]

In other words young adults and middle aged adults and old adults are did different from eachother and because of the difference don't like eachother.

 

[Dejected 55]

Several things in play here...

1. There are always people in every generation that thinks the one before it was more oppressive and the one coming after them are too permissive.

2. Not everyone in any particular generation sees things the same way, so not everyone believes in #1.

3. Sometimes the people with the opinion in #1 are right... sometimes they are not. Society tends to vacillate between oppression and permissiveness. If you look back in time you find things that were more permitted in the previous generation that are considered "wrong" now, and some things that were taboo previously more common place now.

4. When people say "It was better back in my day..." they often are remembering the times when they were children, and as such had no responsibilities and generally weren't experiencing the same world that adults were... so they tend to think the world was better then, because from there perspective it may very well have been... but when they became adults and experienced adult things they think they are experiencing something their parents did not, when in fact they may or may not... but they remember things happening in childhood differently than things that happen in adulthood. Kind of like how as an adult you go back to a place you haven't been since you were a kid and the place seems smaller because your memory is from a time when you were smaller.

 

[Pluto]

 

[Forever Sleep]

I wonder if it's also because we kind of grow into being our parents- attitude wise. So- we hear them whinging about people and things so, we kind of 'learn' to complain about similar things as we grow- politics, economics, society, attitudes etc.

I find a friend tends to spew out platitudes in response to my problems when I know it irritates them when their parents in turn said it to them. I find myself doing the same sometimes. Like we just end up parrot fashion saying the sorts of things they did.

But, I think in some ways, we learn to be discontent with our current situation too. We're even encouraged to be. It's how companies or politicians 'sell' to us- buy this or vote for me and, I will make your life less shit.

It can work in the opposite direction though, too. I also find that as a species, we can be tempted to enter into a pain olympics the moment someone complains. Maybe they're finding work hard but, it was harder for us- in our day. At least they aren't dealing with this or that. I've experienced so many times where family members have insisted they had it so much harder. Maybe that's more a criticism of my inadequacy though. Rather than an endorsement of current times.

Being antinatilist though, the whole thing pisses me off. That we're brought here and expected to 'perform' in the first place. Then, whatever it is, it isn't good enough. They don't like how the youth have changed their world. They don't like how 'weak, immoral, uncaring' or whatever else they are.

Then- don't bring independent, thinking beings here in the first place! If you actually wanted something that just obeyed your commands- you should have bought a dog or something.

Obviously, I don't have children but truthfully, I'm the same. I'm suspicious of the young but I also feel bad for the world they've been dumped in and will now have to try and negotiate. I do actually think that the current era is more challenging than the era I grew up in. I think social media and the internet has played a big part. Negative as well as positive. My future felt uncertain when I was young but the youth today have the worry of AI taking their jobs. Not that I tend to think any era was all that easy but, I'm glad I'm (hopefully) nearer to the end of my life, rather than the start. I do tend to feel like the world is just getting worse but then- maybe that's just my oen negative, cynical bias.

 

[amerie]

Look at his greedcan't even take his eyes away from the iPad. This new generation is lost smh my head