Compared to say twenty or thirty years ago are kids “better” in the sense of being more behaved, less rebellious, and whatnot? Consider the following: crime rates have gone down across the board for the last twenty years and while this generation is quite socially liberal it does not riot or rebel as violenty as say the Boomers forty years ago or as cynical and nilhistic as the Xers twenty years ago.
I think kids are more realistic about things than people like me were. I left a midwest background to go to Greenwich Village and become a playwright. What was I thinking? I could’ve gone to Princeton or Columbia at my parent’s expense, but I chose not to, because that would be giving in to them.
In the mid 60s kids were full of rebellion, coz there was so much to rebel against. Life sucked if you weren’t the norm. And if you weren’t the norm and tried to join the norm, then you hated yourself for not being you and you were miserable.
Now I look at kids and they are so much more realistic than I was.
I do think people are a lot more self centered now than in my day. And part of that is we weren’t as materialistic as there wasn’t a lot to own. Now we have gadget after gadget and designer labels on stupid things like t-shirts. I’m sure if the goods now, were available back then, we would’ve been every bit as materialistic.
Society was a lot
Kids are less rebellious, but I don’t think there’s a big connection between rebelliousness and violent crime. You have to have a conscience to be 1960s-style rebellious, but it takes an idiot with no self-control to mug someone for $14. Fortunately there seem to be fewer idiots these days, maybe because such a higher proportion of them are in prison than before.
The problem with kids today (geez, listen to me) is their expectation to be entertained and generally hand-held through life. I feel this is a byproduct of the total commercialization of the kid experience. Kids get most of their information from TV shows and commercials and they judge the rest of their life experience by the commercial standard - i.e. the average kid is smarter than his parents, never has to study or do chores, solves all his problems in 22 minutes, is attractive, wears stylish clothes and makeup, has a great place to live, etc.
Nope. They are incredibly selfish. Just like they’ve always been.
Today’s kids are horrible. When I walk through the local mall, I’m often shocked by hearing children not only say “no” to a parent, but even swear at their mothers. They have zero respect for authority, are uncouth, loud, and generally unpleasant. That shit flat out did not fly when and where I grew up. I’m 45 years old, outweigh my mother by well over 100 pounds, and I have no doubt that were I to swear at her today she’d rattle my teeth so fast I’d never even see it coming…and I’d deserve it. When a parent tells a minor child to jump, the acceptable responses are : "Yes, Ma’am/Sir (as appropriate), or “How high, Ma’am/Sir?” “No” is not an option.
Parents just don’t discipline their children anymore. The world was a much more pleasant place in my day.
…and they’re always on my lawn! Little buggers just won’t get off, and today’s laws won’t let me shoot them.
Or a genuine desire to not go to Vietnam.
Kids today are a direct result of insufficient chlorine in the human gene pool. Or a meaty military draft. Perhaps both.
In a selfish sense of “I don’t wanna die/I don’t wanna be stuck in a jungle” or in some “moralistic/conscientious” sense of “I don’t want to fight an immoral war”.
Well, the two states are not wholly distinct. I can picture someone concluding the war is immoral and not wanting to risk one’s own life in it. If that same person was around on December 8th, 1941, I can picture him enlisting to risk his life in what he perceived as a just war, with no real contradiction.
And I’ve worked a recruiting booth a few times, incidentally. For a 18-21 year-old uncertain about their life path, or a freshly-graduated college student with more debts than goals, a hitch in the service could be just the thing.
OTOH, it may be better kids are just assholes rather than participating in drive-by shootings or dealing heroin.
Whaddaya expect? Prophet, Nomad, Hero. If the theory holds, the next generation after will be Artists and we can all relax a little. (Artists are nice but dull.)
Can’t they do it all? Lazy kids today, can’t be assholes and do drive-bys on rival heroin dealers…
They get wild in their midlives though…
I think kids today are too lazy and fat to get into much trouble. I mean, it’s pretty hard to be all rebellious and stuff when you have to get on the computer at 6pm for a vital dungeon raid with 100 of your best buddies! 
-XT
Of course it depends by what you mean by “better” but going by the things we can measure, yes, yes they are better.
Numbers from this pdf
Of those the illicit drug use is the only one that is a pretty mixed bag. True use in 1980 by 12th graders was much higher, but it had bottomed out in 1990, come back some by the later 90’s and since then dropped a little and come back up a little less.
With that one caveat, kids today are getting drunk less, having sex less, using contraception more, having babies less, and committing violent crimes less.
So by those metrics, yes, better. As politically involved? I don’t know.
Seriously–what’s going on with today’s kids? They mouth off to adults, and they disrespect parents. They break the law. They roam the mall talking crazy talk. They have no sense of right and wrong. What will they be like as adults? (1) When I was a kid, I was taught to be quiet and to respect adults, but today’s kids are mouthy and have no discipline. (2) I think it comes down to kids not respecting their parents. They’re rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control. (3)
- Plato
- Hesiod
- 6000-year-old Egyptian tomb
:mad:
Why can’t they be like we were – perfect in every way?!
What’s the matter with kids tooodaaaaaayyyy?!! 4)
- Bye Bye Birdie
If the older generation did such a great job raising their kids, how come those kids grew up to be such crappy parents?
Not wanting to be uselessly conscripted into an unjust and unnecessary war to die or be grossly dismembered in an extraordinarily hostile and extremely foreign environment is selfish?
Fuck Sparta.