We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists

He's the total package, baby.

 

Surprised that JC, the ultimate ageist, hasn't come clomping onto this thread. Anyhoo, tis the way it's always been: humans look into the mirror until the big picture around them cannot be unseen.

 

All I need to feel special is pride in my school's football team and a new, overpriced screen-printed T-shirt. Note, I actual had nothing to do with the creation of those things, but DAMMIT I'M SPECIAL! ROLL TIDE!

 

I believe there's as much of a generation gap between twentysomethings and their parents as there was in the previous generation.

 

The piece is a mixture of a few facst and a few falacies stated as fact pieced together by gross leaps of reasoning.

Test scores are lower than they were two generations ago, and there is a huge gap between students' academic preparation and their perceptions of their own academic preparation.

I don't know that drinking or drug use is up. I know that, despite what the author claims, tobacco use and violent crime are down from two generations ago.

Social media and cell phones weren't around two generations ago, so saying the activities have increased is specious.

Tattooing and body piercing are certainly more common than they were two generations ago, but that seems more like a shift in fashion and taste than an indicator of something menacing. If anything, the menace previously associated with tattoos and piercing has been neutered.

Large-scale change is ongoing and inevitable. The printing press changed the world, and the consequences were both wonderful and catastrophic.
The steam engine. Refining petroleum into kerosene. The electric light.
All of these developments changed the social interaction and ongoing psychology of our species in profound ways. They all led to the end of valued ways of life, thought and interaction. They all led to strange and scary new ways of life, thought and interaction.
Anyone of them are more seismic change bringers than cell phones, Twitter or video games.

 

In my day, they dropped the drinking age from 21 to 18, and for about the first 3-4 years after that, they didn't check IDs for ANYBODY. If you had two bucks in your pocket and could walk up to the bar, you got served. I was 14 the first time I stumbled out of a bar.

Then the old fuddy duddies all screamed, "god damn it WE couldn't drink when we were 18, why do THESE young whippersnappers get to!! We have to raise the drinking age back up IMMEDIATELY! HARRUMPH!! HARRUMPH!! HARRUMPH!!"

And so it was.

 

Kids just need Jesus.

 

"Back in my day, we didn't have those fancy spears to fend off sabretooth tigers - we did with our hands and rocks we threw at them! And we sure didn't cook any meat, we ate it raw! These damn kids are so spoiled!" said a caveman.

 

"And we also tied an onion to our belt. Which was the style at the time."

 

My late teens would have been a much less lively time if Maryland hadn't had an 18-year-old age limit.

 

I blame it on comic books.

 

Me too.