AIBU to think we are currently raising the most dull generation yet??

Must be so lovely having such perfect children with such full lives and lots to say. Where I come from people have to work hard to live and don't necessarily have time and money to spend trekking around to hobbies to make their children interesting to other children and their parents.....🙄

I went through a phase like this when I was about 12, all I wanted to do was watch MTV. I was too old to play outside (not cool anymore), too young to really be independent, and where I lived you couldn’t get a job until 14.

I think a lot of kids go through a ‘full’ phase like that at some point.

Sometimes gamer kids get dismissed as dull, but they are just as interested in their sphere as you may be in yours. Have you made the efforts to learn about modern day interests? Or do you just dismiss them as rubbish? Ultimately because you don't understand them? Are not interested in them? Find them dull?

My Dd has finished uni and is a trainee science teacher. She talks to the kids about their interests, plays the games they play, watches stuff they watch... she says their eyes light up when an "old person" (shes 23!) takes notice of what they are saying about THEIR interests. Rather than "dull stuff like Bake off and collecting tea towels" (quote of the week from a student)
Different strokes for different folks.

I spent my Saturday night at a swimming pool. My 8 year old is in the local swim team academy. I watched 120 6-12 year olds compete against each other in front of a huge crowd.

She knows she wants to be a pilot when she grows up, but she'll struggle to train to be one alongside her training for a double olympic swimming and trampolining medal goals so she plans to join Air Cadets when she's in secondary school. Her favourite things to read about are money (thanks Deborah Meaden!) and chickens.
She's going to her first sleep away camp with brownies in the next couple of weeks. She's obsessed with astronomy and she was SO excited to spot the northern lights a few weeks ago.

If you find these kids boring then you're simply not listening.

So you are talking about Gen Alpha? Born 2010 to 2024.

I disagree. My 12 year old niece is interested in architecture and travel. She’s keen to visit Rome. She also has a keen interest in animals and has is considering becoming a vet.

It seems harsh to label a whole generation when they are still so young. They will have a huge burden to carry, paying to maintain the NHS and pensions for Gen X

My kids are busy and active with lots of hobbies but I do find them very unadventurous.

We are lucky to live in a spectacular rural place with lots of opportunity for adventuring.

My childhood was spent doing expeditions, exploring , being gone all day. Admittedly we did some hair curlingly dangerous things but that's part of life. We spent hours collecting wood to build dens". Making rope swings and swinging would fill hours. The more hair raising the better .We followed local streams for miles to see where they went. It's coastal as well so we spent hours in the sea or afloat on rafts etc ( which we also built). We were obsessed by compfires and cooking horrible food on them, I ruined all my mothers pots and pans. We found a cave and tried to set up home in it and become hermits😂. In bad weather we didn't stay in the house until we literally didn't have a dry stitch of clothing or shoes left.
There weren't many organised activities though, so maybe that's the difference, we entertained ourselves.

My kids, living in the same place, do none of this. They are brilliant children, but I am secretly disappointed they haven't had or looked for the same adventurous rural, slightly feral childhood that I had. Although, when I think of some of the bonkers things we did ......maybe I should be relieved that they don't!

I definitely agree that phones have a negative effect.

However, I don't think you can write off a whole generation as "dull". You can appreciate your children as complex, rounded individuals because you know them. You don't know the mass of primary school kids- have no sense of them with individuals with complex and meaningful inner lives- and so it's easy to dismiss then en masse as dull (which one might say was a failure of imagination of your own).

100% agree op. Added to the dullness is a complete lack of SOH. No banter because everyone is too scared of saying something wrong. Everyone looks the same too. It’s like millions of clones!😆

I think it depends on the kid as well. I was born in 93, so no screens really until secondary school. I loved reading, writing stories, and imaginative play with teddies as a kid. I was animal obsessed and forever making animal fact files. As I got into secondary, I never played sports and was only into video games really, and just generally loafing around with mates watching Disney/YouTube. I did still like reading though.

As an adult, I still don't play sports. I still love video games, I go to a board game group, play DnD, crochet, and love to paint.

I have two nieces who aren't interested in screens (their screen time isn't super restricted or anything) and would rather be running around or playing football. I have a nephew who would play Fortnite all day if he could.

There are a lot of adults whose only hobby is coming home and watching Netflix. My hobbies are all indoor hobbies, and I can't talk to the average adult about video games and definitely not table top board games lol.

In my era when the internet was becoming popular, our worlds revolved around MSN, Bebo, etc. Kids just enjoy what's popular at the time, typically. I feel like in your 20's you develop a truer sense of your interests.

I do agree though screen time has removed a lot of imaginative play from children. I was still obsessed with TY beanies aged 11! They all had their own social circles and elaborate back stories/romances, etc.

None of the 18-20 year olds had phones? I was that age 20+ years ago and we all had phones at school/uni. Do you mean they weren’t allowed them in school?

Our kids 8-14 have a range of hobbies including sports and yes video games. I think yabu though in your conversation expectations. It's completely normal for kids to talk a lot about one thing, and yes sometimes that obsession of the moment is Minecraft, but sometimes it's 'venomous snakes' or some random thing. My eldest has mild social anxiety, they can talk to their peers and adults that they know but sometimes struggle to keep a conversation going. That doesn't make them dull, and practice makes perfect so we try to support by suggesting topics or sticking to familiar subjects.

Yabu as your post comes across that you've done a great job with your kids but others haven't which is judgey imo

A lot of the primary kids I teach - year 6 - seem to spend hours out on their bikes playing. Or they have clubs.

I'd encourage your DD to try to find common ground with her peers otherwise there may be a long, lonely road ahead. While exceptionalism is greatly to be admired in adults who can do what they like, go where they please and search out like-minded people, it strikes me as something of a burden in the under 18s who are usually confined to a somewhat narrower path.

@Rosaofthevalley

Does anyone actually think I’m so glad I bought them a switch/iPad/phone it’s been the making of them??

I'm pretty sure my best friend does. Her now 20 year old is acing uni and has already designed games that have been picked up by a major. He's making more money than his parents and they are both professionals.

He was always head in a screen.

I think tech can be used very creatively.

I think it's a little narrow minded to describe the entirety of what can do done with tech as dull - my kids write stories, do graphic art, play role-playing games with friends, loads of stuff that's creative and they find interesting. It isn't all staring at tiktok.

It must be hard for your dd if she's struggling to fit in with friends, and I imagine it's fairly unusual at secondary age to dislike all tech. I hope you manage to help her find some dc with similar interests.

If the home entertainment on offer nowadays was available when we were all kids our childhoods would have looked very different.

I pastied this from someone above. A lady who read tons of books because apart from choir and homework , nothing else was there available after school. If the internet existed when I was in secondary, I probably would still use it for reading things and still people would say this was boring and I lived a dull teenagehood

I've never regretted giving my dc free access to screens. They've always self-regulated well, have a variety of interests, and we don't fight about it. I absolutely understand that this is luck and it doesn't work out this way for everyone.

I do wonder if your dc being anti-phones is maybe more about a desire to say what you want them to say. Screens have a huge appeal and it's pretty unusual for dc to not enjoy them at all.

I enjoy using my phone, I assume you do too as you are on mn.

DS's interests were commented on at his first secondary parent's evening and his Art teacher was thrilled that he's into Warhammer, and not solely into gaming like many of the boys he teaches.
Every report and parents evening DS has always had comments about his curiosty and general knowledge. A lot of this is to do with his autistic attention to detail, but he likes a lot of historical, geographical and scientific knowledge and is keen to share it.

This does not win him many friends, nor does he care. At primary it was gaming that he did make friendships over. At present he's not socially motivated.

I wouldn't like gaming to be a sole interest, but it's not a total void either. Depending on the game there can be planning, strategy and life knowledge. It's often surprised me how much general knowledge they've got from games like Minecraft. The redeeming point of Fortnite is a bit of musical culture- it nearly compensates for the shouting and inane slang.

The sports and activities my DCs do don't particularly make them interesting. There's not that much to chat about swimming lengths, but it at least keeps them fit. Scouting is better for life experience. For DS1, these are things I inflict upon him. DS2 gets fired up by running and events that he's done. It's more places they've been, things they've done and knowledge they've gained.

Neither are readers, and not for the want of trying. I've made some gains with audio books for DS2. They get a lot from youtube and Newsround. Not all screen content is bad.

As young children, screen time was CBeebies. They were in school before we got smart phones and tablets and are about the last of that cohort. Their play was mainly trains, construction toys, vehicles, dens, sticks. Going out involved a lot of babble. Of course this still goes on, but there is also a not insignificant number of young children who have heavily screen-based lives which is a new phenomenen in this form. At least CBeebies was varied, designed and vetted content.

I've worked with thousands of young people in the past 20 years in different contexts. Some are naturally more interesting than others. There has been a general shift of attention span in less than a decade and general knowledge. Young people are the product of their environment. Where they've been dulled by a world that's very screen-based, risk averse, corporate, regimented (school curriculum) and financially restricted, that's not their creation. As a parent, it can be tough parenting within those parameters. My two are lucky to be in a better position than average, but it's still hard to resist external influence.

Dull seems a slight cruel description from someone who used to work in education.

Mine are only primary age so perhaps I'm not in a position to comment yet but none of the kids seem dull - in fact they have way more hobbies than I ever had!

I think each generation has it's own challenges!

However, they have no interest in screens at all. (Something I’m happy to continue) They’re generally playing, outside, baking just normal stuff or so I thought.

Do you mind saying what age your children are?

I totally agree with this post and am quite sure the only ones disagreeing are those whose own kids do nothing but sitting on their phones or gaming consoles.

I disagree and I already mentioned the many things my children do and it isn’t only play on their tablet. It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. OP and your experience doesn’t negate others just because it is different from other posters and our environments.

No one has yet to explain why gaming is seen as such a bad thing and frowned upon compared to other hobbies, considering gaming can be and have a social aspect to it, involves rules/directions, research, memory retention, and other skills.

I agree with some that it could be down to income and what parents can afford as well as how much time parents have to engage with their children.

Even worse society is brainwashing them all into thinking they all have to agree, they're not allowed to hold an opinion unless it's the right one, they're not allowed to make jokes, have banter, have a personality, have uniqueness, have any fun.

Communication issues I agree about, but that does not make them the most dull generation ever.

After all, none of them are in Coldplay.