Are today's young people more childish?

We were all pubbing and clubbing
By 16/17 in the early eighties ( no Id if you looked old enough you got in )and were expected to make our own way home in the early hours. Unthinkable now but no taxi of mum and dad back then , I would have died of embarrassment if my Dad had come to pick me up . Most teens were working and had been since early teens having either paper rounds or Saturday jobs .

If they are more childish, it’s because my generation hasn’t let them do anything. I was allowed out on my own far sooner. We have woodland which is nowhere near cars etc and isn’t very big, so it’s basically our several acre garden, I’ve had kids come over banned from going in there even.

It might be true but I don't think it's a bad thing.

lol. Just like my relative then. No kids?

Consider that many children will be nervous/shy with a stranger asking them for information. Consider also that children are taught to be less trusting of strangers now whereas when I was growing up things were very different.

As I said, one of my children would have known all that information but would have been shy/nervous. I remember a doctor asking my child when their birthday was and them saying they didn’t know. They did. You sound clueless.

@LostInTheMoonlight I'm not an expert at all. It's my observation over the last 20 years of working with them.

Do you want a medal. 🙄

Depending on the setting, maybe they’re nervous. My children would have known all that information when they were young, but one of them at least would have looked to us in some situations as they would have been nervous/shy.

How old are your children because you don’t sound like you know much about children really? You sound like a relative of mine who doesn’t have children but because she has contact with them at work, she thinks she’s an expert.

My dp left school at 14 - he's 47. I mean it was against the law but no one was exactly enforcing it.
Anyway, re our generation of teens vs this one . I was working part time going to clubs at 15, taking drugs at 17, living with my boyfriend at 18. I still had no fecking clue about how to be an adult. No common sense, very few useful skills. I work with kids in their early 20s who astonish me with their professionalism and maturity!
I do agree somewhat about the anxieties of teens wrt going out of their conforms zones and I do think they are a bit overprotected - I am guilty of this as I was so completely under protected I think I went too far the other way.

He’s a late August birthday so guess he would have been 14 but 15 that year.

My dad left school at 14. He’s mid 70s.

Its been a minute since the last thread trying to criticise young people so I guess we were due.🙄

I’m currently involved with a university looking after some post grad students - so 21 years old, minimum. The issues these kids have! From not being able to catch a bus to get to a placement to being upset that the bus ride is 40minutes across town. Needing an extension on an essay because they felt anxious about writing the essay. It never seems to end. And everything has to be about them, they have to be at the centre of every decision, except I can’t put 35 different students at the centre of every decision and the honest answer to why some of them got a certain placement is that, somebody has to do that one.

i know I’m old and long in the tooth but I don’t remember being like this at that age. I was working in a professional job with responsibility for people. I can’t imagine crying and refusing to catch a bus because I was afraid….

I wonder why so many young people have anxiety that almost crippling these days? I don’t know if it’s a covid effect or due to social media or what.

Yes i really don't see what the big deal is about seeing kids behaving like silly kids. Why does it matter?

The fact you think this is meaningful at all makes me think you are immature for your age now 😂

But id the parents are r paying for it then it makes no odds

But 11 year olds don't have money for such stuff so therefore it must be parents encouraging this

Nope. TikTok influencers.

listen to this. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-entertainment/id1718287198?i=1000680628001

Very interesting about how pre teens are being influenced to think they need skincare products.

Oh, from your posts I thought you much older than that - of a generation where people were leaving school at 14 etc.!

I'm only a couple of years younger than you if All Saints and the Spice Girls were the big things when you were 15, and I can therefore confidently state that teens did sometimes behave like that when we were teenagers. There was also a whole media discourse about how soft, immature and unfit for work we as a generation were when we first entered the workplace. The narrative at the time was that we were a very spoiled generation.

Jesus, at 12 years old I was working in the Londis type store on the corner of my road from 5pm to 8pm.

As you say you were working at 16, i have just read another thread where the OP insists her 17 year old is home by 7pm. Some parents need to learn to cut the apron strings.

I agree. Im not sure if its a good or bad thing. Maturity and childish are different things. Immaturity isn't a good thing and they need to live in the real world and learn responsibility etc. However I think society is a bit more accepting of the teen years being a life phase in its own right and accepts the play acting and silly humour that goes with it, they don't need to pretend to be grown up to gain respect as much as earlier generations did.

I've seen plenty of adults shouting, shoving and pushing, yelling and some even squealing well into their 30s, 40s, and beyond. Maybe it's behaviour in general that has shifted over the years, or the perceptions of it.

I had a similar view as a teenager of hating being viewed as a child. Now I just view it as weird and funny when I get carded & as my own children have grown past those ages, I wonder how adults back then just treated me 'old enough' (exact words I heard at 15 from police having told them I hadn't seen a parent or had one in the home in three weeks).

Having three teenagers now, I have learned to not give 'when I was your age' stories, even if trying to compliment or show understanding, because it's different time and they've had much better childhoods. I view my childhood as having been on 'speed run' and I'm thrilled they can be a bit more relaxed and that both of my older children have started pensions as teenagers and have saved more from their work than I ever did at their ages. Really, I just think they're different rather than more childish.

I don't know why you wouldn't want children to be children for longer. This is one of the first times in history children haven't been forced into wars or child labour - in the UK… I'm aware this happens in other countries before anybody misses the point entirely. Frankly, given what we now understand about development, we shouldn't be saying 15 year olds are capable of anything but behaving immaturely because they have at least 10 more years before their brain is fully developed. Forcing children to grow up quickly can make life easier for adults around them but isn't necessarily good for them, as seen with the enormous amounts of miserable people from older generation carrying huge amounts of emotional baggage and unaddressed issues.

Frankly, being selfish is a good thing. I quite like that younger generations outlook. I think healthy boundaries, putting yourself first and not letting work or partners take the piss is a only a good thing. It certainly beats being a doormat all your life.