What scares teenagers these days?

[StBrides]

Some colleagues were talking about how desensitised teens are these days, having grown up in the fully digital age where you can stumble upon really horrible things online.

Because it's Halloween, it made me wonder if the younger generations don't find the traditional scary / horror films scary in the way us who are a bit older do?

I used to love a bit of gentle horror as a teenager, but the famous films from the 70s were too dated for me to get into so they never freaked me out. Just wondering what the scare landscape is like for the "youths of today" I guess - i don't really know anyone in this age group to ask!

@GrittyTunnocks@MrsCuthbertson I don't quite understand why you're picking at what I am saying about my sons life.

But it always has been. I'm not judging them. My own son is affected by anxiety. I just don't understand why we were more resilient.

The word 'no' ?

Because we had HOPE
Hope that things will get better -

• technology was supposed to help with work, illnesses to be cured. I remember discussions about the 3 day week because robots would have simplifies things so much.
• education was the door to a better future. And at the time, it did.

And on the other side, pressures were less. Less pressures with exams. Less pressures to have the Instagram ´perfect’ life. Less instability work wise (see the zero hours contract?). Less poverty.

And I’m not even getting into the issue climate change, pandemics etc…

It’s not that young people are less resilient. It’s that they have a hell of a lot more to cope with that we ever had.

I'm not. But you and he seem prone to catastrophising and that's not typical of the teens I know.

My DD(18) daily faces challenges that would crush others but she sees life as fun, exciting - the complete opposite of a po faced puritan. Her mates are the same.

bloody well wish I was

Being dumped by their friends.

Totally agree.

Also people in the past were free to be twats and then grow out of it. Young people now have to watch their behaviour, especially online, as it follows them forever.

Z for Zachariah! I completely forgot about that book. That terrified me too.

And Where the Wind Blows.

My teenage GCSE English literature reading list one year was awful, Death of a Salesman, Spring and Port Wine, Macbeth, the Great War poets and a book about I think disfigured men in a forestry in Scotland and suicide, Animal Farm and Brighton Rock. All great books but couldn’t they have put a bit of humour or light hearted reading there too? Little wonder a couple of the girls in my class were depressed!

Ridiculous comment - do you know any teenagers or are your ideas just baseless statements that you are parroting from the right wing press! If you do know teenagers then I pity them with your disdain.

As if the inertia on tackling climate change is a phenomena amongst teenagers alone or that they are responsible for a majority of the issues have in only lived on this planet for 13-19 years! The fundaments of Climate Change science were understood at the very end of the 1970s - what's happened in the meantime, armed with that knowledge?

But the education system as it operates today fuels that notion as so much of education is online now. I am not suggesting these tools aren't useful but it's a constant, instant feedback of your performance via testing with Ed tech and then reports to your parents - so much junk email informing me that my child has or hasn't started their Math's homework. Organising themselves, the joy of reading a book and learning something driven by your own motivation has been taken from them. Acquiring knowledge is only for the purpose of passing an exam and that is pushed all of the time. Creativity is just forgotten about and ultimately a society pays for that.

Resources are online - many teens don't proactively access them or read the post where the homework is clearly explained or the topics for the test coming up - it's a bit like your own child (or dh!) standing in the hall that's full of shoes asking "where are my shoes" instead of looking around himself and picking them up.

Do you really teenagers before were carefully reading the explanation fir the homework or were reading the documents/book given to them ahead of time?

My memory as a teen is that some were doing it, yes but most weren’t.

Their biggest fear is probably turning into what we have become.

You're probably right!

Supporting themselves.

When I was a teenager AIDS terrified me.

Grandmas - and Grandads of course, fear their wisdom, judgements,
slap round the back of the head for giving cheek, fear withdrawal of
affection, or home cooking, sympathetic hearing at times of emotional
upheaval, fear them dying, fear them not indulging anymore,
fear of grandad not taking them fishing in the forbidden rain anymore,
fear of grandad innocently snitching, fear of grandad leaving his
handmade tools to cousin should they fall out,
fear that one day all that love will one day be memories, teens helpless
to prevent this, Cnut like, helpless, fearful.

My DS is almost a teen and he's terrified of power cuts and the Internet going down 😂

With the Amber warning last week - we took the opportunity to turn the router off (pretending it was the weather!) and prove (gently) that having no Internet is okay! And we played Monopoly for a bit.

No Spotify, no streaming TV, no smart meter! No bossing Google and Alexa about. It was nice actually.....

No trauma was involved

Clowns and waxwork models

An empty fridge. (Teenage sons)

Talking to someone on the phone or making eye with an actual person in a shop!

Yes, I work with teenagers and have my whole working career. The last 15 years of teenagers take less responsibility than any I have worked with. I think we are storing up enormous problems.
They are certainly not responsible for the mess we are now in but they make a lot of noise about it and I see them less willing than any group in society to do their bit. They are pampered by poor parenting - they expect to have everything and are prepared to change nothing.
All we can do is what we as individuals can influence- use as little plastic as possible, as little petrol/oil/energy as possible, recycle whatever we can, don't buy poor quality and throw it away, re-use, don't fly, don't litter, don't buy one-use stuff, fast-food etc. There are you g people that do their best but I don't see lots of young people taking notice of any of that. I see them turning as their 'go-to' to :
a) Fast food and one use packaging- ends up as rubbish and landfill
b) Cheap/short-use synthetic clothing from places like Primark which ends up as landfill very quickly
c)Plastic one-use drinks bottles carelessly disposed of as litter or in general waste, not re-cycled
d) Canned drinks that are thrown in general waste and not re-cycled
e) Expecting holidays abroad (often to cheap resorts where plastic useage and rubbish left is shocking)and to go travelling
f) Leaving appalling mess after festivals

But they make a lot of noise about the environment.

I include people in their 20s in that. It's as if none of it applies to them. Even amongst the most educated they just don't really get it- we all have to change.

Soap

Student loans

24/7 news cycle and social media. Overexposed and oversaturated to everything going on at all times.