To say that the next generation is primarily screwed in terms of resilience

[Namechangechangeobv]

And WTF do we do about it?

Obviously many young people are wonderfully resilient but the overall trend I’ve seen in my line of work (behavioural education) is that there are vast, and I mean VAST numbers of young adults who cannot leave the house, come into a classroom, look someone in the eye, make a phone call, speak infront of the class (if they make it in), cry when pronouns are wrong (daily occurrence), take responsibility to revise/get a job/learn to drive.

What is going to happen to these humans in the future?

They were talking on the radio about his mental ill health for people in their 20s has really increased.

It’s well documented that the mental il health of young people and teenagers has massively increased over the past 15 years or more. For all groups and especially for teenage girls.

Clearly something is going wrong and it’s probably multi-factorial.

My tuppencd worth us that I think the very controlled childhoods kids have will be a factor. I do think that the free range childhoods of old were needed to enable children to build social skills, emotional skills, problem solving and resilience. You just can’t do that in the same way at adult directed and supervised activities.

And of course all the social media stuff, pornographer, amount of time gaming rather than actual real life laying with other humans.

Our school system has a very narrow academic focus that only suits a certain subset of kids.

it’s not surprising they aren’t doing great.

I'm not sure that it's just teenagers. There seems to be a collapse of resilience everywhere.

The previous mentality of just getting on with things or taking control of a situation as best you can or only worrying about what you can control seems to be gone.

Even with work queries, I'll help anyone but people don't seem to be able to help themselves anymore. It used to be "I considered this or that option, and wonder if you could give me a steer" now it's "I don't know what to do". This is without reading the procedural manual, without checking the source of the issue, without going back to a previous similar issue".

Resilience is reducing but self help and genuine effort appear to be reducing too.

Also work in behavioural education and tbh I disagree, I see young people every day who are overcoming significant barriers and are still going. It sounds like you've forgotten how hard it is to be a teenager and contend with peer pressure, bullying, hormones, lack of self confidence, figuring out identify. Teenagers are going through a lot, even the well adjusted well supported ones. I think we've created a society where they are better able to express their feelings and fears whereas in years previously that would have been kept silent. None of the issues you've listed are new to this generation I remember going through similar along with my sister when we were teens. And in terms of pronouns, ultimately regardless of where you stand on gender identity, for many young people it's about respect and being seen and having bodily autonomy. Persistent misgendering of someone (again regardless of intent or your stance on gender philosophy) is a sign of disrespect to that person, that's how they will interpret it. Most young people will react to being disrespected and undermined so again, that in itself isn't completely unfathomable. You're asking someone to act like an adult when they haven't even finished with the necessary brain development to do so. I'm really surprised to hear someone in BE talk this way tbh. What we do about it is meet them on their level, invest in and support them and try to build their confidence and self esteem. The rest follows.

What is "behavioural education"? Is this education of kids with behavioural problems, or more general than that? If the former, then more kids than average will have "behavioural problems", which might affect your sample.

I made some interesting observations of teenage behaviour when I was a driving instructor, some twenty years ago. Of the 17-year-olds, I found that the more middle-class and academic they were, the harder they found it to make decisions. It was as if it was the first time in their lives they had had to make decisions quickly, without an adult doing it for them.

Having poor mental health doesn't appear to be such the stigma as it used to be. People talk about it much more freely it seems.

Boring but evidence based response - lack of access to sport, green space, independent playing, and being outside.

It's multifactorial of course but that's the biggie. State schools selling off sports facilities and playing fields, local authorities selling off any patch of land and closing playgrounds/parks along with car culture - these are all driving children inside - and devices are keeping them there.

The link between sport & exercise, unsupervised play, outside activity and personal resilience / mental health is very well researched and established.

Please pay attention to the current Housing, Communities and Levelling Up inquiry.
https://committees.parliament.uk/work/7981/children-young-people-and-the-built-environment/

Pretty ageist - so maybe il join in?

I worked in an office with a lot of people 40+
Who would get upset over:
Not being said hello to in the morning individually
Not being able to sit next to their friend
Being asked to learn a new piece of technology
Being asked to train on something new
Being asked to change shift pattern (with several months notice, with change only to one shift a week, no overnight working, had always been in their contract from day 1)
Being asked to read emails
Being asked to put in annual leave correctly
Not getting complimented on doing their day job to the minimum standard accepted, then when we did compliment them, claim its patronising.
Being asked to walk less than 50ft to the car park after dark in a safe part of town with adequate lighting
We don't supply free biscuits any more
The company is restructuring and this is a PERSONAL SLIGHT AGAINST THEM (and 50 other people) and HOW DARE THIS COMPANY DO THIS TO THEM (their job is literally no longer needed because noone wants the service any more)

...I could keep going. Do I think this means all 40+ people lack resilience? No, obviously not.

I would also point out here that I would consider something like 'getting upset because my partner is invited to his work colleagues wedding and I'm not, despite having never met this work colleague, because it's 'rude'' pretty lacking in resilience but people get their knickers in the twist all the time about stuff like that and that's considered normal...

I too despair and, writ large, liberal democracy as we know it is in trouble.

I suspect this website self-selects for a more no-nonsense style of parenting, as people who think correctly sexing someone is "literal violence" will have long gone elsewhere.

Of course there are those who are doing well. I said that in my first post. There is also a HUGE increase in those who aren’t. That both I and others have observed.

@AgnesX "People talk about it much more freely it seems."

Or, more cynically: people can gain social cachet by labelling themselves as suffering from various mental health disorders.

We have a young generation who are mentally weak due to helicopter parenting. Going to school isn't optional! MH covers everything. Some have poor MH others use it as an excuse because as a society we are to scared of questioning it. I work in this field my personal views are not my professional stance but I see too many teens using MH interchangeably for I can't be arsed.

I’m sure that there are difficult people over the age of 40 but I work with young people so am talking about them. I guess mainly because I’d like to help.

I think the pendulum will swing the other way in terms of parenting. The ‘gentle’ parenting and (misinterpreted) ‘child centred’ approach will be stagmatised as being harmful to well-being and healthy social development.

Children desperately NEED boundaries and their immature whims less pandered to and taken oh so seriously. I think as life gets harder we are going to have to return to grown ups being in charge.

And that doesn’t mean children aren’t loved, played with, cherished and read to. It means we treat them as children. We nurture, cajole and Mary Poppins them rather than putting them on lofty pedestals of preciousness.

@FKAT
That is really interesting, thank you.

I am interested in this (on a personal level as I had MH problems in my teens in the 1990s which were completely ignored) - do you have links to a research study or more detail. I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

My kids also both had MH problems as teens and they are now (largely) much better, but a key difference is that I got them treatment.

YANBU. Parents and teachers unable to or want to discipline, no consequences, mobile phones/social media, no winners (taking part is enough), giving children everything they want without having to earn it, no work ethic for some reason, always doing an activity (no time to be "bored" or think for themselves), little face-to-face contact or socialising with people - but this is is the most recent 2 or 3 generations, not just today's children.

I assess parenting, children, family dynamics, teach parenting etc for a living.

It's multifaceted as a pp said but one of the main contributors is parental burnout. Both parents working, often full time, trying to run a household and take dc to activities, juggling so many plates alone. Very few people have actual support these days and those that do it's minimal. Life has become busier but real practical and emotional support has decreased. Parents are exhausted. It's difficult to go beyond meeting basic needs when you are running on empty. Most people are drudging through the day praying for bedtime. Parental mental health is on the floor. Resilience needs teaching but the parents are too exhausted to teach it.

This is what we get for falling for the biggest crap to ever come out of pedagogical theory - the child-centred approach.

Agreed 1000% I have cousins much much younger then me and they rely on their parents for everything. Inmeam everything. They have 0 social skills with adults and don't know how to hold a conversation.
One cousin always asked me for help with all her home work when I asked of she attempted it herself she would say no. Did she ask the twacher - no. Friends - no. Just wanted me to do it. I was asked by all of them to write their CVs, not to check drafts etc no. Write them! Apply for work no they slant want jobs. Work experince no unless someone applied for them. They are all born 1998-2010 and they all have the same personality lazy and unbothered.

There's a strange sort of undertone that suggests people believe the school of hard knocks builds resilience.

It doesn't, security builds resilience, knowing that bad things happen, but they get better, there are peolel there to catch you.

Our current young people have has 3/4 years of communal trauma, on top of whatever else they're going through.

This is a really interesting take and I definitely see this from the parents. So few show even a vague interest in what their child is doing.

But it’s the same here (on MN). I’ve been here for 20 years (I know!) and there never used to be endless posts from people who won’t answer the door/phone, or who freak out if a stranger says hello or touches their baby. I don’t think it’s a generational issue, I think it’s a societal issue. And particular to the U.K. In the last five years, I’ve lived in Southern Europe and the Middle East, neither of which seemed to have the same problems.

There is that, but we now have to be supportive and have to keep our more cynical thoughts to ourselves 🤨

@Namechangechangeobv "Persistent misgendering of someone (again regardless of intent or your stance on gender philosophy) is a sign of disrespect to that person, that's how they will interpret it."

I disagree that this is the case "regardless of your stance on gender ideology". If you use pronouns to describe people's sex rather than self-identified gender, it's nothing personal. We have just reached a position in society in which your freedom to be offended trumps my freedom of expression.

💯 % agree with you OP.

There is a huge crisis in the making. A whole generation of young people will shortly be entering the workplace and are simply not prepared for reality.

They are (and I use this word deliberalely) weak. And their weakness will be taken advantage of by people who are more capable. I don't know what the answer is.

The world doesn't care about your anxiety.

I think it will lead to the downfall of Western societies. That's not being overly dramatic. Look at the armed forces, they cannot recruit because most young people see no value in fighting for anything. They would rather have an intellectual debate, and they think such debates indicate progress, that as people they are somehow superior. But it only takes someone who is infinitely less agreeable (Putin for example) to overpower you and take advantage of you.

The old adage

"Strong people create good times, good times create weak people, weak people create hard times, hard times create strong people".

Well we need to remove barriers to resilience - so we might want to ensure people can access healthcare, we might like to look at reducing poverty or improving the quality of housing, or making things safer out and about.

Then in terms of helping people cope with stress, there are lots of things like having hobbies to give purpose, sleeping well, socialising, building support networks, learning how to manage your time

Then there is a bit of reflection on what you find difficult and what you can change, things you have overcome or just accept you find something hard and what to do with that feeling.

Im sure its not a lost cause - but i think we need to look how resilient societies structures are too, not just individuals. Our education system itself has zero resilience for instance. Its falling apart, no teachers etc