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?

I haven’t read the full thread yet, but I do think you have a point OP. I’ve been teaching for 18 years and I’ve definitely noticed a difference. We have so many parents now contacting school saying their child can’t be asked to read out/have questions directed at them/speak in front of others etc. This is not all children with additional needs either. Many of these children are perfectly capable of doing these things, but they feel a bit uncomfortable so their parents contact school, speak to their head of year who then tells us we must act as if the child is not in the room. Children need to be put in uncomfortable situations in a safe environment so that they learn how to deal with these feelings. By letting them avoid it completely is doing them no favours in the long run.

I was in high school in the early 90s. In our year group at least 4 boys got expelled. Countless more spent their time playing truant for most of the lessons. Some would show up for school maybe once a month. There were kids sniffing glue in the woods. Kids smoking pot in the subway at lunch time. There was teenage pregnancy. Girls getting groped by the boys. Kids openly being disrespectful to teachers. Looking back loads of the kids would have been diagnosed as having SEN these days. Some of the kids spent most of their time getting told off for not doing their work. Some of the girls were so withdrawn and barely said a word. None of them had any extra support. None of the classes had a TA. If you didn't make the top set, you were left in the lower sets which were basically like Lord of the flies, with a hopeless teacher sat at the front of the classroom. Two of the lads I went to school with ended their own lives before we were 25. Two more have since.
This wasn't an inner city school. Just a normal, semi rural school.
These problems aren't new. They are just more recognised.

You may well be right. I don't live in the UK, and had never heard of all this about not answering the door/phone or freaking out when someone speaks to them, and was frankly amazed when I started reading "how dare a stranger touch or speak to my baby" posts. I've not encountered it here.

These days it seems many young people, if they don't like doing something and no-one spoon feeds them, then they just claim "anxiety" and refuse to do it.

I deal with this all day. And they all say the same things... "The work gives me anxiety, people looking at me gives me anxiety, if I dont have my phone on me it gives me anxiety, forcing me to get up for school gives me anxiety, I don't consent to this, I dont consent to that, its abuse if you make me do something I dont want to do (schoolwork)..you're triggering me/my anxiety" and on and on it goes.

Of course there are some people who genuinely suffer with crippling anxiety, it's not this many ..

Its all very well mentioning work and employment issues as many posters have, and you aren't wrong, except this is the generation constantly being told AI will take all their jobs

Whats the motivator for working hard at school and developing skills to help them in the workplace when they are being told there isnt going to be a workplace

We need to tell them to fix up, look sharp.

Of course everyone has mental health issues from time to time. Just as everyone has physical health issues from time to time. And the two things very interlinked.

But how 'safe' an environment is school?

Every fellow pupil has a filming device in their pocket to film you making a prat of yourself before potentially posting it to the world to be taken the piss of?

Just ban the bleedin smart phones from all under 16s
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/655473

I feel that they are under pressure from a much younger age in the last 20 years and it's showing now.

Playgroups and nursery schools are Ofted'd and have to have targets for 3 and 4 years old to make them school ready.

Primary's are rarely now infants progressing to juniors - it's all primary and learning targets from year dot. SAT's and SAT's and targets targets.
I was at primary in the late 70's 80's and it was sooo much fun! Painting, drawing, school plays, assemblies playing recorders and glockenspiels and lots of singing/someone on the piano. Our teacher read stories and we had class quizzes and learning was free and easy and not strained.

I think the pressure of modern primary 'targets' is killing the joy of learning and children are learning stress and anxiety early on. They can't cope.

Then all it takes is another life event to come along (covid/losing a family pet) and, BAM, they're fucked basically, they can't cope. Like life burnout from too much educational stress at a young age.

Government policy has been increasing the pressure in EYFS and primaries for years now. Secondary kids are exhibiting all the symptoms of being highly pressurised: burnout, anxiety, feeling of hopelessness, school refusal, isolation.

That's my personal theory anyway.

People can have individual needs without having a diagnosis.

Wetwipe parents raising wetwipe kids. Have you seen the number of people on here who need to come and ask MN who it could be at the door if they hear a knock. Rather than just answering the door, like a normal person.

Thirdly when you look at the world today's teenagers are growing up into I'm not bloody surprised they're anxious. From climate change to war to an increasingly fucked economy, I'd be surprised if any but the most privileged viewed their future with any sort of comfort.

Do you really think no previous generations had to deal with that? People were talking about climate change when I was a kid - a long time ago - there have been wars for as long as I can remember, and I have lived through several times of a fucked economy. How do you think the generations who were teens in the two WWs managed?

Feeling anxious, down, or worried occasionally is NOT a mental health issue. It's completely normal, just as having a twinge or a pain now and again is hardly a physical health issue.

Calling them "issues" is a big part of the problem.

Thirdly when you look at the world today's teenagers are growing up into I'm not bloody surprised they're anxious. From climate change to war to an increasingly fucked economy, I'd be surprised if any but the most privileged viewed their future with any sort of comfort.

We were terrified of the hole in the ozone layer as kids. Didn't stop me going to school or reading aloud.

Most of the young people I work with now couldn't give a hoot about climate change to be honest. And war, well they just look at the shocking videos for a few seconds and scroll onto the next. They're not up worrying about it at night.

@Jc2001 Completely agree with you. It depresses me to read headlines from the Daily Mail calling young people "snowflakes" and completely minimising people's struggles but then again it's far easier to do that then actually find out what's really going on. My life was blighted for a long time by childhood bullying during the 1980s and there was no support for me whatsoever. Now in my son's school there are mentors(older kids there) who look out for the younger kids and anti-bullying classes are taught from a young age. When I go to help at my son's school I am so impressed with the courtesy of the kids there and how helpful they are to their peers. I think being in touch more with emotions in early years is a really positive thing and I think we should be proud of our younger generation rather than using these pejorative terms about them.

I think @Hereyoume was right when she pointed out the the old adage

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

Empires have grown up - and fallen ... as times get easier, people get softer, they then fail and are overcome. It's not just young people though - it's our whole society.

How do you think the generations who were teens in the two WWs managed?

Suffered trauma but never talked about it and knocked ten bells out of their kids, who went on to be such shite parents in the 1970s that the government had to make dozens of public information films about telling your mum where you are going (if indeed she gave a shit) not playing on railway lines or climbing pylons.

My DD is 17 and has a part time job in a shop. She is usually rotated every 1.5 hrs, till, stock, door and cleaning. She says the number of young staff who walk out or leave if they are asked to do something they don't like either that or they say they can;t do that particular part of the job as it makes their anxiety worse There is one aspect to her job she isn't keen on but she does it and doesn't complain. One girl will only do till another can't do the till because touching the money makes her anxious. Her boss thanks DD all the time for her flexibility and her ability to do everything she is asked to do without moaning or walking out. She says she has never seen anything like it before and this generation of young employees is getting worse.

Humans evolve fairly slowly. Every generation faces disruptions and upheavals. But the digital world has ripped a lot of near-certainties into shreds. In all retrospect, the economic woes of the 1970s (as a teenager) didn't worry me as much as they did my parents who faced adult problems. All I had to do was study for my A levels by candlelight. But this generation seem uniquely and genuinely squelched by global digital media. Every job or internship is advertised to the whole world and contested by the whole world. There's not much camaraderie left.

As someone who has had stress, depression and suicidal ideation I can tell the difference between feeling a bit sad and depression, thank you very much.

Mental wellbeing is very much about being in tune with your emotions and whether they are realistic in the circumstances or if there is a pattern you need to be concerned about, just like a twinge in your knee that doesn't go away, and then suddenly you can't put weight on that foot. It's not black and white.

The thing that surprises me is their sense of helplessness, or even resentment. Young adults are the ones who will change the future - there seems to be little recognition of that, where fear and hard times galvanised previous generations. In less-well-off places, they still do!

Like a preponderance of MNers, I grew up under a very real fear of nuclear annihilation. I now disagree with my younger self's view on what to do about that, but I tried to make a difference. I was born into hardship and lived through serious economic depression (1970s) when there were far fewer support systems than now. Our attitude to challenging circumstances was "What can we/I do about this?"

There is currently a great deal of social cachet attached to "oppression" and vulnerability, with kids vying for positions of most oppressed and most vulnerable. I can't think of anything more likely to quash resilience. I keep hoping it's a fad that will die off, but it's been going on for so bloody long now that I worry it's more likely to kill the kids off 😢

Obligatory rider that the Gen Z kids in my family are extremely pro-active, resilient and realistically ambitious. They didn't grow up exclusively in the UK, though. It's possible that the chunk of their childhoods spent in SE Asia contributed to their work ethic.

A big part of it also is that due to everyone having a recording device in their hand at all times there is no room for mistakes which I can imagine is making young people highly anxious. If they give something a go and "fail" then it's not only their peers that may laugh at them, but there's the chance it could be broadcast to the entire world.

I heard a story last week about a girl who had done something embarrassing and it was photographed and then sent on in a chain mail effect so that her cousins and friends from different towns all heard about it, it got passed on to her parents etc. It must feel like being on live tv all the time.

I follow several high-profile academic psychologists and campaigners who specialise in these sorts of trends. To paraphrase Jonathan Haidt's summary - we've over-protected young people in the real world, and underprotected them in the virtual (online) world

People's experience of Gen Z on here is really not my experience. I find they are on the whole polite, funny, sensible and extremely resilient and just get on with things without moaning. Unlike their (allegedly) elders and betters.

Teachers need to get off the 'resilience' band wagon. It's used as a word to abuse kids, usually with Sen now. Quite often used to mean 'obedience'