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?

FYI both our sets of parents had idyllic WWW2 experiences. They weren’t living in cities, had very limited information and were babies who then went on to become and enjoy being boomers.

If your parents were babies in WW2 then they aren't boomers. You can't become one, you have to be born one.

The reality lies somewhere between the two points, I think.

Previous generations had harder and easier aspects of their lives growing up.

Being away from home, for example, now is a very different and much more simply managed situation than it was 30 years ago. Contact is so much easier. Air travel is another massive change: young people can see first-hand much more of the world than a generation ago.

The internet has brought risks and harms, especially with the constancy of interaction. Teens don’t have time away from peers. But the internet has also brought astounding changes in efficiency and opportunity, for the better.

On mental health, I don’t think there’s any realistic dispute that we do catch, treat and support young people with genuine mental health concerns better than we did. That is progress, generally.

The difficulty seems to me to be what is caught in the slipstream. If we stretch the definition and identification of mental health issues so far we create problems where none really exist. Anxiety and stress are usually part of life. Labelling these things as problems creates a minority of young adults who see the world as a place to take refuge from when it’s not plain sailing and requires effort. Which leads to an expectation of dependency.

Agree.

There are too many people imo with black and white thinking where they seem to refuse to choose not to see evident shades of grey and everything to them is on the extreme ends and they conveniently forget how algorithms work, on top of a sad lack of personal responsibility and self-awareness which was there way before Covid.

Social media and constant news makes me feel bad, then either get off of it or change what you see on it, or maybe go further and examine why it makes you feel bad and why you choose to follow things that make you feel bad. Why not take a break, delete, and/or unfollow such things. The choice is yours.

I can understand wanting to know what is going on when it comes to the news but it is typically the same thing being reported over and over and it is not always unbiased.

People openly admit that what they see on social media and what goes on in their everyday vastly differs and I often wonder if they are using social media to the extent where if it’s reported repeatedly that specific generations are xyz, they believe it over their own experiences and/or look for certain characteristics to make it true to them.

Telephones were not common in houses in the 1940s. I am amazed someone thinks they were. Even in 1970 only 35% of households had a telephone. It was only in 1944 that education became compulsory between ages 5 and 15 years old. Things were very different in the 1940s just after the war.

I'm going on the experience of my parents. They had secondary and tertiary education and they had telephones at home post-war when they were children. I know because I was fascinated by them telling me about party lines.

You’ve more patience than me. I wasn’t going to bother trying to educate that poster.

You're right, I'm an idiot, my parents must have been lying to me.

I will clarify that I grew up in a different country though. I assumed the UK would have been more advanced than where I lived but apparently not.

SM is all young people have known. They have never experienced life without it and never experienced a more mindful life. Brains are continuing to grow and develop until 25. Adults have enough problems regulating and they have pre smart phone lives to fall back on so not how anybody can think saying just regulate is helpful.

As usual this thread has turned into an ‘us V them’. Older generations telling younger generations how flaky they are in this case. So sad and predictable. No empathy whatsoever.

It’s pointless comparing challenges from the past to challenges today. It’s like comparing apples and pears. It’s also very divisive (what isn’t lately!)

Older people should be guiding youngsters and supporting them. People in jobs like the @Namechangechangeobv should be supporting and not slating people. I’m amazed she is in the job she is the way she walks about our young people. Youth is a difficult time for most people whenever they are born!

If you can stomach it watch breathtaking on ITVX

I was fortunate not to loose a parent in covid but my husband lost his mum. She already had lung cancer so we dont know it was covid as it was very early on but she had been doing well until this point. No tests at this time.

I found the program very triggering and it brought back many memories of those early days.

What we were being told.

Now imagine being a child and hearing all that.

Kids listen. They pick up
on everything their caregivers do. Language, tone, body language. Even if you think your not they know.

Fear was everywhere especially at first and it was very real. It was
Only a while later conspiracy theorists started.

That stuff stays with a child.

I was terrified in the 80s of aids and nuclear war. I can be more rational now but as a teen I remember being really worried about this stuff.

Add in school shit. no nhs support cost of living, climate change and war It's been a decade of stress so far.

Some of us 'older people' have been guiding successive waves of 'youngesters' (grads) through their early careers, chartership and into highly trained professionals on good salaries for decades. I have been involved in grad training for nearly 25 years and there has been a noticeable increased trend in recent times of the oft mentioned 'flakiness' insofar as poor attendance ("I'm feeling a bit poorly/not in a good place today"), push back on certain aspects or training and basic workplace functions(I.e refusing to travel to site, unwilling to do a basic presentation infront of half a dozen peers). This was virtually unheard of before. I can only speculate that such antics were tollerated at university and as such people though it was an attitude they could carry into the workplace. The odd thing is that part of the grad selection process involved team exercises, presentations, solving problems within a set time etc so they can clearly do it when it matters.

Yes, I know what happened in the war. I'm not suggesting it wasn't hard.

Yet the social isolation that some felt in the pandemic was not there. Mums at home with babies in apartments alone for weeks or months. Old people scared to go out for years - some are still affected by this, afraid of normal human contact. Kids and teens cut off from other kids for months.

And not just friends, also normal daily interactions like shops.

If it exists, this behaviour perhaps is corresponding with the breakdown of the social contract - you study hard, you work hard and then you will have a secure future, this is not the case now so why work all hours God sends.

Where did I say just regulate?

I said there is a choice like there is for many things. To ask and examine one’s own feelings and the why. That is not just regulate.

Resilience is gained, not given. We’ve all had a rough trot. And life is relentless. I think some parents are the ones lacking in resilience. We’re meant to be the adults in the room. I’m honestly a little fed up with the marshmallow parents out there. Yes, boundaries are fucking hard and sometimes you’ve got to fake it til you make it. But you’ve gotta pick a side; piss or get off the pot. Follow through or don’t fucking complain to me. If I can do it, anyone can

And you expect teens to have the skills to do that.🙄

Social media is not all gen z have known especially the older ones. My son is nearly 17 and he definitely is not a social media baby, in the car to my Mum's which is 4 hours away he used to have a mobile DVD player to watch until he was about 8. DD on the otherhand is Generation Alpha and yes, smart phones, iPads have been around since she was a baby. That said, I didn't let her have that exposure and we played loads, performed in pretend plays, played musical instruments, made loads of worlds with Lego, Playmobil, Sylvanian families, at parks after school regularly. I work in data protection so definitely didn't want my children to be a data set from a young age.

Please point out where I said an age group. I didn’t. I said people. You chose to make my post specifically about young people.

I wasn’t speaking solely on young people.

I also think teens are more capable than people choose to believe they are. I was asking myself such questions as a teen because I was raised to.

You used to socialise at school, uni, work. So there was a big incentive to be there. Now we socialise by iPhone and social media, or at least young people do so no need to be at those places - you can do it anywhere.

And we ended up with generations of broken adults as a result. I'm not sure what your point is.

I agree with you.

I teach people to drive aged mostly 17-28 and they are amazing. They are mentally strong, intelligent, capable, committed and determined. I’ve had gymnasts, singers, actors, dancers synchronised swimmer, trainee police officers, nurses those interested in politics, education, science.

They are wonderful and I always think to myself that as the young people who will be the future generation running the country we’ll be safe in their hands.

Show me where I have once slated the young people I work with?

You’re an absolute prime example of the issues that us teachers face - made up indignation and outrage. I do wonder how people like you actually survive in the real world.

Well, the scores are in and sadly, apparently, IANBU.

I guess it now remains to figure out how to unpick this all and figure out a way forward for these guys and gals. And in the meantime pray for a different government and some half decent funding.

I think you’re unlikely to get those that I work with coming to learn to drive with you, sadly. Any chance of subsidised lessons??

I think schools need debating societies. There was an Oxbridge grad teacher in my state school who set one up.

Debating something where you have to stand up and speak, consider someone else's opinion, see what audience reaction is like but realise none of it really matters - it's so valuable.

Can I ask please, do you work in a less affluent school? And/or do you support pupils who are mainly from lower income families?

Is there a big divide now between those kids who are resilient and capable and those who are not?
I dread to think what's going to happen in the future if this is reflected within society as there does seem to be huge proportion of young people with lack of resilience.

I don’t work in a less affluent place. Most of my students come from less affluent homes. The annu number of them has gone up from 20 to 200 in the last few years.