Are today's young people more childish?

[HelenInHeels]

I've noticed this a lot on public transport, trams particularly from teenagers say 15, 16 years old or thereabouts. And in town.

They seem far more childish than my friends and I were at the same age. We were wanting to be seen as grown up. Now I see a lot of squealing, shouting, shoving and pushing, yelling and behaviour I'd expect in seven year olds. Usually in mixed groups, but not always.

I was mortified if I was seen as a "child" at 15 (technically I was of course) and we were just not like this. I'd have been mortified if I'd acted like this.

Have today's young people really changed so much? I'm talking late 90s here not the 1960s!

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.

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.

@Hardbackwriter The last people to leave school at 14 are now 92 years old. I'm 41.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The school leaving age was raised to 15 in 1946/7 and to 16 in 1972. Did some slip through the net I wonder?

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

Where did I say I think it's meaningful? I didn't. It was merely an observation. I might have done at the time though, being 15 and all that ...

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 .

A recent thread on here suggested leaving an 11yo, at Secondary school, one for an hour after school was neglectful.

Or other threads saying that expecting a child not to have a mobile phone that can be tracked is neglectful.

Or allowing sleepovers
Or walking to school alone
Or expecting them to walk more than 10mins...

They are infantilised in some ways while being exposed to adult ideas on others.

There's some truth on your second paragraph. I don't tend to have problems with individual teenagers at work, it's groups who are a pain in the backside.

I remember reading a thread about leaving a 15 year old who was turning 16 in few weeks alone for a night the amount of posters who said they wouldn't consider it until they were 16 was ridiculous like a child suddenly becomes mature on their 16 th birthday some even suggested it was against the law.

Yes, but it's not a surprise.

Children had little choice but to grow up quickly just a few generations back. Young latchkey children were a common sight - I was one of them and expected to entertain myself from 2-6pm from around age 7. There was a microwave and some leftover food for me to make when I got home. Strict instructions never to open the door to strangers, but that was it. That would be seen as neglectful now.

I used to walk myself to school and back, used to walk to the library 15min down the (busy main) road. By age 10 I was expected to take two inner-city trains and a tram to get to my school because we had moved away. That would be seen as reckless now.

If children failed school it was their fault, not anyone else's. If a child walked out in front of a car they got a huge telling off. Adults, in general, were not afraid to tell a child off, and so we conformed to society more easily. Children nowadays are not to blame for anything. Fail school? It's the teacher's fault. Walk out in front of a car? The driver needed to have anticipated that. Tell a child off? You better hope you don't get an earful from the parent, or worse.

The fear of litigation means children are bubble-wrapped in so many ways that they cannot function when confronted with actual day-to-day life. In some schools, children are not allowed any sharps, including pencil sharpeners and scissors. Chemicals in Science are now so diluted they barely work. In Food tech, they are not allowed to do more than basic cutting, and some schools now require pre-cut meat and vegetables. As a result, children don't know how to handle actual danger anymore. Many don't take risks seriously, because they've never been exposed to it.

And when it comes to socialising, it's all pre-scripted for them. Parents don't allow young children out of their sight and intervene far too quickly in squabbles. Teachers have to fill every second of even things like tutor time with "meaningful" activities and lunchtimes are barely enough to eat and pee, so children don't learn social behaviour there. Again, any squabbles are intervened with. Then they have after-school clubs or evening clubs, again, with pre-scripted ways of interacting. They have no real chance to learn what is and isn't appropriate, so it happens a lot slower.

I do see it as detrimental. Studies on brains may show that today's generations' brains don't fully develop until age 30, but I wonder what similar studies would have shown 150 years back if the technology had been there.

You definitely have a point. Kids in my primary seem to be academically ahead but socially and emotionally behind. They are all tutored after-school with little ‘play’. Even at breaktime/lunch they can’t seem to sort squabbles without involving an adult.