Kids Today

Is there hope for the next generation?

Whether we are parents, teachers, or just adults observing teenagers at the mall or the movie theater, it is easy to give in to the sentiment that “kids today” are a real mess, and therefore our society is headed for trouble. Major news carriers have nothing good to say about young people. Drugs are epidemic. The drop-out rate soars. Journalists warn us that young people today not only do not want to wait for marriage; they do not even wait for a date. Dating has supposedly been replaced with “hooking up.” Girls have gone wild. Boys are all drunk or on drugs, or both.

Are we headed for a societal meltdown at the hands of the next generation? I think not.

Sure, I have seen the statistics on teen sex, drop-outs and drugs. I’ve also read about the Sixties and the Seventies, and I remember the Eighties and Nineties quite well. We may give practices a new name, but “hooking up” is not substantially different from “free love” or a “one-night stand.” About half of teens are sexually active, just like before. The drop-out rate is no better, no worse. The teen pregnancy made a small surge during Bush’s administration but has been steadily declining over all. The abortion rate has actually fallen. Teen smoking is at a ten-year low.

As in previous generations, only a portion of young people are engaged in the practices that scare adults to death. CosmoGirl recently shocked the nation by claiming that 1 out of 5 teenagers photograph themselves naked. Nobody mentioned the flipside also revealed by the survey: 4 out of 5 teens refrain from the practice, despite having the means and encountering the same pressure from friends, magazines and billboards. By focusing on the outrageous and the sensational, media outlets create panic. Apparently, that’s what sells papers and keeps viewers watching.

The younger generation is obsessed with computers, cell phones and iPods. It’s true. I finally realized that if I wanted to have a meaningful relationship with my adult daughter, I must add a texting plan to my phone. Calls are neither answered nor returned in this age of instant-everything and thumb typing. Young people are more computer-literate than ever, but we tend to focus on the negative aspects of this. We mutter about English literacy when we read, “How R U?” and fail to recognize that our kids are learning a shorthand that is just as valid as that used by Ham radio operators and telegraphers of old. We’re befuddled when kids get around parental controls, and forget to appreciate their intelligence and ingenuity.

Parents are not the only ones who focus on the negative. Media outlets routinely play up teenage delinquency, even as they ignore millions of American teens who are smart, strong, responsible and ambitious. When have you ever watched a TV special about the millions of teens who use the Internet responsibly to further their education, keep in touch with friends and learn about their world, without putting themselves in harm’s way? Yet it happens every single day.

Condemning next generation is as old as time. Even during the Pax Romana there was great concern about a rising crop of lazy youth who did not understand the value of work or the importance of politics. Maybe it’s a sort of amnesia on the part of adults. We forget what it was like to be young. We remember our hard work to bring up a grade, but not all the homework we missed that put us in that position to begin with. Did we really understand hard work, appreciate money, or have a strong grasp of the reality of consequences of sixteen?

In many ways, this generation is just like any other. There will be slackers who stay home with mom and dad, criminals, and those who feel entitled. There will be leaders and lovers, givers and takers.

If we are honest about our own generation, we have more slackers, drug addicts, welfare bums, and criminals among the adult population than among the teens in our community. Society progresses forward at the behest of a great team of hardworking but ordinary folks, while a few bright leaders show the way. This is how it has always been, and this is how it always will be.
Teenagers I know give me many reasons to hope for a better tomorrow. They write novels, put on plays, sew their own costumes, revive old styles of music, and read Goethe’s Faust just for fun. They jump hurdles, volunteer with disabled children, assist political campaigns, compose music and win scholarships. Many of them are one or two years ahead in their studies.

Amazing teens are all around us, even if their stories don’t make front page. In 2007, a teenage girl became the first female Georgia Fiddle King, putting old timers to shame with her rendition of “I Don’t Love Nobody.” I know a young man who plows with oxen. When his sister was a teenager, she started her own business canning and selling jellies. Just this week, a Ringgold High School student made a perfect 800 on the Math SAT. A few months ago, a middle school student revolutionized solar energy collection, defying generations of scientists who said it could not be done.

As a whole, teens are smarter now than we were back then. They learn more math and science in lower grades. They know more about international issues, and have a greater commitment to problems like global warming. They even know how to program the VCR.

Let’s face it; our children may be smarter than we are. They have a different starting point than we do. Older generations developed the Internet, but these kids were born in the age of Wi-Fi. They cannot imagine a world without those connections, and they will build on them, taking technology farther than we ever dreamed. Their thinking is not tangled in landlines and cable wires. Their world is not linear. While we have reached the edges of our imagination, they have only just begun.

What will the world be like when these young people gain control? It will be global, connected, instant, and intolerant of intolerance. Tomorrow’s entrepreneurs will focus on removing barriers, growing community, and sharing resources. They will create platforms rather than hierarchies.

Tomorrow’s leaders will tackle the problems they inherited from us, including a damaged economy, a ravaged ecology, and a world at war. All those hours spent online and on the cell phone may translate to diplomacy rather than deployment. Unfettered by prejudices, they inhabit a word both larger and smaller than ours. They will succeed where we failed – and they will fail where we succeeded – and all in all, the world will keep spinning.

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