I've yet to meet a teenager I would want to talk to for more than five minutes. I find most of them dull and self absorbed. They refuse to expand their minds beyond their little social worlds. It's lamentable. I am chilled by the thought of today's teenagers becoming future leaders.
I don't think yesterday's teenagers were any better.
I was a teen in the late 80s/ early 90s, and I recall teens back then being equally appalling, if not even a little bit more so.
The only real difference I see is that teens today have become less independent, less willing to assume adulthood and all that entails.
I think they're younger, in a lot of ways, than the teens of the previous generation.
My generation grew up during the divorce boom. We were all latch-key kids. Most of us lived in single-parent households and many of us were responsible for caring for our younger siblings after school from a young age.
I think that trend has turned around, at least slightly: divorce is less common and less cavalier than it was at its peak in the late 80s. And nearly every state now has laws against children under twelve being left home unsupervised.
Nine-year-olds today go to organized afterschool programs, not home to an empty house, to babysit their two younger siblings while mom works the late shift.
People of my generation understood the concept of responsibility from a young age. We were ready to work and live independently by the time we were of age to do so. We were already chomping at the bit by our mid-teens, wanting to be free.
I think more teens dropped out of school in those days; there was less effort made to retain them if they wanted to go.
Society was also more tolerant (or at least, more resigned to the inevitability of) teen smoking and drinking, sex and drug experimentation.
I do recall some half-hearted "Just Say no To Drugs" campaign, but there was certainly no abstinence-only movement back then.
Watch the movie
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Then watch
Juno. Therein lies the difference between teens today and teens of twenty years ago (and the difference in societal
attitudes about teens then and now).
I wouldn't say teens have gotten
worse; I would say they're more sheltered today, and less mature.
An alarming number of them don't seem to get the fact that they will be expected to work for a living, that a regular, full-time job is the price of freedom.
That fact was
never lost on the teens of my generation; we all got jobs as soon as we were able. Couldn't wait to get out of our houses and out from under our parents' thumbs.
Too many kids today will contentedly live at home until they're 30.
At least, that's my two cents on the issue.