Young People Ruin Everything
I was a young person once. I don’t remember many details. It didn’t last long, youth, that is. I don’t remember being so selfish, so fat headed, so self-absorbed or as narcissistic as it seems some of the youngsters I meet today seem to be. That’s mainly because I’ve had too much alcohol in the interim to remember. Add to that, the usual senility old farts like me tend to manifest right after we start forgetting to zip-up our fly, and you arrive at my current situation; jealous of their vitality, astounded at their diversity.
We humans tend to want to lump people in groups, assign traits to all that which we see in a only a few, that of course, is stereo-typing. Not such a good idea as it turns out – gives too much credit to some, not enough to others. Young people today are a product of the technology my generation helped create. Millennials and Zs can’t seem to comprehend it, but us Boomers brought them into both worlds; the real one and the Web one. The interesting paradox is that while one part of this younger generation continued the evolution of the Internet with innovations like Facebook, another part doesn’t know how to spell Facebook. One segment of this digital society designs software, while another just plays with it. One group of this generation takes their family and community responsibility seriously, while another part simply exclaims, seriously! One channel of this generation seems ambitious, pursuing advanced degrees, maybe even going to med school while another part cheerily ignores life’s lessons of smoking and cancer, obesity and over-eating, drinking while driving and ultimately, providing the hands-on medical practice their newly graduated doctor cohorts require. A little simplistic I know, and maybe I’m stereotyping right now, just to a smaller group.
No longer is there ‘The Pepsi Generation’ we remember from the sixties or seventies. The new world order is fragmented at best; channelized is a better word. That’s because young people today have freedom, and lots of it. They can work from home if they want. If they choose, they can never leave the bedroom and go to class online. Just heard about some research that says over a third of them still live at home in their 30s! They can sit at home and have multiple relationships on TikTok, Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram and X. Thanks to technology, their desktops and laptops, their smart-phones and tablets, their Hulus and Netflixes; they can tune into whatever channel of life they want and avoid the rest – or not. Choice.
We didn’t have that kind of freedom when I was a kid. We had to go to school or work, or both. We actually had to drive to the job or take a bus. When we got paid, we had to take a paper check to an actual bank, no PayPal, no Google Wallet or Chime. Chime was the sound your doorbell made. If we were enrolled in school, we would have to attend class, take a test and pass it. If we wanted to socialize, we had to get up the courage to ask someone for a date, and towards the end of the evening, we even had to pay for it. And in those days, you got in trouble when you tried to have more than one ‘special’ friend at a time.
But today as I peer into the wrinkled face staring back at me in the mirror, I see that I can’t smirk with glee at this new crop of critters, now cutting their teeth on reality. Yes, I do worry about those that don’t seem to have a grasp on the underlying brutal realities that so far have been out of sight for them. And yes, secretly I wanted them to suffer just a little bit before they grew too far up. But instead, even the most ignorant of this bunch are smarter than the average kid in my day. Even the loneliest can find a fan on Facebook. Today, thanks to change, the only things that need to comes out of the closet are clothes; not so in my day. The only consolation I ever thought I would get from my life is the satisfaction that someday I could tell these young rascals ‘I told you so’, knowing that they would have to go through the same crap I did. But did they? No, they didn’t. Time changes things. Young people ruin everything.
