Friends, let’s have some real talk: I’m concerned about our youth. If I project the future based on my experiences with young people, I get overwhelmed with worry. A generation of helicopter parenting and babysitting screens has left kids untested and unprepared to deal with the harsh reality of LIFE.
Life is hard. To be good at it, one needs to be able to overcome adversity. When children are given everything they want and are coddled and doted on all along the way, they become soft, weak and frankly, hard to be around. When one pairs that with the amount of screen time they now find themselves in (eight, nine, ten plus hours a day in many cases!) the result is soft, whiny, entitled self-centered lunatics.
I wish I were exaggerating.
And I assure you, this is not a ‘get off my lawn’ rant. This is real talk. I worry. I’ve seen the deterioration of our youth firsthand and this is the generation that will be running the show when I’m in my final season. A quick example of what I’m talking about: during a boxing class I was teaching recently, a 14-year-old girl accidentally knocked over her water bottle, spilling water everywhere, making a mess. Instead of immediately moving to clean it up, she just stood there, frozen, shaking with uncertainty of what to do next. I was teaching, so on the side I advised her that there were paper towels in the bathroom she could use to clean it up. She began to shake with even more anxiety as she convulsed, “But, but, I don’t know how!”
Um…???
Or the time I recently took a 17-year-old male in my boxing class to the side and kindly asked him to step outside to clean the mud off his shoes. His shoes were caked with mud and it was getting all over the floor, making a mess. Instead of obliging like a normal person, he took offense, thinking I was ridiculing him. He huffed and puffed and made a big scene, disrupting the entire class with his angry dissent.
And don’t get me started on the screens. I’ve watched the immediate transformation of sweet innocent children into deviant, scheming degenerates after having been given smartphones. My personal opinion is that if most adults can’t seem to control their own attachment to their phones then there is little hope giving one to a child. See ya later, innocence.
But not all hope is lost. I recently had the opportunity to act as a judge in the Conflict Resolution Bookmark Art contest, an art competition where Montgomery County students were tasked with designing bookmarks promoting healthy, positive ways of conducting conflict resolution among their peers. And hallelujah! The experience gave me hope!
Students from kindergarten to eighth grade presented their artworks with the hopes of winning one of four top prizes, with the best in each grade going on to be laminated and then mass produced to distribute throughout Montgomery County. Through their art, I could see that some kids are more based than others. There is hope that they will rise to the top and counteract the slew of misguided ones eventually. Seeing the wide range of creativity and talent that is out there made me think better of our youth. In fact, my favorite piece of the entire competition (which won first place among the eighth graders by the way), was a mountain landscape with the words: “All you want is on the other side of fear, so face your fears.”
Amen!
What a profound declaration from an eighth grader! Wow! Consider me hopeful once again. And let us encourage our youth to step outside of their comfort zones – to be tested, to have the hero’s journey and to find themselves and all they are capable of by going forth and facing those fears.
What is YOUR opinion on the state of our youth? Do YOU have concerns? Do YOU have any ideas to combat those concerns? Tell me in the comments!
Oh Jeff , I’m so glad you had the courage to speak the truth. It scares me to as I am in my last season and I worry about who will take care of me. I didn’t come with text instructions and on what to do for them to do!! Don’t get me started on my world my grandchildren will inherit. Pray to God that this ship rights itself thru him.
I feel ya. Gotta stay positive where we can I suppose and try to be good examples. Thanks for sharing!
Apparently there has been no progress on this matter of youth since the Hull Daily Mail brought this to the public’s attention in 1925, “We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude and utterly selfish.”
If the adults of my grandparents’ generation had taken taken care of this back then, as they should have, we wouldn’t be in this fix now. Hrumph.
See! It goes way back then. I guess that means I, too, am part of the problem (although I am childless, so I tend to remove myself from the equation) 🙂 Thanks for sharing, Ken!