Insights

‘We did things better back in my day’ is a common refrain, a sentiment handed down from one generation to the next. Four thousand years ago, the Akkadian king Naram Sin was recorded complaining:

We have fallen upon evil times and the world has waxed very old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their parents.

The words sound hardly out of place today. BBC has created a compendium of complaints directed towards today’s youth. The Daily Mail, for example, have turned such slags into a cottage industry.

(Perhaps no columnist will match the letter found in a 1771 Town and Country magazine article: “Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Poitiers and Agincourt…”)

It is all, of course, complete and utter nonsense. The evidence is overwhelming: young people are accepting of different religions, ethnicities, and genders; gather, synthesize, and present information from around the world; complete more formal education than any previous generation in history; create and share their own content; and take a much more cautious approach to sex and alcohol than previous generations.

These trends are worthy of our praise, not derision. The kids are, in fact, all right.