Kids These Days

I hear a lot of talk about “kids these days,” how they’re out of control, getting worse by the year, disrespectful, and so on. Supposedly, they’re so much worse than the previous generations. Maybe it’s just because I was such a “bad” kid that I think this is so totally off-base. By bad, I don’t mean I beat people up, participated in gangs or robbed the elderly. I did drugs. A fairly decent amount of drugs. Mostly pot and LSD. I dropped acid for the first time on the third day of my junior year…at school. I drank way before I was 21. I slept around. I dyed my hair black and wore really cute, freaky tights under my black skirts. I hung out at the mall…on drugs. But despite all of this, I was still a pretty good person. I was polite to my elders, never skipped school (it was kind of hard to do so though, I went to a school with only 31 people in my grade so we were easily missed), never got into fights that I started (well, once, but she deserved it!), never hurt anyone.

Now, 17 years later, I work in the mall seasonally. I see the mall rats, wearing the same freaky-cute tights, fun colored hair and tattoo-covered boys. The punks, goths and Emo kids (Emo kids have their own set of issues, but that’s a totally different post). They come in, they get glared at by older people and store owners, followed around stores like they’re there to steal and nothing more. It’s kind of sad, because most of them are really polite, sweet kids.

And really, how can kids today possibly be any worse than the coked-out children of the 80′s, the flower children of the 60′s, the greasers of the 50′s, the gangsters of the 30′s, the flappers of the 20′s and so on? Every generation had their troublemakers or “bad eggs.” Sure, there are a few things that SEEM to be getting worse. Like school shootings. But then again, there has always been violence in schools. We just have mroe media coverage now. Gangs have been an issue for decades. There’s a brat in every bunch. But overall, are kids these days really any worse than kids of those days?

[To give credit where credit is due, this post was inspired by a comment posted on facebook by my ex-husband.]