'I'm A Teacher, And I See This Too Often': People Are Sharing The Toxic Trends They're Already Noticing With Gen A
Every generation has critiques and qualms about the one that came after it. Well, someone on Reddit asked, “What scares you the most about the next generation?” Here’s what they said, plus some responses from members of the BuzzFeed Community about the most worrisome trends among “kids these days.”
1. “I’m a teacher, and I worry about cellphone addiction. Teenagers in class: head down, looking at their phones. Teenagers at the bus stop: head down. Walking across the street, riding a bike, walking: head down. It makes me sad.”
2. “They CANNOT use a computer. They can surf the web but cannot do anything useful. Many of my students are worse than my parents at doing simple things like attaching documents to emails or understanding the file path.”
3. “Nowadays, attention spans have gotten so short. So many young people couldn’t even sit through a book if they tried.”
4. “I’m a high school nurse, and I see they have no patience. They expect things to happen instantly. They don’t understand that there is no instant cure for things. For example, they think I’m crazy because I want them to sit for ten minutes on ice from an injury.”
5. “They are unable to focus: brain rot, meme culture, short-form content has caused everyone to develop the attention span of a goldfish.”
6. “I teach young kids (so, Gen Alpha). Many of them can’t persevere through a challenge without falling to pieces. And it’s not like, ‘I’m crying because I can’t find my notebook because I’ve had a rough day, and this is just the final straw.’ It’s, ‘I’m crying because I can’t find my notebook, and no one is coming to rescue me even though if I looked in my desk for more than point five seconds, I’d find it.’”
“A lot of it is bad parenting. It’s not just the iPads and TikTok. Many parents will step in before a kid is ever challenged by something and fix it for them so they don’t learn to problem-solve. They expect me to spoon-feed them answers and refuse to do anything that takes more than a minute of thinking. They also make excuses for their kids’ behavior and don’t discipline them (I had a parent this week try to explain that the problem isn’t that their daughter talks in class; the problem is that other kids are talking to her when she talks to them). I don’t foresee these kids being able to function in any career that expects them to do anything other than precisely what they want to do, and that asks nothing of them.”
7. “The way they are constantly seeking validation through others. Everyone is so preoccupied with taking pictures for their social media platforms that nobody appreciates the people and places they see. Attention is an addiction, and most people will do anything to get it.”
—Ralphie, 44
8. “The sheer ignorance. So many don’t read books. They have a limited vocabulary. I don’t speak to many who seem to think critically. They are raised to take standard tests and consume content rather than analyze and contemplate. It’s terrifying.”
9. “They have a complete lack of any understanding of finances. Not only that, but they lack any aspiration. They have no interest in developing job skills that can help them in the future. This generation will be shocked when they discover how hard their parents work and how much it costs to live in their hometowns.”
10. “They don’t know how to write. They can’t use punctuation. It’s sentence after sentence after sentence nonstop.”
11. “The way today’s youth puts everything on social media. I’m a boomer and am so grateful that my youthful behavior is not recorded anywhere. I probably would not have had the life I’ve had if my past was living in cyberspace. I was an idiot, and all young people should have that option. I suffered for my indiscretions, but once I had moved on from certain people and places, that suffering moved entirely into my head; nobody knew what an idiot I had been (and believe me, I came up with many new and exciting errors to make). I was allowed fresh starts. Today’s kids are not, and that’s a shame and a societal problem.”
12. “Their arrogance and constant misuse of buzzwords they heard from YouTube therapy sessions. For example, they were ‘traumatized’ after that last math class. It’s troubling.”
13. “Their reading comprehension is nonexistent. There’s story after story of teachers who teach upper middle school with kids who can’t point out the main character of an elementary-level paragraph story or find the theme of a simple passage. It genuinely scares me that in the next election, some of these ‘COVID babies’ who had critical learning year(s) robbed from them will be voting based on what people tell them to think because they don’t have the mind to research for themselves.”
14. “The openness young people have on social media these days. They post about all their problems as if that could help. It’s not going to. Getting away from social media might be the better solution.”
15. “Increasing lack of critical thinking and the inability to differentiate truth or reality compared to what they are spoon fed by various types of media that don’t care about people’s best interests. We’re already seeing the increasing consequences of this over the past 20 years, and it will only get worse.”
16. “They suffer from anxiety. So much of it. They come into our school clinic freaking out because they can’t breathe, they’re shaking with limb numbness, and they have a panicked look on their face. I ask them if they could be anxious about something, and they tell me they aren’t. But it’s pretty obvious they are. It just comes out of nowhere and for no particular reason. I deal with so much mental health. These poor babies.”
17. “I’m a millennial. I think we’re going to see a segment of young people become more traditionalist as they yearn for simpler times they never knew. In the process, I fear they may drag out some of our old, hateful ghosts.”
18. “On one hand, I think younger folks are more open to talking about mental health. This is good and sure beats my parent’s ‘just bury it so deep in your soul it never comes up’ strategy. On the other hand, it seems like kids today are way more sensitive about things. Sorry, but arriving too late to a sold-out movie or an airline losing your bag isn’t a ‘genuine mental health trauma.’ No, that waiter isn’t giving you ‘microaggressions.’ He’s just in a hurry because, if you look around, this restaurant is slammed.”
19. “The boys aren’t growing up. They all seem to be living in mom’s or grandma’s basement. They have no ambition, few hobbies, and no skills; they’re careless and are not interested in college, and they can’t hold a job or keep a girlfriend. And yet... they’re overconfident and misogynistic.”
20. “The younger generations don’t spend time together in person. They have full relationships and hangouts over their phones, gaming consoles, or whatever. They don’t get together and muck about as often. It’s weird.”
—Alie, 31
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
