It’s common knowledge that parents have experienced childhood at one point. Therefore, teenagers don’t really say “you don’t know what it’s like”. (At least, I haven’t heard it yet). But in this generation, parents haven’t had the struggle of many things that kids are faced with today.
Adults never had to worry about phone addictions during class, because they had a flip phone at best. (I’m not great with this stuff, I may be wrong).
The adults also did not have to worry about their future regarding artificial intelligence. I see every job being taken by these guys. I’m not sure if it’s a big point, but AI growth at this rate, is pretty scary, and their parents can not say grew up with this.
I feel like I’m forgetting something… One sec…
What about a global fufknig pandemic?
Even if you don’t get sick, every kid in elementary, middle, and high school has been deprived of 2 years of essential human interaction. That much time alone had caused so depression globally.
As a cherry on top, have you ever heard someone say someone along the lines of “man, kids these days”. Anything that follows that is most of the time the parent’s fault for not raising their kids properly.
So in addition to kids not being properly raised to do anything as an adult, we also don’t know how to interact with other humans.
As the technology grows, we realize more and more what a messed up world we’re in. With artificial intelligence killing us in every way, video becoming more accessible to reveal racist police, and our technological reliance killing our intelligence, I think it’s safe to say that parents of this generation’s kids have not had the experience that the kids had.
post ending: sorry about my citations, I wanted to back up my claims because I want sure about it. maybe that kills the “shower thought” part of shower thoughts.
Where I’m from, the parents and children have led pretty similar lives. Middle school was stressful enough that they didn’t go put anyways.
I’m not saying you’re wrong because yes those are real problems your discussing and absolutely worthy of discussion. Mishandling how AI fits into society is going to be a major problem, the pandemic was a huge disruption globally, and devices designed to extract as much dopamine as possible are definitely targeting kids. These are valid problems of our day.
But (I’m assuming you are a teen), many people have experienced similar pervading fears in the past, in my lifetime I’ve gone through multiple economic crises, watched planes crash into multiple buildings on live TV in 3rd grade and watched our country split itself apart politically in real time recall the Y2K bug hysteria, and yeah even flip phones in my time were decried as addictive.
My parents lived through the looming threat of global nuclear conflict and the fear that commies have already secretly invaded and body snatched your neighbors and that “thuggish drug dealers” are on every corner waiting to give you drugs and get you addicted while the real drug dealers (tobacco companies) testified in front of congress that they weren’t marketing to kids with their cool and edgy cartoon characters and that nicotine wasn’t addictive.
Adults might not seem phased because most of us have been through global scale crises before. For some, yeah that stoicism is just callousness of a lifetime of unnecessary crisis. For others, it’s a call to action to tackle a problem none of us can solve ourselves. Most parents, if they had the choice and power, wouldn’t want their children to go through this kind of stuff, but we aren’t the ones who hole the keys to power, that belongs to our “heavily sponsored” politicians. All we can do is just figure out the next few steps as they happen.
I’m not saying this to invalidate your fears, there is truth to them, but don’t give up because of that fear. Learn about what causes that fear, understand it, and then fight to make sure others don’t have to go through it. You’re young, you have a good starting baseline of understanding about the world, far more than I did when I was a teen, you have a lot of time to expand that understanding, keep learning, and fight the good fight.
Thank you for this. Even through my pessimistic writing, I’m still an optimistic person. I’m still going to pursue my dreams, and I’m not too sure if ai is going to replace all jobs yet, anyways.
