Kids These Days: What we are really arguing about
My bet is that in the 1940s, adults really missed those great teens in the 1890s, who knew the value of work (only half of them went to school) and weren’t yet coddled by indoor toilets.
None of this means that the worriers are mistaken or that we are in the grip of a moral panic (though I might make this argument in another post). But it does suggest that the popularity of despair can’t be taken as good evidence that this despair is warranted.
But still, things really are rough for kids today. I opened this post with a graph from Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation. Here’s another, looking at American children ages 10-14.
