Are modern teens really that bad….or are we just growing up?

Adults worry about drugs young people may or may not be taking and the pedophiles who (apparently) stand on every street corner; You worry about the dangers of the Internet and of good old-fashioned apathy. In fact, you feel compelled to whip yourselves into a frenzy of panic the moment teens display any behavior not approved by ‘those who know best’.

The general consensus among ‘experts’ seems to be that the state of youth is just not as robust as it used to be. We are told that young people nowadays are less moral and less dynamic than their parents or grandparents were. Young people, it seems, just don’t give a damn.

But who says this, exactly? Dare we guess that those who are so disdainful of today’s teenagers have only a passing acquaintance with the memory of their own youth? The youth of yesteryear might have all the answers but I suggests that those answers could be wrong for one reason and one reason only: The youth of yesteryear forget.

They forget how they themselves blundered through the minefield of adolescence. They forget the late night returns to face the wrath of their parents: “What time do you call this? We were worried sick.” They forget the foul-mouthed tirades against their family who just ‘don’t understand’. They forget the fags and booze, and joints smoked. They forget just what an ugly and painful yet fabulously irresponsible time it was being young. They forget because they grow up. We all do….unfortunately.

Human nature never changes. Youth never changes. Young people nowadays are no different, no better nor worse, than they were in any idealized past that we imagine. The boy to man is still the same as it ever was: The unpredictable and uncontrolled emotions, the sense of injustice at every turn and, above all, the raging pool of hormones we all wallow in.

You make the mistake of judging young people by the standards of the societies we live. That standard is set in stone wherever you go in the world. The youth of any country is just that: Youth. It has no nationality.

Yet perhaps there is one difference present modern societies that is fundamentally different from the past: The state is taking over the business of raising children. It feels compelled to do so because, like the individual parent, it is being scared out of its wits by the media.

The dangers are all around us, yet we all worry ourselves sick about potential dangers facing young people. But we can’t help it, and so you ‘responsible adults’ quietly lose your minds.

Hysteria is a curious thing. Young people are prone to it but so are older people. What is it that young people do nowadays that so outrages you? Could it not be that young people are simply adapting to a society that adults have created?

“I blame society” is often the first of choice among the unthinking. Yes, and that society is the society that you created in your own image. You introduce us teenagers into it then you spend all your time blaming us for behaving in a fashion that you yourselves encourage. You can’t escape the blame by saying you don’t hold with modern ways. We all watch TV; We ‘consume’ and we jump when the media says, “JUMP.”
You think that teenagers who have sex are promiscuous, but are we not doing just what YOU did at our age? Many of you smoked weed and got drunk and declared to the world (and your parents) that you didn’t give a damn. You did all that when you were sixteen. You did it in the past, teenagers do it now and teenagers will continue to do it in the future.

Is it healthy for us to do all this? Probably not . But perhaps we are doing it because that is what we have to do in order to grow up. We should never be impressed by ‘moral’ and virtuous youngsters that come perfectly formed out of the box. Such perfect teens are not being honest with themselves. There will inevitably come a time when young people have to make that little rebellion and declare their individuality. They have to do so and it’s better to do so at sixteen rather than thirty.

Our modern society is not that bad. Where would we rather be? In those morally upright times when people were lynched or wiped out by plague? Or perhaps these modern time is closer to Utopia than we might think. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Modern society is not perfect, but it is the best non-perfect society we have known or ever will know.

Perhaps perfection WILL conquer society in the future, but until then, let’s be thankful for small mercies AND teenagers.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

-Philip Larkin – This Be The Verse