Question for the brain trust here.......
For those aged 21 and younger......is society tougher to exist in now than in previous generations?
If so, how much has social media factored into it?
If you will forgive a response from someone who hasn't been under 21 since the Reagan Administration?
My kids are now grown, and just from my biased perspective I think it IS tougher now - tougher than it was for my kids, which was tougher than it was for me. Not physically tougher - its much easier physically. But IMO much tougher emotionally, and the "Double Whammy" is that many young people in America grow up deprived of the basic coping skills that previous generations had. In biased opinion, social media is a big part of it, but its also the technology in general that also plays a part.
My generation often suffered with the TV set as their "baby-sitter" (and thus as their de-facto "parent") - but the stuff on TV in the 1960's and '70's (which was mindless drivel for the most part) - seems like the works of Aristotle, Mozart and Shakespeare compared to the toxic swill being piped into our homes these days.
But that's not the half of it.
When parents give a child a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone - they place in that child's hands the best, but also the very WORST our world has to offer. And guess which gets consumed? And when children retreat into the technology, they also lose (or never learn) interpersonal skills.
Add to that the social media aspect, which takes common childhood malice and bullying to unimagined proportions, and you have the recipe for what we are seeing in America - record levels of suicides among young people. "Sticks and Stones" - minor taunts or insults many of us dealt with as children and/or as teens - face to face, with maybe one or two other kids attacking you? Yea, try dealing with vastly more vicious attacks coming from dozens of known (or anonymous) belligerents (perhaps virtually everyone that young person knows), safely attacking from behind their keyboards.
I feel so bad for parents and kids today - and I just don't know the answer. If you completely separate a child from technology, that causes a whole other set of problems, and really, I don't know that its even possible for them to do school work without it.
What these young people desperately need (again, my biased opinion) is real-world - face to face communication with peers and ESPECIALLY with parents.
No insults to anyone intended by these remarks!!! Please know I'm not trying to judge anyone!!!