Do children have it easier or worse today?

[Lamb]

Do you think that children growing up today have it easier or worse than what you had when you were growing up?

 

[psalms 91]

I would say worse because of the prevailance of drugs, lack of parenting in many cases and peer pressure I think is worse as well. It is a shame that in many cases kids have the say instead of the parents which raises spoiled selfish kids ill prepared to go into the world and of course drugs which can and does kill them or give them a record which kills opportunities and or a drug problem that makes them unable to cope in the world.

 

[NewCreation435]

It depends. On one hand kids today are exposed to things that I never would have even thought of as a kid. Many adult issues and information their little brains aren't capable of dealing with including but not limited to violence on television and violence video games and programs with sexual content.

The technology can also be fun and addictive in good ways to.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

I feel children now have easier as (most) kids are spoiled and they can get away with things as the parents don't want to discipline or don't know how to.

 

[tango]

I think on balance kids today have it worse than I did.

On the positive side there's technology everywhere, if you want to know something you've got Google at your fingertips (and if you don't have broadband at home chances are you have it at school or at the library). When I was a child there was no such thing as broadband. There wasn't internet access as such. If you were a real techinerd you might use a modem to get onto a BBS (text-based, bandwidth was nowhere near enough for graphics) but the only people you'd find there were other techinerds.

On the downside there's technology everywhere. If I did something stupid as a teenager my friends would mock me about it for a while and within a week or two it would be forgotten because someone else did something stupid and we were mocking them for it. These days the chances are someone took a video on their phone and it's on Youtube for all eternity. If I wanted to get away from people it was easy, I wasn't expected to be available at any time on every social media platform that exists, unable to escape bullies online because turning off social media would just result in being socially ostracized.

Then there's the endless problem of children being taught what to think rather than how to think. These days it seems free thought is frowned upon, there's little opportunity for creativity in schools because they are too busy following a set curriculum. During my school days thinking was encouraged and it was far from rare for teachers to give us assignments that required us to think around a problem rather than simply learn a method during class and apply it for homework.

In my schooldays there was no question of boys using the girls' facilities. Boys getting into the girls' shower room was the stuff of movies like Porky's and the topic of teenage sniggering. We didn't have to worry about someone who was visibly male insisting on being referred to as if they were female. We didn't even have the pressure of a hugely sexualised society at all - I remember being about 16 and one of my friends was talking about his sister who had moved in with her boyfriend. They weren't married. It was obvious my friend was very disapproving of such things. Back then it was very unusual to cohabit unmarried. Until the age of about 16 or so most guys didn't even carry contraceptives, it was pretty much assumed they wouldn't be needed. Sure, sometimes a teenage girl would get pregnant but it certainly wasn't common.

Back then children didn't call all the shots. You might get away with talking back at an adult for a time but chances are you'd pay the price for it later. One way I saw it put more recently was that it was the child's job to test the boundaries and the adult's job to set and enforce the boundaries. Now it seems more and more there are no boundaries, so the kids trying to push the boundaries find there are none. But then they hit reality and sooner or later have to realise that once they leave the educational system nobody cares about their self-esteem and they don't get a gold star just for showing up.

 

[Andrew]

Kids today are crying out for attention that their parents don't give. Instead they are babysat by video games and phones. The educational system is defunct as google replaces need for teachers. College is a debt creator. It's a very tough time when its actually more profitable to win hits on youtubing hurting yourself or acting a fool. Political Correctness rewards wickedness. Conspiracy Theories cause distrust. Pharmaceutical companies push diagnosis on everyone. Kids become senile at the age of 3 due to the vase information about the world. Advertisements are insane and profane. Music, video games and television are distasteful and violent. Sex is pushed in cartoons. Politics is a freak show. Racial profiling to the max, more distrust. Satan is "cool", God is kicked out of school, Christianity is confusing due to division and the educational system pushing out alternative "theories" contradicting biblical beliefs. The workforce cannot keep up with the economy and underpaid employees are forced to work long hours and college grads end up at mcdonalds. Divorces separate families.
Just to name a few

 

[Ruth]

I think some have it worse and some better. Kids with parents on illegal drugs have it worse. Parents who interact with their children and teach them right from wrong in a loving way benefit.

Children are also subject to fearing school shootings which makes it worse than I had it. The craziest thing we had in high school was a streaker! Yes, they call me the streak...remember that song? lol. No, I was not a streaker...

 

[Confessional Lutheran]

I think some have it worse and some better. Kids with parents on illegal drugs have it worse. Parents who interact with their children and teach them right from wrong in a loving way benefit.

Children are also subject to fearing school shootings which makes it worse than I had it. The craziest thing we had in high school was a streaker! Yes, they call me the streak...remember that song? lol. No, I was not a streaker...

:happy-run2: :happy-run2:


Me neither.

:cool-relaxed::cool-relaxed::cool-relaxed:
:cool-relaxed:

To the topic of the thread, though, I think kids today do have it easier in some ways, but there's a trade- off, too. Life is a lot less certain than it used to be, what with school shootings and random terrorist attacks. There are also random acts of stupidity that leave people dead ( I'm serious. Think about people who aren't aware of our traffic laws going out into a highway and causing fatal traffic accidents). Kids might be allowed to pop off at the mouth at their elders without fear of consequences, but ( that being said), they are also well aware that a lot of the adults they disrespect think very little of them in return.

 

[Wilhemena]

My take on this is that children have it easier for their schooling because of access to information on the www and that also is their downfall because of more peer pressure from social media. Children have their entire lives documented online which is scary to old timers who only have a hand full of photos from their own childhood.

 

[Lamb]

I wish I had the internet when I was a kid. I love to learn

 

[psalms 91]

I am glad we didnt as had enough bullying in school sure did not need more

 

[tango]

I wish I had the internet when I was a kid. I love to learn

The internet, complete with all sorts of content filters that have no idea what they are supposed to be filtering.

One place I worked at introduced a content filter, basically to stop people downloading porn at work. One of the guys in my team caused a huge laugh when he got the message that sites of type "sex" were blocked. He was trying to access a publication called the Financial Times, from within an investment bank. You can probably guess what sort of information you might find in the pages of the Financial Times. If you can find a less erotic publication than the FT I'd be impressed.

When I got set up with my Freeview box it came with a clutch of free adult channels and the option to sign up for pay-per-view for a bunch more. Not being interested in the adult channels I tried to use the option to hide them, so that they wouldn't appear in my channel listings and they couldn't be accessed without using a PIN. Sadly what actually happened was that a couple of the adult channels vanished, most of them remained, and the regular channels I wanted to watch were suddenly restricted and could only be accessed with the PIN. That got to be a real drag, so I just turned it off and put up with two pages of channels with names like "Babestation" on my listings.

I often wonder if filters today are better than they were back then, so that kids can be left to browse and learn without finding the kind of stuff that would make Caligula blush.

 

[Josiah]

When I was a kid - way back when - I had to walk to school.... barefoot...... in the snow..... up hill..... both ways!

When I was a kid - there were only like 50 channels on TV! To get anything good, you had to go to Blockbuster and search and hope your fave movie was there and RENT a TAPE (they made you get popcorn and candy, too), after, you had to rewind it (or they fined you) and return it! SO much bother!

When I was a kid, you had to PAY MONEY to watch the Disney Channel.

When I was a kid - they LIMITED the number of hours you could be on the 'net (you paid by the hour), no unlimited access. And it was s.l.o.w..... and I mean S.L.O.W.... sometimes it would just STOP.... and meanwhile the older sis is SCREAMING to get off the ______ phone so her boyfriend could call her (fat chance) - the internet tied up the phone line (go figure).

When I was a kid - there was no Starbucks (at least not around where I lived). How did we live? How DID we live??

I had it bad..... I had it hard....




.

 

[JRT]

Socrates (died 399BC) wrote --- Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

 

[Lamb]

Socrates (died 399BC) wrote --- Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

It's a good quote but the authenticity is doubtful from what I've researched. Forbes included the quote in their magazine and staff tried to authenticate it but it only went as far as being told it was from a line in a Dutch book and no one could remember the title so it ended there.

 

[tango]

When I was a kid - way back when - I had to walk to school.... barefoot...... in the snow..... up hill..... both ways!

When I was a kid - there were only like 50 channels on TV! To get anything good, you had to go to Blockbuster and search and hope your fave movie was there and RENT a TAPE (they made you get popcorn and candy, too), after, you had to rewind it (or they fined you) and return it! SO much bother!

When I was a kid, you had to PAY MONEY to watch the Disney Channel.

When I was a kid - they LIMITED the number of hours you could be on the 'net (you paid by the hour), no unlimited access. And it was s.l.o.w..... and I mean S.L.O.W.... sometimes it would just STOP.... and meanwhile the older sis is SCREAMING to get off the ______ phone so her boyfriend could call her (fat chance) - the internet tied up the phone line (go figure).

When I was a kid - there was no Starbucks (at least not around where I lived). How did we live? How DID we live??

I had it bad..... I had it hard....




.

50 channels on TV? I couldn't imagine that kind of luxury when I was a kid. I had three. Yes, three channels. That was it. I guess I'd have been around 14 or 15 when a fourth channel appeared.
I didn't have to pay money to watch the Disney channel. I had no Disney channel at all.

I remember going to rent tapes from Blockbusters. Even though you were allegedly fined if they had to rewind them when you returned them, it was surprising how often you'd get a tape home and find you had to rewind it before you could watch it.

I remember having a modem that was rated 1200/1200. That meant 1200 baud both ways. Most people at the time would have a 1200/75 (1200 download speed, 75 upload speed), or a 300/300. The 57600 modems were years away. You didn't download graphics over a 1200 baud modem, everything but everything was text. My first modem didn't even connect cleanly to the telephone, you had to take the cover off the phone and use crocodile clips (I think they are called alligator clips in the US) to connect the modem to the right parts of the telephone.

 

[psalms 91]

50 channels on TV? I couldn't imagine that kind of luxury when I was a kid. I had three. Yes, three channels. That was it. I guess I'd have been around 14 or 15 when a fourth channel appeared.
I didn't have to pay money to watch the Disney channel. I had no Disney channel at all.

I remember going to rent tapes from Blockbusters. Even though you were allegedly fined if they had to rewind them when you returned them, it was surprising how often you'd get a tape home and find you had to rewind it before you could watch it.

I remember having a modem that was rated 1200/1200. That meant 1200 baud both ways. Most people at the time would have a 1200/75 (1200 download speed, 75 upload speed), or a 300/300. The 57600 modems were years away. You didn't download graphics over a 1200 baud modem, everything but everything was text. My first modem didn't even connect cleanly to the telephone, you had to take the cover off the phone and use crocodile clips (I think they are called alligator clips in the US) to connect the modem to the right parts of the telephone.

Yup three is all we had as well

 

[ValleyGal]

It sure is easy to guess about how old everyone might be from this thread. lol.

When I was a child, we had a black and white tv with two channels. The Bugs Bunny Road Runner hour was on Saturday mornings so parents could sleep in. There were no cell phones, personal computers, or internet; our learning came from the library and school. We had rotary phones attached to the wall and a party line.

When I was a child, it was safe to walk halfway across town to get to school, and the most pornographic thing anyone saw or did was kissing Jimmy under the big tire on the playground in grade one. We thought kids who did hard drugs (cocaine, heroin, and mushrooms) were junkies and they were not cool.

When I was a child, we went outside to play, and a skipping rope or string would entertain us for hours and hours. Our indoor toys were limited to Etch-a-Sketch and Fuzzy Felts. If we were really lucky, we might get a Barbie or Chatty Cathy for Christmas. We had great imaginations and we used them!

When I was a child, we worked for our spending money. It was safe for a 9-year-old to have a paper route with a 10 block radius. We did our chores every week, and were rewarded with a dime so we could skip to the store and buy a chocolate bar. Or if we did a really big chore, we got a quarter that we could save up - this would be the money we would buy Christmas gifts with. When we moved to the farm, we got real wages - minimum wage was $3.00 per hour. I saved up enough to buy my first used car, which cost me $150.

When I was a child, we drank water from a hose, ran through the sprinkler, and played on metal playgrounds that would be deemed unsafe by today's standards. Seat belts were not mandatory and our roller skates were not in-line; they were metal and attached to the bottom of our shoes with straps. Our teachers could hug us when our parents wouldn't, and there was such a thing as failing a grade. Our friends lived in our neighbourhood, and not on FB. We got to know the real them, messy lives and all. Camping meant pitching a tent by a creek and collecting wood for a fire to cook over.

Today, children are in bondage to devices, internet, and all they have to offer. They are in bondage to earning an easy and lucrative income. They are in bondage to unrealistic goals of retirement at age 30. They are in bondage to isolation because they never learned how to go out and love their neighbour. They are in bondage to self-esteem over education. Parents are in bondage to fear of child protective services being called on them. Schools are in bondage to fear of ruining a child's self-esteem over educating and evaluating students (they don't realize you can do both!). Playgrounds are in bondage to safety over exploration. Toys have to be bigger and better, creating less imaginative play. Children are being protected by helicopter parents who want to keep their children dependent on them forever.

In my world, life was so good as a child, and I grieve for the next generations of children and families. I may have had a dysfunctional family, but I never knew it until I was an adult trying to have a family of my own. I had a good childhood....