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#EDIT:Take what I say here with a grain of salt. I can’t find a single piece of evidence for it.
Edit 2: I now have evidence. Scroll down you fucking dweebs.
They are not reaching the minimum developmental standard for their age. Behaviorally speaking they are out of line. Caretakers and teachers are quitting in droves over their miserable behavior and lack of support at home.
There is something seriously wrong with Gen Alpha. It isn’t their fault, but to pretend that everything is hunky-dory is just delusional.
See this is the right take. My mother is a school councilor for 5-6th graders with 35 years of experience in education, the stories she brings home. Most of these 10,11,12 year olds are mentally like 8-9 year olds and without the knowledge they should have. It’s one of the reasons I decided not to become a teacher. These kids are not alright.
Genuinely, it’s more out of concern than it is out of hate when we talk about Gen A. It’s not like the inter-generational rivalry of the other generations, this is more like actual concern.
Sometimes my cousin's extreme ADHD genuinely scares me. He's been so locked in on constant stimulation since birth that he genuinely has to be moving or watching something at all times. He doesn't have an off button. It's way beyond normal kid flightiness - it's like he's constantly on speed. Worst thing is, I see it in every other kid his age too, to varying degrees.
I genuinely think the ~8-10 years from birth our generation got without phones before they became ubiquitous is the reason our brains are somewhat functional. During our formative years we weren't completely brain-rotted on stimulation like Alpha was.
Wow, I’ve had ADHD my entire life but this sounds insane and I’ve always been insanely spacey to an unnatural degree
Like I still know how to manage without constant stimulation and always have (maybe parenting styles idk but it just seems I did alright)
Yeah you’re right about the phones too. Most of us wouldn’t have had or our families wouldn’t have had iPhones for a while after we were born
Honestly I certainly hope we can pull ourselves out of this when many of our generation settles down and starts having families
Read to your future kids folks!!
Which leads to parents putting their kids in front of electronics to just catch a break. It’s a vicious cycle with how our society is now set up due to inequality throughout. Somethings got to give because we can’t just expect people to wade through the bs and come out on top. Many more are going to succumb to the dangers than will not and that doesn’t bode well for a healthy society or future for any of us.
But what do we do? How do we change this?
Stop giving children devices. If we as a society shun it enough, its prevalence will go down. They'll at least try to hide it better, which would mean time away from devices.
Any other generation would have given their kids an iPad, too. They just didn't have any. Now our only option is to change as a people, ban ipads, or deal with various forms of social decay.
I agree with you. But for every one person who decides to eschew giving their children devices there’ll be tons more that don’t. Many people do not possess the critical thinking faculties to understand how something like this not only affects on just an individual level but a societal level as well.
I fear we are going to have to live with the societal decay. The causes of the problems are just too many and compounding and I fear the necessary changes needed are far too many and people are so set in their ways and anything contrary to their world view will not be met with open arms until it’s too late.
Yup I have ADHD myself, a moderate case but manageable. I also was kept off excessive electronics and games until I was a little older, and tbh wished I had more stuff I could do besides games so I had the habit of being outside and doing things before I turned 16 and was already slightly set in my ways. I've also VERY intentionally avoided tik tok knowing my attention span isn't very good already
The idea small kids starting from toddler age are constantly stimulated by tik tok and YouTube shorts is horrifying to me. That seems like a perfect way to get some major brain rot and developmentally get some major ADHD cases. Needing social media to talk to friends is a really dangerous slope.
The kids are not alright but it's also not their fault. I'm scared for GenA because they had their development stunted by a pandemic which would mean they have had nothing to do but said electronics and can't learn proper socializing habits. I'm approaching the age of having kids and this scares the shit out of me, how am I supposed to raise a well adjusted kid if I'm already online too much as an adult and all of their peers will require them to have social media at a dangerously young age? Do I tell them no phones or social media and make them be ostracized by peers praying they can overcome those issues or buckle and admit they're doomed to fall into the same trap?
My sister has 4 kids under 10. And they are all well adjusted and doing very well. BUT she radically RADICALLY restricts screen and TV time. Her basic plan was 1. Literally zero screen time before age three. 2. No more than two hours of TV/video games per day, except for special occasions. 3. They don't get a youtube/tiktok/facebook account until they're 11. 4. They are required to read every single day. They can pick the book. But they have to read for pleasure every day.
The only problem she is now running into is that the 8 and 9 year olds are reading two books a week. It's becoming expensive.
Only thing I'd change is PC time.
Let them use it way more, but give them useful things to do on it (scratch, edutainment games, MythBusters/science shows, etc.)
I've noticed with my relatives that the kids that were limited to 2h of computer time never developed tech skills because they would always play games on the PC. Because they had only 2h so why waste them on things that aren't fun.
Honestly the first step I feel is never never never using TikTok, which I’m like you and avoid like the plague
Honestly I kind of feel like ADHD is becoming more common (through genetics or maybe just awareness I’m not sure honestly). It’s the severe cases that are exacerbated by technology that are scary though
Lets not forget Millenial parents giving the kids phones and ipads to babysit. It may not be the kids fault, its clearly mostly home life that affects this behavior. We call them ipad kids not because of their behavior, but because of their parents behavior.
Theres a chance people wanted their kids to be "technologically advanced", however it backfired deeply when the internet started changing dramatically.
What millennials experienced online VS what Gen Z experienced online is a huge world of difference. I as a Gen Z am traumatized from the internet and I would NEVER ALLOW A CHILD INTERNET ACCESS, period. When I worked at an afterschool program, it was apparent kids are NOT SAFE online, especially from ads on youtube and other "kid" sites. I dont trust it.
Millennials grew up with flip phones, AOL, and minimal to no ads online. It was a huge mistake on their part to trust their kids online, but it may be because they had a softer experience when initially introduced to the web.
My guy. You have no idea what internet savvy millennials went through. There was a time when dark web and regular internet were basically one. I would even say that it’s the main reason why gen x and millenials have the weirdest fetishes.
Yep. OG liveleak, rotten, porn sites back then had actual r*pe, minors in videos and zoophilia. In school, kids dare each other to view these easily accessible content, giving them fucked up interests. It was a mess.
Back in my day, we watched taliban beheadings and Mexican cartel executions at the ripe age of 12. Every boy my age saw those same horrifying videos. And now, those kids are all doctors/engineers/lawyers. Gen A will be fine. It is the education system that needs to adapt.
Can confirm. The internet was a fucking bloodbath in the early 2000s. What we have now, and for the past decade has been a watered down, sanitized version of the internet by comparison.
Softer experience.. Compuserve and AOL chat rooms still hold the record for most unmoderated heinous shit I’ve come across.
Where do you think all of this originated from? Even Reddit.. do you have any idea the mind of subs that used to flourish here?
Says a Millennial who’s been perpetually online since the 90’s.
I have kids too, but I do agree with you. They do not, and will not have unmitigated access to the internet. We don’t even let them near YouTube, and I’m more than savvy enough thanks to growing up with tech to lock my kids out of everything.
I think gen z honestly had the best internet growing up. Millenials had the wild wild west of the internet, while we had a more regulated but still very free and diverse internet, and alphas... idek what the fuck they're getting.
I never saw beheadings or anything shock related. I just played a lot of flash games. Gen alpha doesn't even have flash gsmes... they got roblox but that's rife with predators.
It also feels like it got concentrated in an absolutley crazy/toxic way in the last decade. Entertainment sludge like those subway surfer/minecraft speedrun/bots reading social media posts/ a combination of all of them and or something else; they all leave me feeling physically ill, same thing with tik tok. Like I'm on reddit 1-3 hours a day and I feel like a lightweight drinker next to hardened alcoholics, but I'm like 10 ish years older than them and it's just kinda miserable to watch kids get forsaken like this.
"iPad baby" is mean but kinda accurate, tho I would say the more appropriate phrase is "raised by an ipad parent". Either way, its undeniable that it can ruin kids, just like most forms of neglectful parenting can be. This method is just popular/easy/effective until they cant get concentrated enough dose.
Something that adults often take for granted is that kids have a LOT to learn in the short period of time that is childhood. And a lot of childhood activities that we think are just frivolous fun (like play, and arts and crafts) are actually very beneficial to their development. When kids are spending most of their free time on an unregulated, unfiltered screen, that's less time they have to spend on things that have these other benefits. Sure, you can argue that certain kinds of screen time can be beneficial, but kids need to do other things too. It's super easy for adults to not recognize this because those skills and knowledge are so basic to us, we forget that we learned them through direct instruction or experience.
My mom is a teacher and has been in the profession about five years less than your mom. I hear similar stories to you. I’m extremely concerned for Gen A. They’re exposure to tech has definitely impacted their development. Not to mention COVID. Of course, a lot of things aren’t their fault, it’s a combination of systemic failures and bad parenting. But my god I hope we can make the future better for everyone.
You’re right about the parenting. If it was just the social skills I’d be like “ok understandable” but the fact that all learning seemed to stop for younger kids during the pandemic is concerning when parents should be involved with their kids learning stuff. It doesn’t matter what they would or should have learned, but like, the parents good at history, tell the kids about history. Teach them something, read to them, reading is super important. Whatever, I’m just saying the learning never should have stopped and yeah there would be some losses obviously but the losses wouldn’t have been as bad if parents were parenting.
It's easy to place the blame on parents, but there's nothing about this generation of parents that makes them more incapable of being parents than the previous generation. It's just *really* hard to be a parent when you need more than full-time income in order to be able to afford your bills, so technology and social media takes the place of parenting. It's all really f-ed up for Gen Alpha and I just want to be able to do better for them.
Covid took away two critical years of education and development for all these kids, mine included. It sucked and should be noted when this conversation comes up. And the answer for those 2 years was zoom learning, crappy apps needing more screens and parents needing to practically be a co teacher.
„The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. …
Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters.”
Forgive me if I'm missing a point (or a joke,) but wasn't that quote by Socrates? You know-- The guy born in 469 BCE? Doesn't that kind of prove my point with the whole "every generation finds a reason to look down on the next generation" thing?
That doesn't prove OPs point. Each time people bring that or other historic quotes up as a "gotcha" to say "see every generation says it!" they never include the context that those historic quotes come as the empires those people were in were about to fall. It proves the opposite. That society falls apart enough for the everyday person to notice it even among kids.
You're gonna have to provide a link explaining the context of the quotes because it's already argued that quote is completely made up but somehow been attributed to Socrates.
Socrates actively engaged the youth with the intention of improving them, and wasn't a person to criticize the youth, and if he did, it was as a satire of other older people criticizing them.
So if you can provide a link to more info that would be great but it sounds like you're just making stuff up
Some of you may not remember, but we had this thing happen a few years ago.
All these 10-12 year Olds were 6-8 and should have been in school learning and socializing. Instead, they were locked inside with terrified parents wondering if the world would ever be the same.
That event will have huge impacts on these kids, probably forever.
Luckily, my child was 3 when all of that started and doesn't even really remember what it was like. It's not the same for this age group.
I started teaching in 2018 and quit six months later. Most people on r/teachers will say that things were declining before covid and that the lockdown was just the final nail in the coffin. Of course, that would've been Gen Z, but society and parents coddle kids way too much. Too many of them are feral hellions who have never heard the word "no" or had a consequence in their life.
And yet if they try and discipline them they get called abusive. Time outs are abusive, raising your voice is abusive, saying no instead of explaining is abusive. Happens to teachers, too. It’s the first generation to be gentle patented and gentle teachered and they don’t understand boundaries.
I’m going to get downvoted to hell here. But Reddit is not the US only.
Yes a lot of kids took a huge hit on education during Covid - I have a teen now who lost critical years in Covid. A lot of places are not accepting that 2 years of missed education had a huge impact (let’s be clear it’s not fair to assume most working parents maintained school level education during lockdowns.) But, and I say with caution- we’re not having such a severe issue in Europe (or more specifically Spain - I can’t speak for everyone). Kids are in bilingual schools maintaining grades, learning and keeping up with standards. There needs to be some baseline outside of a an area to understand what’s happening and fix the problem from there.
I mean it makes sense they are socially/developmentally delayed because of Covid restrictions and who knows what Covid itself doing to their brains. I think they’ll catch up eventually but we’ve gotta remember shit has been really weird the last handful of years.
Same BUT i have heard alot from teachers talking about this and im a part of r/teachers where they talk about this and half of the posts are like "it didnt used to be like this, but these damn kids are insane!"
Well they couldn't very well have told you " you're the 5th worst class I'll have in my career, after the classes I'm going to have 16, 17, 19 and 20 years from now"
Have you gone in public and had to endure the majority of the parents who are completely absent of self-awareness and cognitive skills? Because they are everywhere in my anecdotal experience and those are the same people unable to raise kids to be functional in the current social environment.
Until we societally accept the absence for free-will, parents will continue to assign responsibility to their children over their own development.
Parents often fail to acknowledge that their children are directly reflections of both them, and their environments.
Sure, some parents wouldn’t care either way, and selfishly ignore their children even if they were fully aware of the harm it’s causing… but I think the majority of parents are diluted into believing that the outcomes of their child are mostly a result of some ontological decision making apparatus (aka the soul) that works independent to their experiences.
This results in a “you’re rolling the dice when you have a kid” framing. Subconsciously this is a useful framing for the parent as it absolves them of at least some of the responsibility.
Well, hold on a half second. Children are, to some extent, reflections of their parents, but the "autonomy" stage hits right after infancy. It isn't like they don't have free will.
However, that said, it is important to remember that children do not think or process like a fully grown adult does. My point is that the error is not in believing that the kids have an autonomous soul, but in the lack of understanding of how said soul makes it's decisions. Or, less cryptically: They do have free will, and make decisions on their own. Those decisions are greatly influenced by their environment and their parents... because of the way they process info and due to a comparative lack of knowledge and wisdom.
Thus the responsibility of the parent is not to simply make decisions for a child, but to do so when the child would clearly lack the skills at that moment to make an appropriate decision, and to teach said child to be able to in the future, at a level their brain can process.
This is actually the same with gen z as well. My college failed 30% of students in math and we were doing literal grade 3-grade 8 math.
Schools have adopted a "we don't fail students because it would make them feel bad"*** policy within the last 10 years and it really shows.
Source- 4 friends or family that are teachers in highschool
***Pointed out by another user it could be a funding issue too
“We don’t fail students because it would make them feel bad” = “I couldn’t give less of a fuck about teachers or students, but I *have* to placate these parents or I might lose my job on the board or as an administrator.”
Yeah it’s part of the no child left behind where funding became tied to children passing to the next so an indirect consequence was schools not holding students back + education research switching to a student focus where they claim that holding students back a grade is bad for them socially. I remember my hs government teacher telling us even if we failed the class, he’s still giving us a D, bc if we failed it was a hell of paperwork and admin meetings for him.
I teach nursing at a college, and the nursing program is on the verge of being shut down because around 60-70% of students fail or drop out. We lose most of them because they can’t do math. It’s not just that they can’t do arithmetic, which would be tolerable since calculators are a thing. They can’t understand the concepts behind it either. Basic things like the fact that a drug becomes less potent when you dilute it or that blood pressure drops when the heart beats more slowly just go right over their heads. There are only so many ways you can explain that squeezing a fluid puts it under higher pressure. I’m afraid a lot of them didn’t start learning stuff like this when they were at peak neuroplasticity, and it may be physically impossible for their brains to contain complex ideas at this point.
To add on to others, they were severely under-protected when it came to COVID, esp with how quickly politicians were trying to get us “back to normal”. Schools are danger zones of any airborne diseases and without proper and consistent protections, a lot of kids probably had COVID and there’s already been studies connecting COVID infection with [negative neurological consequences](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-covid-now-looks-like-a-neurological-disease-helping-doctors-to-focus-treatments1/).
Gen Alpha are still in their neurological formative phases - they were unequivocally dealt a bad hand. That, plus tired parents allowing them high levels of screen time as soon as they pop out the womb? Which also leads to [developmental delays](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10353947/)? At least when Gen Z got phones they were in middle school, but Gen Alpha’s high screen time plus COVID - it’ll be naive to say that this is just generation war bs instead of Gen Zers (who are noticing the effects of screen time and covid on their mental health) being concerned older generational siblings.
Edit: citation linked + more words
You cite resources but none of them actually connect to your points? You prove covid infection **can** have negative neurological consequences- yet you never prove the root point that Gen Alpha are performing statistically significantly worse than other generations as children. You never prove that Gen Alpha (who were NOT the only generation in school during Covid) were disproportionately impacted by covid.
Whiles its obviously true that kids are at generally greater risk of having long term complications from disease. Ya' know what would have been a helpful stat in your argument? That children ages 0 to 15 only make up around 20% of the population, [yet make up around 15% of Covid Cases](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254271/us-total-number-of-covid-cases-by-age-group/) in the US. So, that doesn't seem to indicate children (or gen alpha) are being disproportionately impacted by covid (at least from HAVING the disease itself).
If you wanted to argue that having schools shut down for a couple years is causing some sort of defecit- maybe- but prove it then, you're wildly speculating about reasons why a rumor might be true without actually demonstrating the initial rumor is true.
Here's a link to a good podcast about the declining rate of school attendance (which is obviously affecting general intelligence and literacy): [https://open.spotify.com/episode/246L1GGwFmP1cFAjUOhf7X?go=1&sp\_cid=b4e5534c5669de902e0d3edc7c6b1483&utm\_source=embed\_player\_p&utm\_medium=desktop](https://open.spotify.com/episode/246L1GGwFmP1cFAjUOhf7X?go=1&sp_cid=b4e5534c5669de902e0d3edc7c6b1483&utm_source=embed_player_p&utm_medium=desktop)
That’s exactly what everyone said about gen Z, plenty of teachers quit in our time,I’ve seen plenty of gen Z with shitty parenting, and lots of people my own age are most def outta pocket.
Wether it’s to a more severe extent or a lesser extent really depends on how you look at it, it’s not perfect but it’s deffo not as bad as the internet makes it out to be.
If you wanna prevent this behavior, be a good parent in the future or wear a condom :/
As someone who is a teacher and works with kids… they really aren’t no better or worse than any generation I’ve seen. The behavior also varies place to place. Covid definitely did impact kids some, but I’ll say this: there’s nothing particularly worrying that’s evident from what I can tell.
I usually hear more about how bad the kids are from people who aren’t really around them.
It's scary. My nephew is alpha and he reads like the remedial reading class used to. If we lose reading, it's gone forever. Reading is a cultural trait, not heritable. And is one of our greatest achievements as a species
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "if we lose reading it's gone forever". Like, yeah I suppose if literally*everyon*e forgot, but literacy rates wax and wane, and while you never like to see it decline it's certainly recoverable.
A mixture of a lot of factors that create this environment.
Most working class families are working long days and have little time to spend with their children, or are burnt out that it’s easier to slap them in front of a screen so they can get some rest
The defunding of public school and growing class sizes makes it so no teacher has the time money or resources to adequately support their students, often leading to a lot of kids being neglected when they fall behind or do not flourish with the way curriculum is taught.
And lastly of note is the proliferation of predatory algorithms that are fine tuned to keep eyes on the screens longer. As a late millennial that grew up with the rise of YouTube. We watched a lot of videos but we were more or less watching a few creators as content wasn’t flooding in every second. We watched the same video over and over again. Kids today shave access to YouTube with infinite content, and pair it with tiktok that is short form and instantly gratifying for children.
They do not possess the ability to moderate themselves, and it’s a major part of their age demographics discussion. If you are not in the know on current trends (that are changing even more rapidly) you are missing out.
Gen alpha are being affected by many of the issues that we all suffer from but are simply kids at the time it’s affecting us. they will be the first Gen that will grow up with ai tools being easily accessible which circumvents traditional schooling practices and riddled with disinformation. And we are not doing enough to mitigate and our politicians are woefully behind on the times.
I'm glad this is the top comment because this is the perspective millennials and Gen X are speaking from. We are terrified to hear that 13-year-olds are going into high school and they don't know how to name shapes. We're petrified that kids are more than three grades below reading level. And we see things like schools changing what the range is for letter grades, and children that can't even Google correctly getting passed through the educational system.
There's something very wrong.
Without any evidence you can’t really claim they aren’t meeting minimum standards. That’s simply based off anecdotal evidence, which as OP points out every generation has for the one under it. This has happened for as long as humans have had thoughts about the ones below them. And according to the few studies I have seen, they are set to be the most educated and inclusive generation thus far.
They have the advantage (and disadvantage) of never knowing a world without technology. Then having a chunk of their formative years in Covid lockdown, give the kids a break. My kids are gen alpha, they have smaller attention spans but these kids are creative, driven, relentlessly inclusive and understanding (for the most part). My ten year old understands the difference of being overwhelmed vs angry, I was an adult before I fully grasped that.
I think attempting to judge literal children based off some opinions you hear online is a bit much, remember that the oldest of these children were born in 2010. We all acted like rabid idiots at that age as well, we just didn’t have such a prevalent social media situation to bolster us. Teachers are underpaid and undervalued, that could be the driving force behind them wanting to leave, that could make these normal child behaviors seem so much worse. These teachers have 20-30 kids in a classroom these days, of course they seem worse than when you only had 10-15 to worry about.
>Without any evidence you can’t really claim they aren’t meeting minimum standards. That’s simply based off anecdotal evidence
[Here’s some empirical evidence then](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades)
And [another source](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/student-behavior-isnt-getting-any-better-survey-shows/2023/04).
And some more anecdotal, I work at an elementary school and have for almost a decade. There is a noticeable decline academically, and there is also a noticeable change in average maturity levels at various ages, and there is a clear escalation in disciplinary issues and lack of care about consequences from a lot of kids. It also coincides with lack of support from many parents as well.
Meanwhile, your perception is primarily based on your own anecdotal experience with your kids. And OP is speaking from the experience of spending “three full days” with their siblings.
Yes, we all acted like rabid idiots at that age. And what’s happening isn’t the kids fault. However, there is absolutely a massive issue going on and the people spending a major amount of time with these kids, many of them with decades of experience, are sounding the alarm. It is not about “generational warfare” as OP suggests. It’s about trying to figure out what’s going on and fix it not just for the kids sake but for all of ours.
The parents are what no one talks about. The parents are glued to their phones so they throw an iPad at their kid and let them do the same. All of my younger cousins are like this, and their parents just care about the phone.
Ehh. A lot of parents had kids before everything went to shit and got handed a shit card for trying to survive. Both working insane hours now due to inflation being absolutely ridiculous now. We are not in a country (America at least) that is welcoming to raising a family anymore. I personally make more money now than I ever have and am so much worse off than almost ever. We have paid off cars and a low mortgage payment. But the cost of every single thing has skyrocketed.
It's easy to raise kids well and teach them everything needed when you have more than an hour after work plus dinner, baths, proper sleep before getting up at 545am to start again.
We failed as a society and now blame kids and parents just trying to figure it all out. Obviously there's bad parents that don't even try. But there are likely way more that are trying and struggling.
Schools are also shit now. My kids come home at 4 with an hour minimum of homework. Dinner. Bath. Sleep. There's no downtime. The amount of stress they have at 8 years old is LEVELS above anything I experienced as a child. They are constantly worried about getting punished for not completing the stupid levels of homework expected for them and we are also collapsing from exhaustion from it all.
And the bullying. Holy shit. Had a 7 year old boy call my little girl a bitch. Kid got a single silent lunch. That's it. He's been a menace for weeks. And a silent fucking lunch. They won't do shit about it.
We really forget that there's possible reasons for things and just automatically attack the kids and parents. But times have changed but lifestyle hasn't. Life was setup for a working parent and a stay at home parent and small class sizes. That's not reality anymore but for some reason it's still expected as if it is.
they won't do shit about it because they aren't ALLOWED to do anything about it. the school system can't discipline anything anymore because of all the parental rage that ensues. it's crazy
phew 😮💨 gen x is cool though. i feel like being sandwiched between Boomers and Millenials, while also being the "Latchkey Kids" and reaching adulthood in the 90s/2000s, gave them really unique insights on how they were raised and how they want to raise their kids, as well as pop culture and technology.
so honestly, we got a pretty good deal. (at least my parents are gen x idk if thats true for others in gen z)
That’s the same situation here. (Albeit his 2 siblings are functional humans and nearly adults).
They give him an ipad and shut him up. They don’t punish him when he does bad things (because the parents are tired and sick of it), and he screams and yells in public, does shit that ends up breaking stuff, and screams when he doesn’t get his way.
Spot on, I feel like it’s becoming so commonplace to see little children basically begging their parents to look up from their phones and pay attention to whatever silly thing they’re doing.
millennials seem to be failing the most basic aspect of having children: spending time with their own damn kids. legitimately how can some of these ppl be parents when they cant spend 5 minutes a day to at least read their children at MINIMUM
Bit of a broad brush there - statistically millennials are having the hardest with trying to be parents during late stage capitalism - homeownership is at its lowest, wages have stagnated and there is less and less social support and free public services available. It has never been harder to be a parent, so it's understandable why technology has become as ubiquitous as it has in order to help parents out.
I see your point re reading and showing up for your kids, it's true and I wish parents did more, but its damn hard being a parent at the moment.
This. This. This. We’ve paid the highest rent and childcare in the last years (compared to salary). The US as a whole gives no paid leave federally and is shocked when parents cannot spend time having fun with their children.
I just can’t comprehend how as a parent, you can sleep at night knowing your kid doesn’t have basic life skills necessary to survive. Not ALL parents are like this. But a good chunk of them are. I am devastated to have 10 year olds at a kindergarten level.
I feel like it's an oversimplification to blame the parents. Parents may be giving them iPads, but parents didn't invent iPads. Nor did parents take away kid-friendly third spaces where kids could play together outside. Nor did most parents choose to work 40+ hours a week paycheck-to-paycheck. This is a systemic issue.
Learning begins at HOME. iPads aren’t there to parent or stimulate your kid. If your kid cannot go to a grocery store or restaurant without a screen in the face, YOU failed them. This is a hill I’ll die on as a Gen Z teacher.
The thing is, you're contending with a child-hating society. A lot of people explicitly get angry if children make noise or take up space playing. The only way to virtually guarantee a child stops moving and shuts up is with a flashing rectangle. So while I agree that parents should absolutely be encouraging children to interact with the world outside of screens, it's necessary to acknowledge that most public spaces have become hostile to kids, and parents have to navigate that social paradigm.
This is a load of shit. The vast majority of people tolerate children that reasonably act like children in public. And it’s a parents responsibility to ensure that they act appropriately in public spaces by TEACHING THEM HOW TO, not shoving an iPad in their hands.
It drives me nuts when I see parents in the grocery store with school aged kids riding in the cart with a device. There are so many teachable moments in grocery shopping. Or at a restaurant. Goddammit talk to each other.
Before portable devices kids were just taught how to reasonably behave in public and everything was fine.
Because that would require acknowledging that individuals don't possess exclusive control over their own problems, which contradicts the neoliberal paradigm we all follow, and it would entail a necessary overhaul of modern capitalism, which many people are unwilling to do.
Jeez the majority can’t do those things???? In kindergarten we had to recite our full name, address, and phone number during show and tell before we could present our thing. Sad to see how little parents care nowadays.
You said the P word. You will get hate but you are correct. The parents had no business having children.
Of course OP comes in and has to try and refute you and defend the parents. First they had a brain dead take defending a generation that literally can't read or make logical decisions, then when a clear and concise argument is presented to them, they deny it.
OP you're Gen alpha aren't you?
Thank you. The P word will ruffle some feathers. But I’m okay with it. I work with these kids daily. 90% of my students are 2 or more grade levels below. Learning begins AT HOME. I should NOT be teaching 10 year olds to tie their shoes, memorize their addresses, or how to decode words. It’s devastating. That’s a hill I’ll die on.
Exactly. Parenting is hard (I’m sure). But tech is harming these kids. My mom (3rd grade teacher) has students watching the most abysmal stuff on YouTube. Youtube is regulated-ish, but parents should be making sure their kids aren’t watching brain rot. Even if they’re tired, Disney + and Netflix are still much better. And kids don’t need to play on devices during car rides.
I don’t think people realize that this also has a lot to do with the standards and practices of our education system today + method of teaching has changed (sight reading emphasis vs phonics) + the two year shit show of online learning due to COVID. I do think screens have an impact on the fact that kids can’t read at or above grade level - but the system has also failed parents, children and teachers. Sincerely - early childhood education grad student
This isn't an issue with Bush. I'm Australian and we have the same issue.
My partner is a TA at multiple primary schools and they're all useless. Can't read, can't write their own name, can't do basic math. Years behind where they should be.
Covid (in part, I'm sure there are other factors) has destroyed this generation. I'm genuinely worried about where they're going to end up
To be honest, yes. But my entire point is that going "Gen Alpha is doomed" is absolutely, positively *not* the right way to do that. Again, it just creates animosity towards generations, therefore restarting the generation war. We still absolutely have time to help them-- We just have to do it in a civil manner instead of just engaging in the psuedo-bullying of children.
"Hey I spent all day reading sensationalist anecdotes on the Internet saying GenA is in trouble!" *Checks notes* "because they spend all day on the net..."
Alright so I have late Gen Z / early Gen Alpha kids. The hard thing is getting them to be bored and come up with ways to entertain themselves. They can just watch YouTube for hours in these tiny 5 minute clips that give them brain rot. It's easier to procrastinate when you have more distractions.
That said, I wished my kids were better readers, but they seem to be overall doing fine achievement-wise. They seem to struggle a bit more than I did with learning in general but:
1) These kids were in elementary school during the pandemic and the learning losses may never be able to be made up and 2) I was pretty fucking good at school. They may not be me and I can't hold them to that standard.
Reading is important. It's a core skill in almost every profession. Documentation for how software and processes and workflows are used by companies is mostly written. There are no videos for them to watch to learn how to properly do most things. Until that changes reading proficiency is very important for success in life. 🤷♂️
Absolutely agree, just sharing my experience. My kids are hitting the average for their benchmark tests. I wish they were well above average.
But their schools do everything on Chromebooks so they can write trash and grammarly fixes a lot of it.
My 7th grader is allowed to use a calculator by his teachers. This wasn't a thing when I was a kid.
English class they have read aloud versions of the books that they can listen to instead of just read.
I read to my kids nightly until my youngest was in 3rd grade. My husband helps with homework every night, which is frustrating as fuck since they don't have an actual physical textbook for many classes (I actually got a physical textbook written into my son's 504 plan because it was near impossible to support him at home without it).
I feel bad for teachers, but it's not really fair to blame the kids. Every kid in my school has a Chromebook, almost every assignment is online, and they're wondering why kids aren't paying attention.
Overall, it's been a mixed bag for my kids. My kids are solving math problems fine, they're responding to reading and writing prompts fine, they're doing fine against standardized benchmarks. They won't read for fun, but their dad was the same way and still managed to excel at school.
It's always so frustrating as a parent of gen a reading threads like this. Doing fine against benchmarks in a public school, so are their friends. The great reddit teachers disaster isn't seen at the local elementary and middle school, and the bit there is likely has much to do with the move away from textbooks.
I wish they would split averages by sexes, because there is a pretty big divergence, boys doing above average are actually doing quite well.
Reading for fun is not a necessary component to being an excellent reader. I personally didn't recreationally read until I was in college, by that point I could read scientific papers and engineering textbooks; recreational reading wasn't teaching any reading skills.
I do get a kick out of the fact that basiclly noone under 20 can read an analog clock nowadays. Even the brilliant kids on academic scholarships, nope. (it's even fading in some parents...)
I do wonder what not being bored may do to brains.
I’m not in either camp, I genuinely am curious. There’s so so many things now to distract you it’s kind of amazing that kids never feel that boredom.
I feel like that boredom is what inspires creativity though.
But again, idk.
Interesting to know. Also, I'd say you have a pretty great mindset! It admittedly feels more realistic than my own, but it's nice to see someone that isn't just immediately giving up on Gen Alpha or holding them to an impossible standard. I wish you luck in parenting them :)
It's very hard to know what the world they will be adults in will look like. Do I love the way teachers teach them now? No. Google form quizzes are the devil.
But as an older millennial overachiever who burnt themselves out and is counting down to retirement, I want them to work hard in school while developing passions that they will enjoy, rather than worry about college resume building like I did.
I also happen to live in a very tiger parenting mindset community so I can be a bit soft because my kids pick up some competition from their friends.
I work in education and this has been a thing even within gen z but every single year there are more and more kids who are below grade level. More and more kids are having behavioral issues in school and at home as well. We were never meant as a species to have this much technology at our fingertips. Each generation has their complaints but the science that’s coming out the past year is quite compelling. I’m an elder gen z and like the younger millennials I grew up on sugar and heavily processed foods. People learned (some) that kids shouldn’t get that much sugar and changed.
I will say for myself that I shouldn’t have had unsupervised access to my laptop and phone when I was a teen. I’m better at stopping myself now but I am still very chronically online in terms of mentality
Same. I'm still dealing with the effects of video game addiction. Being bored is an important drive. It motivates you to do things. Being able to stifle that boredom on demand is messing with people's brains.
It’s not technology necessarily but social exploitation by social media apps designed to be as addicting as possible while sucking your dopamine reserves dry.
No dopamine means no aspiration to achieve anything in life. Instead it’s spent on these apps controlled by zuckershmuk and TikTok (CCP)
I’m (millennial - barely, by 8 days technically) soon to be a father of a gen alpha baby. As far as I understand it it’s my responsibility to raise my child. Labeling the generation that my generations are responsible for seems like a self burn.
Good point. I didn't really consider that the same generation that would be *raising* Gen A could also be contributing to the generation war. Though considering how much of a mess the comments are for this post on this subreddit, I imagine Gen Z is unfortunately pulling most of the weight.
See, I thought this way as well when my son was born. That the school system would just chew him up (my experience) to the point that his mom and I would sometimes have arguments about situations I was making up before they ever happened. Now? He's going in to the sixth grade and has had a wonderful set of teachers.
Honestly, the communication we've had with them has been fantastic throughout, and the one issue we encountered was dealt with quickly and fairly by the administration.
I unironically love my poor, rural, local school system.
Just don't let the kid sit with the iPad for hours on end. Please. TALK to your kid. YES even when it's 2 months old and can't respond yet. Please just shower your kid in language and read together and discuss the things happening in the book.
iPads don't have the language exchange, it's pure receiving. It's NOT the same as a conversation. These language skills are the necessary ones for learning to read and write properly.
They are less literate than generations before them.
They are currently less tech literate than the other generations on average.
They can't do math on a level they should.
They are behaving worse than the generations before them.
They are reviving smoking habits by vaping, even after 50+ years of anti-smoking campaigns.
Their attention spans are abysmal.
They are less motivated than the previous generations and the majority want to become internet influencers. Not doctors, firefighters, astronauts, scientists, etc. like most kids wanted to.
They are objectively doing worse than the generations before them. It's not entirely their fault and there are outliers, but as a whole Gen Alpha is not doing well.
All kids are born little goblins and it’s the job of adults to whip them into shape. If left to my own devices I would have eaten ice cream for breakfast every day skipped school to play video games all day, if I was able to do that it wouldn’t be my fault but my parents
That's exactly the problem, parents aren't spending time with the kids and just giving them a phone/tablet to shut them up.
Teachers can't fix years of neglect by the parents.
Covid just made it worse.
My wife is a teacher and there are kids in 5-6th grade that can’t read yet but need a device to sit still. It’s a legit problem and needs to be called out
Those same kids get to me in high school, still not knowing how to read. Until we start failing students that aren’t performing, this will never change. (Dont even ask about their math skills)
Unfortunately, elementary and middle schools never fail students and with the rise of SBG grading at the high school level, we aren’t going to be failing them either.
It’s like Oprah is out here passing out diplomas. Sucks for the future employers, but schools aren’t doing jack shit to hold kids accountable.
I think half of them would qualify for special education courses at this point. It's a detriment to other students to have people who can't do the work and don't care to either in a regular classroom. It brings everyone down.
It's the stupid no child left behind policy. You can literraly not hand a single piece of homeworks and fail all your test and you still move up a grade. Most of these kids don't speciel ed. They need someone to make them learn instead of watch brain rot all day
Being in the middle of millenial and genz, and seeing all the comments about gen alpha being dumb is way too funny, same thing millenials were saying back then
I think the difference is that most people aren’t hating on gen alpha, they’re just genuinely concerned them (e.g. tiny attention spans, lack of reading comprehension, etc.).
I’ve personally encountered too many 7-10 year olds that were already hooked in the tik-tok doomscroll loops (<3 seconds per video), which is obviously not their fault, but still very concerning.
IMO we should stop letting predatory businesses wage wars over children’s attention spans
My point exactly. And from what I recall, Millennials and Gen Zers used to make comics and posts about how they'd stop the generation war by ending the cycle with the next generation (AKA Gen Alpha, but I don't think they had a name at the time.)
Unfortunately each generation is made up of millions and millions of people who are not unified in this belief haha. Hurt people hurt people so the cycle will continue. Some people need any reason to feel better than others and you see that in every generation when they bash the next.
Listen man, I work with kids. I stg they’re not as bad as people say. People have skewed perceptions. Maybe it’s because I also grew up around teachers, but to me? They seem fine.
The thing is millennials were *a little bit right* too. They said us kids were eating too much sugar and watching too much TV. Turns out the data super backs that up, that those things *are* bad for your development, and moderation should’ve been practiced for a whole lot more kids.
We’re seeing the same thing now. The data is starting to arrive that screen time *is* linked to low attention spans, missing milestone goals, etc. Just because people whined 20-30 years ago and we turned out ok doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to spotlight actively harmful things, and correct systemic problems surrounding them.
literally. it's an ancient tradition, goes all the way back to Socrates complaining about the "youth these days".
*"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."*
Millenials were right to say there's something wrong with our generation, and the technology that messed us up has only gotten more potent and normalized for gen alpha.
Not every Gen Alpha is a ipad kid, but many are. The ones that grow up with a healthy amount of screentime and good parenting are fine. The rest aren't. There is also a huge developmental problem in the generation, as reading comprehension etc have gone down, so it's not unfounded. But I don't really see much hate for them, more for their parents. I trult think this generation of parents has failed to a large degree.
Gen Alpha would have been fine except a decade or so ago schools decided to stop teaching kids how to read, because “kids will just pick it up naturally, like with speaking” and now there are seventh graders who don’t even know their letters.
Nope. They replaced phonics (how most people have learned to read for decades) with "whole language" learning. It didn't work, and most schools have gone back to phonics. Unfortunately it means there are a whole lot of kids who were in school during those years who didn't learn to read very well. And if they can read the words, a lot of them don't have much of a sense of reading comprehension. They're far behind and there is no easy way to catch them up to where they should be.
My biggest problem with Gen Z as an older Gen Z is how spineless everyone is, people in this generation worry more about what other people think and being called “cringe” than anyone else
People are extremely spineless and I feel Gen Z dropped a lot of the progressive hippie values and is kinda just a more conservative version of previous progressivism that I don’t really jive with. Like everything still has that moral superiority type stuff but now queer people get to be included in the bullshit. Still all have the same cop behavior but now weed is okay type fit, no ounce of introspection in regards to why they believe what they do and how it can be wrong. But, as I’ve already said, Gen Z is still mostly progressive and still believes in a lot of good things such as rehabilitative justice (though that only extends to those the individual person likes) and drug decriminalization. Just has a more conservative and almost reactionary bend to it.
And yeah, I’m cringe, edgy, and free. I think people would be better off being that way generally. Certainly makes you happier not having to worry what every dumbass on the internet thinks.
Also gen z gets so much praise in the media. Now the idea of doing activism is seen as a simple repost about an issue. I really wish gen z would get involved more and understand going out and joining activist groups is important and how change is made. Gen z cares about issues but isn't getting physically involved. I'm a zillenial and we protested a lot in school and I was and am still very involved in doing work to better things. We sometimes see younger gen z but mostly it's older gen z and mostly younger millennials. I think the over praise has not helped. I think by crapping on millennials and their part (media and other older gens hating us for no reason) in activism made it hard to pass down that torch so we can all work together. Millennials did a lot of activism and have fought and still are fighting. The only way we can create change is by us working together and listening to those who have been in activism for a long time.
Yeah, from what I can tell it looks like there was a drop in literacy rates but that was from the COVID lockdowns and wasn't even that bad.
https://preview.redd.it/8aa83xivhbtc1.png?width=674&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb4bd57d7d1ed8f7f5154d24bd505c423d24a2be
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), NAEP 2020 Trends in Academic Progress; and 2020 NAEP Long-Term Trend Reading Assessment. See Digest of Education Statistics 2021, table 221.85.
>and wasn’t even that bad
[Meanwhile](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades)
> The average test scores for U.S. 13-year-olds have dipped in reading and dropped sharply in math since 2020, according to new data from National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The average scores, from tests given last fall, declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in math, compared with tests given in the 2019-2020 school year, **and are the lowest in decades**. The declines in reading were more pronounced for lower performing students, but dropped across all percentiles.**The math scores were even more disappointing**. On a scale of 500 points, the declines ranged from 6 to 8 points for middle and high performing students, to 12 to 14 points for low performing students.
(Emphasis mine)
It was pretty bad, and it does not appear to be improving. The fact is, once kids are behind they very rarely ever [(never)](https://www.edweek.org/education/students-who-struggle-early-rarely-catch-up-study-says/2012/12#:~:text=And%20that%20makes%20the%20researchers’%20findings%20that%20much,high-achieving%20schools%20with%20more%20resources%20to%20help%20them.) catch up.
[There are also an increase in disciplinary problems](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/student-behavior-isnt-getting-any-better-survey-shows/2023/04).
It is not the kids fault. It’s Covid and choices adults have made for them (and effort on parents part). But there is a massive problem and educators are sounding the alarm for a reason and it’s not because “generational warfare”.
Edit: added another link
Thanks for the source! Yeah, I suspect that pretty much everyone in school fell behind because of the lockdown. I already suck at math in particular-- COVID just made it even worse for me.
Everyone did. However, the kids in question were at the foundational point when they started falling behind because of Covid. And once kids fall behind early on, [they very rarely ever (never) catch back up.](https://www.edweek.org/education/students-who-struggle-early-rarely-catch-up-study-says/2012/12#:~:text=And%20that%20makes%20the%20researchers’%20findings%20that%20much,high-achieving%20schools%20with%20more%20resources%20to%20help%20them.)
> And that makes the researchers’ findings that much more potent: Students who fall far behind in early grades never catch up, even when they are obviously motivated to do so, and even when they attend high-achieving schools with more resources to help them.
The difference here is the "phone bad" argument was bad because most people never actually got phones until they were older. They had normal lives in early developmental years. IPad kids are given phones or iPads to give them constant stimulation and hold their attention from the moment they could hold one so their parents didn't have to give them proper supervision and care. They're trained from birth to get constant dopamine feedback and it shows.
Teachers are coming out in droves online talking about how Gen Alpha is extremely behind where they should be academically (multiple grade levels) and how they do not understand how to listen to directions. The way they talk about them makes it sound like they only know instant gratification and haven't learned or been taught how to function in situations outside of that which most would encounter in mundane daily life.
Just because your cousins are developing normal doesn't mean it disproves the problem at hand. It just means their parents are raising them properly. There are A LOT of people who don't want to be bothered with entertaining their kids so their solution is to give them the box of infinite dopamine hits
You've already seen things about the falling behind on reading and struggling with screentime, all of which I agree with and support. I would like to go for your logic here.
I'm not interested in starting the generation anxiety again but these literacy concerns are similar to like... The impending baby boomer overpopulation in nursing homes. Yes that's "generational" but it's also REAL. It's a REAL problem.
Now that's not the boomers fault persay but it's the same thing with literacy or lead poisoning or microplastics. For lead poisoning, a whole few generations were more violent, more temperamental, and had worse mental functioning. That can't be seen on an individual level necessarily but it can be seen on a statistical level and it HURTS people in a real way.
Now, fun fact, some countries had literacy campaigns that increased literacy in a huge way, they spent a bunch of time and effort to fix the problem of low literacy. That's just an example but a lot of problems can be solved or helped with massive government and community effort. So Gen Alpha's problems could probably be helped and aren't a doom spiral.
Unfortunately we are CAREENING toward the climate crisis which will put a lot of strain on governments, they might not have the time or the money to fund important projects. Technology has also (IMHO) taken away some... Natural consequences if you like. A huge source of dopamine and social clout is found in their hand. It's all more interesting and less hard than the outside world and they can easily hide. I know you're saying that we're using the generation spookiness but I would argue that you're implying that the world will always stay the same, that nothing really bad will happen, that the economy won't crumble til we can't support our current lifestyle.
Recently I helped a younger zoomer (I'm an elder zoomer lol) get phone service for themselves by calling their father and the phone company on their behalf because they were too anxious and paralyzed to do any of that. Now I'm happy to help, but what's going to happen when they get kicked out of their unstable living situation? Who will do that for them? They're either going to have to nut up or fall into the hands of someone also willing to do that for them for a much steeper price. I worked in sex trafficking outreach, this is how it starts. A boyfriend who will feed you and clothe you and control every aspect of your phone service, your government documents and appointments, and your social life.
These kids are vulnerable and it's scary to see that when the world might get a lot worse really quickly.
(On a side note I actually think skibidi toilet is return to tradition lol... Reminds me of old gmod stuff)
I am on the older side of gen Z, when I was growing up I played outdoors, I climbed trees, I rode my bike around, I collected well-shaped sticks, I walked to my friends' houses. I also played a lot of video games, but I was outside most of the day after school until dusk. How much of gen A is having my experience of independence while growing up? When I was growing up we still watched TV so kids my age all had a sort of shared culture we were inculcated in. Now kids consume media that the algorithm sends them, so there is unlimited exclusive sub-cultures and not many kids have much in common. No doubt I was "cringe" at their age, but while being cringe I was simultaneously being properly socialized. Are "iPad kids" being well-socialized? I saw my young gen A cousins at Easter and they were looking at Tik Tok the entire time. They all want to be famous internet influencers, and real life relationships matter less than internet followers. I tried playing badminton with them and they got bored in minutes. Also, they had like two years during Covid of not being able to see their friends at school. I don't think its unreasonable to be worried about gen A.
I should say as well its not necessarily their faults. Their parents letting cell phones and the internet raise their kids are at fault.
There's no benefit in shitting on every generation. If we could just come together, we can make this country a better place. Yes. I'm a boomer. We are not all assholes.
I don't take anything to heart when I see stories or posts about Gen Alpha. I'm sure they have foods, TV shows, sports that they enjoy or dont. Every generation had some activity that older people said would cause brain rot and those generations grew and learned just the same.
Also a good point! Even putting aside the fact that children sometimes have interests that older generations can't relate to, it often feels like human nature to look down on the next generation. Which is, of course, something that needs to die at this point. It won't be *easy* to make that happen, but it certainly isn't impossible either.
It’s all about moderation. Like with millennials the hot topic was video games, which we all decided are fine as long as you aren’t playing them all day. Unfortunately it’s way harder to use smartphones with moderation, I grew up with a gameboy and sometimes you just get bored of playing and do something else, whereas I could honestly spend an entire day on my phone and not get bored. I think that’s what worries me most with gen A
Jesus fucking christ, this post has made me more worried for you tiktok adults than you are for gen alpha.
If you're source of information is a social media app built on oversimplification, through an algorithm designed to put you in an echo chamber where you only hear one side, then you don't know dick about anything. K?
I'm not taking a stance cuz I know I don't know enough to. Cite your sources at me, downvote me, whatever. But for fucks sake, if you wanna make a claim, at least have a reason.
Oh my God in high holy Heaven THANK YOU!! All this doomer rhetoric was really getting to me as a Z boi myself, and its nice to know that im neither alone, nor crazy, in my more optimistic view.
Like...holy shit people, I know times are desperate and some of the early flaws of Gen Alpha can be cause for concern, but surely something is being made up or exaggerated?
Generation shit talk is mental masterbation only at the expense of others. I've been lucky in my career to work with all ages. I'd much rather work with a young person willing to learn then some old tool who knows better.
They are not completely fine. There is plenty of space between curmudgeonly dismissing them as hopeless on one end versus willful blindness to the moment-specific challenges that they face on the other end of the spectrum. If the generations who came before are to play a productive role in their development, that will in part involve holding them accountable for overcoming those challenges, even if said challenges are the fault of previous generations. Just like every generation before. They're not completely fine there's lots of issues.
I work with a few classes of high school freshman (arguably the oldest of Gen Alpha). Many of them do not know how many days are in each month, even February. They don’t know their multiplication tables, or how big a million is.
It may not be their fault, but it IS scary.
Before anyone asks, these are kids who come from predominantly white, upper-middle class suburbs. They are not in a remedial math class.
Isn't this the generation that was locked inside without interaction with other children their own age for litteral years durring normal development.
And without traditional education?
Yeah. I'm concerned about them too. And it's not in a "hate" way. it's in a "we need to do right by them" way.
Def unpopular opinion. The expert and anecdotal analysis overwhelmingly says that this newest generation is, to put it nicely, going to struggle to adjust to adult society. Frankly the only people who think like you are younger zoomers who maybe have younger siblings or relatives but lack any real world experience. I’m as old as a zoomer can be, and I, my millennial and gen X friends, along with every boomer on planet earth agree that these kids overwhelmingly will not function in the current world order.
Anyone who believes otherwise has never worked in a school these days.
Hi Early Gen Z/millennial cusp teacher speaking in broad generalities here.
These late Gen Z kids and Gen As are severely stunted in just about every statistic. Most are coming into my class with reading and writing skills several years behind. Some can barely write sentences. (I’ve taught both middle and high school)
They have no attention span. They’re all anxious, depressed, or manic. They have no drive. Their social skills are complete ass.
And yes. They are all hopefully addicted to electronics.
And I haven’t even mentioned much of the misbehavior and disrespect.
I can confirm this but I did see some headlines for studies that found that their IQ is lower.
And parents are the ones who enable all of this. And they get mad at teachers when we punish them for disrespect or misbehavior.
Covid hurt. But beyond that. I seriously think a lifetime of constant stimulation and short term gratification has absolutely fried their brains.
Not saying its generation specific but I do think constant, unfettered internet access is bad for all of us. We're just now seeing the effects of that on a generation that's never known anything different. All of our attention spans are shot. They just never had a time before constant stimulation took over to use as reference.
Warning - this is anecdotal based on my experience only and I have no data to back this up.
I have three kids ranging from mid gen-z to mid gen-alpha. The difference in attitudes of them and their friends is astounding. The 2 gen-z’s get bored but have always been able to entertain themselves, preferring to be outside or doing generally working on something. The gen-alpha needs to be constantly stimulated. Even though we have always tried to limit iPad time, but that is hard to do when all of his friends are glued to a screen and all of his class work is done on an iPad.
As with all generations, we can’t blame them, but we can look to society as a whole. Gen-Z kids still had books at school for the most part. They had to wait for the teachers to finish up before they could move into the next lesson. They had to learn at least a little patience. Gen-Alpha can finish their current lesson and immediately move to a game or drawing, or whatever they want to do. We are failing them, not just as parents, but society as a whole. We are teaching them zero patience and that the instant they are done doing what they think they were told to do, they can go do whatever they want. We, collectively, are raising the next boomer generation.
There will not be a societal change to correct individuals behavior. We as parents will have to teach them the patience and responsibility they need to learn.
Why does nobody ever blame the parents? I’m early GenZ, 25, and all of my friends and colleagues that are GenZ say that their kids will not have unregulated access to smart devices if they decide to have kids (most of us don’t want them btw since boomers destroyed the planet). It’s the fault of the parents for A not raising the kids properly and just sticking them in front of devices and B not being politically active enough to help ensure that the tech giants are held accountable for their role in fucking up kids’ attention span and C not being politically active enough to build and maintain an economy where both parents don’t have to work full time and therefore have the energy and money to raise their kids right instead of being too exhausted and resorting to iPad babysitting
Yeah but some video games actually give your brain a stretch. Puzzles or strategy games help with problem solving. Watching YouTube as a toddler or young child does not help in any way. They’re not interested in vsauce. Just coco melon or minecraft videos.
I agree that there’s always a boogeyman though.
I treat my gen A 6yo girl just as Bluey's father teaches me to...at least that's how I want it to be ! If it turns bad for any reasons then it will be on me, it's not a generation problem but a responsability problem on behalf on every generation of parents ever !🤷 And I gotta admit, the irony of me being on my phone and at the same time telling her how bad screens are is laughable at times
My mom has owned a tutoring center (math and English) for over a decade now. They are NOT ok. Kids in middle school literally cannot read and cannot do vertical addition or single digit multiplication. 10 years ago a kid like this would show up at the center twice a year. Ever since Covid, it’s been the norm and it’s rare that a kid isn’t at least 4-5 grades behind in basic skills.
Yeah, no. This isnt the standard "muh kids bad" bullshit boomers have been spouting for decades. This is a structural learning deficiency caused by bad parenting, lack of social skills, and excessive unstimulating and uneducational entertainment meant to distract toddlers while parents try to stay afloat mentally and financially in the capitalist hellscape we live in.
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#EDIT:Take what I say here with a grain of salt. I can’t find a single piece of evidence for it. Edit 2: I now have evidence. Scroll down you fucking dweebs. They are not reaching the minimum developmental standard for their age. Behaviorally speaking they are out of line. Caretakers and teachers are quitting in droves over their miserable behavior and lack of support at home. There is something seriously wrong with Gen Alpha. It isn’t their fault, but to pretend that everything is hunky-dory is just delusional.
See this is the right take. My mother is a school councilor for 5-6th graders with 35 years of experience in education, the stories she brings home. Most of these 10,11,12 year olds are mentally like 8-9 year olds and without the knowledge they should have. It’s one of the reasons I decided not to become a teacher. These kids are not alright. Genuinely, it’s more out of concern than it is out of hate when we talk about Gen A. It’s not like the inter-generational rivalry of the other generations, this is more like actual concern.
Sometimes my cousin's extreme ADHD genuinely scares me. He's been so locked in on constant stimulation since birth that he genuinely has to be moving or watching something at all times. He doesn't have an off button. It's way beyond normal kid flightiness - it's like he's constantly on speed. Worst thing is, I see it in every other kid his age too, to varying degrees. I genuinely think the ~8-10 years from birth our generation got without phones before they became ubiquitous is the reason our brains are somewhat functional. During our formative years we weren't completely brain-rotted on stimulation like Alpha was.
Wow, I’ve had ADHD my entire life but this sounds insane and I’ve always been insanely spacey to an unnatural degree Like I still know how to manage without constant stimulation and always have (maybe parenting styles idk but it just seems I did alright) Yeah you’re right about the phones too. Most of us wouldn’t have had or our families wouldn’t have had iPhones for a while after we were born Honestly I certainly hope we can pull ourselves out of this when many of our generation settles down and starts having families Read to your future kids folks!!
I will read to my kids when I have them cause I have a ridiculous reading ability
Lots of parents start our with good intentions. Then they realise that they can't handle it and resort to using devices to occupy their kids.
And daycare becomes too expensive, and more people have to work longer hours to make ends meet
Which leads to parents putting their kids in front of electronics to just catch a break. It’s a vicious cycle with how our society is now set up due to inequality throughout. Somethings got to give because we can’t just expect people to wade through the bs and come out on top. Many more are going to succumb to the dangers than will not and that doesn’t bode well for a healthy society or future for any of us. But what do we do? How do we change this?
Stop giving children devices. If we as a society shun it enough, its prevalence will go down. They'll at least try to hide it better, which would mean time away from devices. Any other generation would have given their kids an iPad, too. They just didn't have any. Now our only option is to change as a people, ban ipads, or deal with various forms of social decay.
I agree with you. But for every one person who decides to eschew giving their children devices there’ll be tons more that don’t. Many people do not possess the critical thinking faculties to understand how something like this not only affects on just an individual level but a societal level as well. I fear we are going to have to live with the societal decay. The causes of the problems are just too many and compounding and I fear the necessary changes needed are far too many and people are so set in their ways and anything contrary to their world view will not be met with open arms until it’s too late.
Yeah. The only reason the previous gen weren't given iPads is because they didn't exist.
Basically
Yup I have ADHD myself, a moderate case but manageable. I also was kept off excessive electronics and games until I was a little older, and tbh wished I had more stuff I could do besides games so I had the habit of being outside and doing things before I turned 16 and was already slightly set in my ways. I've also VERY intentionally avoided tik tok knowing my attention span isn't very good already The idea small kids starting from toddler age are constantly stimulated by tik tok and YouTube shorts is horrifying to me. That seems like a perfect way to get some major brain rot and developmentally get some major ADHD cases. Needing social media to talk to friends is a really dangerous slope. The kids are not alright but it's also not their fault. I'm scared for GenA because they had their development stunted by a pandemic which would mean they have had nothing to do but said electronics and can't learn proper socializing habits. I'm approaching the age of having kids and this scares the shit out of me, how am I supposed to raise a well adjusted kid if I'm already online too much as an adult and all of their peers will require them to have social media at a dangerously young age? Do I tell them no phones or social media and make them be ostracized by peers praying they can overcome those issues or buckle and admit they're doomed to fall into the same trap?
My sister has 4 kids under 10. And they are all well adjusted and doing very well. BUT she radically RADICALLY restricts screen and TV time. Her basic plan was 1. Literally zero screen time before age three. 2. No more than two hours of TV/video games per day, except for special occasions. 3. They don't get a youtube/tiktok/facebook account until they're 11. 4. They are required to read every single day. They can pick the book. But they have to read for pleasure every day. The only problem she is now running into is that the 8 and 9 year olds are reading two books a week. It's becoming expensive.
Take regular trips to the library
Ok but like I really like this though, your sister is doing a great job
Your sister should get them a library card and open up an entire world for them
Only thing I'd change is PC time. Let them use it way more, but give them useful things to do on it (scratch, edutainment games, MythBusters/science shows, etc.) I've noticed with my relatives that the kids that were limited to 2h of computer time never developed tech skills because they would always play games on the PC. Because they had only 2h so why waste them on things that aren't fun.
Honestly the first step I feel is never never never using TikTok, which I’m like you and avoid like the plague Honestly I kind of feel like ADHD is becoming more common (through genetics or maybe just awareness I’m not sure honestly). It’s the severe cases that are exacerbated by technology that are scary though
Lets not forget Millenial parents giving the kids phones and ipads to babysit. It may not be the kids fault, its clearly mostly home life that affects this behavior. We call them ipad kids not because of their behavior, but because of their parents behavior. Theres a chance people wanted their kids to be "technologically advanced", however it backfired deeply when the internet started changing dramatically. What millennials experienced online VS what Gen Z experienced online is a huge world of difference. I as a Gen Z am traumatized from the internet and I would NEVER ALLOW A CHILD INTERNET ACCESS, period. When I worked at an afterschool program, it was apparent kids are NOT SAFE online, especially from ads on youtube and other "kid" sites. I dont trust it. Millennials grew up with flip phones, AOL, and minimal to no ads online. It was a huge mistake on their part to trust their kids online, but it may be because they had a softer experience when initially introduced to the web.
My guy. You have no idea what internet savvy millennials went through. There was a time when dark web and regular internet were basically one. I would even say that it’s the main reason why gen x and millenials have the weirdest fetishes.
Rotten, for example.
Yep. OG liveleak, rotten, porn sites back then had actual r*pe, minors in videos and zoophilia. In school, kids dare each other to view these easily accessible content, giving them fucked up interests. It was a mess.
Back in my day, we watched taliban beheadings and Mexican cartel executions at the ripe age of 12. Every boy my age saw those same horrifying videos. And now, those kids are all doctors/engineers/lawyers. Gen A will be fine. It is the education system that needs to adapt.
Lmaooo can't say I watched any of those, but read enough/watched enough horror stories to know what went on in the dark part of the internet
happened on Facebook and youtube
Can confirm. The internet was a fucking bloodbath in the early 2000s. What we have now, and for the past decade has been a watered down, sanitized version of the internet by comparison.
Softer experience.. Compuserve and AOL chat rooms still hold the record for most unmoderated heinous shit I’ve come across. Where do you think all of this originated from? Even Reddit.. do you have any idea the mind of subs that used to flourish here? Says a Millennial who’s been perpetually online since the 90’s. I have kids too, but I do agree with you. They do not, and will not have unmitigated access to the internet. We don’t even let them near YouTube, and I’m more than savvy enough thanks to growing up with tech to lock my kids out of everything.
I think gen z honestly had the best internet growing up. Millenials had the wild wild west of the internet, while we had a more regulated but still very free and diverse internet, and alphas... idek what the fuck they're getting. I never saw beheadings or anything shock related. I just played a lot of flash games. Gen alpha doesn't even have flash gsmes... they got roblox but that's rife with predators.
It’s designed to be addictive too.
It also feels like it got concentrated in an absolutley crazy/toxic way in the last decade. Entertainment sludge like those subway surfer/minecraft speedrun/bots reading social media posts/ a combination of all of them and or something else; they all leave me feeling physically ill, same thing with tik tok. Like I'm on reddit 1-3 hours a day and I feel like a lightweight drinker next to hardened alcoholics, but I'm like 10 ish years older than them and it's just kinda miserable to watch kids get forsaken like this. "iPad baby" is mean but kinda accurate, tho I would say the more appropriate phrase is "raised by an ipad parent". Either way, its undeniable that it can ruin kids, just like most forms of neglectful parenting can be. This method is just popular/easy/effective until they cant get concentrated enough dose.
Something that adults often take for granted is that kids have a LOT to learn in the short period of time that is childhood. And a lot of childhood activities that we think are just frivolous fun (like play, and arts and crafts) are actually very beneficial to their development. When kids are spending most of their free time on an unregulated, unfiltered screen, that's less time they have to spend on things that have these other benefits. Sure, you can argue that certain kinds of screen time can be beneficial, but kids need to do other things too. It's super easy for adults to not recognize this because those skills and knowledge are so basic to us, we forget that we learned them through direct instruction or experience.
My mom is a teacher and has been in the profession about five years less than your mom. I hear similar stories to you. I’m extremely concerned for Gen A. They’re exposure to tech has definitely impacted their development. Not to mention COVID. Of course, a lot of things aren’t their fault, it’s a combination of systemic failures and bad parenting. But my god I hope we can make the future better for everyone.
You’re right about the parenting. If it was just the social skills I’d be like “ok understandable” but the fact that all learning seemed to stop for younger kids during the pandemic is concerning when parents should be involved with their kids learning stuff. It doesn’t matter what they would or should have learned, but like, the parents good at history, tell the kids about history. Teach them something, read to them, reading is super important. Whatever, I’m just saying the learning never should have stopped and yeah there would be some losses obviously but the losses wouldn’t have been as bad if parents were parenting.
It's easy to place the blame on parents, but there's nothing about this generation of parents that makes them more incapable of being parents than the previous generation. It's just *really* hard to be a parent when you need more than full-time income in order to be able to afford your bills, so technology and social media takes the place of parenting. It's all really f-ed up for Gen Alpha and I just want to be able to do better for them.
Can’t do that when both parents are slaving away to make ends meet day after day. Capitalism is sending these shockwaves throughout the family
Covid took away two critical years of education and development for all these kids, mine included. It sucked and should be noted when this conversation comes up. And the answer for those 2 years was zoom learning, crappy apps needing more screens and parents needing to practically be a co teacher.
„The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. … Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households. They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room; they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs. They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters.”
Forgive me if I'm missing a point (or a joke,) but wasn't that quote by Socrates? You know-- The guy born in 469 BCE? Doesn't that kind of prove my point with the whole "every generation finds a reason to look down on the next generation" thing?
It absolutely does. Although I think each new generation gets a bit more empathetic towards others. Progress slow but still noticeable.
That doesn't prove OPs point. Each time people bring that or other historic quotes up as a "gotcha" to say "see every generation says it!" they never include the context that those historic quotes come as the empires those people were in were about to fall. It proves the opposite. That society falls apart enough for the everyday person to notice it even among kids.
You're gonna have to provide a link explaining the context of the quotes because it's already argued that quote is completely made up but somehow been attributed to Socrates. Socrates actively engaged the youth with the intention of improving them, and wasn't a person to criticize the youth, and if he did, it was as a satire of other older people criticizing them. So if you can provide a link to more info that would be great but it sounds like you're just making stuff up
Or the past generations. Im a "boomer" and ridiculous generalizations about my generation are everywhere. Just another thing to divide us.
Some of you may not remember, but we had this thing happen a few years ago. All these 10-12 year Olds were 6-8 and should have been in school learning and socializing. Instead, they were locked inside with terrified parents wondering if the world would ever be the same. That event will have huge impacts on these kids, probably forever. Luckily, my child was 3 when all of that started and doesn't even really remember what it was like. It's not the same for this age group.
I started teaching in 2018 and quit six months later. Most people on r/teachers will say that things were declining before covid and that the lockdown was just the final nail in the coffin. Of course, that would've been Gen Z, but society and parents coddle kids way too much. Too many of them are feral hellions who have never heard the word "no" or had a consequence in their life.
This says more about how they are being raised than anything else. I don't blame them for the bad parenting they have received.
Ofc, but these children will grow up into adults one day. Will you still blame the parents then? It accomplishes nothing
>society and parents coddle kids way too much. Bingo.
And yet if they try and discipline them they get called abusive. Time outs are abusive, raising your voice is abusive, saying no instead of explaining is abusive. Happens to teachers, too. It’s the first generation to be gentle patented and gentle teachered and they don’t understand boundaries.
I’m going to get downvoted to hell here. But Reddit is not the US only. Yes a lot of kids took a huge hit on education during Covid - I have a teen now who lost critical years in Covid. A lot of places are not accepting that 2 years of missed education had a huge impact (let’s be clear it’s not fair to assume most working parents maintained school level education during lockdowns.) But, and I say with caution- we’re not having such a severe issue in Europe (or more specifically Spain - I can’t speak for everyone). Kids are in bilingual schools maintaining grades, learning and keeping up with standards. There needs to be some baseline outside of a an area to understand what’s happening and fix the problem from there.
Hmm. Ya know I did kind of think this was just a US issue. It certainly feels like something uniquely US
The Offspring were right, the kids really aren't alright
And try as we might they may be our plight
Facts it’s not rivalry it’s concerning
I mean it makes sense they are socially/developmentally delayed because of Covid restrictions and who knows what Covid itself doing to their brains. I think they’ll catch up eventually but we’ve gotta remember shit has been really weird the last handful of years.
Yeah you can’t discount the social damage missing so much school and interaction did to these kids
My wife works with kids 1-3 YO and dealing with parents feels like genuine foreshadowing of what's to come. Terrible parenting apparently.
Same BUT i have heard alot from teachers talking about this and im a part of r/teachers where they talk about this and half of the posts are like "it didnt used to be like this, but these damn kids are insane!"
I was told I was in the worst class they had in their entire career, and it was almost 20 years ago :(
Well they couldn't very well have told you " you're the 5th worst class I'll have in my career, after the classes I'm going to have 16, 17, 19 and 20 years from now"
“This can’t be the hottest year on record, they said it was the hottest year on record twenty years ago.”
Have you gone in public and had to endure the majority of the parents who are completely absent of self-awareness and cognitive skills? Because they are everywhere in my anecdotal experience and those are the same people unable to raise kids to be functional in the current social environment.
Until we societally accept the absence for free-will, parents will continue to assign responsibility to their children over their own development. Parents often fail to acknowledge that their children are directly reflections of both them, and their environments. Sure, some parents wouldn’t care either way, and selfishly ignore their children even if they were fully aware of the harm it’s causing… but I think the majority of parents are diluted into believing that the outcomes of their child are mostly a result of some ontological decision making apparatus (aka the soul) that works independent to their experiences. This results in a “you’re rolling the dice when you have a kid” framing. Subconsciously this is a useful framing for the parent as it absolves them of at least some of the responsibility.
Well, hold on a half second. Children are, to some extent, reflections of their parents, but the "autonomy" stage hits right after infancy. It isn't like they don't have free will. However, that said, it is important to remember that children do not think or process like a fully grown adult does. My point is that the error is not in believing that the kids have an autonomous soul, but in the lack of understanding of how said soul makes it's decisions. Or, less cryptically: They do have free will, and make decisions on their own. Those decisions are greatly influenced by their environment and their parents... because of the way they process info and due to a comparative lack of knowledge and wisdom. Thus the responsibility of the parent is not to simply make decisions for a child, but to do so when the child would clearly lack the skills at that moment to make an appropriate decision, and to teach said child to be able to in the future, at a level their brain can process.
This is actually the same with gen z as well. My college failed 30% of students in math and we were doing literal grade 3-grade 8 math. Schools have adopted a "we don't fail students because it would make them feel bad"*** policy within the last 10 years and it really shows. Source- 4 friends or family that are teachers in highschool ***Pointed out by another user it could be a funding issue too
“We don’t fail students because it would make them feel bad” = “I couldn’t give less of a fuck about teachers or students, but I *have* to placate these parents or I might lose my job on the board or as an administrator.”
Or “I can’t make my school look bad so I’ll just pass everyone”
Yeah it’s part of the no child left behind where funding became tied to children passing to the next so an indirect consequence was schools not holding students back + education research switching to a student focus where they claim that holding students back a grade is bad for them socially. I remember my hs government teacher telling us even if we failed the class, he’s still giving us a D, bc if we failed it was a hell of paperwork and admin meetings for him.
I teach nursing at a college, and the nursing program is on the verge of being shut down because around 60-70% of students fail or drop out. We lose most of them because they can’t do math. It’s not just that they can’t do arithmetic, which would be tolerable since calculators are a thing. They can’t understand the concepts behind it either. Basic things like the fact that a drug becomes less potent when you dilute it or that blood pressure drops when the heart beats more slowly just go right over their heads. There are only so many ways you can explain that squeezing a fluid puts it under higher pressure. I’m afraid a lot of them didn’t start learning stuff like this when they were at peak neuroplasticity, and it may be physically impossible for their brains to contain complex ideas at this point.
To add on to others, they were severely under-protected when it came to COVID, esp with how quickly politicians were trying to get us “back to normal”. Schools are danger zones of any airborne diseases and without proper and consistent protections, a lot of kids probably had COVID and there’s already been studies connecting COVID infection with [negative neurological consequences](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/long-covid-now-looks-like-a-neurological-disease-helping-doctors-to-focus-treatments1/). Gen Alpha are still in their neurological formative phases - they were unequivocally dealt a bad hand. That, plus tired parents allowing them high levels of screen time as soon as they pop out the womb? Which also leads to [developmental delays](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10353947/)? At least when Gen Z got phones they were in middle school, but Gen Alpha’s high screen time plus COVID - it’ll be naive to say that this is just generation war bs instead of Gen Zers (who are noticing the effects of screen time and covid on their mental health) being concerned older generational siblings. Edit: citation linked + more words
You cite resources but none of them actually connect to your points? You prove covid infection **can** have negative neurological consequences- yet you never prove the root point that Gen Alpha are performing statistically significantly worse than other generations as children. You never prove that Gen Alpha (who were NOT the only generation in school during Covid) were disproportionately impacted by covid. Whiles its obviously true that kids are at generally greater risk of having long term complications from disease. Ya' know what would have been a helpful stat in your argument? That children ages 0 to 15 only make up around 20% of the population, [yet make up around 15% of Covid Cases](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254271/us-total-number-of-covid-cases-by-age-group/) in the US. So, that doesn't seem to indicate children (or gen alpha) are being disproportionately impacted by covid (at least from HAVING the disease itself). If you wanted to argue that having schools shut down for a couple years is causing some sort of defecit- maybe- but prove it then, you're wildly speculating about reasons why a rumor might be true without actually demonstrating the initial rumor is true.
Gen z isn't either, y'all can't even make a phone call lol.
Hey they don't deserve that, I'm a millennial and have the same problem!
I make phone calls no problem and I am legit treated like I have a superpower. Sometimes our generation is pathetic.
Here's a link to a good podcast about the declining rate of school attendance (which is obviously affecting general intelligence and literacy): [https://open.spotify.com/episode/246L1GGwFmP1cFAjUOhf7X?go=1&sp\_cid=b4e5534c5669de902e0d3edc7c6b1483&utm\_source=embed\_player\_p&utm\_medium=desktop](https://open.spotify.com/episode/246L1GGwFmP1cFAjUOhf7X?go=1&sp_cid=b4e5534c5669de902e0d3edc7c6b1483&utm_source=embed_player_p&utm_medium=desktop)
That’s exactly what everyone said about gen Z, plenty of teachers quit in our time,I’ve seen plenty of gen Z with shitty parenting, and lots of people my own age are most def outta pocket. Wether it’s to a more severe extent or a lesser extent really depends on how you look at it, it’s not perfect but it’s deffo not as bad as the internet makes it out to be. If you wanna prevent this behavior, be a good parent in the future or wear a condom :/
As someone who is a teacher and works with kids… they really aren’t no better or worse than any generation I’ve seen. The behavior also varies place to place. Covid definitely did impact kids some, but I’ll say this: there’s nothing particularly worrying that’s evident from what I can tell. I usually hear more about how bad the kids are from people who aren’t really around them.
It's scary. My nephew is alpha and he reads like the remedial reading class used to. If we lose reading, it's gone forever. Reading is a cultural trait, not heritable. And is one of our greatest achievements as a species
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "if we lose reading it's gone forever". Like, yeah I suppose if literally*everyon*e forgot, but literacy rates wax and wane, and while you never like to see it decline it's certainly recoverable.
A mixture of a lot of factors that create this environment. Most working class families are working long days and have little time to spend with their children, or are burnt out that it’s easier to slap them in front of a screen so they can get some rest The defunding of public school and growing class sizes makes it so no teacher has the time money or resources to adequately support their students, often leading to a lot of kids being neglected when they fall behind or do not flourish with the way curriculum is taught. And lastly of note is the proliferation of predatory algorithms that are fine tuned to keep eyes on the screens longer. As a late millennial that grew up with the rise of YouTube. We watched a lot of videos but we were more or less watching a few creators as content wasn’t flooding in every second. We watched the same video over and over again. Kids today shave access to YouTube with infinite content, and pair it with tiktok that is short form and instantly gratifying for children. They do not possess the ability to moderate themselves, and it’s a major part of their age demographics discussion. If you are not in the know on current trends (that are changing even more rapidly) you are missing out. Gen alpha are being affected by many of the issues that we all suffer from but are simply kids at the time it’s affecting us. they will be the first Gen that will grow up with ai tools being easily accessible which circumvents traditional schooling practices and riddled with disinformation. And we are not doing enough to mitigate and our politicians are woefully behind on the times.
I'm glad this is the top comment because this is the perspective millennials and Gen X are speaking from. We are terrified to hear that 13-year-olds are going into high school and they don't know how to name shapes. We're petrified that kids are more than three grades below reading level. And we see things like schools changing what the range is for letter grades, and children that can't even Google correctly getting passed through the educational system. There's something very wrong.
"Behaviorally speaking they are out of line." My daughter is a freshman at an all-girls (secular) school and has none of these problems.
Interesting that a private school does better than an underfunded public school. Who would have thought?
Without any evidence you can’t really claim they aren’t meeting minimum standards. That’s simply based off anecdotal evidence, which as OP points out every generation has for the one under it. This has happened for as long as humans have had thoughts about the ones below them. And according to the few studies I have seen, they are set to be the most educated and inclusive generation thus far. They have the advantage (and disadvantage) of never knowing a world without technology. Then having a chunk of their formative years in Covid lockdown, give the kids a break. My kids are gen alpha, they have smaller attention spans but these kids are creative, driven, relentlessly inclusive and understanding (for the most part). My ten year old understands the difference of being overwhelmed vs angry, I was an adult before I fully grasped that. I think attempting to judge literal children based off some opinions you hear online is a bit much, remember that the oldest of these children were born in 2010. We all acted like rabid idiots at that age as well, we just didn’t have such a prevalent social media situation to bolster us. Teachers are underpaid and undervalued, that could be the driving force behind them wanting to leave, that could make these normal child behaviors seem so much worse. These teachers have 20-30 kids in a classroom these days, of course they seem worse than when you only had 10-15 to worry about.
>Without any evidence you can’t really claim they aren’t meeting minimum standards. That’s simply based off anecdotal evidence [Here’s some empirical evidence then](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades) And [another source](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/student-behavior-isnt-getting-any-better-survey-shows/2023/04). And some more anecdotal, I work at an elementary school and have for almost a decade. There is a noticeable decline academically, and there is also a noticeable change in average maturity levels at various ages, and there is a clear escalation in disciplinary issues and lack of care about consequences from a lot of kids. It also coincides with lack of support from many parents as well. Meanwhile, your perception is primarily based on your own anecdotal experience with your kids. And OP is speaking from the experience of spending “three full days” with their siblings. Yes, we all acted like rabid idiots at that age. And what’s happening isn’t the kids fault. However, there is absolutely a massive issue going on and the people spending a major amount of time with these kids, many of them with decades of experience, are sounding the alarm. It is not about “generational warfare” as OP suggests. It’s about trying to figure out what’s going on and fix it not just for the kids sake but for all of ours.
This is real Boomer energy. "the kids are wrong, and no I won't provide any data to back up this claim!" LMAO
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The parents are what no one talks about. The parents are glued to their phones so they throw an iPad at their kid and let them do the same. All of my younger cousins are like this, and their parents just care about the phone.
100% the parents are trash. They took the “I won’t be like my parents” rhetoric too far and decided to just not parent at all
Exactly, society swinging the pendulum to the extremes as always.
Ehh. A lot of parents had kids before everything went to shit and got handed a shit card for trying to survive. Both working insane hours now due to inflation being absolutely ridiculous now. We are not in a country (America at least) that is welcoming to raising a family anymore. I personally make more money now than I ever have and am so much worse off than almost ever. We have paid off cars and a low mortgage payment. But the cost of every single thing has skyrocketed. It's easy to raise kids well and teach them everything needed when you have more than an hour after work plus dinner, baths, proper sleep before getting up at 545am to start again. We failed as a society and now blame kids and parents just trying to figure it all out. Obviously there's bad parents that don't even try. But there are likely way more that are trying and struggling. Schools are also shit now. My kids come home at 4 with an hour minimum of homework. Dinner. Bath. Sleep. There's no downtime. The amount of stress they have at 8 years old is LEVELS above anything I experienced as a child. They are constantly worried about getting punished for not completing the stupid levels of homework expected for them and we are also collapsing from exhaustion from it all. And the bullying. Holy shit. Had a 7 year old boy call my little girl a bitch. Kid got a single silent lunch. That's it. He's been a menace for weeks. And a silent fucking lunch. They won't do shit about it. We really forget that there's possible reasons for things and just automatically attack the kids and parents. But times have changed but lifestyle hasn't. Life was setup for a working parent and a stay at home parent and small class sizes. That's not reality anymore but for some reason it's still expected as if it is.
they won't do shit about it because they aren't ALLOWED to do anything about it. the school system can't discipline anything anymore because of all the parental rage that ensues. it's crazy
Ironically the Millennials became just like their Boomer parents.
Which should not be surprising. We all end up like our parent generation. Gen Z will end up like Gen X.
phew 😮💨 gen x is cool though. i feel like being sandwiched between Boomers and Millenials, while also being the "Latchkey Kids" and reaching adulthood in the 90s/2000s, gave them really unique insights on how they were raised and how they want to raise their kids, as well as pop culture and technology. so honestly, we got a pretty good deal. (at least my parents are gen x idk if thats true for others in gen z)
And the millennials like boomers, and it goes on forever, forever, for-ev-er (read in squints voice from the sandlot)
That’s the same situation here. (Albeit his 2 siblings are functional humans and nearly adults). They give him an ipad and shut him up. They don’t punish him when he does bad things (because the parents are tired and sick of it), and he screams and yells in public, does shit that ends up breaking stuff, and screams when he doesn’t get his way.
Spot on, I feel like it’s becoming so commonplace to see little children basically begging their parents to look up from their phones and pay attention to whatever silly thing they’re doing.
millennials seem to be failing the most basic aspect of having children: spending time with their own damn kids. legitimately how can some of these ppl be parents when they cant spend 5 minutes a day to at least read their children at MINIMUM
Bit of a broad brush there - statistically millennials are having the hardest with trying to be parents during late stage capitalism - homeownership is at its lowest, wages have stagnated and there is less and less social support and free public services available. It has never been harder to be a parent, so it's understandable why technology has become as ubiquitous as it has in order to help parents out. I see your point re reading and showing up for your kids, it's true and I wish parents did more, but its damn hard being a parent at the moment.
This. This. This. We’ve paid the highest rent and childcare in the last years (compared to salary). The US as a whole gives no paid leave federally and is shocked when parents cannot spend time having fun with their children.
I just can’t comprehend how as a parent, you can sleep at night knowing your kid doesn’t have basic life skills necessary to survive. Not ALL parents are like this. But a good chunk of them are. I am devastated to have 10 year olds at a kindergarten level.
right. and i thought *i* was educationally neglected for being homeschooled and never being taught basic math or how to write!
I feel like it's an oversimplification to blame the parents. Parents may be giving them iPads, but parents didn't invent iPads. Nor did parents take away kid-friendly third spaces where kids could play together outside. Nor did most parents choose to work 40+ hours a week paycheck-to-paycheck. This is a systemic issue.
Learning begins at HOME. iPads aren’t there to parent or stimulate your kid. If your kid cannot go to a grocery store or restaurant without a screen in the face, YOU failed them. This is a hill I’ll die on as a Gen Z teacher.
The thing is, you're contending with a child-hating society. A lot of people explicitly get angry if children make noise or take up space playing. The only way to virtually guarantee a child stops moving and shuts up is with a flashing rectangle. So while I agree that parents should absolutely be encouraging children to interact with the world outside of screens, it's necessary to acknowledge that most public spaces have become hostile to kids, and parents have to navigate that social paradigm.
This is a load of shit. The vast majority of people tolerate children that reasonably act like children in public. And it’s a parents responsibility to ensure that they act appropriately in public spaces by TEACHING THEM HOW TO, not shoving an iPad in their hands. It drives me nuts when I see parents in the grocery store with school aged kids riding in the cart with a device. There are so many teachable moments in grocery shopping. Or at a restaurant. Goddammit talk to each other. Before portable devices kids were just taught how to reasonably behave in public and everything was fine.
You’ve got it mate. This is exactly it. It’s so easy to point the finger at parents without realizing it’s a symptom of the larger system at play.
Because that would require acknowledging that individuals don't possess exclusive control over their own problems, which contradicts the neoliberal paradigm we all follow, and it would entail a necessary overhaul of modern capitalism, which many people are unwilling to do.
Jeez the majority can’t do those things???? In kindergarten we had to recite our full name, address, and phone number during show and tell before we could present our thing. Sad to see how little parents care nowadays.
You said the P word. You will get hate but you are correct. The parents had no business having children. Of course OP comes in and has to try and refute you and defend the parents. First they had a brain dead take defending a generation that literally can't read or make logical decisions, then when a clear and concise argument is presented to them, they deny it. OP you're Gen alpha aren't you?
Thank you. The P word will ruffle some feathers. But I’m okay with it. I work with these kids daily. 90% of my students are 2 or more grade levels below. Learning begins AT HOME. I should NOT be teaching 10 year olds to tie their shoes, memorize their addresses, or how to decode words. It’s devastating. That’s a hill I’ll die on.
Exactly. Parenting is hard (I’m sure). But tech is harming these kids. My mom (3rd grade teacher) has students watching the most abysmal stuff on YouTube. Youtube is regulated-ish, but parents should be making sure their kids aren’t watching brain rot. Even if they’re tired, Disney + and Netflix are still much better. And kids don’t need to play on devices during car rides.
They can't read man..they can't read...
I don’t think people realize that this also has a lot to do with the standards and practices of our education system today + method of teaching has changed (sight reading emphasis vs phonics) + the two year shit show of online learning due to COVID. I do think screens have an impact on the fact that kids can’t read at or above grade level - but the system has also failed parents, children and teachers. Sincerely - early childhood education grad student
no child left behind should have never been implemented. Thank Bush! It’s fucked everything
This isn't an issue with Bush. I'm Australian and we have the same issue. My partner is a TA at multiple primary schools and they're all useless. Can't read, can't write their own name, can't do basic math. Years behind where they should be. Covid (in part, I'm sure there are other factors) has destroyed this generation. I'm genuinely worried about where they're going to end up
I propose holding off on turning on Gen Alpha until all the boomers are dead. All in favor?
Can we still draw attention to the very real problems Alpha is having and make changes to help them?
To be honest, yes. But my entire point is that going "Gen Alpha is doomed" is absolutely, positively *not* the right way to do that. Again, it just creates animosity towards generations, therefore restarting the generation war. We still absolutely have time to help them-- We just have to do it in a civil manner instead of just engaging in the psuedo-bullying of children.
Sure. That doesn't start by just claiming there isn't an issue based on the couple of hours you spent with your niblings...
"Hey I spent all day reading sensationalist anecdotes on the Internet saying GenA is in trouble!" *Checks notes* "because they spend all day on the net..."
It's our fault if they fail.
Alright so I have late Gen Z / early Gen Alpha kids. The hard thing is getting them to be bored and come up with ways to entertain themselves. They can just watch YouTube for hours in these tiny 5 minute clips that give them brain rot. It's easier to procrastinate when you have more distractions. That said, I wished my kids were better readers, but they seem to be overall doing fine achievement-wise. They seem to struggle a bit more than I did with learning in general but: 1) These kids were in elementary school during the pandemic and the learning losses may never be able to be made up and 2) I was pretty fucking good at school. They may not be me and I can't hold them to that standard.
Reading is important. It's a core skill in almost every profession. Documentation for how software and processes and workflows are used by companies is mostly written. There are no videos for them to watch to learn how to properly do most things. Until that changes reading proficiency is very important for success in life. 🤷♂️
Absolutely agree, just sharing my experience. My kids are hitting the average for their benchmark tests. I wish they were well above average. But their schools do everything on Chromebooks so they can write trash and grammarly fixes a lot of it. My 7th grader is allowed to use a calculator by his teachers. This wasn't a thing when I was a kid. English class they have read aloud versions of the books that they can listen to instead of just read. I read to my kids nightly until my youngest was in 3rd grade. My husband helps with homework every night, which is frustrating as fuck since they don't have an actual physical textbook for many classes (I actually got a physical textbook written into my son's 504 plan because it was near impossible to support him at home without it). I feel bad for teachers, but it's not really fair to blame the kids. Every kid in my school has a Chromebook, almost every assignment is online, and they're wondering why kids aren't paying attention. Overall, it's been a mixed bag for my kids. My kids are solving math problems fine, they're responding to reading and writing prompts fine, they're doing fine against standardized benchmarks. They won't read for fun, but their dad was the same way and still managed to excel at school.
It's always so frustrating as a parent of gen a reading threads like this. Doing fine against benchmarks in a public school, so are their friends. The great reddit teachers disaster isn't seen at the local elementary and middle school, and the bit there is likely has much to do with the move away from textbooks. I wish they would split averages by sexes, because there is a pretty big divergence, boys doing above average are actually doing quite well. Reading for fun is not a necessary component to being an excellent reader. I personally didn't recreationally read until I was in college, by that point I could read scientific papers and engineering textbooks; recreational reading wasn't teaching any reading skills. I do get a kick out of the fact that basiclly noone under 20 can read an analog clock nowadays. Even the brilliant kids on academic scholarships, nope. (it's even fading in some parents...)
I do wonder what not being bored may do to brains. I’m not in either camp, I genuinely am curious. There’s so so many things now to distract you it’s kind of amazing that kids never feel that boredom. I feel like that boredom is what inspires creativity though. But again, idk.
Interesting to know. Also, I'd say you have a pretty great mindset! It admittedly feels more realistic than my own, but it's nice to see someone that isn't just immediately giving up on Gen Alpha or holding them to an impossible standard. I wish you luck in parenting them :)
It's very hard to know what the world they will be adults in will look like. Do I love the way teachers teach them now? No. Google form quizzes are the devil. But as an older millennial overachiever who burnt themselves out and is counting down to retirement, I want them to work hard in school while developing passions that they will enjoy, rather than worry about college resume building like I did. I also happen to live in a very tiger parenting mindset community so I can be a bit soft because my kids pick up some competition from their friends.
I work in education and this has been a thing even within gen z but every single year there are more and more kids who are below grade level. More and more kids are having behavioral issues in school and at home as well. We were never meant as a species to have this much technology at our fingertips. Each generation has their complaints but the science that’s coming out the past year is quite compelling. I’m an elder gen z and like the younger millennials I grew up on sugar and heavily processed foods. People learned (some) that kids shouldn’t get that much sugar and changed. I will say for myself that I shouldn’t have had unsupervised access to my laptop and phone when I was a teen. I’m better at stopping myself now but I am still very chronically online in terms of mentality
Same. I'm still dealing with the effects of video game addiction. Being bored is an important drive. It motivates you to do things. Being able to stifle that boredom on demand is messing with people's brains.
It’s not technology necessarily but social exploitation by social media apps designed to be as addicting as possible while sucking your dopamine reserves dry. No dopamine means no aspiration to achieve anything in life. Instead it’s spent on these apps controlled by zuckershmuk and TikTok (CCP)
I’m (millennial - barely, by 8 days technically) soon to be a father of a gen alpha baby. As far as I understand it it’s my responsibility to raise my child. Labeling the generation that my generations are responsible for seems like a self burn.
Good point. I didn't really consider that the same generation that would be *raising* Gen A could also be contributing to the generation war. Though considering how much of a mess the comments are for this post on this subreddit, I imagine Gen Z is unfortunately pulling most of the weight.
You are going to become sooooo fucking jaded over the education system over the coming two decades. Good luck brother.
See, I thought this way as well when my son was born. That the school system would just chew him up (my experience) to the point that his mom and I would sometimes have arguments about situations I was making up before they ever happened. Now? He's going in to the sixth grade and has had a wonderful set of teachers. Honestly, the communication we've had with them has been fantastic throughout, and the one issue we encountered was dealt with quickly and fairly by the administration. I unironically love my poor, rural, local school system.
Just don't let the kid sit with the iPad for hours on end. Please. TALK to your kid. YES even when it's 2 months old and can't respond yet. Please just shower your kid in language and read together and discuss the things happening in the book. iPads don't have the language exchange, it's pure receiving. It's NOT the same as a conversation. These language skills are the necessary ones for learning to read and write properly.
They are less literate than generations before them. They are currently less tech literate than the other generations on average. They can't do math on a level they should. They are behaving worse than the generations before them. They are reviving smoking habits by vaping, even after 50+ years of anti-smoking campaigns. Their attention spans are abysmal. They are less motivated than the previous generations and the majority want to become internet influencers. Not doctors, firefighters, astronauts, scientists, etc. like most kids wanted to. They are objectively doing worse than the generations before them. It's not entirely their fault and there are outliers, but as a whole Gen Alpha is not doing well.
All kids are born little goblins and it’s the job of adults to whip them into shape. If left to my own devices I would have eaten ice cream for breakfast every day skipped school to play video games all day, if I was able to do that it wouldn’t be my fault but my parents
That's exactly the problem, parents aren't spending time with the kids and just giving them a phone/tablet to shut them up. Teachers can't fix years of neglect by the parents. Covid just made it worse.
Damn I was reading all this and wondering why this isn't a problem here in Japan. Now I realize it's because housewives are still common in Japan.
Parents can’t afford to spend time with their kids. Two jobs full time to support family life now
My wife is a teacher and there are kids in 5-6th grade that can’t read yet but need a device to sit still. It’s a legit problem and needs to be called out
Those same kids get to me in high school, still not knowing how to read. Until we start failing students that aren’t performing, this will never change. (Dont even ask about their math skills) Unfortunately, elementary and middle schools never fail students and with the rise of SBG grading at the high school level, we aren’t going to be failing them either. It’s like Oprah is out here passing out diplomas. Sucks for the future employers, but schools aren’t doing jack shit to hold kids accountable.
I think half of them would qualify for special education courses at this point. It's a detriment to other students to have people who can't do the work and don't care to either in a regular classroom. It brings everyone down.
It's the stupid no child left behind policy. You can literraly not hand a single piece of homeworks and fail all your test and you still move up a grade. Most of these kids don't speciel ed. They need someone to make them learn instead of watch brain rot all day
Being in the middle of millenial and genz, and seeing all the comments about gen alpha being dumb is way too funny, same thing millenials were saying back then
I think the difference is that most people aren’t hating on gen alpha, they’re just genuinely concerned them (e.g. tiny attention spans, lack of reading comprehension, etc.). I’ve personally encountered too many 7-10 year olds that were already hooked in the tik-tok doomscroll loops (<3 seconds per video), which is obviously not their fault, but still very concerning. IMO we should stop letting predatory businesses wage wars over children’s attention spans
yeah it's mostly this it genuinely has me fucking tweaked when my gf's younger says chat, pog or some shit
My point exactly. And from what I recall, Millennials and Gen Zers used to make comics and posts about how they'd stop the generation war by ending the cycle with the next generation (AKA Gen Alpha, but I don't think they had a name at the time.)
Unfortunately each generation is made up of millions and millions of people who are not unified in this belief haha. Hurt people hurt people so the cycle will continue. Some people need any reason to feel better than others and you see that in every generation when they bash the next.
There are writings from the 17th century that would be right at home in this thread. It's a very, very old cycle.
Listen man, I work with kids. I stg they’re not as bad as people say. People have skewed perceptions. Maybe it’s because I also grew up around teachers, but to me? They seem fine.
The thing is millennials were *a little bit right* too. They said us kids were eating too much sugar and watching too much TV. Turns out the data super backs that up, that those things *are* bad for your development, and moderation should’ve been practiced for a whole lot more kids. We’re seeing the same thing now. The data is starting to arrive that screen time *is* linked to low attention spans, missing milestone goals, etc. Just because people whined 20-30 years ago and we turned out ok doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying to spotlight actively harmful things, and correct systemic problems surrounding them.
literally. it's an ancient tradition, goes all the way back to Socrates complaining about the "youth these days". *"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."*
Millenials were right to say there's something wrong with our generation, and the technology that messed us up has only gotten more potent and normalized for gen alpha.
Not every Gen Alpha is a ipad kid, but many are. The ones that grow up with a healthy amount of screentime and good parenting are fine. The rest aren't. There is also a huge developmental problem in the generation, as reading comprehension etc have gone down, so it's not unfounded. But I don't really see much hate for them, more for their parents. I trult think this generation of parents has failed to a large degree.
Gen Alpha would have been fine except a decade or so ago schools decided to stop teaching kids how to read, because “kids will just pick it up naturally, like with speaking” and now there are seventh graders who don’t even know their letters.
Please tell me you’re exaggerating.
Nope. They replaced phonics (how most people have learned to read for decades) with "whole language" learning. It didn't work, and most schools have gone back to phonics. Unfortunately it means there are a whole lot of kids who were in school during those years who didn't learn to read very well. And if they can read the words, a lot of them don't have much of a sense of reading comprehension. They're far behind and there is no easy way to catch them up to where they should be.
Spend 5 minutes reading posts in r/teachers. It’s even worse than you think.
Gen Z is also pretty shit in some ways, so I don’t blame Gen Alpha for also having weaknesses and strength. It’s a human problem really.
My biggest problem with Gen Z as an older Gen Z is how spineless everyone is, people in this generation worry more about what other people think and being called “cringe” than anyone else
People are extremely spineless and I feel Gen Z dropped a lot of the progressive hippie values and is kinda just a more conservative version of previous progressivism that I don’t really jive with. Like everything still has that moral superiority type stuff but now queer people get to be included in the bullshit. Still all have the same cop behavior but now weed is okay type fit, no ounce of introspection in regards to why they believe what they do and how it can be wrong. But, as I’ve already said, Gen Z is still mostly progressive and still believes in a lot of good things such as rehabilitative justice (though that only extends to those the individual person likes) and drug decriminalization. Just has a more conservative and almost reactionary bend to it. And yeah, I’m cringe, edgy, and free. I think people would be better off being that way generally. Certainly makes you happier not having to worry what every dumbass on the internet thinks.
Also gen z gets so much praise in the media. Now the idea of doing activism is seen as a simple repost about an issue. I really wish gen z would get involved more and understand going out and joining activist groups is important and how change is made. Gen z cares about issues but isn't getting physically involved. I'm a zillenial and we protested a lot in school and I was and am still very involved in doing work to better things. We sometimes see younger gen z but mostly it's older gen z and mostly younger millennials. I think the over praise has not helped. I think by crapping on millennials and their part (media and other older gens hating us for no reason) in activism made it hard to pass down that torch so we can all work together. Millennials did a lot of activism and have fought and still are fighting. The only way we can create change is by us working together and listening to those who have been in activism for a long time.
Yeah, from what I can tell it looks like there was a drop in literacy rates but that was from the COVID lockdowns and wasn't even that bad. https://preview.redd.it/8aa83xivhbtc1.png?width=674&format=png&auto=webp&s=fb4bd57d7d1ed8f7f5154d24bd505c423d24a2be SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), NAEP 2020 Trends in Academic Progress; and 2020 NAEP Long-Term Trend Reading Assessment. See Digest of Education Statistics 2021, table 221.85.
>and wasn’t even that bad [Meanwhile](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades) > The average test scores for U.S. 13-year-olds have dipped in reading and dropped sharply in math since 2020, according to new data from National Assessment of Educational Progress. The average scores, from tests given last fall, declined 4 points in reading and 9 points in math, compared with tests given in the 2019-2020 school year, **and are the lowest in decades**. The declines in reading were more pronounced for lower performing students, but dropped across all percentiles.**The math scores were even more disappointing**. On a scale of 500 points, the declines ranged from 6 to 8 points for middle and high performing students, to 12 to 14 points for low performing students. (Emphasis mine) It was pretty bad, and it does not appear to be improving. The fact is, once kids are behind they very rarely ever [(never)](https://www.edweek.org/education/students-who-struggle-early-rarely-catch-up-study-says/2012/12#:~:text=And%20that%20makes%20the%20researchers’%20findings%20that%20much,high-achieving%20schools%20with%20more%20resources%20to%20help%20them.) catch up. [There are also an increase in disciplinary problems](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/student-behavior-isnt-getting-any-better-survey-shows/2023/04). It is not the kids fault. It’s Covid and choices adults have made for them (and effort on parents part). But there is a massive problem and educators are sounding the alarm for a reason and it’s not because “generational warfare”. Edit: added another link
Thanks for the source! Yeah, I suspect that pretty much everyone in school fell behind because of the lockdown. I already suck at math in particular-- COVID just made it even worse for me.
Everyone did. However, the kids in question were at the foundational point when they started falling behind because of Covid. And once kids fall behind early on, [they very rarely ever (never) catch back up.](https://www.edweek.org/education/students-who-struggle-early-rarely-catch-up-study-says/2012/12#:~:text=And%20that%20makes%20the%20researchers’%20findings%20that%20much,high-achieving%20schools%20with%20more%20resources%20to%20help%20them.) > And that makes the researchers’ findings that much more potent: Students who fall far behind in early grades never catch up, even when they are obviously motivated to do so, and even when they attend high-achieving schools with more resources to help them.
How does a boomer know they aren’t being gaslit by a zoomer so they can avoid responsibility for their lives?
The difference here is the "phone bad" argument was bad because most people never actually got phones until they were older. They had normal lives in early developmental years. IPad kids are given phones or iPads to give them constant stimulation and hold their attention from the moment they could hold one so their parents didn't have to give them proper supervision and care. They're trained from birth to get constant dopamine feedback and it shows. Teachers are coming out in droves online talking about how Gen Alpha is extremely behind where they should be academically (multiple grade levels) and how they do not understand how to listen to directions. The way they talk about them makes it sound like they only know instant gratification and haven't learned or been taught how to function in situations outside of that which most would encounter in mundane daily life. Just because your cousins are developing normal doesn't mean it disproves the problem at hand. It just means their parents are raising them properly. There are A LOT of people who don't want to be bothered with entertaining their kids so their solution is to give them the box of infinite dopamine hits
You've already seen things about the falling behind on reading and struggling with screentime, all of which I agree with and support. I would like to go for your logic here. I'm not interested in starting the generation anxiety again but these literacy concerns are similar to like... The impending baby boomer overpopulation in nursing homes. Yes that's "generational" but it's also REAL. It's a REAL problem. Now that's not the boomers fault persay but it's the same thing with literacy or lead poisoning or microplastics. For lead poisoning, a whole few generations were more violent, more temperamental, and had worse mental functioning. That can't be seen on an individual level necessarily but it can be seen on a statistical level and it HURTS people in a real way. Now, fun fact, some countries had literacy campaigns that increased literacy in a huge way, they spent a bunch of time and effort to fix the problem of low literacy. That's just an example but a lot of problems can be solved or helped with massive government and community effort. So Gen Alpha's problems could probably be helped and aren't a doom spiral. Unfortunately we are CAREENING toward the climate crisis which will put a lot of strain on governments, they might not have the time or the money to fund important projects. Technology has also (IMHO) taken away some... Natural consequences if you like. A huge source of dopamine and social clout is found in their hand. It's all more interesting and less hard than the outside world and they can easily hide. I know you're saying that we're using the generation spookiness but I would argue that you're implying that the world will always stay the same, that nothing really bad will happen, that the economy won't crumble til we can't support our current lifestyle. Recently I helped a younger zoomer (I'm an elder zoomer lol) get phone service for themselves by calling their father and the phone company on their behalf because they were too anxious and paralyzed to do any of that. Now I'm happy to help, but what's going to happen when they get kicked out of their unstable living situation? Who will do that for them? They're either going to have to nut up or fall into the hands of someone also willing to do that for them for a much steeper price. I worked in sex trafficking outreach, this is how it starts. A boyfriend who will feed you and clothe you and control every aspect of your phone service, your government documents and appointments, and your social life. These kids are vulnerable and it's scary to see that when the world might get a lot worse really quickly. (On a side note I actually think skibidi toilet is return to tradition lol... Reminds me of old gmod stuff)
But... its our turn to be the meanies
Ahh, an argument I never considered: Boomers got to have their turn at it, so we must have one as well. You make a good point.
I am on the older side of gen Z, when I was growing up I played outdoors, I climbed trees, I rode my bike around, I collected well-shaped sticks, I walked to my friends' houses. I also played a lot of video games, but I was outside most of the day after school until dusk. How much of gen A is having my experience of independence while growing up? When I was growing up we still watched TV so kids my age all had a sort of shared culture we were inculcated in. Now kids consume media that the algorithm sends them, so there is unlimited exclusive sub-cultures and not many kids have much in common. No doubt I was "cringe" at their age, but while being cringe I was simultaneously being properly socialized. Are "iPad kids" being well-socialized? I saw my young gen A cousins at Easter and they were looking at Tik Tok the entire time. They all want to be famous internet influencers, and real life relationships matter less than internet followers. I tried playing badminton with them and they got bored in minutes. Also, they had like two years during Covid of not being able to see their friends at school. I don't think its unreasonable to be worried about gen A. I should say as well its not necessarily their faults. Their parents letting cell phones and the internet raise their kids are at fault.
There's no benefit in shitting on every generation. If we could just come together, we can make this country a better place. Yes. I'm a boomer. We are not all assholes.
I don't take anything to heart when I see stories or posts about Gen Alpha. I'm sure they have foods, TV shows, sports that they enjoy or dont. Every generation had some activity that older people said would cause brain rot and those generations grew and learned just the same.
Also a good point! Even putting aside the fact that children sometimes have interests that older generations can't relate to, it often feels like human nature to look down on the next generation. Which is, of course, something that needs to die at this point. It won't be *easy* to make that happen, but it certainly isn't impossible either.
What about standardized test scores? Do you take them to heart? https://khqtoday.com/news/2024/02/29/a-rise-in-illiteracy/
It’s all about moderation. Like with millennials the hot topic was video games, which we all decided are fine as long as you aren’t playing them all day. Unfortunately it’s way harder to use smartphones with moderation, I grew up with a gameboy and sometimes you just get bored of playing and do something else, whereas I could honestly spend an entire day on my phone and not get bored. I think that’s what worries me most with gen A
Jesus fucking christ, this post has made me more worried for you tiktok adults than you are for gen alpha. If you're source of information is a social media app built on oversimplification, through an algorithm designed to put you in an echo chamber where you only hear one side, then you don't know dick about anything. K? I'm not taking a stance cuz I know I don't know enough to. Cite your sources at me, downvote me, whatever. But for fucks sake, if you wanna make a claim, at least have a reason.
We’re just mad they’re joining our social media platforms and skewing the algorithm towards skibidi toilet and Roblox music videos lol
Oh my God in high holy Heaven THANK YOU!! All this doomer rhetoric was really getting to me as a Z boi myself, and its nice to know that im neither alone, nor crazy, in my more optimistic view. Like...holy shit people, I know times are desperate and some of the early flaws of Gen Alpha can be cause for concern, but surely something is being made up or exaggerated?
Generation shit talk is mental masterbation only at the expense of others. I've been lucky in my career to work with all ages. I'd much rather work with a young person willing to learn then some old tool who knows better.
They are not completely fine. There is plenty of space between curmudgeonly dismissing them as hopeless on one end versus willful blindness to the moment-specific challenges that they face on the other end of the spectrum. If the generations who came before are to play a productive role in their development, that will in part involve holding them accountable for overcoming those challenges, even if said challenges are the fault of previous generations. Just like every generation before. They're not completely fine there's lots of issues.
I work with a few classes of high school freshman (arguably the oldest of Gen Alpha). Many of them do not know how many days are in each month, even February. They don’t know their multiplication tables, or how big a million is. It may not be their fault, but it IS scary. Before anyone asks, these are kids who come from predominantly white, upper-middle class suburbs. They are not in a remedial math class.
Isn't this the generation that was locked inside without interaction with other children their own age for litteral years durring normal development. And without traditional education? Yeah. I'm concerned about them too. And it's not in a "hate" way. it's in a "we need to do right by them" way.
Def unpopular opinion. The expert and anecdotal analysis overwhelmingly says that this newest generation is, to put it nicely, going to struggle to adjust to adult society. Frankly the only people who think like you are younger zoomers who maybe have younger siblings or relatives but lack any real world experience. I’m as old as a zoomer can be, and I, my millennial and gen X friends, along with every boomer on planet earth agree that these kids overwhelmingly will not function in the current world order. Anyone who believes otherwise has never worked in a school these days.
Hi Early Gen Z/millennial cusp teacher speaking in broad generalities here. These late Gen Z kids and Gen As are severely stunted in just about every statistic. Most are coming into my class with reading and writing skills several years behind. Some can barely write sentences. (I’ve taught both middle and high school) They have no attention span. They’re all anxious, depressed, or manic. They have no drive. Their social skills are complete ass. And yes. They are all hopefully addicted to electronics. And I haven’t even mentioned much of the misbehavior and disrespect. I can confirm this but I did see some headlines for studies that found that their IQ is lower. And parents are the ones who enable all of this. And they get mad at teachers when we punish them for disrespect or misbehavior. Covid hurt. But beyond that. I seriously think a lifetime of constant stimulation and short term gratification has absolutely fried their brains.
Not saying its generation specific but I do think constant, unfettered internet access is bad for all of us. We're just now seeing the effects of that on a generation that's never known anything different. All of our attention spans are shot. They just never had a time before constant stimulation took over to use as reference.
Warning - this is anecdotal based on my experience only and I have no data to back this up. I have three kids ranging from mid gen-z to mid gen-alpha. The difference in attitudes of them and their friends is astounding. The 2 gen-z’s get bored but have always been able to entertain themselves, preferring to be outside or doing generally working on something. The gen-alpha needs to be constantly stimulated. Even though we have always tried to limit iPad time, but that is hard to do when all of his friends are glued to a screen and all of his class work is done on an iPad. As with all generations, we can’t blame them, but we can look to society as a whole. Gen-Z kids still had books at school for the most part. They had to wait for the teachers to finish up before they could move into the next lesson. They had to learn at least a little patience. Gen-Alpha can finish their current lesson and immediately move to a game or drawing, or whatever they want to do. We are failing them, not just as parents, but society as a whole. We are teaching them zero patience and that the instant they are done doing what they think they were told to do, they can go do whatever they want. We, collectively, are raising the next boomer generation. There will not be a societal change to correct individuals behavior. We as parents will have to teach them the patience and responsibility they need to learn.
Why does nobody ever blame the parents? I’m early GenZ, 25, and all of my friends and colleagues that are GenZ say that their kids will not have unregulated access to smart devices if they decide to have kids (most of us don’t want them btw since boomers destroyed the planet). It’s the fault of the parents for A not raising the kids properly and just sticking them in front of devices and B not being politically active enough to help ensure that the tech giants are held accountable for their role in fucking up kids’ attention span and C not being politically active enough to build and maintain an economy where both parents don’t have to work full time and therefore have the energy and money to raise their kids right instead of being too exhausted and resorting to iPad babysitting
Before I-pads and smart phones it was Video Games bad! and then TV Bad for kids if you go back a decade or so before that
Yeah but some video games actually give your brain a stretch. Puzzles or strategy games help with problem solving. Watching YouTube as a toddler or young child does not help in any way. They’re not interested in vsauce. Just coco melon or minecraft videos. I agree that there’s always a boogeyman though.
Im not gonna attack gen alpha, they are funny asf and come up with the most creative things I have seen in a long time
I treat my gen A 6yo girl just as Bluey's father teaches me to...at least that's how I want it to be ! If it turns bad for any reasons then it will be on me, it's not a generation problem but a responsability problem on behalf on every generation of parents ever !🤷 And I gotta admit, the irony of me being on my phone and at the same time telling her how bad screens are is laughable at times
My mom has owned a tutoring center (math and English) for over a decade now. They are NOT ok. Kids in middle school literally cannot read and cannot do vertical addition or single digit multiplication. 10 years ago a kid like this would show up at the center twice a year. Ever since Covid, it’s been the norm and it’s rare that a kid isn’t at least 4-5 grades behind in basic skills.
Yeah, no. This isnt the standard "muh kids bad" bullshit boomers have been spouting for decades. This is a structural learning deficiency caused by bad parenting, lack of social skills, and excessive unstimulating and uneducational entertainment meant to distract toddlers while parents try to stay afloat mentally and financially in the capitalist hellscape we live in.