It seems when it comes to the “youth of today” there’s a lot of talk of the things that will corrupt them, or they’re not as strong as the generations before. They’re all into their devices and not paying attention to the world.
The astonishing thing to me is the lack of responsibility that the older generations take for this. The so-called “youth” of today have been brought up by previous generations, and like it or not, each generation has at least some culpability behind the generation to follow. They lead, for better or worse, the next generation in what they do.
Are they completely responsible for everything? No. Every generation is also responsible for itself and what they do with their lives. I don’t say this to get “Gen-Z” off the hook for anything they/we do. If there is a change that should happen, each generation is responsible for that. Specifically, each person is responsible for themselves and the actions they take from there.
When I see people playing the blame game of saying that an entire generation is being ruined or doesn’t have the character of the last, I think of how useless these statements are. Very few people have ever been motivated by you saying “you’re really lazy and are going to fail in life.” Unless you have a very close relationship with someone telling you that, you’ll likely fall even deeper into what they’ve just told you.
Instead of commenting on the world and generations at large and how they’re “ruining” something, focus on your own specific sphere of influence. If it is the youth, what youth are in your life that you can not scold, but teach and help learn what it looks like to live the kind of life you know will be better for them.
If people are doing something wrong, it’s good to help them realize that, but maybe if we think of ways to help people learn the truth instead of call them out in front of everyone we know we may have better success at actually turning a generation we think is going to fail into a generation that learns from the generations before.
The pendulum often swings from generation to generation. The generation to follow yours is often going to have a natural tendency to rebel against what your generation did. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing though. Could it be possible to get them to rebel against the bad things you did, and even encourage that, and encourage them into the things that have helped you to be successful?