“Kids these days don’t know respect!” “Today’s generation is full of nothing but lazy, entitled kids who have never done an honest day’s work!" And my personal favorite, “When I was your age, we had to walk to school uphill, both ways, for 10miles and in the snow!” (Seriously, why is this Giant Hill such a recurring obstacle for older folks, and why was it always strategically placed on the path to school?)
Everyone who has had the apparent misfortune of being born anytime after 1990 has heard these statements once, twice, no -- at least a thousand times from the older generation. It doesn’t matter how hard you work or what your GPA is, as soon you pull out your iPhone and snap a photo of your pumpkin spice mocha for Instagram, you have instantly become everything that is wrong with this generation.
Yes, we get it: We are destroying society with our smartphones and our chatspeak and our newfangled electronics. Millennials are harbingers of ruin and destruction bent on tearing down the supposed golden era of stability and “simpler times." However, the endless harping about things not being how they used to be is not in any way unique to today’s society. These kinds of complaints have quite literally spanned all of history, tracing all the way back to ancient Rome and perhaps earlier. In fact, there is even a word for this phenomenon: “juvenoia," which means “exaggerated anxiety about the influence of social change on children and youth.”
Even in 20 BC, there seemed to be a general sentiment that the good ol’ days were much better than the present. The poet Horace wrote of his generation, “Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they.” Talk about self-deprecation. He goes on to say that it is the younger generation which will ultimately corrupt the world. Yikes.
In 1624, a minister in London said that “Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie... the ancient are scorned, the honourable are are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded.” In other words, “These damn kids have no respect for authority!” Sound familiar?
A delightful editorial cartoon from the 1600s also bemoans the youth of the present. The image shows a picture of the past, the good ol’ days when people actually read books, wore cool and hip spurred boots, and constantly had a lance at the ready to slash people with. The second picture shows the corrupt present, in which those young hipsters play dice and cards and wear something outrageous as ribbons. The audacity!
In the late 1700s, a publication called Paris Fashion: A Cultural History published a letter from a reader who had a few things to say about the men of the present generation: “Whither are the manly vigor and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…” Turns out masculinity was just as fragile in the 18th century as it is now. Real men wear tights and cravats!
OK, so we can all agree that no matter what century you were born into, you always miss the past. But why?
Supposedly, people have what is called an “adventure window," which basically just means they are young and willing to explore the world and try new things. However, once we’ve reached middle age and have generally settled into our ways, this window slams shut. Suddenly anything we aren’t familiar with is working against the natural order of the world. This is mostly fueled by paranoia and fear of the unknown, as well as the unwillingness to understand. But what people often fail to comprehend is that the same basic values that prevailed when they were kids will continue to exist in the present, just not always in the exact same form.
After all, some things never change.
