I’m getting older. Yes, I’m only 28 years old, but that’s firmly outside of the teenager range. People on the street don’t call me “boy” anymore when they approach me. And so, yes, when I look at kids that still go to school, I see them as “the next generation”. I see them as youngsters now, while not counting myself as being one.
And, like many, I’m often shocked by what I see and hear. Young boys, perhaps 9 years old, who scream and curse for no reason. Years ago, some kids like that even tried to threaten me and block my path. It was both hilarious—I could pick them up and shove them aside easily—and terrifying—because why on earth were 9-year-olds yelling at a large 25-year-old stranger that they were going to “cut his throat”?
I am not impressed by the next generation. Most of them are rude, they litter, they destroy stuff for no reason, they threaten people for fun, they curse like a sailor, and they seem to have no other hobbies than endangering traffic and looking at their smartphone. I have to ignore fireworks going off at random almost every night.
And so I found myself looking down on them. I found myself thinking what I’ve heard older generations say when I was young: “Man, kids these days.”
Most people around me share the same sentiment. I once got caught up in a really long unbelievable conversation with my speech therapist, as she described the daughter of her neighbors and her crazy behavior. Literally cursing out her mother and slapping her in front of everyone … and the mother did nothing, even apologized. A 7-year-old girl! And why did she do that? Because her mother had to go home, but she wanted to stay at the horse riding centre a little longer.
I can barely look up anything online about kids or a specific generation without finding the same sentiment. Example after example of (young) kids behaving in ridiculous, stupid, dangerous and violent ways. In some countries poverty forces kids into criminal behavior, yes. Trauma, like a terrible situation at home, can do that too. But I live in the Netherlands, and here we kind of have the opposite problem: kids are so darn privileged that they think they can do anything and there will be no consequences! We’re talking about rich, healthy, educated, cared-for children who decide to destroy stuff and call out to strangers with random diseases.
Whenever this topic is mentioned, people are quick to say that this “has always been the case”. They point to old philosophers, like Plato, who already remarked that the younger generation was so rude and dumb. As someone who studied a lot of history himself, I can agree that this is a somewhat funny theme across all of history. There are just some sentiments and complaints that seem to have survived since the dawn of humankind. Looking down on the next generation, thinking the kids are dumb and society was going to be ruined, is one of those repeated complaints.
People conclude that it’s just “kids being kids”. Or “teenagers testing boundaries and doing dumb shit”. That it’s normal, mostly harmless, and will blow over as they get older.
And that sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? We can all remember some “dumb shit” we did ourselves when were young. Now, I have always felt like an old soul myself. I was a very well-mannered kid, got my degrees without trouble, never really acted out, etcetera. But even I can remember some stupid things I did as a kid that I really should not have! Because you lack experience. Because you’re bored out of your mind at school. Because you want to do stuff, test stuff, see what happens, discover life.
I write this article, however, because I realized this just isn’t true anymore.
Yes, kids have always done some dumb things. They’ve played silly pranks. They’ve tested boundaries. But there is a world of difference between a harmless prank and threatening someone with a knife. It’s just not the same thing.
Most behavior of kids, as I grew up, was just that—silly, minor, harmless, dealt with easily. Even the victims of a prank shared in the fun, at least most of the time, because it really wasn’t anything terrible. You know, you’d hide the favorite mug of that teacher you like. After delaying class by 10 minutes, she finally finds it, everyone laughs, and you get on with your day.
Me and my family members have certainly … borrowed … a good number of discarded road signs in the past. They’re discarded. The construction workers threw them in the bushes once the construction work was done. Nobody misses them, while we can have a laugh adding some traffic signs with directions for visitors arriving in our backyard.
Yes, it’s not what you’re “supposed to do”. They’re pranks, they’re dumb things, they’re testing boundaries. But it’s so so so much less harmful, dangerous and violent than what kids these days are doing.
So that’s my first argument: yes, the current generation of kids/teens is a far bigger problem than usual. Because their means of creating trouble have multiplied a thousandfold.
When I was young, it would be really hard to get your hands on fireworks as a kid. Nowadays, it seems every teenager carries around a small bomb for fun. The newspapers regularly have a small article about an “accidental explosion”, usually because someone asked a friend—who had nothing to do with any of this—to “keep it safe” for a while. That’s the level we’re at. Kids have so much dangerous fireworks that they’re asking friends to store the excess in their bedroom for a few weeks … where it can suddenly explode. This is not fiction. Fireworks can spontaneously explode, without it being your “fault”, and it does happen often enough.
Similarly, when I was young, I was happy to have a bike at all. Usually an inefficient one. And if I wanted light, I had to activate my manual dynamo, which means I had to work even harder to get to school :p
Nowadays, kids have fatbikes (and other vehicles) that go much much faster with no effort at all. I have literally seen them run into other people right in front of me, for absolutely no reason too. I have seen three kids on a single fatbike who tried to squeeze through a dangerous traffic situation, where everyone else had stopped because they almost collided. Well, guess what, the kids hit our neighbor’s expensive car and destroyed the front. The kid who owned the fatbike was forced to stay behind, while his “friends” … quickly ran home.
The magnitude of the “dumb stuff” kids can go these days is simply on a different level. And that’s partially because technology advances. Now everyone has a smartphone, adding cyberbullying and hacking as a real threat. Now bikes go faster, now fireworks are easier to get and explode, etcetera. But it’s mostly because parents are actively aiding the teens. They are the ones buying the expensive smartphones, the fatbikes, etcetera.
In fact, we can go even further. We, as a society, have reached a point where self-policing is almost completely subdued and non-existent.
Just yesterday, I read a newspaper article about ~8 kids who had climbed the roof of an abandoned building. This was dangerous, because the building was about to collapse. The police arrived and stayed on the ground, telling them to get down.
What were the kids doing? The usual diet: littering and creating noise as they hung out aimlessly. But they were also breaking the fucking wall. They worked really hard to destroy a brick wall that seperated the building from the restaurant next to it. They created a hole, more parts of the wall came down, and the restaurant owner noticed. He chased them away with a metal pipe.
What was the response? The police gave the kids a “warning”, while the restaurant owner received a “warning” too—that he shouldn’t take matters into his own hands and leave it to the police. These young kids climbed a building that might have collapsed because of that, then broke someone else’s fucking wall. That’s not a small prank. That’s not a small oversight by inexperienced tiny people. That’s a big, dangerous, violent thing that you actively decide to do. It should be punished severely, and you have every right to grab a weapon and chase people away who just created a big hole in your wall.
But no, police tells the kids to stop being naughty, and then puts more effort into telling the restaurant owner to not do anything at all. To “trust the system”. To let the law handle it.
So that’s my second argument: previous generations were kept in check by natural self-policing in communities; nowadays, there are no consequences anymore.
That idea of “let the system handle these youngsters” only works, of course, if the law actually handles it. But it doesn’t. It never will, too. Because there are too many kids doing too many dumb things, and the only people who see that every day and have power over them … are their parents. Maybe their friends and teachers, or other close relatives. They are supposed to handle this. That’s how we evolved. That’s how communities and families work. They can self-police very effectively, but more and more that’s looked upon as something bad and outdated.
We absolutely need to return to that.
It just baffles me. That people can say “it’s just kids being kids, they’ll grow out of it”.
Okay, so how do they grow out of it? What makes them stop that behavior? It’s someone telling them to stop. It’s their parents setting boundaries. At some point, kids learn what behavior gets them punished, and that’s how they learn to stop doing it. If something has no negative consequences for you, then you don’t magically stop doing it just because you’re now 18+.
Bad behavior gets worse and worse if it’s rewarded. Bad behavior continues if unaddressed. Bad behavior stops if you actually put a stop to it.
And I understand why the police doesn’t really take most of these things seriously. They are stretched thin as it is, they have bigger fish to fry, and it’s not really their job. It’s the job of the parents, teachers, strangers who fall victim to these kids. But at the very least, the police/society should stop telling people to not do anything and let it go, they’re just kids.
There’s a difference between making mistakes (because of inexperience/“being a kid”) and actively doing harmful and violent things. A difference between, say, not paying enough attention in traffic and actively driving your fatbike into other people. A difference between cursing at a stranger because you’re angry about something, and actively seeking out lone strangers to threaten them with a knife.
And when kids were self-policed, this difference was quite clear. Parents would laugh along with small mischievous deeds by their children. They would be very clear and very stern when they did something more dangerous and harmful.
Nowadays, parents seem to silently disapprove of everything, while practically approving of everything. Behind their backs, they’ll even speak ill of their kids for minor things like talking back to a teacher. (Which they have all the right to do, and can even be the only right thing to do with certain teachers that treat kids like their pets.) But when their kids go on a rampage destroying school property, they’ll somehow publicly claim they are innocent and the school itself is at fault (or something). It’s the world turned upside-down. Of course, if kids are not punished and even rewarded for whatever shit they pull, they’ll continue to do it. That doesn’t go away magically just because they get older.
So, in short, yes, the youth of today and their behavior is a bigger problem than it ever was in history. Because their means of causing destruction and harm are far, far larger. And the societal systems that kept them in check and taught them to stop the behavior have been eroded.
The solution is simple. Let people self-police (small) matters, those within their direct community/family/school.
Most of the older generation still do this! And I commend them for it, because it’s effective! When some kids on fatbikes try to drive an older man off the road … you can be sure that he breaks, grabs one of them by their neck, and yells at them for a minute asking what the fuck they’re doing. I’ve seen it happen several times. And suddenly the kids aren’t so tough anymore, they look scared, they mumble an apology, and they go away.
Because I know the value of setting boundaries immediately, I do this myself too. A while ago, for example, I was playing badminton with some family members (and some of their friends). We simply played for fun on a small patch of grass next to our house, part of a pretty central place in our town called “the market”. Then some boys and girls on their bikes arrived. And they started driving straight through our game. We ignored it once or twice; not worth creating a fuss. But then they started driving over our clothes and equipment, which were on the floor to indicate where the net was. (They continued driving “into” other people around us, and only stopping at the last second.)
As you can expect, nobody did shit. Bystanders didn’t do anything. My family members wanted to pretend nothing was happening, maybe even sneak home. Everyone is conditioned nowadays to turn aside. So the next time that boy ran over my stuff and passed dangerously close, I easily grabbed his bike, which nearly threw him off, and scolded him. He looked scared to death and they all left us alone immediately, while yelling at us. I didn’t even touch him or curse at him, because it’s not even necessary—just setting a boundary is often enough to stop it.
And now you know why I started this article talking about a 9-year-old who yelled death threats at me.
Attach consequences to actions. Attach big ones to conscious, repeated bad behavior that can’t be explained away by “inexperience” or “kids being kids” anymore. And for the love of god, don’t actively give your kids harmful things they wouldn’t be able to get (easily) themselves otherwise. This includes smartphones, if you ask me. But fatbikes, fireworks, too much money, etcetera are on the list too.
And I get it. I get that you want to avoid conflict. Especially if you’re still young too, especially if you’re a woman. But it’s still the right thing to do if we want to prevent this problem from growing even bigger. Every new generation of kids is sure to test the boundaries and have to learn everything from scratch. They can only learn that if the older generation actually sets those boundaries.
Also, you need not be so afraid. We seem to overestimate the (physical) capabilities of kids/teens :p I’ll end this article with a fun anecdote to support that, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
I regularly play soccer with my little brother. We rotate between some fields in the area, because every field has its pros and cons. (One has a goal, the other doesn’t. One is often used by others for dog training or whatever.) Without fail, once in a while, a group of boys will arrive while we’re playing and ask “can we join?” Now, these are often boys somewhere between 8 to 14 years old. They arrive like a large pack of wolves, carrying some expensive football.
Once you start playing with them, however, you learn a few things. First of all, they are absolute shit at soccer. Second of all, most of them are quite nice and friendly, they will respect us, and it’s usually just one “ring leader” that creates trouble. (You can identify them as the one carrying the ball and being easily the most skilled at the sport :p)
Third of all … I feel like a giant when playing against them. I am a man of average height and build. I have always been very fit, yes, but also have a severe chronic injury that basically gives me a thousand disadvantages.
And when you play against those kids/teens, you feel like a hammer mowing them down left and right. Just the pure difference in weight, and strength, and muscle, and momentum. I kept saying “sorry” for purely accidentally slamming one to the ground. They try to tackle me, they just fall over while I barely feel a thing. I can walk with the ball at a nice slow pace, and they still can’t catch up. In all those games, my brother and I are 2 against ~8, and we mostly just walk around and shoot once in a while when they are almost starting to win.
The difference in physicality and experience between an adult and a kid is just massive. Every adult—even those who aren’t fit or big or whatever—should be able to stand up against kids and teens without fear. You can swat them aside if they try something stupid, believe me. And if the police/bystanders dare to attack you for self-defense, you can just laugh at them and wish them good luck not handling a problem at all.
By now, you know I have a lot of experience actually meeting annoying kids and having to deal with them. That’s what you get from being outside a lot, being forced to deal with things all on your own a lot, riding your bike absolutely everywhere. And in my experience, 99% of them will say sorry and stop/go away if you just clearly set a boundary. They’re not actually looking for violence. They probably know they can’t win or achieve anything here. Their parents are likely not supportive of their actions, they just don’t care/don’t know. They’re just doing dumb shit because no one has told them to stop yet.