It has little to do with them and everything to do with what is taught and tolerated within their environments.
“‘Kids these days’ are plagued with unnecessary political, academic, athletic, & social pressures as they constantly compare themselves to others.
This feeds anxiety & the inferiority complex.
And few ‘adults these days’ are doing anything constructive to help them navigate.”
-Ray Zingler on X
People always talk about “kids these days.”
They are lazy. They just don’t want to work.
My response is always, “Yeah? Who’s raising them? Who’s leading them? Who is showing them the way?”
Adults, right?
“Well you know the world is just different these days!”
If this is the case, this gives adults a pass to teach work ethic, discipline, and commitment to doing things the right way?
Adults are applying an immense amount of political pressure to their lives from academics to extracurriculars.
We try to make kids feel as if they don’t score a certain number on an arbitrary test that it will in some way negatively impact their ability to succeed in life. Or if they don’t make the ‘A’ Team in baseball they don’t work hard enough. “If I’m going to pay all this money…”
And then when the kids get a second to breathe, they sprint first to virtual social environments to compare themselves to others (fake) highlight photos and reels, before awkwardly immersing themselves into a real social environment where they can confirm their own perception of inferiority.
Do we have any wonder in the world why kids are the way they are these days? And I’ve only begun to barely scratch the surface of the cliff notes version.
They are riddled with pressure, anxiety, depression, and feeling inferior, not because of “social media” and not because of “travel ball” but because very few adults are doing anything tangibly practical to help guide them through this muddy landscape.
I understand this is new territory for all involved. I’m not implying all adults have the navigational blueprint, but I will say this, adults sitting there playing on their own phones, and continuing to highlight the “I know, I know, it’s a different world these days!” does absolutely nothing to help the struggles our current kids are going through.
Our kids need strong leaders, real leaders to guide them.
To teach them how and why to work hard.
To discipline them. I mean actually discipline them.
To not bail them out, but guide them through adversity.
To help them develop a “bullshit meter”. There is more of it out there today than you can shake a stick at and most of it is right under our noses.
It’s not “kids these days” it’s “adult these days”.
