Do you think youth today are better or worse than past generations?

Better, because society in general is better. Also, people who criticise the next generation seem to forget who they were raised by….

The same as they have always been. Human nature us unchanged.

As each generation passes, the children are much more intelligent and I give that credit to computers.

Today’s children are more permissive than past generations. Morales are fading and many are much more overweight, than is healthy for themselves.

I contribute the downside to todays teenagers to only having a one-parent family. This is not true in all cases, but in many. The male leadership is lacking in their guidance.

If, the teenage pregnancy numbers are down, I welcome that.

Generally, teenagers follow in their parent(s) footsteps into adulthood. If there are lazy parents, there will be lazy children.

Better in some ways, worse in others.

Many of the categories you have outlined call for actual data. These questions have answers (crime, education, teen pregnancy, debt, technical expertise, single parents, etc). So, it would difficult to just making sweeping generalizations about an inter-generational comparison without the actual data.

Youth today are stellar! I won’t share my daughter’s achievements, but I am very proud of her. I don’t know how representative she is, but my sense is that there are a lot of pretty smart cookies in her school.

I was thinking for a while there they are stupider and more self absorbed than years past. But, then I come onto fluther and am so impressed by many of the young people on here, it makes me very happy, and I think I was wrong. I think young people today come in every which way, smart, honest, hard working, caring, selfish, mean, it just depends on the person, just like throughout history. The majority of the time when a young person acts in a dissappointing way in front of me, 9 times out of 10 their parents are dissappointing also.

As for all the categories names in the original question, I would think there is hard data on some of those things.

Many of the 20-somethings I know are resigned to the fact that they will be worse off than their parents. A college degree only guarantees debt, and certainly not a job. The thought of one-day owning a home is a potential nightmare. Climate change may directly impact their lives. It’s a scary time to be young.

The youth today are better because we have a better mindset about human rights than past generations.

We are all people, and no man is better than the next. We all make mistakes. But, some youth may be more advanced than others in our generation, and past generations. Take Albert Einstein for example; not many people are more advanced than him, and he is from past generations. But, there are also brilliant minds today. Scientists, teachers, even certain children.

Both.

@GladysMensch I know people say this all the time—this is the first generation that will not do as well as its parents, but I think that is hornswoggle. For one thing, that was the fear of my generation. Turned out not to be true.

Yes, we are in a recession now, but that will end, or maybe has ended, and the economy will pick up, and there will be jobs a-plenty. Also, the simple fact of the incredible advances in technology make it impossible for people living now not to be better off than those who lived when the technology was not invented.

I think the fact of being young, and having nothing, is scary. I hope it helps to know that most of your parents started out with nothing, too. Well, not quite nothing. I had an education. I was woefully underemployed for more than a decade and arguably for my whole life, and I still managed to save enough to be thinking about an early retirement. I won’t be wealthy. No yachts for me. No vacation homes. But I will be a able to travel a bit.

Slowly and surely, over the years, you will accumulate resources and in the end, you will have that house and it will be fancier than your parents. Shoot, my house is bigger than my parents, and they made theirs from scratch while mine was built more than a century ago. Mine, strangely, is worth more than theirs is. Probably has to do with local real estate markets more than the actual amount of effort that went into making it.

Today’s youth will be just fine. Better than fine. It just may not happen instantly. But then, nothing ever does. If I could pass on one lesson to young people it’s that: your life will not happen instantly. I know I fully expected to jump into a leadership position straight out of college. I had no clue. There was still a lot to learn. And once I put my time in, I ended up in a leadership position. But it took decades. Be patient. You will earn what you want.

I’d have to agree with @tom_g . Claiming that any one generation is “better” than another is subjective at best. Any speculation on the topic would be just that.

My own opinion? Well, they are better at some things and worse at others… so it’s an even playing field as far as I’m concerned.

Well, some of those are hard statistics. It’s either true or it’s not and isn’t a matter of opinion. But as to the non-statistical issues, such as entitlement and unruliness, I’d have to say the same. It’s so common to say that “kids these days” are worse, but that kind of thinking has been going on for millennia and will continue to go on.

Obviously the age of electronics and instant info has changed many aspects of growing up. I think we are seeing the results of this in the forms of cyberbullying, increased obesity and less appreciation for what they have. Of course though my generation (X) was considered lazy too so this one is iffy, and the way a kid is brought up along with their life circumstances are major factors here too I think.

I do feel as each generation supersedes the previous, that we are gradually getting better and more moral as a society. Unfortunately, as with any type of major transition, great pain and suffering usually precedes something much better. Obviously there are newer versions of chaos that come to be as the inevitible result of great change. Order eventually comes to chaotic situations, but I still feel that we are a long ways from where we should be as a ‘civilized’ society.

I agree with @DominicX. Whenever anyone asks this type of question, the following quote always comes to mind:

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. –Socrates, Fifth Century B.C.

I think that young people today are a great deal more “tech” savvy than previous generations (after all high tech gadgets abound & they grew up with these gadgets). I also think that most of them are really intelligent & I think they care about the future of humanity. Unfortunately, they will not have the opportunities that past generations had, due to the political climate in the United States (you know, wars in various countries, super secret agencies that can literally grab a person off the street & imprison them, the over-weening power of the military that is being funded while America’s infrastructure crumbles around us, while big corporations send the jobs out of the US, etc.). They will have to deal with Global Warming / Climate Change, which is going to be very drastic. I sincerely hope that they are up to the challenges that they will face. I have 6 grandsons & I worry about the world that they will inherit. There have always been good kids & mediocre kids & kids that have had a very poor sense of responsibility, that has not changed from one generation to the next & that probably will not change in the immediate future. The survival of our civilization will depend upon these young people.

No better and no worse.

Today’s youth are whiners and do feel the world owes them something.

@MollyMcGuire I disagree with you. Almost all of today’s youth are NOT whiners & they are realistic enough to know that the world does not owe them anything. They are willing to work hard & all they hope for is a chance.

A lot of times we make projections on others. What we see in them is actually how we feel about ourselves.