Were kids always like this?

Is this because of parental warnings not talk to strangers, has technology totally taken over, and/or have kids been like this since they lived in caves?

Probably a combination of all three. I say kids have always been assholes.

I rode the bus (way before tiny screens) and we barely interacted with each other that early in the morning.

Your neighbors want to be walking the dog and have had their coffee. The kids just want the bus to get there so they can catch 20 minutes more of sleep before they start their day for real.

I see plenty – plenty – of adults staring at screens, zoned out, and being rude. There are friendly adults and friendly children, and there are jerks. In any case, I don’t see how we can blame the children. How many adults make an effort to be polite to a child?

You’re right, of course, @longgone. Just citing what I experience in my neighborhood.

The neighborhood I used to walk in where I just moved from the kids never said “hi” as they passed by me, but adults always swapped greetings. I think as a child we were the same if we did not know an adult. It is a stranger thing I think. It also depends on the situation and location I think. Some kids are more outgoing if their parent is nearby, some the opposite. I’m 45 and to a young child I am old and outside of their realm.

Let’s talk place though. When I am at Disney World for instance, a lot of the children will talk to anyone. If you tell a girl her princess dress is beautiful she will start on a long explanation of which princess she is and that she saw her at breakfast and next she is going to see Mickey at Fantasma. Then she will show you her signature book and all the characters who have signed it.

I read that many kids don’t get enough sleep and they walk around like zombies. It’s hard to be perky and friendly that early.

Sometimes we’re they’re wearing headphones, which makes it seem like an excuse to avoid any personal greetings on the street. (I don’t wear headphones.)

I never talked to adults or really anyone when I was a kid. I was painfully shy.

In general, I find that nowadays people look at you like there’s something wrong with you if you politely greet them…

There has always been a sort of ‘disconnect’ between kids & adults. A lot of kids think they have all of the answers, & they won’t find out that they don’t have all of the answers until they become adults. And far too many adults totally dismiss anything that kids have to say. Mostly kids will out-grow being children & become adults & then they will realize that adults also do not have all of the answers.

In my neighborhood, most adults say hi; some kids do and some kids don’t. With both, I am often the one who initiates the greeting.

My kids don’t ride the bus, but they are so barely coherent at that time of the morning that they hardly talk to the people they know and like, so it would be unlikely that they would talk to people they don’t know.

To many young people, adults are just semi-necessary beings who must be tolerated. I try to balance this out by ‘collecting’ memories of polite kids who were obviously “brought up right”.

Recently my wife, our daughter, infant grandson and I got on a very crowded city bus in Brooklyn. Two kids around 12 years old (who I took to be brother and sister) immediately jumped up and gave my wife, daughter and the baby their seats, then rode while standing for the 15 minutes until we got off.

Of course, as others have said, some kids are just shy, and others have been repeatedly told by their parents to never speak or interact with adults whom they don’t know. A sign of our neurotic times…

The great comedian Bill Burr surrenders to this in a routine about parental fear and not being able to talk to neighborhood kids anymore…

“Remember when you could just rub a kid on the head and say “Whataya say there, Rusty?.....Now, you just think….Get that fuckin’ thing AWAY from me…”

I appreciate all your comments.

When I was a kid, I viewed the adult world as being in a different universe. It was easy and natural to talk to another kid, but what could you say to an adult? If an adult outside my family started talking to me, it was like talking to a space alien.

It’s everywhere and it’s a cycle, it’s a social precedent I could say like all mentioned it’s all who your comfortable with. It’s not you, it’s the nature.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room Of course, kids in your neighbourhood could just be an exceptionally rude and/or shy bunch. I’m curious: Do they really not respond when someone looks right at them and greets them?

I think we learn to be polite during the course of our life, some people never do, but with the others, it’s just what you pick up along the way. Most small children aren’t polite by nature, maybe kind or friendly, but not courteous. The ones that are, are probably often in the company of very polite adults and it becomes second-nature for them to be well behaved.
I guess that there have been times when it was generally more important that even small children behaved respectfully, so they were taught to do so, especially towards adults. Nowadays most adults are less strict with children.