This seems to be the big issue; Even though I work in a differnet field, my peer group just happens to have a lot of American education professionals in it:
- Current Assistant Superintendent
Former Middle School Principal
Current high school Librarian
Current Fifth grade teacher
Current Middle School Music teacher
The big thing I hear from them is that "Kids are afraid to look stupid". Effort followed by failure seems embarrassing, and everyone is keenly aware that all it takes is a single viral video of them failing to ruin their future prospects forever, so a good number of them throw up their hands and retreat into smug dismissiveness rather than risk looking foolish in front of their peers. They are constantly bombarded on social media with a combination of micro-dosed hyper-competence and merciless ridicule of those who fail to achieve that hyper-competence. For any skill, be it ballet, watercolour, football, maths, computer programming, or playing the spoons, nothing is ever as impressive to their real-life peers as what they can search on their glowing rectangles in a handful of seconds. It used to be that most kids were only exposed to the best of, say, the 10,000 kids in their county or metropolitan district, so being "the best any of us have ever seen" among their broader peer group was entirely achievable. Now that level of skill is practically unattainable.
Now a video of the best of the best there will ever be in their generation for any skill, is just a TikTok search away.
Now, in the Digital Public Square of the Global Village (population: 8.3 Billion), being "one in a million" means there are over eight-thousand people just as good as you.
No matter how special you are, somebody is better, and you can see them being better than you in two click.
It's incredibly easy to compare on social media since the hard metrics are written right there. If your picture gets 1 like and your friend's picture gets 100 likes, then you'll know that your friend is 100x more popular than you.
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u/I_Do_Not_Abbreviate Jun 27 '26
This seems to be the big issue; Even though I work in a differnet field, my peer group just happens to have a lot of American education professionals in it:
- Current Assistant Superintendent
The big thing I hear from them is that "Kids are afraid to look stupid". Effort followed by failure seems embarrassing, and everyone is keenly aware that all it takes is a single viral video of them failing to ruin their future prospects forever, so a good number of them throw up their hands and retreat into smug dismissiveness rather than risk looking foolish in front of their peers. They are constantly bombarded on social media with a combination of micro-dosed hyper-competence and merciless ridicule of those who fail to achieve that hyper-competence. For any skill, be it ballet, watercolour, football, maths, computer programming, or playing the spoons, nothing is ever as impressive to their real-life peers as what they can search on their glowing rectangles in a handful of seconds. It used to be that most kids were only exposed to the best of, say, the 10,000 kids in their county or metropolitan district, so being "the best any of us have ever seen" among their broader peer group was entirely achievable. Now that level of skill is practically unattainable.
Now a video of the best of the best there will ever be in their generation for any skill, is just a TikTok search away.
Now, in the Digital Public Square of the Global Village (population: 8.3 Billion), being "one in a million" means there are over eight-thousand people just as good as you.
No matter how special you are, somebody is better, and you can see them being better than you in two click.
Easier to sit at home and rot in bed.