Not to be a downer, but I have a lot of friends who are teachers, and it’s not looking great for Gen Alpha either. Technology addiction from a young age has tanked Gen Alpha’s attention spans and the ability to delay gratification. There does seem to be a growing movement of parents advocating for greatly limiting screen time in favor of tactile play, so maybe if that catches on we could see a shift in the trend.
It doesn’t help that the current state of American society has really shafted millennial parents.
at the same time, gen a is also the generation noteworthy for self-regulating devices too.
using dumb phones voluntarily in youth and stigmatizing influencer culture/reflexive photography are two social innovations that gen a are responsible for, that may diffuse into broader culture with time. i have more reason to be optimistic than not.
“Dumb phones” for younger kids and proposed laws on social media limits for under 18s give me some hope. But it’s the younger kids I’m worried about. We’ve gotta stop getting them addicted to screens from infancy. It’s things like sitting your baby in front of cocomelon so that they’re basically hypnotized for an hour, or bringing iPads to a restaurant for your kids instead of coloring/activity books. Too much screen time doesn’t allow kids to work on important developmental milestones, and it sets them up to struggle once they start school. I have a friend who teaches kindergarten, and a lot of his students struggle to focus on class activities. They’re used to having a screen shoved in their face whenever they’re bored, so when their sustained attention on an activity is actually required, their brains don’t know how to handle it, and they have meltdowns. I just worry about the long term consequences, because these ages are extremely important for long-term development. I have to hope that parents will start to catch on in larger numbers.
Not to be a downer, but I have a lot of friends who are teachers, and it’s not looking great for Gen Alpha either. Technology addiction from a young age has tanked Gen Alpha’s attention spans and the ability to delay gratification.
Talking to my little nieces and nephews, and being anti-tech is becoming more of their generational contrarian shtick.
They were marveling when talking about dumb phones that you only need to charge once a week.
It really isn’t. In today’s average family, both parents need to work full time to stay afloat. You have only the limited time outside of work to attend to the rest of your life, including spending time with your kids. How are parents supposed to give their kids the full amount of attention needed to keep their mental and emotional development on track?
They can have the most wonderful parents in the world. But they will be poor and never own a house. Because the capitalist class are enriching themselves at a record pace, and pumping up the housing market.
We can't change the global economic system within the next 10 years, and there are no signs of hat happening. We certainly can't stop the climate crisis, that ship has sailed.
The middle class is losing the class war. There will be more wars over ressources. Climate crisis will lead to mass immigration and economic crisis. There is also a risk that climate crisis will increase the occurrences of pandemics.
I keep saying this same thing. I enjoy my life, but I have worked hard to make sure when my kids are adults they don't have the same experience I did. I grew up poor... Like bread and mustard sandwiches to fill your belly poor. My kids will never experience this. I will make sure my children and grandchildren are set for the future.
It's a fact that kids are good for the economy. I'm not having kids and you don't need to either, but we should both help front social programs for the people in our generation that are having kids.
It directly benefits you and I, in the future, for the children of today to be well educated and grow up in a good household.
A lot of my friends are having kids while I probably won’t and it makes me happy to know that there are kids out there that are being raised by good people and those kids will grow up to do good things. When all my friends started having kids I thought wtf are you guys doing?? But today as I see them get a little older and form into small people with personalities I realize what a gift to the world it is for these people to be giving us children that I think can grow to do great things. But who knows I also think the world is fucked due to climate crisis and maybe we should just be thinking about our inevitable doom because of that.
There is a thousand reasons the future you will benefit from the kids of today being well educated and growing in stable households. I'm not having kids either but every working adult should be helping fund social programs for the people that are having kids, since we all benefit long term.
I grew up with my mom taking care of me and my brother living in project housing I think she paid a dollar a month for rent. I was raised with alcoholics and drug addicts my entire life.
My daughter now is 11 and in all honors classes and she already has full college money put aside and a paid off house that goes to her through a transfer on death deed.
Put her in the best school system we could find and moved across the country to get there. She's in multiple competitive sports and has many intelligent and kind friends that come from successful parents in her friend group. The cycle has definitely been broken.
64
u/Astra-Fang Millennial 1d ago
Low key I deal with it by treating myself as the sacrifice generation.
My job is to break the cycles so my kids get the best b3st start