SCARY TIMES
Kids These Days
Youth crime, violence, and chess are out of control
The Time magazine cover headline alarms seniors like me:
“The Youth Crime Plague.”
Inside, the story is dire:
People have always accused kids of getting away with murder. Now that is all too literally true. Across the U.S., a pattern of crime has emerged that is both perplexing and appalling. Many youngsters appear to be robbing and raping, maiming and murdering as casually as they go to a movie or join a pickup baseball game. A new, remorseless, mutant juvenile seems to have been born, and there is no more terrifying figure in America today.
Frightening to those of us who are older? Of course.
An apt reflection of our world in the 2020s? Not so much.
A reason to panic? No.
The above is an excerpt from a Time cover story published July 11, 1977 — just under half a century ago.
Yet it’s easy to mistake that the piece applies to today.
I live in the Philly area and the evening news is filled with stories about shootings, stabbings, and vandalism, mostly committed by teens and 20-somethings. The latest crisis is hordes of young people swarming the boardwalks of the Jersey shore.
In times like these, we seniors may be tempted to give into fear, to think that the world is going to pot, to utter the classic phrase, “Kids these days.”
But the truth is, just as the Time article shows, we’ve all collectively been here before.
Most oldsters today grew up in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, when youth crime peaked.
Others of us rebelled with flower power, Black power, and women’s liberation.
Our appalled parents and grandparents believed we were the ones who were driving the world to ruin.
With our scary rock ’n’ roll music, long hair on boys, and miniskirts on girls, we terrified them with what appeared to be challenges to the world they had shaped after the Great Depression and World War II.
Our folks despaired that we were a lost cause, condemned to live in a worse world than theirs.
Most of us, though, turned out to be solid capitalists, parents, and voters.
The truth is that every generation thinks the younger ones are out of control. For evidence, go back millennia to the time of Aristotle, who, in the 4th century B.C., complained:
[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
In 1843, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, reported to the English House of Commons about:
“… a fearful multitude of untutored savages … [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits … [girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody … the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly.”
Fast forward to the ’50s — the 1850s — when Scientific American warned:
A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages … chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements … they require out-door exercises — not this sort of mental gladiatorship.
(Thanks to History Hustle for assembling these and other quotes about older generations’ view of younger ones.)
The lesson for today’s seniors? As our guru Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, advised, “Don’t panic.”
As scary as the world is for us seniors, don’t give in to the idea that America is on an irretrievable path to decline because young people are particularly and irretrievably lawless, don’t want to work hard, or thumb their noses at authority.
The fact is, according to an FBI report, for the first three months of this year as compared to the first quarter of 2023:
The murder rate fell by 26.4 percent, reported rapes decreased by 25.7 percent, robberies fell by 17.8 percent, aggravated assault fell by 12.5 percent, and the overall violent crime rate went down by 15.2 percent.
Despite the alarm coming from the news and politicians who hope to benefit from senior terror in the ratings and at the ballot box, there’s nothing special about the perceived decline in values, ethics, and morals among today’s teens.
Each generation of humans thinks its members are special, that nothing like what’s happened to them has happened before. It’s a bias built into us as we grow up and age. It’s a self-centeredness that helps us function but also discounts history.
An update of the old adage might go:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to be scaredy cats.
I admit, as I sit here in my 60s, I find myself tempted by hopelessness about the state of the world. I can relate to those who want to reestablish a sense of stability and order. I worry about my toddler grandchildren growing up in an America that’s more Furiosa than Mayberry RFD.
But I won’t give in to that fear.
I rely on the core values my parents taught me about tolerance, courage, and grace in the face of hard times.
I reject the idea that we need to police young people into line or elect authoritarian leaders.
I decline to be the kind of senior who grabs a shotgun and growls, “Get off my lawn.”
I recognize that what is going on is that we seniors are part of the cycle of history as the old gives way to the young.
Just because it’s happening to us, at this particular phase of life, doesn’t make it exceptional.
I find solace in knowing these times are not unique. We’ve been here before. And everything mostly worked out fine.
Young people grow up. They find relationships, set up homes, and mature to believe in mostly the same things we do — no matter how unlikely that seems to us seniors right now.
We are simply a part of the normal cycling of history. The kids will be all right. Eventually, they will turn into us, frightened about what their times’ selfish, entitled, irresponsible, uncaring, uncouth, and disrespectful members of the younger generations are becoming.
At least as long as the kids don’t fall into the debauched grasp of chess.
Randall H. Duckett is writing a book about the emotions of chronic pain and invites fellow sufferers to share their stories. He can be reached at randall@hurtfeelings.life. He is also the author of Seven Cs: The Elements of Effective Writing (available on Amazon); learn more at randallhduckett.com.
