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Kids have been soaked in the news that we're all doomed because of climate change, and they won't ever be able to afford the American dream, no matter what. Co

Kids have been soaked in the news that we're all doomed because of climate change, and they won't ever be able to afford the American dream, no matter what. Consider the filter bubble your friend from the other side of the political aisle is in. The kids have their own and they don't have any real life experiences to weigh against it. They know they don't have a future. They have no evidence to the contrary. Why would they care about school?

Workaccount2 3y ago
Economics and climate change? I'd be slacking off because it is clear that AI is going to be the brain job top dog by the time I get to career stage.
- baobabKoodaa 3y ago
  Ahh, climate change. The go-to explanation for absolutely any negative phenomena observed in the world.
- darby_eight 3y ago
  I see a lot more kids mocking AI on TikTok than fearing it, but I might be looking in the wrong place.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    Fear it? I would be embracing it. Send my allocated AI entity to work and send me the checks. In a sense it is like having a body double go to school for you.
    - anon291 3y ago
      Oh goodness... This must be satire.
      - Workaccount2 3y ago
        Just give it 10 years, when you freshly graduate college ready to start a 40 year career.
        anon291 3y ago
        I'm in my thirties with three kids; hoping to be done with working in a decade or so. Tech industry is basically free money.
  - UncleEntity 3y ago
    “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” ― Nicholas Klein
    - darby_eight 3y ago
      Somehow I don't think he was referring to corporate chatbots.
justrealist 3y ago
Look this sounds really good on the internet, but this is disconnected from reality. The kids chronically truant are POOR and have no structural support at home. They are not depressed upper-middle-class-kids. The more-informed (albeit misinformed) demographic you're describing is not the problem.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This is exactly true. The doomerism might affect a few, and I'd suspect more in college, but at the elementary and high school level there are much simpler and obvious explanations.
silverquiet 3y ago
I'm approaching 40 and I'm pretty worried about climate change and don't really think I can afford the American dream. I can't imagine staring down six or seven decades into the future at this point.
- partiallypro 3y ago
  Every generation says this, they still showed up and did the work. Do you honestly think a teenager that was drafted into WW1 wasn't scared for their future? What about people in the Spanish Flu or Polio epidemics? People in the 50s thought we'd all die in nuclear war. It's so annoying that people think our circumstances are worse than our ancestors. They aren't, unless you're literally at war, your life is better than anyone before you. Anyhow, kids are skipping school because their parents allow them to, it has nothing to do with "climate change," "COVID," or "the future." Parents should be heavily punished for truancy of their children, it's a form of child abuse/neglect. That's regardless of income, poor kids can't get out of poverty if they have no means to do so. That can be unpopular, it's irrelevant if it is. Kamala Harris got flack for that, but it's absolutely good to punish parents that allow this. If you disagree, you live in a bubble.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    Are you saying that this generation is somehow different from all the others not because of their optimism for the future, but because they lack work ethic? I think that elders have been complaining of following generations' work ethic since pre-history. But I distinctly remember kids being optimistic (I thought irrationally so; I was a pretty miserable child before it was cool) about the future when I was in school. They all thought they were going to get handed a lucrative job after they finished a four-year degree at some luxurious university.
    - partiallypro 3y ago
      No, I'm not blaming the kids. I'm blaming the parents, I felt like I made this pretty explicit in my second paragraph. Virtually no kid wants to go to school. That's irrelevant. Some kids don't want to eat anything but junk food. You shouldn't let them. You're the parent. You cannot allow your kid to be truant. You are nearly guaranteeing them poverty, that is abuse and neglect, and it should be punished. There are some stories here of people saying it worked for them, this place isn't "most people," most people on HN came from families with money or had opportunities bestowed upon them. Reeks of privilege. Forget the doomerism of what a child might think, again it's about perspective. That's not even why these kids are skipping class to begin with, that's just some invention people here have said. We're talking about kids that can barely read or write, not HN poster kids with educated parents or good surroundings. People are skipping classes because their parents allow it, kids will look for excuses and always have. The parents should be held liable, and it's not just bad for the kids, it's bad for all of society. People arguing in favor of truancy are totally detached from reality for -most- people.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I feel that people that graduated high school in 2020 had the worst experience (at least in the US) of any cohort in at least 50 years. They didn't get to experience really the end of high school, and those that started college in the fall didn't really get to experience the beginning of college, when many people make lifelong friends. Now they're graduating in 2024, where the vibe on many campuses is one of division, suspicion and despair over the Israel/Gaza war, and they're likely to see greatly diminished economic prospects (especially compared to anyone who graduated college in tech from say 2010 to 2021). Not to mention the general "vibe in the air" is one of pessimism in the US. I have a ton of empathy for these people, and it makes me count my lucky stars for being a Gen Xer. Honestly, I feel like Gen X is the luckiest of all the generations. People generally don't blame us for f'ing everything up, we had the luck of growing up before the Internet and smartphones where we still got to just play and have relatively unstructured "kid lives", many of us graduated into the booming, optimistic 90s. Many of us got to buy houses before they became unobtainably expensive. Sure, we had the epidemic of parental divorce, and if anything that hope of the 90s has, at least for me, turned to jadedness in many areas, but I just feel so lucky to have been born when I was.
- anon291 3y ago
  I think you got your years wrong
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Whoops, thanks, meant people who graduated HS in 2020, not 2000. Edited.
madamelic 3y ago
In addition, the constant blaring reminder that adults all around you will not protect you physically if it comes to that. The fact that "school shooter hero" even has to be a term is absurd and embarassing for us as a country. Even when I was in high school over a decade ago, the fact that we could have a school shooter was constantly present and I was always running exit plans. I do have anxiety issues but I can't imagine what it is like for children now.

Workaccount2 3y ago

Economics and climate change? I'd be slacking off because it is clear that AI is going to be the brain job top dog by the time I get to career stage.

baobabKoodaa 3y ago
Ahh, climate change. The go-to explanation for absolutely any negative phenomena observed in the world.
darby_eight 3y ago
I see a lot more kids mocking AI on TikTok than fearing it, but I might be looking in the wrong place.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  Fear it? I would be embracing it. Send my allocated AI entity to work and send me the checks. In a sense it is like having a body double go to school for you.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Oh goodness... This must be satire.
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      Just give it 10 years, when you freshly graduate college ready to start a 40 year career.
      - anon291 3y ago
        I'm in my thirties with three kids; hoping to be done with working in a decade or so. Tech industry is basically free money.
- UncleEntity 3y ago
  “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.” ― Nicholas Klein
  - darby_eight 3y ago
    Somehow I don't think he was referring to corporate chatbots.

justrealist 3y ago

Look this sounds really good on the internet, but this is disconnected from reality. The kids chronically truant are POOR and have no structural support at home. They are not depressed upper-middle-class-kids. The more-informed (albeit misinformed) demographic you're describing is not the problem.

bombcar 3y ago
This is exactly true. The doomerism might affect a few, and I'd suspect more in college, but at the elementary and high school level there are much simpler and obvious explanations.

silverquiet 3y ago

I'm approaching 40 and I'm pretty worried about climate change and don't really think I can afford the American dream. I can't imagine staring down six or seven decades into the future at this point.

partiallypro 3y ago
Every generation says this, they still showed up and did the work. Do you honestly think a teenager that was drafted into WW1 wasn't scared for their future? What about people in the Spanish Flu or Polio epidemics? People in the 50s thought we'd all die in nuclear war. It's so annoying that people think our circumstances are worse than our ancestors. They aren't, unless you're literally at war, your life is better than anyone before you. Anyhow, kids are skipping school because their parents allow them to, it has nothing to do with "climate change," "COVID," or "the future." Parents should be heavily punished for truancy of their children, it's a form of child abuse/neglect. That's regardless of income, poor kids can't get out of poverty if they have no means to do so. That can be unpopular, it's irrelevant if it is. Kamala Harris got flack for that, but it's absolutely good to punish parents that allow this. If you disagree, you live in a bubble.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  Are you saying that this generation is somehow different from all the others not because of their optimism for the future, but because they lack work ethic? I think that elders have been complaining of following generations' work ethic since pre-history. But I distinctly remember kids being optimistic (I thought irrationally so; I was a pretty miserable child before it was cool) about the future when I was in school. They all thought they were going to get handed a lucrative job after they finished a four-year degree at some luxurious university.
  - partiallypro 3y ago
    No, I'm not blaming the kids. I'm blaming the parents, I felt like I made this pretty explicit in my second paragraph. Virtually no kid wants to go to school. That's irrelevant. Some kids don't want to eat anything but junk food. You shouldn't let them. You're the parent. You cannot allow your kid to be truant. You are nearly guaranteeing them poverty, that is abuse and neglect, and it should be punished. There are some stories here of people saying it worked for them, this place isn't "most people," most people on HN came from families with money or had opportunities bestowed upon them. Reeks of privilege. Forget the doomerism of what a child might think, again it's about perspective. That's not even why these kids are skipping class to begin with, that's just some invention people here have said. We're talking about kids that can barely read or write, not HN poster kids with educated parents or good surroundings. People are skipping classes because their parents allow it, kids will look for excuses and always have. The parents should be held liable, and it's not just bad for the kids, it's bad for all of society. People arguing in favor of truancy are totally detached from reality for -most- people.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I feel that people that graduated high school in 2020 had the worst experience (at least in the US) of any cohort in at least 50 years. They didn't get to experience really the end of high school, and those that started college in the fall didn't really get to experience the beginning of college, when many people make lifelong friends. Now they're graduating in 2024, where the vibe on many campuses is one of division, suspicion and despair over the Israel/Gaza war, and they're likely to see greatly diminished economic prospects (especially compared to anyone who graduated college in tech from say 2010 to 2021). Not to mention the general "vibe in the air" is one of pessimism in the US. I have a ton of empathy for these people, and it makes me count my lucky stars for being a Gen Xer. Honestly, I feel like Gen X is the luckiest of all the generations. People generally don't blame us for f'ing everything up, we had the luck of growing up before the Internet and smartphones where we still got to just play and have relatively unstructured "kid lives", many of us graduated into the booming, optimistic 90s. Many of us got to buy houses before they became unobtainably expensive. Sure, we had the epidemic of parental divorce, and if anything that hope of the 90s has, at least for me, turned to jadedness in many areas, but I just feel so lucky to have been born when I was.

anon291 3y ago
I think you got your years wrong
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Whoops, thanks, meant people who graduated HS in 2020, not 2000. Edited.

madamelic 3y ago

In addition, the constant blaring reminder that adults all around you will not protect you physically if it comes to that. The fact that "school shooter hero" even has to be a term is absurd and embarassing for us as a country. Even when I was in high school over a decade ago, the fact that we could have a school shooter was constantly present and I was always running exit plans. I do have anxiety issues but I can't imagine what it is like for children now.