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Kids are getting ruder, teachers say. And new research backs that up
- whatnotests2 2y ago"Kids today have no respect." -- Socrates, probably
- ahazred8ta 2y ago"These children ain't got no behavior. Them children were taught too blooming slack." - H. Belafonte
- viccis 2y agoI think the "every generation always thinks the next one lacks respect" thought terminating cliche is not warranted when we've gone through such a shift in media consumption over the past 10 years. They would have been correct saying it about the first generation of kids raised on television too.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoIf there's one thing people like more than a simplistic idea, it's one that allows them to virtue signal being above both sides of a debate.
- overu589 2y agoAnd there is that recent study assuring us every generation thinks things are just turning more to shit.
- xg15 2y agoI know, even the ancient Romans were lamenting that the young generation will be the empire's downfall, and look where Rome stands today... oh wait...
- arp242 2y agoSo what are you saying? That there are never any changes to children ever? Yes, maybe there's a bit of complaining from old coots throughout the ages, but that doesn't mean there are never any structural problems ever. Maybe there are real problems today. And maybe there were real problems in Socrates' time too. Merely posting this without any thought is just dismissive nonsense. Certainly for the situation today, there are huge changes to how kids are raised. Maybe that has zero effect. Or maybe it does. Either way, whatever Socrates did or didn't say has no bearing on it.
- a-french-anon 2y ago"Things never change." -- Random wisecracker on the interweb
- namaria 2y agoAristotle
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- orionblastar 2y agoWhen I was a kid, the most advanced tech we had was an electric calculator. If our parents didn't watch us, a babysitter did. At most, we had an Atari 2600 for video games on the spare B&W TV that got replaced with a Color TV for the father and mother. We played outside and kickball in the streets until the lights came on. Today's kids have smartphones, PCs/Macs, Video Game Consoles, and movie streaming devices and are unsupervised on the Internet. For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs. They have no respect for teachers or other adults and don't know how good they have it compared to me and the rest of Generation X. No wonder they are getting ruder. https://www.chron.com/business/article/Why-didn-t-Steve-Jobs-let-his-kids-use-iPads-16468409.php https://www.chron.com/business/article/Why-didn-t-Steve-Jobs... Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPads. He must have known something of the side-effects in kids and iPads. Just try to take the iPad or iPhone away from a kid and see how they react.
- musicale 2y ago> For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs Such topics should really be limited to the opera, Shakespeare, and ancient Greek drama – where they belong.
- gambiting 2y agoI grew up before internet really and there were always kids that had absolutely no problem with physical violence, you'd get stones thrown at you(good scenario) or punched or kicked(bad scenario) if you did something they did't like. But sure, they didn't swear as much I guess? One time I came back with a bloody nose because I got punched in the face for walking in the wrong place and some kid didn't like it, and my dad's response was "well, did you hit him back? why not?" Don't get me wrong - I do actually think that kids nowadays are rude. They have no respect for teachers, parents, elders or anyone really. But I'm also 100% sure that my dad used to think the same thing, and his dad before him too.
- orionblastar 2y agoI had a bully who wanted to copy my answers on a science test, I refused so he said he'd beat me up. After science class, he followed me in the hall and kicked me in the back of the head. He was a black belt in TKD with the spinning roundhouse kick. All I could do was back up to avoid being kicked in the head. Until a vice principal broke up the fight. Sometimes you can't avoid bullies and sometimes they have a black belt in a martial art. Nobody brought a gun to school back then, but now kids bring guns to school.
- ano-ther 2y agoThis seems to be the study (gated): https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2025-40514-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2025-40514-001 Can somebody see if they asked the same students (between 9 and 14, an age range where behavior changes quite a bit)? > The goal of the current work was to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic school shutdowns may have impacted classroom incivility in children and adolescents. > Study 1 compared prepandemic (Fall 2019) to postpandemic school shutdown (Fall 2022) rates of classroom incivility in a sample of 308 adolescents (49.7% boys; 61.0% White) between the ages of 9 and 14 (M = 12.06; SD = 1.38). Classroom incivility was significantly higher postpandemic shutdowns, while bullying, emotional problems, and friendships remained stable. > In Study 2, we surveyed 101 primary educators (95% females; 88.1% White). Findings suggested that young students lacked social skills and knowledge of classroom expectations, contributing to increased classroom incivility. Our results highlight the need to monitor ongoing levels of classroom incivility.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoTo me it reads as if this is unpaired data. Though sampling the elementary schools with at 83% participation rate and the destination high school at an 87% participation rate is sure to cover a LOT of the same students. > Adolescents in Grades 5–9 at Time 1 and 8–12 at Time 2 completed both self-report and peer nomination questionnaires as part of the larger study. Research assistants visited classrooms to assist in data collection, and all questionnaires were completed on electronic tablets via the online platform Qualtrics. Active parental consent and adolescent assent were required for elementary students (Grades 5–8) while passive consent was used for high school students. In the first wave (November 2019; Grades 5–9), the overall returned consent form rate was 83.78% (including 77.15% positive consent). Students also provided assent to participate; no students who had parental consent chose not to participate. For Wave 2 (November 2022), consent was only collected for the Grade 8s (86.6% returned), and for Grades 9–12, the consent rate was 98% with a participation rate of 87%. > All measures and procedures received ethical clearance from both the university and school board research ethics boards. I should also point out that this is from five Ontario schools. Any statements about the behavior of students in other regions would be an extrapolation.
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- jasinjames 2y agoMy SO is a Occupational Therapist, so she spent part of her master's degree studying pediatric development milestones. A LOT of those milestones (ability to handle objects with hands, develop muscle strength, resolve conflict with others, etc) depend on playing with other kids in the real world. If a child is proportionally spending more time on a device than interacting with peers, they're going to have problems. Prime example: W-sitting. Lots of "iPad kids" have an unusual sit pose where they splay their legs out. Oftentimes it's because they're sitting on a device so often that their core muscles are underdeveloped.
- njtransit 2y agoMy daughter sits in a W pose and has since she could sit independently. She never uses an iPad or other device. The doctor said it’s due to having flexible hips. Just an anecdote.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoWhat age kid are you talking about? I remember preschoolers doing this before wifi existed but maybe you're talking about older children that would normally have stopped doing it?
- starkparker 2y agoturns out the more control you remove from a class of people's lives, the more petty disobedience they engage in, in order to wrest some semblance of control back this is measured "post-pandemic" but especially in North America it's also post-Trump's first term, during economic struggles largely affecting middle and lower classes, at a breaking point in classroom surveillance escalation that's included sealed bags for cell phones and monitored devices, all coupled with declining funding, training, and educational quality for teachers. throw a generation that self-organizes action against every wrong (many real and some mostly perceived) and you get a school environment that is actively hostile the more one tries to enforce order upon it but also just look at "quiet quitting", slacker culture, civil and labor rights movements, and most of the rest of American history at various inflection points. dismissing student misbehavior as children being inherently bad for some reason means willfully looking past all of the major events and figures around them that are influencing that behavior
- rapjr9 2y ago[flagged]
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoMaybe there's a subtler way to shoehorn a projection of your unrelated pet topic into the discussion?
- rapjr9 2y agoSo kids are not human and can't decide they don't like being told what to do?
- Gud 2y agoI think the parent poster has a good point. Last year I was at a wedding for one of my best friends - his distant niece, who was ~17 during the pandemic, told me, she could not attend her own graduation ceremony. For nearly two years, she could not see her friends. Before the pandemic, this would have been considered a disaster for the individual. Now we are supposed to just shrug our shoulders and accept this new totalitarianism.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThe whole point of it all was to slow the spread of the disease, protect society's most vulnerable members (the older/sicker people), and especially, keep the healthcare system from collapsing due to too many people getting sick all at once. If a pandemic like this happens again, we should probably take a different approach, and put the old people into protected communities, separate from others and with measures to keep infection out (outsiders have to wear biohazard suits when entering the protected area). Or perhaps put the kids into their own boarding schools separate from others.
- Maxious 2y ago>"Trust has also been eroded, and many of the measures taken during COVID-19 are unlikely to be accepted by the population again" > "The striking conclusion, I think, from this report is that right now we are arguably worse-placed as a country to deal with a pandemic than we were in early 2020," [health minister] said, citing the erosion of public trust. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-29/covid-response-review-released/104531920 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-29/covid-response-review...
- onetokeoverthe 2y ago2 or 3 generations of being coddled instead of paddled. New moms on their phones.
- lancesells 2y agoCoddled wouldn't make you rude. Being exposed to too much internet would make you rude. If you look at the default sidebar in Youtube it's a shitshow.
- shiroiushi 2y agoPeople outside America are exposed to the internet too, and aren't nearly as rude as modern Americans. Personally, I think the modern rudeness is due to something unique about American culture.
- whythre 2y agoThe American Dream curdled into misplaced entitlement and overbearing arrogance.
- bubaumba 2y ago> and aren't nearly as rude as modern Americans You haven't been in Russia or post-USSR.
- lancesells 2y agoWe probably live in different places because I haven't found people to be all that rude where I've lived (cities), but America is huge and has hundreds of different cultures so I'm sure there are some where rudeness is more prevalent.
- shiroiushi 2y agoYou must have been asleep during the Pandemic.
- downrightmike 2y ago#MoralPanic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS4GFaG7Ypw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS4GFaG7Ypw
- binary_slinger 2y agoI would encourage anyone in the U.S., who has the opportunity, to become a substitute teacher. In my area it requires a degree and background check. So you can observe first hand.
- dmvjs 2y agowhat about the parents and teachers?
- gweinberg 2y agoThey're getting ruder also, just not as fast.
- n_ary 2y agoI would say that they are getting more tolerant. At the risk of appearing promotion of domestic abuse, my parents resorted to cane when I was not acting “socially acceptable”. Presently, children resort to tantrum if parents do not bow down to their whims. I understand that violence is not an answer, but some methods of discipline is relevant. Also I can claim to be old fart now and get the privilege to say, back in my days, children would show some manner in public places and had the decency to respect others in their surrounding, while kids these days are like somekind kind if weird world where they pretend that no one matters around them. I experience this utter disdain for elders everyday when I am out at public places. My parents rewarded obedience and civil respectful behavior, an incentive that I see entirely missing. Also, parents these days are also hands-off, while the kid is whacking another in the playground, the moms are too busy scrolling through the insta/tiktok, so it is definitely a lot of factors in the end.
- bubaumba 2y agoMay be not, it could be just new normal. Reading old books I noticed how nicely people are talking to each other. But it may only sound nice by modern standards while being actually the same by old.
- blerghudz 2y ago[dead]
- mgraybosch 2y ago[dead]
- tiahura 2y agoHow many more bits of evidence do we need to acknowledge that in the war between culture and counter-culture, culture lost.
- GenerocUsername 2y ago[flagged]
- opwieurposiu 2y agoMy 8yo boy has gotten much nicer after 8 months of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) training. Before he was in trouble for fighting at school, he was rude to his grandma, and just generally unpleasant. Now he makes his grandma happy, and is fun to be around. Well worth the $250 a month I pay. I think martial arts is worth a shot if you are trying to improve your kids kindness. Why does learning how to fight make you kinder? Could be because if you are mean to a more experienced training partner you quickly get your ass handed to you. Could be because boys just need to wrestle. Could be the student creed they recite at the beginning of each lesson. Anyway, I can't argue with results.
- namaria 2y agoDisciplining the youths with martial training is a time honored tradition.