What Older Generations Keep Missing About Today’s Teens

0:00We'll be right back.

0:30Boy, every time I go upside down, I get dizzy, Ralph. Yeah. Well, you know, it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown. Okay. And it takes, what, fewer muscles to go upside down? I'm not sure of that. We have a guest today, Ralph. We do. Jazlyn Coles has been on the program before, and she got rave reviews from our listeners and viewers. So we wanted to have her back again, but we particularly wanted to have her back because of a subject that is kind of in the ether these days, and that is, how come our kids are so screwed up today?

1:10How come Gen Alpha is such a messed up generation and Gen Z is just about as bad? Well, you know, Jim, that's kind of in some ways a myth, because if we go all the way back to Socrates, we discover that every generation is messed up according to the generations that preceded it.

1:40Uh-huh, yeah, and our generation, Ralph, the baby boomers, were not held in high regard by the people who came before us, right? We were not. Okay, now, Jazlyn, there's a lot of press out there about how bad these iPad kids are. There are stories about them getting themselves and their parents kicked off of airplanes because they wouldn't relinquish their iPads or turn them off.

2:13Do we have a doomed generation out there? Now, you've got your pulse on the university community, right? Yes. Okay. So I do believe that there are different narratives that suit the times that we grow up in. I believe that there are moments where we have to pull away from the augmented realities that we're being fed all the time. What's an augmented reality? That's where you let technology paint out your reality of what you see. So social media has a lot of, it's giving a lot of hope, it's giving a lot of comparison or a route to comparison.

2:49It's allowing us to be able to see what's possible, but at the same time, if we're not careful enough and learn those boundaries and stay in touch, kind of like touching the grass a little bit, you know? Oh, yeah. We're going to be able to, we'll miss out on the fundamental and true things that bring us all together. Okay. It's more divide, that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. So social media can bring us together or it can divide us. Absolutely. Yeah. But I don't believe we have a broken or lost generation overall.

3:20I think there's just a new way to go about it now. Well, you know, they process, these, let's take Gen Alpha. Kids were born between 2010 and 2026. So they're somewhere between the ages of zero and 16 now. Mm-hmm. They process information very quickly. They learn by doing. They're great at pattern recognition. Those are some of the things that I've noticed. My grandkids are all in, you know, the Gen Alpha group. And they don't seem like such bad kids.

3:51And it seems like what they're grasping is a reality that they can work with. Now, the kids that might have trouble might be kids who maybe get devastated by social comparisons. Mm-hmm. Like, oh, I just got defriended. You know, growing up, even, I'm Gen Z. So growing up, I was bullied for some of the things that's now popular, right?

4:21Like, whether that was wearing Crocs or Champions when I didn't have an iPhone. And so it's like, okay, well, I'm now the outlier in the group. And that makes you feel uncomfortable. And a lot of times, in the younger generations, less, at least when we're very young, they make that a potent thing to talk about, right? Mm-hmm. And they make it known. Yeah. And I understood that kids were bullied because they didn't have a Stanley water bottle. I never heard that. I think the older I'm getting, the less for the height, you know?

4:54So I don't have a Stanley water bottle. It can be overpriced. You know? Like, it's just one of those trended things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there's our water bottle for today, right? Right? The thing about this, I think, Gislin, is that kids today, differentially from Gemini, they grow up in public. And I think when you're changing, sometimes almost from week to week, it's very difficult to be exposing yourself to all kinds of criticism.

5:31Mm-hmm. Now, you get, hopefully, a lot of affirmation, but I think today it's much easier to criticize than it is to give affirmations. So there's actually a popular thing trending right now where people aren't just showing their success or their highlight reels, but then they're showing the process. And I think there's something so valuable in that because having all of the affirmations can create some space of naive optimism, right? And it's like, okay, all these things are possible, but what is the sacrifice it is to get there?

6:01And when we think about the older generations, they're... ... ... ...