Condor- Unfortunately, I think kids these days have it worse than many generations, in my opinion. I have a young son (9 years old), and I'm quite concerned about his future, as all parents are, but I fear this landscape is vastly different from before.
I don't have a cell phone (never have), and even so, the pressures on him and his peers is immense, even at that age. Parents with kids just a couple of years older are already dealing with sexting, addiction, bullying, etc. in ways that were never on my radar growing up. I've heard first hand horrific accounts. A colleague of mine was dumbfounded when he realized his 12 year old girl was sending pictures of her boobs to kids who pressured her, not knowing what it meant. That's just the start.
A lot of adults do not know about the danger, or they do and are simply unwilling to confront it, maybe because it is so nebulous and frightening and they don't have a sense of control.
The potential for abuse, whether it is extreme bullying -a generation ago, you just had to suffer it at school, but now they can get a text at 3 am calling them a stupid bitch or worse- exposure to varying degrees of extreme pornography, relentless advertising, and not to mention the addictive nature of those devices.
It's a mountain of shit that has been piled on to them, mostly by parents who have given kids these tools of truly awesome power (not always in a good way), but not the responsibility or training for how to use them. The parents themselves are often in the dark, completely clueless to what they have sprung upon an unsuspecting generation of guinea pigs. They don't know how to use this technology responsibly themselves, let alone being in a position to teach kids about it.
No, I give kids these days a lot of credit. They're dealing with pressures that few before them have ever known. Hopefully they can make it to the other side without being completely damaged. Or maybe every generation is somehow shat on, who knows.
As for my son, we've been scaling intimidating, technical mountain peaks on several different continents since he was 3. We paddle oceans around the world in conditions that make most sailors do a double take and go on extended jungle treks, unassisted, among a bag of other pretty serious adventures.
In short, we have put him through the ringer, and he's just 9 years on this planet.
Aside from being a lot of fun for all of us, I seek out these challenges with him as a sort of preparation for the real trials that are to come. It's not the mountain, jungles or challenging ocean conditions that put the fear into me, inherently dangerous as they are, but these little black hole devices that push kids into truly horrific territory at ages when they are unequipped to deal with the onslaught of the very worst of the adult world.
Despite what some people want to believe, desperately hope to believe, there really is no kid filter for all of the madness you can find in the online, connected world in which they live. They're drinking from a firehose that's connected to the greatest cesspool humanity has created.
Respectfully, I disagree. The kids are doomed, and not because they are weak. I'm surprised more aren't cracking under the pressure.
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