I’m sure that this one is going to make me sound like some ol’ geezer complaining about “back in my day!” but I promise I will try to be more productive than that.
Being a teacher means getting to see what the next generation is capable, both good and bad. A fellow teacher-friend and I had been talking the other day about this, about how even though we are only 10-15 years apart from our students, there is a huge leap in action and thinking; students today are completely and totally different from us when we were in their shoes. This post is going to try and dive into some of those differences, both good and bad. So…let’s get started.
Technology
I think it’s safe to say that technology has come a long way from 10-15 years ago. With the advent of smartphones, it’s rare to find anyone – student or teacher – who does not have something with internet access.
On the one hand, this has allowed for greater student understanding. Students now have an easier time accessing information from all over the world, from news articles to encyclopedia pages. Just a few finger-taps, and *bam*, you can pull up information on just about anything. This allows for students to be wholly more knowledgeable, but more than that, it allows for students to be more tolerant. Since they are able to be more well-informed, they can make better decisions that will hopefully lead to a better world when they are all grown up.
However, as with anything, technology also comes with some downsides. While studies are still mostly preliminary, there is a lot of evidence to back up the idea that people, especially teenagers and young kids, are actually suffering from cell phone addiction. As in, an addiction similar to that with alcohol or drugs. Yep.
I’ll give a personal example. At one of the schools I previously worked at, there was a rule that if students had a cell phone, they had to keep it in their locker. They couldn’t even have it on their person, they couldn’t use it in the halls, and they most definitely could not use it in class. The student culture was built around that, and, for the most part, there were very little issues; in two-and-a-half years, I can count on one hand the number of times I had to take up a cell phone. Students just didn’t use them that much, and as a result were more focused in-class and seemed to learn a lot more.
At another school I work at, however, that rule is not in place. Students can use their phones in the hall, and are sometimes even allowed to use them in-class. While this allows for some unique teaching opportunities, it does create a wholly different culture; students have much bigger issues with using their phones in-class, and are often distracted from the class material. I still maintain the “no phone use” in my class, and students become noticeably fidgety or upset when I tell them to put it away. In short, they show signs of withdrawal, even for just a 45-minute time span.
So don’t get me wrong. I think that the upgraded technology is fantastic, and offers a whole host of advantages for our society. But whereas we had to grow with the developing technology, and thus learned restraint, our students are not being taught these things, and it can lead to some really harmful behaviors if it is not addressed.
Apathy Towards Violence/Sex
Yup. That age ol’ “media is too graphic” nonsense. Personally, I don’t think things are actually too graphic, but sex and violence does seem to come up a lot more in your average television/movie than it did even 10 years ago. And, like the advent of better tech, it comes with its own harmful downsides.
Compare the teenage pregnancy rates of the United States to other first-world countries. Notice something? The United States still has a huge teenage pregnancy issue comparatively; granted, it has gone down over time, but other countries have it much lower. Why? Maybe it has something to do with the media the kids watch. Or, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our sex education is downright abysmal. Students just simply have zero idea how to be smart about these kinds of things, and unfortunately a lot of television shows and movies present it as something wholly different from the real world.
Violence, on the other hand, is something that has simply become considered “normal.” Even kids movies have to have some sort of action or violence in it to gain viewership. Why is this a problem? It desensitizes us to violence, normalizes it in a way where we just come to expect it, even though it is ultimately something that should not be considered normal.
Perhaps this wouldn’t be as big of an issue if shows and movies actually talked about it. Don’t get me wrong; it isn’t like we should suddenly have every movie preaching nonviolence or anything (otherwise we might not end up with amazingly-filmed scenes like this), but when many of the average movies contain scenes with heroes mowing down waves of enemies, it does start to get a bit concerning. Some shows and movies actually do a great job of talking about difficult emotional issues, but many just blow past it, or exemplify the exact wrong way to do things.
Talking about these issues is imperative. Yes, it is better if we actually sit down with these kids and talk about it to them in-person, but sometimes that’s not only possible. And considering how glued to their screens so many kids are nowadays, it’s not such a bad thing to take advantage of that and push positive, uplifting messages.
In Conclusion
No, this current generation of students is not somehow worse than mine was. Nor are they worse than the generation before mine, or the generation before that. No, the world is not going to end when they become adults. In fact, there’s a lot of good that can be said about these kiddos; they’re driven, they’re tolerant, and they’re connected in ways we never will be. They will help to shape the world.
But they need help and guidance just like we did. Technology can be a terrible pitfall just as much as it can be an effective tool. Graphic content doesn’t have to be a bad thing if positive discussion can actually be gained from it. It’s up to us, the current adults, to help them. Especially in a world that, lately, seems to have become increasingly confusing and unpleasant, that is the very least we can do.
Jacob Ryckman 
