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. 2019 Oct 16;5(10):eaav5916.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aav5916. eCollection 2019 Oct.

Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking

John Protzko  1 , Jonathan W Schooler  1
Affiliations

Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking

John Protzko et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

In five preregistered studies, we assess people's tendency to believe "kids these days" are deficient relative to those of previous generations. Across three traits, American adults (N=3,458; M age = 33-51 years) believe today's youth are in decline; however, these perceptions are associated with people's standing on those traits. Authoritarian people especially think youth are less respectful of their elders, intelligent people especially think youth are less intelligent, well-read people especially think youth enjoy reading less. These beliefs are not predicted by irrelevant traits. Two mechanisms contribute to humanity's perennial tendency to denigrate kids: (1) a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels, (ii) a memory bias projecting one's current qualities onto the youth of the past. When observing current children, we compare our biased memory to the present and a decline appears. This may explain why the kids these days effect has been happening for millennia.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Results from studies 1 to 3 on Americans’ beliefs in the decline of children.
Straight line represents authoritarians believing that children no longer respect their elders. Dotted line represents more intelligent people believing that children are becoming less intelligent. Dashed line represents more well-read people believing that children no longer enjoy reading.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Mediation model from 1500 American adults drawn to match the demographics of the U.S. showing false feedback altering the kids these days effect indirectly through both subjective belief in reading ability (“I enjoy reading now”) and memory for how much one enjoyed reading as a child.
The crucial indirect pathway is manipulated beliefs in current ability altering the kids these days effect through reconstructed memory of how much one enjoyed reading as a child (β = −0.009, P = 0.04, 95% CI = −0.02 to −0.002).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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