Jinx wrote:
> But seriously, I saw this piece on er, TV, the other night about
> the new generation of teens. Quite plainly there are a couple of
> issues that weren't around 20 years ago
> 
> First is that you get and expect reward for participation rather than
> achievement. Entering the work force can come, according to
> employment recruiters, as a nasty shock to those fresh out of school
> who don't automatically become the office darling/heroand find they
> actually have to produce something to gain recognition

"Wasn't around 20 years ago"?  I believe similar sentiments have been 
found recorded on ancient Sumerian tablets.  *Every* generation in every 
society seems to believe that about the generations that come after it. 
  It never seems to believe that about itself or its preceding 
generations.  I'm pretty sure this is just the effect of our brains' 
default cognitive biases and attribution errors, all the things that Sir 
Francis Bacon eloquently called "idols."  That's not to say that such 
problems don't exist, but they always have and there's no real evidence 
that they're *worse* today.

> Second is the trend towards sedentary entertainment. Ask a kid to
> go outside and play and they probably won't know what to do

Parental anxiety may contribute to this.  One of the effects of the mass 
media has been to make the world *scary* out of all proportion to the 
actual level of *danger*.  You get parents who won't let their kids walk 
to school because they saw a story about a kidnapping that took place 
thousands of miles away.  That's the cognitive distortion of emotional 
reasoning.  In fact, today's kids are at substantially *less* risk of 
being kidnapped than the kids of 20 years ago; not only are there 
*fewer* kidnappings in absolute number, but there are a lot *more* kids.
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