Childhood adultification and the future of society

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In modern degenerate society a number of worrying trends have emerged. One of these trends is the rise of the adult child. Among people under the age of 35 roughly half still live with their parents. Toy consumption by adults has gone through the roof, romantic relationships through the floor, and abilities such as how to cook for oneself and other basic self-care tasks have declined significantly. But who is the culprit behind this mess? Well I believe it is in large part due to a trend of adultification of children that I believe will have effected many of the readers here (including myself). This phrase is used by the psychologist Sam Vaknin (a personal favourite of mine) to describe the practice of putting children in developmentally inappropriate roles. The most common form of this occurs in the form of what is known as emotional incest/covert incest in which an adult looks to their child for emotional support during hard times. This is an example of a developmentally inappropriate role. That of having to emotionally support your parents when the person is emotionally under developed. This is but one example of this. There are others including parentification when an absent caregiver puts the role of taking care of a child on to another child. There is a lot of this in modern society. I would argue that the entire education system is predicated on doing this. For example purely theoretical instruction based education doesn't work for children as kids generally learn with an adult directly present. For example if a kid wants to learn how to climb a tree they will generally only do it if an adult is watching. This is so the kid has a safety net should something go wrong. There is a lot of this around.

The effects of this form of abuse are massive and can range from boundary issues to developmental problems. This has lead me to believe that a huge part of the issues we see today stem from this form of abuse on a mass scale. For example romantic relations have declined in large part due to boundary problems and lack of ability to negotiate. This ties into the education system's tendency to not assist feuding kids solve their issues but rather to instead make the problem go away for the benefit of the staff. Typically by imposing separation. This I believe is an example of prioritising the needs of the adults over the children. This is in large part what has happened over the past 30 years. Placing children into adult social roles when they're not prepared for it. The role of taking care of the adults and subordinating their own needs for it. This is in effect depriving children of a real childhood in favour of one spent meeting the needs of the adults around them. People like to pretend that people born from the 90s onwards had great childhoods filled with cool franchises but completely ignore the more important things.

But what is the effect of this going to be? Well I think we're already seeing it in things like adults buying toys. But long term I think we can expect a huge rise in things like adult babies and possibly a legal category of trans aged people. If more and more adults are developmentally stuck as half children, half adults then surely as time goes by these people will realise the damage done and start demanding that they get the development they never got. Of course there are numerous problems with doing this but either way I think we can soon expect adults applying to primary schools in the name of equality. We'll also see the normalisation of this abuse with something along the lines of "people mature at different ages".

I can expand further but I feel this introduction would go on too long. Feel free to ask for further clarification.
 
In modern degenerate society a number of worrying trends have emerged. One of these trends is the rise of the adult child. Among people under the age of 35 roughly half still live with their parents. Toy consumption by adults has gone through the roof, romantic relationships through the floor, and abilities such as how to cook for oneself and other basic self-care tasks have declined significantly. But who is the culprit behind this mess? Well I believe it is in large part due to a trend of adultification of children that I believe will have effected many of the readers here (including myself). This phrase is used by the psychologist Sam Vaknin (a personal favourite of mine) to describe the practice of putting children in developmentally inappropriate roles. The most common form of this occurs in the form of what is known as emotional incest/covert incest in which an adult looks to their child for emotional support during hard times. This is an example of a developmentally inappropriate role. That of having to emotionally support your parents when the person is emotionally under developed. This is but one example of this. There are others including parentification when an absent caregiver puts the role of taking care of a child on to another child. There is a lot of this in modern society. I would argue that the entire education system is predicated on doing this. For example purely theoretical instruction based education doesn't work for children as kids generally learn with an adult directly present. For example if a kid wants to learn how to climb a tree they will generally only do it if an adult is watching. This is so the kid has a safety net should something go wrong. There is a lot of this around.

The effects of this form of abuse are massive and can range from boundary issues to developmental problems. This has lead me to believe that a huge part of the issues we see today stem from this form of abuse on a mass scale. For example romantic relations have declined in large part due to boundary problems and lack of ability to negotiate. This ties into the education system's tendency to not assist feuding kids solve their issues but rather to instead make the problem go away for the benefit of the staff. Typically by imposing separation. This I believe is an example of prioritising the needs of the adults over the children. This is in large part what has happened over the past 30 years. Placing children into adult social roles when they're not prepared for it. The role of taking care of the adults and subordinating their own needs for it. This is in effect depriving children of a real childhood in favour of one spent meeting the needs of the adults around them. People like to pretend that people born from the 90s onwards had great childhoods filled with cool franchises but completely ignore the more important things.

But what is the effect of this going to be? Well I think we're already seeing it in things like adults buying toys. But long term I think we can expect a huge rise in things like adult babies and possibly a legal category of trans aged people. If more and more adults are developmentally stuck as half children, half adults then surely as time goes by these people will realise the damage done and start demanding that they get the development they never got. Of course there are numerous problems with doing this but either way I think we can soon expect adults applying to primary schools in the name of equality. We'll also see the normalisation of this abuse with something along the lines of "people mature at different ages".

I can expand further but I feel this introduction would go on too long. Feel free to ask for further clarification.
Wait but what happens to the kids who were given these roles? Are they also the ones who grow up to be half children in adulthood?

I think alot of this stems of the modern rejection of the traditional roles and responsibilities of people in society and an emphasis on "whatever just makes you happy, man".

There's an idea that modern adults are not commonly agreeing on that meaning in life is derived from the adoption of responsibility and a vague goal of "happiness" isn't going to end well.

It's not that you can't find happiness in life is just that happiness is subjective, a fleeting feeling rather than a permanent state of being, and that life (whether in society or in wild conditions) is clearly not set up for some kind of permanent feeling of happiness.
 
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RisingThumb

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There's a term called manchild that gets used a lot. I'll also add that a lot of this was predicted a long time ago- Theodore Kaczynski predicted it in the notion of surrogate activities. These surrogates are for meaningful activities that promote survival. The specific definition of surrogates isn't made too clear in Industrial Society and its Future, but I believe it to be things that don't support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. As an example, I don't think Funko Pop collecting would provide much towards Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.

I don't know if classifying different surrogate activities is beneficial or even useful to an individual.
"people mature at different ages"
This is already the case. You have people who are very young(16 and below), who take self-improvement seriously and try to improve their tripartite of themselves(Body, Mind, Spirit(Not necessarily religious, a dead spirit languishes in apathy and corrodes meaning for improving mind or body)). This is as far as being straight edge and denying drugs, alcohol and other destroyers of the body, or investing in the future. There was an experiment about delayed gratification, and those who do delayed gratification generally do better in the majority of indicators for what people would commonly associate with success.
For example romantic relations have declined in large part due to boundary problems and lack of ability to negotiate.
Perhaps, but I'd argue that romantic relations have died in large part due to the effect of pornography, shame about sex, dissolution of romantic roles and the destruction of touching aestheticism. The last one I consider the most important of them all, as this destruction of touching aesthetics that move the soul is commonplace everywhere, in your goyslop food, in your building designs that lack character, in your artwork and music(If you want to know a population, look at their preferred music). How can people know what is possible, and what to aspire to if all they see doesn't touch their soul, but actively harms it. You can see this further in how people are promoting fat people as beautiful. Aesthetics are a window into the soul- in all regards including a person's body. Fat people, tired-looking people, messy-looking people all describe themselves very well by their aesthetics, and it sends a message about the quality of them as a person, and the quality of a person will affect the quality of a romantic relationship.

I'd also like to ask, can you substantiate the belief that romantic relations have declined in large part due to boundary problems and inability to negotiate? As it's written, I believe this is a hyperstition that only proves itself true, if a person believes it.
The effects of this form of abuse are massive and can range from boundary issues to developmental problems. This has lead me to believe that a huge part of the issues we see today stem from this form of abuse on a mass scale.
Almost every generation has suffered some form of abuse or generational problem. In solving their generational problem, their solutions create new problems for their children. It's also worth noting this is a very coloured perception, as this isn't as strongly the case in Eastern countries like Japan or China where there are still very strong family roles that get maintained and put onto people. This presents problems to the Japanese people that could be solved with a Western attitude, but that has its own problems. I don't believe you can have your cake and eat it with regards to generational problems and generational solutions.

Another issue arises from this. Since generational problems affect a huge population size, it's not practical to fix it for that huge population. Instead it's better to be prescriptive and apply your own cures to yourself- knowing how hard changing yourself is, you'll know how impossibly hard it is to change others and the folly of it outside of your local sphere of influence.
People like to pretend that people born from the 90s onwards had great childhoods filled with cool franchises but completely ignore the more important things.
Better than the kids nowadays, there's untold unquantifiable psychological damage that is done via social media and the internet. You've asserted that 90s children ignored the more important things. It's trivial to say lots of things are better than cool franchises, but you can you elaborate more on this?
 
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RisingThumb

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There's an idea that modern adults are not commonly agreeing on that meaning in life is derived from the adoption of responsibility and a vague goal of "happiness" isn't going to end well.
If you follow the idea of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, you need to take responsibility for meeting the various elements of it- and what that is and how it's achieved isn't easily said as it's very individualistic. A vague goal of happiness doesn't work, but if you know what constitutes your happiness, or even better satisfaction with life you can easily set SMART goals towards them. Have a normie video on the topic of achieving misery(through trying to vaguely achieve happiness :^) )
 
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Orlando Smooth

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You're completely on point with where this is unfortunately heading, but, with all respect, I think you're completely off base in terms of the origin of the problem. The type of people who wind up as these adult children are rarely those who have had "hard lives" by the standards of historical human experience. Instead they have "hard lives" by the standards of modern, creature comfort laden, risk-minimized society. Kids who were sent to coal mines, sweatshops, farm fields, etc., did not grow up to an adult life of childhood, despite having what many would now consider adult responsibilities thrust upon them at a young age. Also, older siblings and cousins aiding in the raising of children has been the default throughout human history. Anecdotally, every childish adult I've ever known has had one thing in common: parent(s) that ensure their most baseline needs were met (food, shelter, clothing, physical safety), but otherwise felt apathetic towards their children. Call it emotional neglect if you want, but I think it's more a combination of not known how to raise a child, not having (or making) sufficient time to ensure the child's emotional needs are met, and assuming that "they'll figure it out just like everyone else does." This seems to be true of the childish people you encounter online too, but without deep insight into their personal lives I can't say for certain. Goal setting is a skill that is never taught to them, nor is how to work hard at something. As such, their goals end up coming from pop culture and early life lived experiences ("ooh the cool kid down the street has action figures, I want action figures" - 20 years later they have $15k worth of random "collectibles") because the concept of personal growth is literally not known to them. Factor in some selection bias regarding only ever listening to criticisms of self-help, theocratic pursuits, and personal development and you've got someone who both doesn't know how to make their life any better and believes those who attempt are just fools buying in to some kind of fraud.

For example romantic relations have declined in large part due to boundary problems and lack of ability to negotiate.
I have myriad grievances with the education system but this just seems like an odd take. Fighting and conflict is what happens once negotiation has already broken down beyond repair, it's not the origin point. I think a far more plausible explanation is the decline in family size. Siblings offer you peer-level interactions within a familial relationship. To partner successfully is to form a a new family unit with a peer. With so more and more people having fewer and fewer siblings, it's no wonder that their ability to negotiate within a peer level familial relationship is not fostered in childhood. They therefore have to start that learning process from scratch much later in life. To be clear, I do believe the education system is a hinderance, I just don't think it is in the way you're describing.

I think alot of this stems of the modern rejection of the traditional roles and responsibilities of people in society and an emphasis on "whatever just makes you happy, man".
Pretty much exactly this. By knowing what your role is and fitting into it, your brain rewards you with serotonin to stabilize you long term. By not having standard molds for average people to fit into (in the name of "liberation") we have stripped people of their ability to socialize themselves properly. Traditionally, societies the world over and throughout time have known that happiness is fleeting and therefore should only enjoyed as it occurs, not pursued for its own sake. But since happiness can essentially be commoditized we are lead to believe by marketers that it is a sustainable psychological state. It's Epicureanism but without the underlying philosophy; nothing but an empty shell of hedonistic behavior with no goal except prolonging the inevitable dopamine crash until death.
 
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Pretty much exactly this. By knowing what your role is and fitting into it, your brain rewards you with serotonin to stabilize you long term. By not having standard molds for average people to fit into (in the name of "liberation") we have stripped people of their ability to socialize themselves properly. Traditionally, societies the world over and throughout time have known that happiness is fleeting and therefore should only enjoyed as it occurs, not pursued for its own sake. But since happiness can essentially be commoditized we are lead to believe by marketers that it is a sustainable psychological state. It's Epicureanism but without the underlying philosophy; nothing but an empty shell of hedonistic behavior with no goal except prolonging the inevitable dopamine crash until death.
Reminds me of a thought I had about how some cultures still strongly impose certain aspects which are inherited ways of life.

Like if you're a korean, then a korean man must do this, must play this sport, must like drinking with family , friends and colleagues, must be able to smoke, must do etc etc.

Yes inevitably people to varying degrees chafe against the expectations, but as you said it gives average people a mold to fit into. Because quite frankly alot of people (including myself sometimes) just have no idea.

Giving people traditional and cultural patterns of behaviour allows a sense of belonging and the impetus to take actions that might not necessarily feel good at the time, yet bring longer term 'happiness' or more accurately 'satisfaction' with life.
 
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CahCaw

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Interesting thread, love for how many of thoughts I agree with have already been expressed.

Especially this
There's a term called manchild that gets used a lot. I'll also add that a lot of this was predicted a long time ago- Theodore Kaczynski predicted it in the notion of surrogate activities. These surrogates are for meaningful activities that promote survival. The specific definition of surrogates isn't made too clear in Industrial Society and its Future, but I believe it to be things that don't support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. As an example, I don't think Funko Pop collecting would provide much towards Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.

What I do want to add though, is how the internet is playing a detrimental effect on kids from the information point of view. Kids, unlike literally any generation before the 21st century, have unlimited access to all information. Whilst free speech, in the adult society is a good thing, I'm questioning how healthy this is for kids.

I think the predominant problem which arises is the sexualization of it all. From my experience kids these days are very exposed to sexual jokes, making them themselves too. I'm not even talking about teens, I'm talking about kids 11 and younger. Just twerking, making constant sexual remarks, moaning, etc. Not all of them do this, but some do this so fucking much. I also remember talking with my dad about this once - how he found it scary how much my sister (who was I think 8-9 at the time?) knew about this crap, and how she was even at one point making inappropriate remarks towards my dad because of it. It can't be healthy for kids to already be thinking about this shit when they're this young... But what can we do? The algorithms will keep recommending that which we find funny, and since kids find sexual things always funny the algorithm will keep recommending them that.

Another scary thing is how the internet is spreading nihilism, even to kids. Think about the news, how politics has become a joke, how it's just one crisis after another. I'll just drop a snippet of me paraphrasing a conversation I once had with an 12-year-old:
The kid: "Yeah we just live, and then we die. There isn't much more to life"
Me (talking to a friend): "I remember this wasn't as much of a sentiment when we were their age, no?"
Me: "Isn't this because of the exposure to the internet"
The kid: "You do make a point"
So yeah....

Does anyone else here talk with kids and experience the same 2 upticks?

I must say, I'm not sure what the consequences of these two aspects may be. But, what I will say is that the 21st century feels like a giant social experiment with no goal, only untold amount of unforeseen consequences.
 
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Yabba

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Interesting thread, love for how many of thoughts I agree with have already been expressed.

Especially this


What I do want to add though, is how the internet is playing a detrimental effect on kids from the information point of view. Kids, unlike literally any generation before the 21st century, have unlimited access to all information. Whilst free speech, in the adult society is a good thing, I'm questioning how healthy this is for kids.

I think the predominant problem which arises is the sexualization of it all. From my experience kids these days are very exposed to sexual jokes, making them themselves too. I'm not even talking about teens, I'm talking about kids 11 and younger. Just twerking, making constant sexual remarks, moaning, etc. Not all of them do this, but some do this so fucking much. I also remember talking with my dad about this once - how he found it scary how much my sister (who was I think 8-9 at the time?) knew about this crap, and how she was even at one point making inappropriate remarks towards my dad because of it. It can't be healthy for kids to already be thinking about this shit when they're this young... But what can we do? The algorithms will keep recommending that which we find funny, and since kids find sexual things always funny the algorithm will keep recommending them that.

Another scary thing is how the internet is spreading nihilism, even to kids. Think about the news, how politics has become a joke, how it's just one crisis after another. I'll just drop a snippet of me paraphrasing a conversation I once had with an 12-year-old:
The kid: "Yeah we just live, and then we die. There isn't much more to life"
Me (talking to a friend): "I remember this wasn't as much of a sentiment when we were their age, no?"
Me: "Isn't this because of the exposure to the internet"
The kid: "You do make a point"
So yeah....

Does anyone else here talk with kids and experience the same 2 upticks?

I must say, I'm not sure what the consequences of these two aspects may be. But, what I will say is that the 21st century feels like a giant social experiment with no goal, only untold amount of unforeseen consequences.
Yes, I see this shit every day with my students.

Why just a couple days ago, girls were twerking before class for a tik tok or whatever.

I told them to take it outside, but they were visibly upset. "But, Mr.(My last name here) it's just a (tik tok or whatever)!"

Anyway, I also see a fair share of nihilism in my class, albeit it's usually just in jokes. However, I do occasionally hear their real views, when they talk seriously (extremely rare) or about politics (thankfully outside the classroom).

In these views the kids tend to fall into two categories, nihilism and a allways look on the bright side of life type of view.

Strangely enough, the social girls and antisocial boys are nihilistic, while the social boys and antisocial girls have the bright side of life view. I don't know why these specific gender and social dynamics happen but, I see them everywhere.
 
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CahCaw

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Anyway, I also see a fair share of nihilism in my class, albeit it's usually just in jokes. However, I do occasionally hear their real views, when they talk seriously (extremely rare) or about politics (thankfully outside the classroom).

In these views the kids tend to fall into two categories, nihilism and a allways look on the bright side of life type of view.

Strangely enough, the social girls and antisocial boys are nihilistic, while the social boys and antisocial girls have the bright side of life view. I don't know why these specific gender and social dynamics happen but, I see them everywhere.
Fascinating! I definitely see the same thing when it comes to nihilistic jokes. What I do find worrying though is how often times there's a hint of truth in it, like in the frequency of it / or moments they're not saying anything and you know something is wrong.

As for the last bit, do you maybe have a theory (even if you know it's probably wrong) to it? Can't really say much about that myself since my pool is much more limited, but maybe you can pull together something since you have a lot more anecdotes.
 
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Ok it looks like I got a conversation going and I'm very happy about that. To be fair I knew this would require some clarification and I'll provide that here.

Counter point 1: "But people do mature at different ages"
This is true. However the context in which I use that quote is in how at some point in the likely not too distant future you will have this being used to defend adults regressing into much younger ages in order to try and recapture the childhood that was stolen from them in order to prop up the adults around them. I should also state in advance that such a trend will likely have nothing but damaging effects for a variety of reasons.

Counter-point 2: "But what does this have to do with boundaries?"
The answer to that is quite a lot. More specifically it teaches kids to be self-sacrificing for the needs of others to a fault. It trains the child up to ignore their own personal needs and to prioritise the needs of those around them as more important. This effects romantic relationships heavily and does in fact tie into the pornography issue. For example a major issue is men putting their wives through humiliating and oftentimes painful sexual practices in order to please the man. This leads in turn to relationship breakdown as the woman cannot put boundaries in place as she will have been trained from childhood to only put the desires of others first, even when they want the exact opposite. It's a child that has been taught to never say no.

Counter-point 3: "Isn't this a modern problem?"
This one is somewhat tricky to answer as there is a clear distinction between emotionally inappropriate and physically inappropriate roles. Coal mining is an example of physically inappropriate roles whereas therapist to an adult is an example of an emotionally inappropriate role. The effects of sending children into industrial work is very well documented whereas what I am talking about here is very different. What I am talking about is the subordination of children's needs in the name of satisfying the needs of adults. And by needs I mean developmental needs. Psychosocial development to be more specific.

I admittedly have a somewhat unique insight into this having had parents who worked in the education system, of which, one became staunchly opposed to it. I was told of how teaching staff like to undermine and bully children who fit into one of three categories. And those were fat, black, and quiet. Teaching staff absolutely despise children with any of these three characteristics. Quiet girls are treated especially badly by teaching staff from what I have been told. Why is this? I believe it to be an example of adultification. That is stealing the development of the child in order to satiate some adult's fantasy. They hate introverted little girls because they don't act like their gal pals. It is adults trying to make children into their friends. Adult friends at that. Child beauty pageants are a great example of this in action. It is the use of children by sad and pathetic adults to fulfil their own needs and deny the needs of the child. Adultification. Placing children into the role of emotionally supporting adults. Here is the a good video summarising this type of abuse:


View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rgGlEq0pw3c
 

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As for the last bit, do you maybe have a theory (even if you know it's probably wrong) to it?
Well I believe that the social girls fall into nihilism because the communities of are days are increasingly toxic. I believe the antisocial girls fall on the opposite end because they do not engage with these toxic communities.

Now the social Boys have their attitude because they're simply glad to be able to be social, and act in a community (something that's getting harder and harder for boys to do) no matter how toxic. Then the antisocial boys fall into nihilism because they cannot find a community. These boys than turn to the internet for community. As outcasts they turn to 4chan and reddit. Yes I have redditors in my class. These sites than brainwash them into a nihilistic 'doomerism' philosophy.

These are my conclusions as a teacher, after thinking more about the experiences I've had in the classroom.
 
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What I do want to add though, is how the internet is playing a detrimental effect on kids from the information point of view. Kids, unlike literally any generation before the 21st century, have unlimited access to all information. Whilst free speech, in the adult society is a good thing, I'm questioning how healthy this is for kids.
The kid: "You do make a point"
1) yeah, you will grow up as smart-ass, maybe
2) modern Lisa Simpson. not 90s-00s ones, but 10s-20s one (in the newest Kirk episode, they were into about hard issue, finally)

on Nihilism
- sounds like this video, to me ("Lost futures") -

View: https://youtu.be/gM1KswrYKog?t=1002
 
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CahCaw

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Well I believe that the social girls fall into nihilism because the communities of are days are increasingly toxic. I believe the antisocial girls fall on the opposite end because they do not engage with these toxic communities.

Now the social Boys have their attitude because they're simply glad to be able to be social, and act in a community (something that's getting harder and harder for boys to do) no matter how toxic. Then the antisocial boys fall into nihilism because they cannot find a community. These boys than turn to the internet for community. As outcasts they turn to 4chan and reddit. Yes I have redditors in my class. These sites than brainwash them into a nihilistic 'doomerism' philosophy.

These are my conclusions as a teacher, after thinking more about the experiences I've had in the classroom.
Makes sense. Sounds like even those doing well are on the verge of doing not so well...

You mention 'toxic communities', but I'm wondering - what do you exactly mean with this? Like what is so toxic in the way kids are interacting with one another.
 
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punishedgnome

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You're right that more adults act like children, but I think the root cause is empty consumerism. Now, that is pushed by the schools to some degree, but the government and schools push it because corporate interests are interfering with government. At the end of the day, if you only live to consume, you will be unhappy. You have to have something you enjoy besides buying shit.
 
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I agree with most of this and I have seen all these things firsthand, thankfully not in my family, but definitely in school and in other people's families. Something I will say is that I don't think that the issues you mentioned can be said to be the definitive cause of the manchild issue. I think they are most certainly a contributing factor but I think that society has so many issues at this point that we can't really trace a specific issue to being the cause to the manchild we see today. I think we're dealing with a pool of issues that are very difficult to separate from eachother that increasingly worse issues emerge from.

On the topic of schools not assisting feuding kids in favour of making things easier for the staff I can say that this is a massive issue and being somewhat fresh out of school I think it contributed to a lot of the issues I saw in school. I saw the shift from adults acting as mediating force early in my schooling (it wasn't often that they did any mediating, but at least it happened) to brushing feuds off entirely, intimidation by staff, and maybe separating the feuding parties if they didn't back down after being body slammed into the pavement. Actual thing by the way. The security in my school would beat kids down if they had to interact with the students at all. Anyway, I think the reason I saw this shift was probably because as older staff started to be replaced the new staff themselves didn't have anyone to mediate their feuds and thus didn't learn how to resolve issues normally. As time went on these people slowly replaced the teachers who did actually mediate. A bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.

As for children acting as therapists for adults it's a real thing and it's only getting worse. I feel that a lot of kids are more mature than the adults who are supposed to the mature guiding force in their life. I think what happened here is that because of the immaturity of the people who should be guiding our youth they've had to figure everything out on their own. Since they've had to navigate the world without a safety net they have a better understanding of the world since they've had to fall without that safety net a few times.
Yeah you seem to understand what I'm getting at. My theory is that it contributes massively to manchild syndrome by not allowing people to become fully fledged human beings as they have no internal understanding of themselves or what drives them. They live for other people. I believe these people become unable to develop due to their over concern for the needs of the adults around them that they simply don't grow up. I made this thread because I've been reflecting a lot on this over the past few months and realised it is in large part what holds me back. I've been starting to increasingly resent my parents and hate old people in general after watching a certain programme that was totally aimed at grown men. I believe the world has become far too centred on adults and the elderly specifically thanks in large part due to population decline and boomers being boomers. And that bit about younger people having a better understanding of the world is (I think) attributed to an increased sense of realism. Boomers have a very happy go lucky air about them because they got on to a decent economy and generally have money. Not only that but it was easy for them to do so. People our age and younger didn't get this as the economy tanked in 2008 and hasn't really recovered since. However said group is not any more mentally healthy and is perhaps worse. Most of us had to rely on the internet to receive some form of solace and that obviously has a lot of downsides.
 

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You mention 'toxic communities', but I'm wondering - what do you exactly mean with this? Like what is so toxic in the way kids are interacting with one another.
Well think of it like this. Teenagers are still thinking things out but, they can still interact with each other fairly well, do to proper teaching from their parents. At least that's how it would be in a ideal world.

Sadly many parents don't teach kids proper manners, saying please, thank you, and most importantly (for this conversation) keeping the other person in mind. Kids don't keep that in mind these days. They talk only about what they want to talk about, If you ever try to steer the conversation in a direction in a way they don't like, they'll shoot you down.

Thankfully these kids are in the minority, but barely so being around 40% of the student population by my estimates (I'm being ironic).

So why are there so many of these kids? Well it's due to two factors. Lack of social interaction outside of school, and the Internet. Now the lack of social interaction is probably simple, less social interaction, the worst you are at it.

So then there's the internet. It's the first thing kids turn to when there not talking to someone. Wether it be on their computers, phones, or TV's, kids can access it everywhere, and it's addicting properties can rob them from valuable time for social interaction, instead spending their time browsing Instagram and watching tik toks. Tik Toks and other video platforms (YouTube in particular) give them the unreasonable expectation that they can just say whatever they want, and that people have to listen. This is because the vast majority of videos are monologues with a single voice droning on and on about any sort of topic.

Anyway, this conversation has been great CahCaw, feel free to ask more questions.
 
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all great talks
i dont want to generalize, but i will

there are(?) two types of people

those who take American psycho-types people like their personal bible (AP, Tate guy, Taxi man, Rayn Gosling memes) , literally
then those who are the opposite - afraid to do anything, they had to walk on eggshells to dont offend anyone

is this right versus left? authoritative versus liberal?

did you also noticed that, or is it just meme, is it something i just want to see, what i see because it is simplier than complex reality?
does these memes, stereotypes been visible to you, also? (bateman vs sad-possum-edgy-skeleton-honest -posting)
 
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I did a little teaching in my school (yes the one I was actively attending weird story) my senior year and that is something I had a lot of issues with. Kids just didn't have manners and it was hard to even talk to them. I think I saw you in another thread talk about kids playing on computers all the time too and not being able to take them away. I don't know how long you've been teaching but do you think the manners and computer issues have gotten worse or better since you started teaching? Also what do you think would help with these problems in an academic setting? I'd like to see it from an experienced teacher's perspective.
do they grow our of it, or, if no roots/values, they will just be zombies, without any further thoughts and be guilible and being able to be manipulated (4chan, redpill, gurus and sigmas, alphas?)
or opposite - being those who do these things to others - little machiavellis?
(lol , now when i think about it, it is, -this thesis- just retelling of Schizos vs Psychos - isnt it!(?))
 
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Yabba

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I think I saw you in another thread talk about kids playing on computers all the time too and not being able to take them away.
Yeah I've talked about that.
I don't know how long you've been teaching but do you think the manners and computer issues have gotten worse or better since you started teaching?
In my class and in the classes of my coworkers (we give each other advice), better. Overall, worse.
Also what do you think would help with these problems in an academic setting? I'd like to see it from an experienced teacher's perspective.
Well me and other teacher friends have developed some tips and tricks that can certainly help. However, on a larger scale I'd recommend the public education systems to STOP GIVING KIDS IPADS!! I swear to God, it's seem every kid had an ipad or some other computer device that was assigned to them in around first grade. This gives kids the unrealistic expectations that school is just using computers, with a teacher to explain if anything goes wrong. Then when a teacher tries to do some actual teaching, they get mad, and don't pay attention. So many problems would be solved for some many teachers, if they just waited to give kids computers in middle school or highschool, limiting interaction before that to a computer lab that the kids go to every other day.
 
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