The Problem With Young People These Days…

Psst…if you’re middle-aged or older let’s have a wee side-meeting on the comfy chairs.

Now, I know no one thinks they’re ‘middle-aged’ but if your choice of tipple comes with a shot of Rennes and you pack Ibuprofen before your passport then this means you. Pull up a seat.

There’s been a bizarre trend among us in the Repeat Prescription Frequent Flyers Club – and I’m looking at greying men in the group here – to describe young people as lazy and uncommunicative.

Why is it bizarre? Well, let’s spend a day in the horrifically uncushioned and fashionable shoes of a young whan in their early 20s…

• What’s in their wallet? Very little, we took away their hopes of owning a home any time soon then added a twist of about three recent recessions, soaring prices for everything, the job market in a mess (go and look at the salaries if you don’t believe me) plus rental prices through the roof due to short supply. That’s not a double-whammy, more of a quadruple-whammy. Or more. And if you’re thinking ‘oh it isn’t that bad’ then I bet the mortgage you bought for twice your income years ago, in an era when one person’s income could support a home, is either paid off or covered by two late-career incomes.

• How’s their health? If you read the last paragraph you can already guess. Oh, and we left their health services groaning under the weight of demand as a wee extra twist of the knife.

• What do they do for work? Much MUCH more than you did at their age. We had the time to find our way and possibly even arse around for a while after school or studies. Our youngsters? If they can, they’re hitting their career hard and fast to try to get out of low pay, high rent hell some very distant day.

• Are they going to tell me off for using hateful language? Probably. And so they should. A generation so horrendously shafted by us older folk will tend to have a sense of empathy with other ill-treated groups. Also, language moves on and always will. It’s theirs now.

• Why all the different words for their sexuality? Well, the digital world makes it easier for people to be themselves and to classify exactly what that is. A good thing. Plus it creates safety for young people. Keep in mind that your ma’s generation thought the world would end because Elvis waved his hips yet we all turned out fine. Resisting people being themselves because you can’t be bothered with new words is a similarly ridiculous look.

• And what about their communication? Yes, young people grew up with ‘their screens’. We grew up with those new-fangled gaming consoles and our parents grew up gallivanting at dances when they should’ve been at their book learnin’. And so it continues.

• What are their politics? Better than ours. They’ve looked on in horror as we’ve cast our votes for the parties who continue to make the mess I’ve described worse and worse, year after year. If anything, being very prone to manipulation in the shape of corporate self-interest sold as rage-bait and individualism by some media outlets, us old folk have gone from falling for the ‘free Parker pen’ trick to cheering on the type of politics currently taking a wrecking ball to young people’s futures. To add insult to injury, we’re like a guy poking a sore tooth in that many of us keep doubling down on this stuff somehow expecting a different result.

• How’s their social life? Ah, good question. Remember the after work pub culture we had as young’uns? Nights out for food? Unaffordable to many as a regular treat now. And all those cheap social clubs we had are disappearing. Yet still we complain about over-use of screens.

But – back to us – here’s something we haven’t covered yet: our old age.

We generally haven’t done a particularly good job of looking after our older people so it might be a good idea to show more respect to the generation who’ll be figuring this out when we need it most.

Because, ultimately, the old stereotype of an ageing guy grumbling about young folk these days isn’t just intellectually lazy, it’s an incredibly boring cliché.

Woody Harrelson’s character in True Detective said it best: “Throughout history, I bet every old man said the same thing”.

That was in 2014.

So, bearing in mind what we’ve put them through, we’ll be lucky if young people don’t have us all arrested or reduce the voting age at the very least.

After all, the problem with young people these days is simple. It’s us.

Our apology should be getting out of way, listening to how we’re impacting their lives and – best of all – handing them the wheel. They might even keep us supplied with Rennes and Ibuprofen in our old age if we do.

(Public domain image by Don Wright for the Miami Herald)