Listening to, I think, Kresta in the Afternoon yesterday.
They were bemoaning how kids didn’t seem to socialize out in big, random groups anymore– they would spend time with smaller groups of friends, but there wasn’t any “hey everyone is going to this place, come hang out” type socializing. Younger kids would do it some, but the older they got the more set they became on only associating with the same group.
This went into how much social media kids are using, especially at a young age.
At a different point during the conversation, they mentioned how the culture is increasingly hostile to Christian principles– it’s not enough to, say, keep your nose out of what someone else is doing. If you are, oh, a Catholic who won’t help celebrate homosexual unions, you can’t be allowed to sell produce at a farmer’s market. And so on.
The idea that these might be connected was not raised.
When I was a teen, the “bullying” situation was pretty bad. Admit to something that wasn’t cool, or fail to say the right words, and you’d get a hard time.
It’s now moved up to physical assaults not being unusual, teachers will get in on the act, and a much wider range of things are unacceptable– you’re a girl who doesn’t want a guy showering with you after gym, no matter how he “identifies”? You are a hater and might even be suspended.
You get recorded saying something that can possibly be construed as badthink? You might get death threats when it’s put on line. You might even end up with a mob outside your house, if you’re old enough that it’s not “just” public shunning at the place you are required to spend most of your waking hours each weekday.
Memes that were made ten years ago as parody are now being re-created– in all seriousness.
The kids that want to avoid becoming targets are going to hide. Same as the adults.
I thought that the entire grouothink mentality I faced in junior high and high school was stupid. Don’t listen to the right music, don’t watch the right TV shows, etc and you were an outcast. Elementary school children were not that bad.
Cliques are notorious. There was one I had run ins with in high school. I was not impressed with people who thought their own poop didn’t stink.
Social media has made adolescence a lasting part of adulthood. Video games, too.
How do you figure?
The stuff that made high school bad is now commonly observed in supposedly mature adults, even urged by politicians.
Being able to talk to people who are a long ways away, and what amounts to pop novels in visual form, have nothing to do with it.
(Incidentally, depending on who is doing the defining– this here is social media. You’re not passively consuming it, and it’s media, so it is social media.)
Frankly, being an “outcast” in this morally corrupt world, might just be enough to get you a second interview with St Peter, while the cool kids get sent down below to warm up a bit.
Out of school before the end of the Fifties, I did not observe what is so blatant today. I mean the secular humanism that so instructs this corrupt generation. God grant we be steadfast in the face of it all. Perhaps the most dangerous sin is that of despair. We must avoid the near occasions to the sin of despair. Identification of these would be a worthwhile essay/task for the bright minds of those who draw such as myself to this site.
Whoops! substitute such as me for “such as myself”. Think of it as Bill being Old Bill, rather than the solecism of a solipsist who thinks he is the only one drawn to this site.
Amen on despair.
I get a bit annoyed with all the doom and gloom, when the fact that “kids” are withdrawing means that they don’t support the loud bullies, and that they move to different social groups means they’re not giving up.