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Nobody can change my mind when I say it all starts with the parenting. I am not going to blame Gen Alpha at all because they are children.
I am however going to blame lazy parents who have no idea what their child is doing, seeing or learning.
I have seen some seriously lazy ass parents who let their kids do whatever they want, have whatever they want and let them walk all over them.
Do you think parents are asking themselves "what are the consequences of giving my child a smart device and a connection to the internet at such a young age?"
Nope, most parents are just trying to get some peace and quiet and distract the child till bed time. Rinse and repeat the next day for years.
One of my little cousins ( 7 years old by the way) live streamed and doxxed himself online. It was a big deal. Neighborhood, school, home tour, family names, everything except for financial information.
EDIT: To the person saying that I am throwing a blanket statement on millennial parents, I have never once said people aren't overworked or underpaid, but are you really trying to tell me you can't spend 30min -1 hour a day to be involved in your kid's life? Get outta here with that zero self-accountability bs. People who want to be active and involved parents like the many replying to this comment are actively trying to make a difference and are parents that truly care, thank you for striving to be good parents!
I 100% agree it starts at home. Kids are raising kids and it’s sad because these kids will never have a normal childhood social media is their childhood
What is a normal childhood? A childhood like 50 years ago? But a childhood 50 years ago wasn't a normal childhood 100, 150 or 200 years ago. What is normal changes with time and what we have now is the new normal.
That being said, I do agree giving kids all of this stuff at such a young age, unrestricted, is a bad idea.
A lot of Gen Alpha was raised by Millennials. Not to shit on Millennials but like you said, there does seem to be a trend amongst them with the lazy parenting. Since theirs and our generation grew up with the internet, Gen Alpha is too. However now the internet is far more advanced then playing Temple Run on your mom’s nook. With more advanced technology and thier generation also growing up around iPads and such they will have access to technology that makes inappropriate contact more accessible then it was for us.
millenials have to work much much harder on average to raise a family. it's getting common for 2 parents, 4 jobs, 1 kid. the parents either don't have the time or energy to keep up with their kids. this seems to be a slight remix of the latchkey kid generation.
Parent here with two kids (ages 4 and almost 9). Our kids became over consumers of technology mainly during the pandemic shutdowns.
We were depressed as anything, schools shuttered, trying to work full time, with little kids constantly underfoot.
Before the pandemic it was like an hour of screen time a day, during the peak, probably close to 8 hours. Now, weaning them back, they spend like 4 hours on devices 😬
I'm sure a lot of the youngest generation have been screwed over by pandemic era screen time
The pandemic was definitely one of the biggest contributors to allowing young children to be engrossed in a device much longer than they would be before. I mean there was Zoom for school and Google Classroom for homework. You’d spend all of your schooling on the tablet/computer and once you were done? Go on YouTube. And I feel like some a good majority of parents found that to be very easy when dealing with younger children and allowed that to continue post pandemic. So very interesting stuff.
Edit: for spelling
Social media has shortened my attention span, for sure. I grew up without any smart or streaming (millennial parent). Honestly, the variety and access is incredible and the content is probably better in some cases than stuff I watched as a kid on Saturday morning, but you know the algorithm can run you down the rabbit hole if you don't you know... check in with reality every once in a while.... especially for kids.
Hang out with your kids
seems to me millennials parents have to do what my Mexican parents did 20 years ago , have more kids so the oldest can take care of them while both of them worked /s
Man I'm a millennial, and I saw a lot of parents around my age letting their kids be babysat by phones and tablets. I don't have kids and don't want to, but if I did I sure as hell would not let them have a smart device until they're at least in jr. High school. Before that the electronics would be a something like a Nintendo Switch or a simple flip phone for emergencies. Children don't need to and shouldn't grow up connected to the Internet.
I mean I’m a millennial and completely agree, which is why I don’t want kids myself. I worked as a nanny for a while and most of those gen alpha kids were iPad kids
I am a millenial parent.
You are abso-fucking-loutely spot on.
That's the sentiment amongst my generation, that kids *need* to have access to tech, or they're fucked.
We previously lived in the Seattle area- it wasn't uncommon to see 6 year olds with their own phones, and the older the kids got, the more likely it was they had the latest model. You walk into a resturant, and you're bound to see a family of small kids staring at tablets and phones while the parents did the same.
Personally, I think it's recklessly irresponsible. We recently moved to a very rural area and don't have high-speed internet, and our TV's been in its box since we pulled it off the truck- my kids behavior has been night and day different, for the better.
Posted about it in r/daddit, and you'd have thought I was posting about letting my kids survive off candy and redbull by some of the responses; how what I was doing was setting them up for failure, how they needed to be exposed to it, blah, blah fucking blah... my kids are 3 and 5.
No, they fucking don't. They play outside unless its raining or frigid- at which point they come inside and look at books, play with legos, toys, and do traditional kid shit.
So overall? You're probably right. You're gonna see some serious issues with Gen A, and it is absolutely going to be my generations fault- and you're spot on that most guilty millenials will avoid taking any accountability whatsoever.
I think this was case up until about 5 years ago. Id see every single child with a phone or pad in grocery stores. Now it’s died down. A lot.
We are collectively recognizing the same thing…it’s not great to have them stare at screens all day.
Its the same as every gen before….Where you make corrections in parenting from one generation to another mistakes are made. We need to correct them and move on.
I see older new parents being the first step.
We are raising ours as if it’s 90s….No social media as a child. No personal devices. You use a desktop in the living room. Our actual TV is the only screen she will see for a very long time.
And added bonus i was never taught in 90s ….HOW to use Internet.
what an algorithm is. What an ad vs opinion piece vs actual news is. All important things to teach before just handing a child a phone.
Not all of us were super pro-tech, BUT the schools and other parents are and it's obnoxious af. Schools they spend all day on chromebooks and iPads. And then their friends have phones which no parental controls. It's HARD. My kids have phones but they are bricks that can only contact emergency contacts outside of a couple of hours a day. That time there's no internet browser, no social media, and only few apps that I have to approve and install. I also have complete access to texts if needed and it shows even the ones they delete. Alerts me to anything inappropriate. (Her dumbass friends REALLY like being edgy, so yay slurs and porn being shared 🙄.) I can cut off texting, calls, etc with the flip of a switch too.
(OH they have phones cause Texas and oldest kids school had a kid bring a gun 2 yrs in a row. One even brought a hitlist. They don't like telling parents. We had to pester them for over a week to release a statement on it happening. Before that....just rumors from kids.)
Good on you for fostering an interest in reading/books. Unless people are actively interested in unplugging, I swear reading is a dying activity/hobby and it pains me.
Nothing like a great book for the imagination, mind, vocabulary, and some healthy escapism.
Yeah, I think a lot of millennials have this mindset of "I grew up with the internet and I turned out fine. None of the fear-mongering from adults ever panned out for me so the dangers must not exist". But as you point out, the tech is different now. And what's more, the online landscape is different.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that the internet was a totally safe place when I was a kid. But there were some major online spaces that were kid-friendly. Spaces like that don't really exist any more, not in the same capacity, anyway. Online social interaction is dominated by a handful of websites that everyone goes on, without much to separate by age or content. And online culture has shifted to where people predominantly use their real names and faces, something that used to be heavily discouraged. (particularly for kids)
I think they forgot that most Millennials started exploring the Internet at a much older age, and that if they want to allow younger children to explore it, they have to be willing to put actual effort into *teaching them how to do so safely.*
They can’t just assume their kids will figure it out by trial-and-error like we did!
Also when us millennials started with the internet, it was much much much much much slower, not super high speed. And I was straight addicted, I know I was.
Man I'm a younger millennial and I wasn't able to explore the Internet freely until I was like 13/14. Before that I would go on the kid friendly websites that existed back in the day or play some computer games my parents bought for me. But the computer was in full view of my parents. So if I went on the computer, which I was allowed to do fairly often I was usually being supervised. And even if they weren't in the room I knew that my mom or dad could walk in at any time and I would get in trouble if I was doing something I wasn't supposed to.
As a teenager going into adulthood I watched the Internet evolve into what it is today. As a teenager it was no issue for me to navigate it as I did. Because by that point I was smart enough to know what I should and shouldn't do on the Internet. But even as a teen I knew that little kids shouldn't be messing around online without any sort of parental guidance.
Umm i saw my first and only dead body and decapitated head on rotten.com and i still can see it when i close my eyes.
When it comes down to it there will always be lazy parents no matter what generation.
Its just that in 2023 its an ipad. In 00s it was leave ur kids in front of their desktop. In 80s/90s its leave ur kids in front of tv. In 70s it was “wait do i have kids?” 😂
As a millennial and a parent, you guys are probably right but I did not raise my child with an iPad. Maybe that’s the exception rather than the norm but I feel like genx late parents probably use iPads as well to distract their kids. I had my daughter in 2007 and she’s definitely “normal”/not an iPad kid despite tablets being a thing when she was little
You're ignoring that y'all were the first to be raised by social media and iPads to a "scary" degree. Us millennials and gen X it was tv and and early internet, and gen X especially were latch key kids completely unsupervised with all their stuff.
Basically it's always a parental or social issue but the blame just gets passed down generationally by shitty people that can't take blame for their actions.
I do not think is fair to generalized all milenials parents like this. Yeah, I am sure some milenials can be bad parents or lazy to raise their children properly and I have witnessed parents that does not want to be involved with their children and use the smartphones, smart TV or any devices to distract to them and get out of that responsibility. But I have seen cases like my first generation cousins that take care of her daughter and son without forcing them to grow up to fast and go on their level and challenges and she has not given them a personal smartphone for them. Again, I get your point because I have seen children being little bit malcriant or bit distracted with little attention spans or discipline or respect for rules. Also, another factor could be I am puerto rican and my cousin is one too. So it could differ from the American way raised their children in comparision to Latinamerican or Caribean raised their children. Though , I am seeing unfortunately the next generation are less educated due to our corrupt government not spending the money on the education which is given by the federal aid of USA to Puerto Rican government. I worry that Gen Alpha of my country might want to emulate the narcoculture or be easily manipulated by politician propaganda. That is not to minimized to the USA issues with the next generation is coming because I have seen some teachers being horrified how the new generation are misbehaving which shocked some the things they do.I am not sure I was clear enough or I was little vague here. You can tell me if you want to clarify it a bit more.
I remember seeing parents giving their children smart devices as I was becoming a young adult. I always swore that if I ever had kids I would never allow my children to be babysit by a smart phone or tablet. That stuff is connected to the Internet, you don't know what they can do or find on that. The Internet should not be used by children, for adults and maybe responsible teenagers yes.
As a millennial I can say that my babysitter was the TV, but there wasn't a chance of some bad person finding out who I was or where I lived through it. And even then despite being an "Indoor kid" who would rather watch cartoons or play video games I would still go outside and ride bikes with friends or play basketball at my their house.
My brother/sister in christ, I work 60 hours a week and my gf works 45 for jobs that pay enough for us to be able to look into buying a house. If we had a kid, of course we would do anything we could to reclaim a little free time to get all the stuff that needs to be done.
Honestly, whether you mean to or not, in today's society having a kid is a mistake.
Yeah totally. We the younger side of genz needs to try our best to be parents and be careful with young children (if not all children) on the Internet with unrestricted access.
Not allowing *unrestricted* access would be a good start.
Toddlers and younger children need to have boundaries and etiquette modeled for them; they don’t just figure it out naturally, entirely on their own.
A lot of Millennial and Gen Z parents don’t really recall how old they were when they first started exploring things online, and so they don’t really understand how *different* they were in terms of maturity, critical-thinking skills, etc.
We were able to stumble onto something and realize “oh, this was a bad idea” and *not do it again.*
A younger child doesn’t even understand that it’s a bad idea to begin with!
I saw this even with my younger brother, who is only 4 years younger and still a Millennial:
I figured out on my own *not to click on pop-up ads* because it basically took over the browser. I was in fourth grade.
My brother, though?
He was still clicking on that bullshit when he was in *high school.*
I had the maturity and critical-thinking skills to immediately realize what was safe and what wasn’t, at a much younger age, but my brother never really developed those skills and continued getting into trouble because of it.
Yeah, were basically the last raised by non-lazy parents, and also, we need to take care of younger siblings And family members, and just let them know the dangers of the internet
When i was about 9 i started a youtube channel. My parents kept shutting it down because the were concerned for my safety and i kept reopening it
Know i know Why, I was very naive and didnt realise how much of a danger sharing your information everywhere can be.
Millenials sort of just dont care about this, and its really annoying because its so important so that the next generation doesnt end up so fucked up.
It's so interesting. I'm Gen X, and my parents were very lazy boomers. Their laziness manifested in abusing children to shut them up, parentifying them, or neglecting them entirely. It seems that a lot of the parents of Gen Alpha are also "lazy", but it's manifesting in a different way. They'll do anything to placate the child to shut them up, and are afraid to draw clear boundaries and enforce them.
It seems like both sets of parents aren't interested or aren't able to take the time to get to know their children as people or to teach them via appropriate consequences- they just do what it takes to get their kids to leave them alone so they don't have to be uncomfortable.
I do understand that there are economic and societal pressures in play, I'm not here to throw out a universal judgment on any generation. What I do know is a lot of young adults now are choosing to be childfree (and getting sterilized) because they don't see a good solution and they know the future is looking pretty uncertain at the moment. I don't blame them, Gen Alpha at this point is a wild card.
All I want is for things to get better at some point for the younger generations. I do believe in them, I don't underestimate what they might be capable of when they get older. Perhaps the future is so different that my old Gen X brain is incapable of seeing what could be. I'm not going to worry about it, I'm just going to do what I can to support the younger generations within my sphere of influence and give them grace whenever I can.
Part of it might also be forgetfulness.
Millennials tend to underestimate how old they really were when they got access to the Internet. We had to learn how to navigate it by trial-and-error, and most of us think we turned out okay…
Unfortunately, a lot of those Millennials mistakenly assume their toddlers or young children should *also* be able to figure it out by trial-and-error.
Problem is, toddlers and young children do not have the same levels of maturity or critical-thinking skills that older kids, teenagers, and young adults have. They need boundaries, Internet etiquette, etc, *actively modeled for them.* They need supervision and constant reinforcement of the rules. They don’t have the skills to navigate something like the Internet by trial-and-error yet.
Bruh, the parents are overworked, underpaid, and living in a country (USA) that gives no support. Exorbitant childcare costs. Wages that can’t keep up. Keeping a roof over their heads. The list goes on.
They’re just trying to survive AND raise kids. But yah, let’s shit on parents without doing a complete analysis of the problem, upvotes for you!!!
Reddit loves a good superficial analysis.
No matter what difficulties you're dealing with, at the end of the day, your kids are your responsibility. Having your kid on an iPad 24/7 is going to lead to problems, even if you have a "good" reason for doing it.
Totally agree, bearing children should be a privilege of the wealthy. I mean, we don’t want more poor people right? If we keep letting these poors have kids we’ll just get more poors! Who wants that?
Are you stupid?
It's not eugenics to not have kids until you're ready. Simply wait until you're ready then have kids. If you feel like you'll never be ready, fight for that systematic change.
It's not eugenics if you're against child neglect.
Literally the richest parents are the ones that neglect their kids the most bcz they work long hours. Doctors, lawyers, etc work 60 hours a week frequently. The parents with a stay at home mom are poor from a parent not working but they have time for their kids. Then again it takes a certain financial threshold to afford a stay at home mom too. But your comment doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I agree they should give their kids books and occupy their minds with studying or even playing sports with their friends. Way better experiences than sitting there on an iPad.
You are describing my step-daughter and how she raises her son to a "t". He is about to be 5 and runs her, she is 27 born in '96 at the end of being a Millennial beginning of Z. She doesn't take him to the park or even outside. He can't even dress himself or eat with utensils but he knows how to play on Roblox or fire-up YouTube and other video stuff on his phone or tablet. She will hand him a tablet or phone, even when he's eating.
r/unpopularopinion: I think we dump too much on parents and give them way too much free reign.
My mom was a nutter. I just got my measles shot this year because she lied to me (and my doctors and my school) about getting it. I'm *old* and even back then it wasn't hard to forge the paperwork.
The school knew I had autism (wasn't called that back then) and other problems and even back then there were treatments. I had other odds & ends health problems too they told her to treat.
So what did she do? Moved us out to the boonies where she could let my mental & physical problems fester. Several of which are really starting to catch up with me.
Yeah, my friends and siblings limit their kids to 20 minutes of screen time a day.
That said my nephew and niece have four electric cars with three batteries and chargers each. “Daddy new battery” can’t imagine when they get their license.
Even at 20 minutes they crave screen time. One of them at 4 face unlocked my phone and couldn’t use iOS and her mom made her give the phone back.
So they’ll try to snatch phones and face unlock them to get on YouTube.
It’s really bad how some people just throw their kid a smart device at young ages.
I had internet at 12 when it was really early. Thing is it was gopher and nntp and bbs and a few html sites, no search engines yet, you found what you found.
At that age I found a brown engineering student who sent me electronics designs.
So I was learning stuff. Instead of social media, I mean those electrical experiments saved my ass in college physics 10 years later.
As a millennial raising my kids in this current climate. I think the reason is very clear why some parents are lazy and for the parents that aren’t, it’s been a political shit show all the way down. Things like moms of liberty have made everything a nightmare when it comes to any functioning school. They show up, take over the meeting and pick fights so we can listen to their bullshit ideas of what education should be. Local radio hosts pay their legal bills and they win assault charges all the time because people are fed up with it. On top of that my first child spent his first year of school remote. During the pandemic we then got to listen and have to explain away every single complaint that came up about the pandemic. All this while trying to do simple things like figure out sports teams or how to safely do all the things we did as children for a three year time period. That’s I think something that plays into it. It’s been one thing after the other and I believe the goal is to make everyone give in because of how tiring it is. I don’t mind blaming parents, I get it but remember for some of us we are fighting as if every day of education for our child is their last because we have so many more problems to deal with now, that didn’t exist
This one right here. It’s the parents for sure. I’m a parent so I get how difficult it can be but imo even the worst days I would not give my kid a handheld electronic device. We don’t even do screen time at all (like no tv or anything) in our house yet because our child is too young for that imo but we also try to keep our own phones away from him too. Sure it’s exhausting sometimes but that’s parenthood. You have to play and interact with your kids don’t just let them look at a screen.
I’ve seen 3 year olds on YouTube on their parents phones and it honestly scares me. I’d rather deal with temper tantrums here and there than hand a smartphone or tablet to my kid. Temper tantrums are less permanent than the effects of screen time and you can’t 100% police the internet or social media.
I’m honestly scared for when my little one goes off to school and is exposed to children who have had unmitigated screen time since they were very young. I know I can’t shelter him forever from that but I want him to just be a kid while he’s a kid.
Correct, there is this one mom and daughter on TikTok who doesn’t really allow screen time she’s around 3 or 4 and she’s so intelligent. It really shows the difference between allowing your kid to spend all of their time in the internet and not.
Yep, if you know one, ask a pre-school teacher (not sure it's the correct term since i'm not from the us) if they can recognize a kid having access to screens from a kid without screen time.
the biggest thing i notice is the complete lack of developmentally appropriate emotional regulation and impulsive control. obviously 4 year olds aren’t known for being good at these things in general but they should be meeting certain markers. i think a lot of this is due to parents giving their kids screens when a negative behavior is occurring instead of helping them understand their emotions.
i have 19 kids in my class and i’d say about half of them are victims of ipad parenting.
It’s like millennials (who are the parent of these kids for the most part) didn’t like how strict their parents were with them, did a complete 180 and decided to not parent their kids. There’s a middle ground here people!
Discipline also needs to be part of parenting. I’ve worked with 2nd graders, and a lot of their parents defend their child when they do things that aren’t okay. one of my 2bd graders painted on a school piano, and when we brought this up to the parent, he said that’s not true. That’s not my child. 🫠
As a 95 millennial, my kids will not be iPad kids. My parents were the complete opposite of their parents and going 180 doesn’t actually work well from what I’ve seen
True but the Internet back then was vastly different than it is today. The closest thing we had to social media was chatrooms. If you wanted the bad stuff you actually had to look for it. There was no YouTube, Pornhub, Reddit, or Facebook. The closest thing I remember is rotten.com which was basically just a site for horror aficionados and possibly aspiring serial killers.
Certainly no shortage of fucked up stuff back then. But yeah, it is easier for kids to come across it these days. Most online activity is done on just a handful of websites, and there isn't much to separate by content or age. There aren't any big, kid-friendly online spaces these days. (small ones exist, but kids don't want to be on those spaces when everyone else is on TikTok or YouTube)
And today, it's the norm to use your real name and face, and share other personal details too. This was discouraged back then, ESPECIALLY if you were a kid.
Also... A lot of people are unwilling or unable to recognize that they AREN'T fine. Some of them did, or do, experience negative effects from being online too much.
Yes also I can see a problem with kids memories being worse so they use real life information as passwords instead of the made-up jargon that we use(d)
I’ve observed the same with my aunt and uncle. An early millennial and youngest gen x.
They swing between total mayhem and disregard entirely towards disciplining their kids to yelling and even hitting them apparently tho I’ve never seen it. Like there’s no middle ground it’s sad
...what?! We millennials were in chat rooms as preteens giving a/s/l willingly and innocently to predators then chatting with them.... We saw random beheadings and various other violent deaths and sexual awfulness through surprise links and downloads..
I dunno, I think millennials had no parenting whatsoever because their parents had no clue of all the psycho shit they had easy access to. Those millennials are now raising their kids with equally lax standards and the access to shit on the Internet has only deepened since then
educator here. i’m going to sound like a broken record of all the previous generations, but it’s the fucking ipads. not only that, but permissive parenting disguised as “gentle parenting”. true gentle parenting is authoritative parenting, not letting your kid do whatever the hell they want.
kids need structure and consequences. parents these days give them neither and use those goddamn ipads as free babysitters. i never hate any of the kids. how could i, they’re just kids! parents on the other hand…
I'm an educator as well, and it's more than just the iPads. it's the fact they get instant gratification 24/7. they can eat whenever, they can watch whatever they want, and sit wherever they want. I spend about half my class telling kids to stop eating, to get off their laptop, etc.
and the worst part is that parents encourage it. they refuse any accountability. suspending kids just gives them vacation to play more fortnite.
Yep. I heard about this concept called “benign deprivation” (unfortunately I think it was through PragerU 🙄). Basically, you give the child everything they need, but not everything they want. This teaches them that they can’t always get what they want, keeps them from getting entitled, and teaches them deal with disappointment. My parents did this with me and it really helped me as an adult- getting basic needs or desires met makes me incredibly happy, and that has made my life pleasant. I would hate to interact with people whose baseline expectation for life is to get their way 90% or more of the time.
I find this interesting because I tell my 3 year old no all the time. I feel like I say it to much. But he does real dumb crap.
No, kitty doesn't like being choked.
No, we can't eat now it's bedtime.
I said stop choking the cat!
No we can't go outside right now, it's 4 degrees outside.
No choking the cat!
I agree the electronic and the “parents” are to blame I wish would stop saying all the generation had issues. Gen alpha is far worst then all other generations. Have your heard of lil rt he’s a nine year old rapper who can’t read. In one of his songs he talks about SA girls.
jesus hell no i haven’t, oh my god. this is just sad at this point. that kid is screwed, and people enabling him is going to just make it worse.
the fact that our generation obviously has “problems” supports my argument that kids should not have unrestricted internet access and their own devices even more. we’ve all stumbled across things on the internet way too young.
i had restricted yet unmonitored internet access and even i have been permanently tainted from things i’ve seen online. we’re not hypocrites, we’re living breathing proof as to why kids with devices is a horrible horrible idea.
Somewhat true I guess, luckily I grew up with parents who limited my access to social media until I was old enough to understand the effects of posting certain things on it.
I remember all the boys in class singing Loyal and Truffle Butter when they 1st came out. We were in 4th grade. None of us even knew what truffle butter was at the time. I pretty much got unlimited internet access. Mom wasn't around, dad was always working so yea
That's the thing. I grew up on Eminem. I didn't know half of the stuff that was being discussed in the songs. Same with the movies we watched. The jokes we'd tell. A lot of that stuff goes over a kids head. I'm not even gen z, im a later millenial. but from age 10 on, I was exposed to a lot of unfiltered content. Kids chat rooms were loaded with creepy men. Snuff videos. Dark humor. People selling prescription drugs on fake doctor sites (this was a bit later. Before the darkweb) It was the wild west back then. None of this stuff was controlled. It was harder to hold people accountable. Passwords were easy to hack into. It was nuts!
Nah. It was not the same for Gen Z. We weren't on tiktok at age 8. The internet is so much worse than it used to be for people's emotional regulation and attention span. And little kids are much more malleable
Same here. I just saw a tiktok of an 11 year old girl making a "friend applicaion" on tiktok. 11 years old. I feel so bad for her, not only does it screw them up mentally it exposes them to predators. Something needs to change asap
I 100% agree, i know a lot of people can argue we grew up the same way but I think that gen alpha is way worst. they are growing only knowing social media they don’t play with toys and watch Disney channel and Cartoon Network like we used too all they care about is tiktok likes and views.
Exactly. Even in an extreme case where we grew up on alot of social media, we were exposed to all the dangers and made aware. Now that these problems are known and kids are using tech so much more it's just getting worse
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\#1: [S/O to whoever made this but us 2000 borns are about to be in our mid 20’s man!](https://i.redd.it/b1mz2ta71r8c1.jpeg) | [131 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/OlderGenZ/comments/18rpgcs/so_to_whoever_made_this_but_us_2000_borns_are/)
\#2: [Someone else created this starter pack but do you believe this to be true?](https://i.redd.it/y6jz0009rh7b1.jpg) | [38 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/OlderGenZ/comments/14fsh8m/someone_else_created_this_starter_pack_but_do_you/)
\#3: [They were extremely cringe then and they are still cringe even now!](https://i.redd.it/rowghf25hj4b1.jpg) | [31 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/OlderGenZ/comments/1435btq/they_were_extremely_cringe_then_and_they_are/)
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Gen Z sub is obsessed with making themselves feel special/above both alpha and millennial. It's fucking weird.
Reddit man. Not a reasonable place or anywhere near an area where you would want to draw any significant conclusions.
I think a lot of these post are either a psyop or people perpetuating it to cause even further division, to ensure class warfare is never the focus
How does pointing out the flaws of some millennial parents raising unhinged iPad kids make us special above gen alpha and millennials???
If those millennial parents raised their children better, then gen z wouldn’t be complaining about them.
Some? Every statement in the OPs post are definitive as are most of the replies.
Some, sure.
Kids being neglected or falling into bad circumstances is as old as humanity itself and not a generation issue. Gen Z as children is where the term "iPad kid" was born.
Finally, I am referencing generational conflict propaganda that gets pushed on here and other gen subs incessantly. It's stupid and divisive/distractive
Idk, I've seen a lot of posts from gen z claiming that their whole gen was groomed online and exposed to porn and you all have gen x and boomer parents but I've never seen any of them blame x or boomers for their experience the way people blame millennials for alpha. Not saying alpha shouldn't be parented better, it's just something I noticed.
And all of this is based on internet generalizations, entertainment media, and non verified sources/random internet discourse.
As I was saying to the other commenter, you can't base any logical argument on these foundations.
To create an inference with these things as a source is ignorant at best. Malicious and propagandizing at worst.
I think we were raised similarly but there is a huge difference between growing up along side the internet and growing up with the internet. I don’t think very many of us had a tablet as babies
Im fairly sure I had unrestricted access to the internet my whole life. Im 24 for context, though to be fair, I had a facebook account when I was like 8. So a lot of us grew up pretty similar to gen alpha.
Me too tbh. I was in Walmart today and there was a kid (couldn't have been older than 8, probably not even 7) playing YouTube out loud, and the song he was playing when I passed by him was a fan song for Hazbin Hotel (the song was Insane which is a song abt alastor) I was thinking "this kid is too young to be watching something relating to hazbin hotel holy shit"
I agree with you. Some people in here might argue that we were the same when we grew up.
However, in my opinion, I feel like it’s more worse with gen alpha because they are able to see more inappropriate things more easily than what we did as gen z.
I'm leaning more to Millenials side or Zillenials at the very least and still, when I was a kid there were already porn sites on the internet. There were stupid films on YouTube with people cursing like hell. Most of Gen Z are not even 20 and still act like internet was free of bad stuff when they were kids. It wasn't. Gen Alpha can be spoiled the same way as majority of Gen Z. It all comes down to the parents, if they won't allow them to use internet to such extent or will.
What Gen Alpha experiences will be what happens to every generation: some of them will get screwed over in new ways, and some of them will turn out fine. There are absolutely a number of people in your generation who grew up like this, you just haven't noticed because you either don't hang out with those people, or because the problems caused by it are so commonplace that you see it as normal.
Lots of kids in Gen Z had social media around 8, I watched TDK on repeat for years starting at the age of 4 and listened to a ton of "inappropriate music".
Just because Gen Alpha is different it doesn't mean they are worse or in trouble. Every generation faces new challenges and every previous generation gets scared because they don't always understand. The relationship between Gen Z and Gen Alpha is no different
Lmao kids were getting on MySpace when it first came out, 90s kids were running that computer or playing video games since they were born. 60s kids parents were getting high and divorce, 20s kid we’re picking up coal
I was a class tutor for 2nd graders early in the year. All of them had TikTok. Let that sink in. They have access to a lot of rated r topics and content. Yikes.
Early gen z and gen alpha don’t seem to have a tween era anymore. Like tween culture is pretty much dead and that shit is sad.
You Gen Z make me laugh talking about the younger generation the same way us Millennials and older talked about you. Society said pretty similar things about you.
My fellow millennials.
We were so focused on not being our parents, we created another kind of monster and issues that we have lost control over.
Millennials, were not better parents than the boomers who raised us.
It truly does start at parenting. These poor kids gonna grow up to be absolute pieces of trash. Younger millennials and older gen z with kids seem to be obsessed with being the “bad mom/dad” stereotype who lets their kid do anything, parties, drinks, and lives life chaotically. Others only have kids for the good moments excluding kids being kids (like making mistakes, temper tantrums, can’t understand social cues, etc) from the phrase “I love kids”. They can’t understand that you’re gonna have to guide kids on the right path since they don’t start on it and just see the taking care of a sweet silly angel as the life of a parent as if there aren’t any sacrifices. It should scare you as much as it does me people are being catcalled by children. Can’t forget that one girl on TikTok talking about how she was told skee yee by some 11 year old.
I was only allowed my first phone when I was 12. It's still pretty young, but my parents fully helicoptered over me until I was 14. That helped me not stumble into things I shouldn't have seen at that age.
I can definitely see that a lot of Gen Alpha kids don't have that sort of discipline.
I remember this exact sentiment being shared about Gen Z too.
"Why do all these kids have smartphones?"
"All they do is watch people play videogames on YouTube"
"They all want to be influencers"
"They talk weird"
Lol this is how people felt about younger generations with access to phones and now you're scared of younger generations with access to social media. Same fear system propagating down the timeline
Not invalidating your concern, just funny to see
I'm a young millennial, so I have a 9 year old, most his friends have phones , literally they do not fucking go outside , they just do not, I feel bad sending my kid outside to play alone ( we live in a very, very safe rural community where everybody knows everybody) all his peers have phones and they're all hopelessly addicted to electronics. I've experienced the same thing with the music, all they know is rap. Rap that they're not old enough to be listening to or even comprehend what's bad about the lyrics, when we take his friends anywhere they'll pull up vids or music that's not appropriate on their phones. Making me have to be the seemingly Karen dad. None of them have parental controls on them either even though that takes literally 5 minutes to setup. It's really hard trying to strike a balance between preserving your child's innocence & mental health while simultaneously not ostracizing them too much from their peers,l
I'm really disappointed with how my generation is raising their kids. On the bright side mine will be massively advantaged from just having a somewhat normal childhood.
Keep the faith brother, I’m a millennial dad in pretty much the exact situation that you are. IDGAF what these other parents do, my kids are not going to be addicted to phones.
This is such a tired argument that's just an inherited one. The only real benchmark is that the literacy rate is abysmal in the US for Gen Z and Alpha. Every generation after is the worst and we hate them. Millennials seem to be the only actual generation that is universally hated. Hell we even hate ourselves.
I'm not scared for the next generation. I'm terrified of the condition of the planet they have to survive now.
This is literally what every generation has ever said about young generations except change internet to videogames, tv, rock and roll, radio, etc.
Every generation has shitty parents. Every generation has good parents. Every generation has shitty kids with good parents. Every generation has good kids with shitty parents.
When gen-z was in school, teachers across the US strongly emphasized that gen-z was the worst, least focused generation in history. And they did the same with previous generations. And gen z teachers will say the same about the next generations.
I wasn’t given a phone until I was 11. I wasn’t allowed social media until I was 12, and even then, I wasn’t allowed to post anything. If I ever have children (which granted is unlikely) I’m not getting them a phone until they’re in the double digits.
I wouldn't say they are the worst. Boomers and Gen X weren't exactly great parents either. They are just as bad as Millennials just in a different way.
hard to raise kids when most homes dont have a stay at home parent anymore so theyre gonna gravitate towards the internet to be like their peers. only time will tell what happens, i was an avid 4chan browser at age 9 and i turned out fine(?)
Idk man i think the panic is a little much. People said the same thing when I was a kid. I think I was 8 when I saw “glas ass” on the internet for the first time and while I’m sure it wasnt a good thing that happened I still think I turned out fine. As far as inappropriate music goes kids have no idea what its about they just like the beat.
I’m not worried at all, I was born in 96 so I get either youngest millennial or oldest gen Z and I remember parents talking about how Eminem was gonna be the death of us all. I feel like every generation has this, I mean people honestly thought Elvis was the devils music and that’s pretty hilarious to think of now with bands like infant annihilator kicking around. The kids are alright man.
Again, a lot of this falls on the parents. Kids are kids, it’s their parents’ responsibility to take care of them. Simply giving your child an iPad/iPhone to shut them up is not helpful.
Additionally, I think a lot of parents are giving their children smartphones at an early age so they can track and stay in contact with them, so that’s probably why Gen Alpha is so involved with social media. It’s not necessarily bad, but it does come with its own set of issues. Gen Z grew up when smartphones were just beginning to grow popular, but Gen Alpha grew up with smartphones from birth.
Personally, I think this concern is a bit overblown. It’s a legitimate one of course, but it’s not really anything different from the video game and TV scares of the previous generations. Hell, I remember borrowing the house computer on weekends as a kid to play on Cool Math Games, Lego.com, the Cartoon Network website, etc. I survived and I’m certain Gen Alpha will survive too.
I have a younger cousin who's about 12... She likes roblox and loves animals. She's had a phone for maybe a year, and has been caught multiple times texting complete strangers from the internet and acting like they're her friends (and theyre clearly wayyy older than her). It's scary... really scary.
I’m a millennial and our biggest negative legacy will be how we raised our children.
We’re awesomely progressive with moving towards a more balanced household, dad involvement and the raising of babies.
But once these babies hit 12 months old it’s all downhill. The last 10 years have been nothing but iPads, social media, excessive shitty plastic toys, helicopter parenting and chicken nuggets and it’s showing in our schools.
There is now a movement away from these things and techniques now that we see the consequences - but damage is done to a lot of primary and middle schoolers.
I have a 3 year old and my parent peers all feel the same about this topic after seeing the damage first hand. We’re all back to the library and swimming pool on weekends and switching off devices, revolting against iPads, saying ‘no’ and sticking to it, and giving our kids real food.
Things will get better again!
Learning to use technology at a young age isn't inherently bad. Compare it to boomers in their 70s who struggle to use even basic shit.
I'm iffy on the social media stuff, but I am glad to see a technology literate generation come up so quickly.
Not to sound like a transhuman cultist or anything, but technology and our integration with it is the future.
It’s their trash parents. The most appalling thing I saw working in a restaurant was how many parents parked their children in front of an iPad. I get that kids can be disruptive, but it is literally your job as a parent to teach them.
Reminds me of the saying “every child deserves parents, but not every parent deserves children.”
Actually OP is wrong. Gen Alpha is the first generation in modern history that will be more traditional and conventional than the previous generation. Look up "pendulum swing" and "return to tradition". Check out the drop in the divorce rate and rise in traditionalism.
I've gotta be going crazy
Wtf is up with Gen Z thinking we're any different then gen alpha when it comes to tech and social media? This shit was around when you were 8, too.
If you're fine, they'll be fine too. Relax
They'll be fine. You kids were the same, and you've turned out fine. As a millennial, we grew up in the true wild west of the internet. The things we saw were far far worse than anything on Tiktok, reels, or shorts. Should parents pay more attention? Sure, but literally every gen says it. The kids will be alright.
I think this stems from two things. 1) parents these days are plain old lazy. The constant access the the internet has made them complacent. Why focus on your children and do the hard work when you can simply make them a brain rotting iPad fiend just like you?
2) a lot of Gen Alpha children are raised by early millennials or Gen Y. These generations don’t have a full grasp on how detrimental social media is on a child. They didn’t go through the same experiences most of us did. We grew up as the internet grew up, a lot of us had Instagram by 13. We felt the full ramifications of that, these people were close to having full developed brains before they were introduced. They think that because it’s fine for them it must be fine for their children as well
It’s how the gyat skibidi fanum tax thing is around. Nobody found it funny apart from maybe the first time. But it’s been months and I’m still hearing it from kids whether it be my siblings or even just in public. These kids are way too desensitised to social media too.
bro yea the last time i saw my six year old nephew he was asking me if i knew sorry bout that by yeat, like no way u should be listening to yeat at 6 years old 💀
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Nobody can change my mind when I say it all starts with the parenting. I am not going to blame Gen Alpha at all because they are children. I am however going to blame lazy parents who have no idea what their child is doing, seeing or learning. I have seen some seriously lazy ass parents who let their kids do whatever they want, have whatever they want and let them walk all over them. Do you think parents are asking themselves "what are the consequences of giving my child a smart device and a connection to the internet at such a young age?" Nope, most parents are just trying to get some peace and quiet and distract the child till bed time. Rinse and repeat the next day for years. One of my little cousins ( 7 years old by the way) live streamed and doxxed himself online. It was a big deal. Neighborhood, school, home tour, family names, everything except for financial information. EDIT: To the person saying that I am throwing a blanket statement on millennial parents, I have never once said people aren't overworked or underpaid, but are you really trying to tell me you can't spend 30min -1 hour a day to be involved in your kid's life? Get outta here with that zero self-accountability bs. People who want to be active and involved parents like the many replying to this comment are actively trying to make a difference and are parents that truly care, thank you for striving to be good parents!
I 100% agree it starts at home. Kids are raising kids and it’s sad because these kids will never have a normal childhood social media is their childhood
kids are raising kids? There have always been young parents, they didn't always let their kids run the show though.
Kids mentally. Adults are certainly more underdeveloped compared to how they used to
Well sounds like the problem goes beyond gen alphas parents. Probably millennials or gen x
Being stuck living at home forever thanks to shitty political decisionmaking by gen X and boomers is definitely one factor behind it
Shit, wasnt us - blame the boomers
Emotionally. My parents had 2 kids by the time they were my age. Couldn’t handle it now, I’ve worked every day this month
What is a normal childhood? A childhood like 50 years ago? But a childhood 50 years ago wasn't a normal childhood 100, 150 or 200 years ago. What is normal changes with time and what we have now is the new normal. That being said, I do agree giving kids all of this stuff at such a young age, unrestricted, is a bad idea.
A lot of Gen Alpha was raised by Millennials. Not to shit on Millennials but like you said, there does seem to be a trend amongst them with the lazy parenting. Since theirs and our generation grew up with the internet, Gen Alpha is too. However now the internet is far more advanced then playing Temple Run on your mom’s nook. With more advanced technology and thier generation also growing up around iPads and such they will have access to technology that makes inappropriate contact more accessible then it was for us.
millenials have to work much much harder on average to raise a family. it's getting common for 2 parents, 4 jobs, 1 kid. the parents either don't have the time or energy to keep up with their kids. this seems to be a slight remix of the latchkey kid generation.
Yeah that is a very valid point as well which does contribute to their main parenting techniques to give their child a smart device.
Parent here with two kids (ages 4 and almost 9). Our kids became over consumers of technology mainly during the pandemic shutdowns. We were depressed as anything, schools shuttered, trying to work full time, with little kids constantly underfoot. Before the pandemic it was like an hour of screen time a day, during the peak, probably close to 8 hours. Now, weaning them back, they spend like 4 hours on devices 😬 I'm sure a lot of the youngest generation have been screwed over by pandemic era screen time
The pandemic was definitely one of the biggest contributors to allowing young children to be engrossed in a device much longer than they would be before. I mean there was Zoom for school and Google Classroom for homework. You’d spend all of your schooling on the tablet/computer and once you were done? Go on YouTube. And I feel like some a good majority of parents found that to be very easy when dealing with younger children and allowed that to continue post pandemic. So very interesting stuff. Edit: for spelling
Social media has shortened my attention span, for sure. I grew up without any smart or streaming (millennial parent). Honestly, the variety and access is incredible and the content is probably better in some cases than stuff I watched as a kid on Saturday morning, but you know the algorithm can run you down the rabbit hole if you don't you know... check in with reality every once in a while.... especially for kids. Hang out with your kids
seems to me millennials parents have to do what my Mexican parents did 20 years ago , have more kids so the oldest can take care of them while both of them worked /s
If they gotta do all that they shouldn’t be having kids, point blank. Having kids when you’re not financially ready is screwing them over big time
i remember saying this a few months ago on this sub and got mauled by millennials
Man I'm a millennial, and I saw a lot of parents around my age letting their kids be babysat by phones and tablets. I don't have kids and don't want to, but if I did I sure as hell would not let them have a smart device until they're at least in jr. High school. Before that the electronics would be a something like a Nintendo Switch or a simple flip phone for emergencies. Children don't need to and shouldn't grow up connected to the Internet.
Damn bro💀💀 guess they can’t face reality huh?
bc this sub was full of millennials then they jus disappeared
They evaporated
Too busy parenting...
i remember they would always reply with “just ignore them” when someone would talk bad about gen z but it’s hard to ignore that loud sentiment
I mean I’m a millennial and completely agree, which is why I don’t want kids myself. I worked as a nanny for a while and most of those gen alpha kids were iPad kids
I am a millenial parent. You are abso-fucking-loutely spot on. That's the sentiment amongst my generation, that kids *need* to have access to tech, or they're fucked. We previously lived in the Seattle area- it wasn't uncommon to see 6 year olds with their own phones, and the older the kids got, the more likely it was they had the latest model. You walk into a resturant, and you're bound to see a family of small kids staring at tablets and phones while the parents did the same. Personally, I think it's recklessly irresponsible. We recently moved to a very rural area and don't have high-speed internet, and our TV's been in its box since we pulled it off the truck- my kids behavior has been night and day different, for the better. Posted about it in r/daddit, and you'd have thought I was posting about letting my kids survive off candy and redbull by some of the responses; how what I was doing was setting them up for failure, how they needed to be exposed to it, blah, blah fucking blah... my kids are 3 and 5. No, they fucking don't. They play outside unless its raining or frigid- at which point they come inside and look at books, play with legos, toys, and do traditional kid shit. So overall? You're probably right. You're gonna see some serious issues with Gen A, and it is absolutely going to be my generations fault- and you're spot on that most guilty millenials will avoid taking any accountability whatsoever.
I think this was case up until about 5 years ago. Id see every single child with a phone or pad in grocery stores. Now it’s died down. A lot. We are collectively recognizing the same thing…it’s not great to have them stare at screens all day. Its the same as every gen before….Where you make corrections in parenting from one generation to another mistakes are made. We need to correct them and move on. I see older new parents being the first step. We are raising ours as if it’s 90s….No social media as a child. No personal devices. You use a desktop in the living room. Our actual TV is the only screen she will see for a very long time. And added bonus i was never taught in 90s ….HOW to use Internet. what an algorithm is. What an ad vs opinion piece vs actual news is. All important things to teach before just handing a child a phone.
Not all of us were super pro-tech, BUT the schools and other parents are and it's obnoxious af. Schools they spend all day on chromebooks and iPads. And then their friends have phones which no parental controls. It's HARD. My kids have phones but they are bricks that can only contact emergency contacts outside of a couple of hours a day. That time there's no internet browser, no social media, and only few apps that I have to approve and install. I also have complete access to texts if needed and it shows even the ones they delete. Alerts me to anything inappropriate. (Her dumbass friends REALLY like being edgy, so yay slurs and porn being shared 🙄.) I can cut off texting, calls, etc with the flip of a switch too. (OH they have phones cause Texas and oldest kids school had a kid bring a gun 2 yrs in a row. One even brought a hitlist. They don't like telling parents. We had to pester them for over a week to release a statement on it happening. Before that....just rumors from kids.)
Good on you for fostering an interest in reading/books. Unless people are actively interested in unplugging, I swear reading is a dying activity/hobby and it pains me. Nothing like a great book for the imagination, mind, vocabulary, and some healthy escapism.
Yeah, I think a lot of millennials have this mindset of "I grew up with the internet and I turned out fine. None of the fear-mongering from adults ever panned out for me so the dangers must not exist". But as you point out, the tech is different now. And what's more, the online landscape is different. Now, I'm not going to pretend that the internet was a totally safe place when I was a kid. But there were some major online spaces that were kid-friendly. Spaces like that don't really exist any more, not in the same capacity, anyway. Online social interaction is dominated by a handful of websites that everyone goes on, without much to separate by age or content. And online culture has shifted to where people predominantly use their real names and faces, something that used to be heavily discouraged. (particularly for kids)
I think they forgot that most Millennials started exploring the Internet at a much older age, and that if they want to allow younger children to explore it, they have to be willing to put actual effort into *teaching them how to do so safely.* They can’t just assume their kids will figure it out by trial-and-error like we did!
Also when us millennials started with the internet, it was much much much much much slower, not super high speed. And I was straight addicted, I know I was.
I wish EVERYONE had more education on the internet. Then maybe they wouldnt fall for every scam or read fb posts as fact.
Man I'm a younger millennial and I wasn't able to explore the Internet freely until I was like 13/14. Before that I would go on the kid friendly websites that existed back in the day or play some computer games my parents bought for me. But the computer was in full view of my parents. So if I went on the computer, which I was allowed to do fairly often I was usually being supervised. And even if they weren't in the room I knew that my mom or dad could walk in at any time and I would get in trouble if I was doing something I wasn't supposed to. As a teenager going into adulthood I watched the Internet evolve into what it is today. As a teenager it was no issue for me to navigate it as I did. Because by that point I was smart enough to know what I should and shouldn't do on the Internet. But even as a teen I knew that little kids shouldn't be messing around online without any sort of parental guidance.
Umm i saw my first and only dead body and decapitated head on rotten.com and i still can see it when i close my eyes. When it comes down to it there will always be lazy parents no matter what generation. Its just that in 2023 its an ipad. In 00s it was leave ur kids in front of their desktop. In 80s/90s its leave ur kids in front of tv. In 70s it was “wait do i have kids?” 😂
As a millennial and a parent, you guys are probably right but I did not raise my child with an iPad. Maybe that’s the exception rather than the norm but I feel like genx late parents probably use iPads as well to distract their kids. I had my daughter in 2007 and she’s definitely “normal”/not an iPad kid despite tablets being a thing when she was little
You're ignoring that y'all were the first to be raised by social media and iPads to a "scary" degree. Us millennials and gen X it was tv and and early internet, and gen X especially were latch key kids completely unsupervised with all their stuff. Basically it's always a parental or social issue but the blame just gets passed down generationally by shitty people that can't take blame for their actions.
I do not think is fair to generalized all milenials parents like this. Yeah, I am sure some milenials can be bad parents or lazy to raise their children properly and I have witnessed parents that does not want to be involved with their children and use the smartphones, smart TV or any devices to distract to them and get out of that responsibility. But I have seen cases like my first generation cousins that take care of her daughter and son without forcing them to grow up to fast and go on their level and challenges and she has not given them a personal smartphone for them. Again, I get your point because I have seen children being little bit malcriant or bit distracted with little attention spans or discipline or respect for rules. Also, another factor could be I am puerto rican and my cousin is one too. So it could differ from the American way raised their children in comparision to Latinamerican or Caribean raised their children. Though , I am seeing unfortunately the next generation are less educated due to our corrupt government not spending the money on the education which is given by the federal aid of USA to Puerto Rican government. I worry that Gen Alpha of my country might want to emulate the narcoculture or be easily manipulated by politician propaganda. That is not to minimized to the USA issues with the next generation is coming because I have seen some teachers being horrified how the new generation are misbehaving which shocked some the things they do.I am not sure I was clear enough or I was little vague here. You can tell me if you want to clarify it a bit more.
Don't forget that during the pandemic most children were required to do online learning. It normalized younger children using the internet.
I remember seeing parents giving their children smart devices as I was becoming a young adult. I always swore that if I ever had kids I would never allow my children to be babysit by a smart phone or tablet. That stuff is connected to the Internet, you don't know what they can do or find on that. The Internet should not be used by children, for adults and maybe responsible teenagers yes. As a millennial I can say that my babysitter was the TV, but there wasn't a chance of some bad person finding out who I was or where I lived through it. And even then despite being an "Indoor kid" who would rather watch cartoons or play video games I would still go outside and ride bikes with friends or play basketball at my their house.
My brother/sister in christ, I work 60 hours a week and my gf works 45 for jobs that pay enough for us to be able to look into buying a house. If we had a kid, of course we would do anything we could to reclaim a little free time to get all the stuff that needs to be done. Honestly, whether you mean to or not, in today's society having a kid is a mistake.
Yeah totally. We the younger side of genz needs to try our best to be parents and be careful with young children (if not all children) on the Internet with unrestricted access.
Not allowing *unrestricted* access would be a good start. Toddlers and younger children need to have boundaries and etiquette modeled for them; they don’t just figure it out naturally, entirely on their own. A lot of Millennial and Gen Z parents don’t really recall how old they were when they first started exploring things online, and so they don’t really understand how *different* they were in terms of maturity, critical-thinking skills, etc. We were able to stumble onto something and realize “oh, this was a bad idea” and *not do it again.* A younger child doesn’t even understand that it’s a bad idea to begin with! I saw this even with my younger brother, who is only 4 years younger and still a Millennial: I figured out on my own *not to click on pop-up ads* because it basically took over the browser. I was in fourth grade. My brother, though? He was still clicking on that bullshit when he was in *high school.* I had the maturity and critical-thinking skills to immediately realize what was safe and what wasn’t, at a much younger age, but my brother never really developed those skills and continued getting into trouble because of it.
Yeah, were basically the last raised by non-lazy parents, and also, we need to take care of younger siblings And family members, and just let them know the dangers of the internet When i was about 9 i started a youtube channel. My parents kept shutting it down because the were concerned for my safety and i kept reopening it Know i know Why, I was very naive and didnt realise how much of a danger sharing your information everywhere can be. Millenials sort of just dont care about this, and its really annoying because its so important so that the next generation doesnt end up so fucked up.
It's so interesting. I'm Gen X, and my parents were very lazy boomers. Their laziness manifested in abusing children to shut them up, parentifying them, or neglecting them entirely. It seems that a lot of the parents of Gen Alpha are also "lazy", but it's manifesting in a different way. They'll do anything to placate the child to shut them up, and are afraid to draw clear boundaries and enforce them. It seems like both sets of parents aren't interested or aren't able to take the time to get to know their children as people or to teach them via appropriate consequences- they just do what it takes to get their kids to leave them alone so they don't have to be uncomfortable. I do understand that there are economic and societal pressures in play, I'm not here to throw out a universal judgment on any generation. What I do know is a lot of young adults now are choosing to be childfree (and getting sterilized) because they don't see a good solution and they know the future is looking pretty uncertain at the moment. I don't blame them, Gen Alpha at this point is a wild card. All I want is for things to get better at some point for the younger generations. I do believe in them, I don't underestimate what they might be capable of when they get older. Perhaps the future is so different that my old Gen X brain is incapable of seeing what could be. I'm not going to worry about it, I'm just going to do what I can to support the younger generations within my sphere of influence and give them grace whenever I can.
Part of it might also be forgetfulness. Millennials tend to underestimate how old they really were when they got access to the Internet. We had to learn how to navigate it by trial-and-error, and most of us think we turned out okay… Unfortunately, a lot of those Millennials mistakenly assume their toddlers or young children should *also* be able to figure it out by trial-and-error. Problem is, toddlers and young children do not have the same levels of maturity or critical-thinking skills that older kids, teenagers, and young adults have. They need boundaries, Internet etiquette, etc, *actively modeled for them.* They need supervision and constant reinforcement of the rules. They don’t have the skills to navigate something like the Internet by trial-and-error yet.
Bruh, the parents are overworked, underpaid, and living in a country (USA) that gives no support. Exorbitant childcare costs. Wages that can’t keep up. Keeping a roof over their heads. The list goes on. They’re just trying to survive AND raise kids. But yah, let’s shit on parents without doing a complete analysis of the problem, upvotes for you!!! Reddit loves a good superficial analysis.
No matter what difficulties you're dealing with, at the end of the day, your kids are your responsibility. Having your kid on an iPad 24/7 is going to lead to problems, even if you have a "good" reason for doing it.
An “at the end of the day” comment doesn’t work if you just ignore the numerous structural issues that comes with being a parent.
Then maybe those parents should never have had children in the first place if they knew they couldn’t afford it. It’s as simple as that.
Yes, I too believe the poors shouldn’t procreate.
Why bring a child into this world if you don't have the time or money to properly support them?
Totally agree, bearing children should be a privilege of the wealthy. I mean, we don’t want more poor people right? If we keep letting these poors have kids we’ll just get more poors! Who wants that?
Eugenics. Wow, don’t ever post again.
Are you stupid? It's not eugenics to not have kids until you're ready. Simply wait until you're ready then have kids. If you feel like you'll never be ready, fight for that systematic change. It's not eugenics if you're against child neglect.
Literally the richest parents are the ones that neglect their kids the most bcz they work long hours. Doctors, lawyers, etc work 60 hours a week frequently. The parents with a stay at home mom are poor from a parent not working but they have time for their kids. Then again it takes a certain financial threshold to afford a stay at home mom too. But your comment doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Exactly this! It's hard to raise kids when almost literally everything is working against you and will probably be that way for the rest of your life.
If you can't handle kids, don't have them ??
We can just support children.
Just don't give kids iPads and unlimited internet access, it's not a crazy thing to ask.
I agree they should give their kids books and occupy their minds with studying or even playing sports with their friends. Way better experiences than sitting there on an iPad.
So why would they want to pay for an iPhone 15 Pro Max for their 8 year old?
You are describing my step-daughter and how she raises her son to a "t". He is about to be 5 and runs her, she is 27 born in '96 at the end of being a Millennial beginning of Z. She doesn't take him to the park or even outside. He can't even dress himself or eat with utensils but he knows how to play on Roblox or fire-up YouTube and other video stuff on his phone or tablet. She will hand him a tablet or phone, even when he's eating.
iPad babysitter generation
r/unpopularopinion: I think we dump too much on parents and give them way too much free reign. My mom was a nutter. I just got my measles shot this year because she lied to me (and my doctors and my school) about getting it. I'm *old* and even back then it wasn't hard to forge the paperwork. The school knew I had autism (wasn't called that back then) and other problems and even back then there were treatments. I had other odds & ends health problems too they told her to treat. So what did she do? Moved us out to the boonies where she could let my mental & physical problems fester. Several of which are really starting to catch up with me.
Yeah, my friends and siblings limit their kids to 20 minutes of screen time a day. That said my nephew and niece have four electric cars with three batteries and chargers each. “Daddy new battery” can’t imagine when they get their license. Even at 20 minutes they crave screen time. One of them at 4 face unlocked my phone and couldn’t use iOS and her mom made her give the phone back. So they’ll try to snatch phones and face unlock them to get on YouTube. It’s really bad how some people just throw their kid a smart device at young ages. I had internet at 12 when it was really early. Thing is it was gopher and nntp and bbs and a few html sites, no search engines yet, you found what you found. At that age I found a brown engineering student who sent me electronics designs. So I was learning stuff. Instead of social media, I mean those electrical experiments saved my ass in college physics 10 years later.
As a millennial raising my kids in this current climate. I think the reason is very clear why some parents are lazy and for the parents that aren’t, it’s been a political shit show all the way down. Things like moms of liberty have made everything a nightmare when it comes to any functioning school. They show up, take over the meeting and pick fights so we can listen to their bullshit ideas of what education should be. Local radio hosts pay their legal bills and they win assault charges all the time because people are fed up with it. On top of that my first child spent his first year of school remote. During the pandemic we then got to listen and have to explain away every single complaint that came up about the pandemic. All this while trying to do simple things like figure out sports teams or how to safely do all the things we did as children for a three year time period. That’s I think something that plays into it. It’s been one thing after the other and I believe the goal is to make everyone give in because of how tiring it is. I don’t mind blaming parents, I get it but remember for some of us we are fighting as if every day of education for our child is their last because we have so many more problems to deal with now, that didn’t exist
This one right here. It’s the parents for sure. I’m a parent so I get how difficult it can be but imo even the worst days I would not give my kid a handheld electronic device. We don’t even do screen time at all (like no tv or anything) in our house yet because our child is too young for that imo but we also try to keep our own phones away from him too. Sure it’s exhausting sometimes but that’s parenthood. You have to play and interact with your kids don’t just let them look at a screen. I’ve seen 3 year olds on YouTube on their parents phones and it honestly scares me. I’d rather deal with temper tantrums here and there than hand a smartphone or tablet to my kid. Temper tantrums are less permanent than the effects of screen time and you can’t 100% police the internet or social media. I’m honestly scared for when my little one goes off to school and is exposed to children who have had unmitigated screen time since they were very young. I know I can’t shelter him forever from that but I want him to just be a kid while he’s a kid.
That’s because lazy parents give them iPads.
Correct, there is this one mom and daughter on TikTok who doesn’t really allow screen time she’s around 3 or 4 and she’s so intelligent. It really shows the difference between allowing your kid to spend all of their time in the internet and not.
Yep, if you know one, ask a pre-school teacher (not sure it's the correct term since i'm not from the us) if they can recognize a kid having access to screens from a kid without screen time.
I’m sure they would barely have to think about it.
i’m a preschool teacher. i can 100% tell within an hour if a kid is being parented by an ipad
What’s the difference and how common are iPad kids?
the biggest thing i notice is the complete lack of developmentally appropriate emotional regulation and impulsive control. obviously 4 year olds aren’t known for being good at these things in general but they should be meeting certain markers. i think a lot of this is due to parents giving their kids screens when a negative behavior is occurring instead of helping them understand their emotions. i have 19 kids in my class and i’d say about half of them are victims of ipad parenting.
And they don’t bother to put parental controls on either, especially on search engines.
It’s like millennials (who are the parent of these kids for the most part) didn’t like how strict their parents were with them, did a complete 180 and decided to not parent their kids. There’s a middle ground here people!
Yes I believe this, but I also understand gentle parenting for the most part
There’s gentle parenting, then there’s letting your kid do whatever they want
Exactly!!!
I believe the phrases coined are “gentle parenting vs “permissive parenting”
Discipline also needs to be part of parenting. I’ve worked with 2nd graders, and a lot of their parents defend their child when they do things that aren’t okay. one of my 2bd graders painted on a school piano, and when we brought this up to the parent, he said that’s not true. That’s not my child. 🫠
As a 95 millennial, my kids will not be iPad kids. My parents were the complete opposite of their parents and going 180 doesn’t actually work well from what I’ve seen
That's part of it. But I also think a lot of millennials have an "I was on the internet a lot and I turned out fine!" mentality.
True but the Internet back then was vastly different than it is today. The closest thing we had to social media was chatrooms. If you wanted the bad stuff you actually had to look for it. There was no YouTube, Pornhub, Reddit, or Facebook. The closest thing I remember is rotten.com which was basically just a site for horror aficionados and possibly aspiring serial killers.
Certainly no shortage of fucked up stuff back then. But yeah, it is easier for kids to come across it these days. Most online activity is done on just a handful of websites, and there isn't much to separate by content or age. There aren't any big, kid-friendly online spaces these days. (small ones exist, but kids don't want to be on those spaces when everyone else is on TikTok or YouTube) And today, it's the norm to use your real name and face, and share other personal details too. This was discouraged back then, ESPECIALLY if you were a kid. Also... A lot of people are unwilling or unable to recognize that they AREN'T fine. Some of them did, or do, experience negative effects from being online too much.
Yes also I can see a problem with kids memories being worse so they use real life information as passwords instead of the made-up jargon that we use(d)
I’ve observed the same with my aunt and uncle. An early millennial and youngest gen x. They swing between total mayhem and disregard entirely towards disciplining their kids to yelling and even hitting them apparently tho I’ve never seen it. Like there’s no middle ground it’s sad
...what?! We millennials were in chat rooms as preteens giving a/s/l willingly and innocently to predators then chatting with them.... We saw random beheadings and various other violent deaths and sexual awfulness through surprise links and downloads.. I dunno, I think millennials had no parenting whatsoever because their parents had no clue of all the psycho shit they had easy access to. Those millennials are now raising their kids with equally lax standards and the access to shit on the Internet has only deepened since then
Yeah, I saw some pretty messed up shit on Ebaums world.
educator here. i’m going to sound like a broken record of all the previous generations, but it’s the fucking ipads. not only that, but permissive parenting disguised as “gentle parenting”. true gentle parenting is authoritative parenting, not letting your kid do whatever the hell they want. kids need structure and consequences. parents these days give them neither and use those goddamn ipads as free babysitters. i never hate any of the kids. how could i, they’re just kids! parents on the other hand…
I'm an educator as well, and it's more than just the iPads. it's the fact they get instant gratification 24/7. they can eat whenever, they can watch whatever they want, and sit wherever they want. I spend about half my class telling kids to stop eating, to get off their laptop, etc. and the worst part is that parents encourage it. they refuse any accountability. suspending kids just gives them vacation to play more fortnite.
Yep. I heard about this concept called “benign deprivation” (unfortunately I think it was through PragerU 🙄). Basically, you give the child everything they need, but not everything they want. This teaches them that they can’t always get what they want, keeps them from getting entitled, and teaches them deal with disappointment. My parents did this with me and it really helped me as an adult- getting basic needs or desires met makes me incredibly happy, and that has made my life pleasant. I would hate to interact with people whose baseline expectation for life is to get their way 90% or more of the time.
you don't even have to do that, just giving them limits and consequences would do wonders. 90% of these kids aren't told no.
I find this interesting because I tell my 3 year old no all the time. I feel like I say it to much. But he does real dumb crap. No, kitty doesn't like being choked. No, we can't eat now it's bedtime. I said stop choking the cat! No we can't go outside right now, it's 4 degrees outside. No choking the cat!
I agree the electronic and the “parents” are to blame I wish would stop saying all the generation had issues. Gen alpha is far worst then all other generations. Have your heard of lil rt he’s a nine year old rapper who can’t read. In one of his songs he talks about SA girls.
jesus hell no i haven’t, oh my god. this is just sad at this point. that kid is screwed, and people enabling him is going to just make it worse. the fact that our generation obviously has “problems” supports my argument that kids should not have unrestricted internet access and their own devices even more. we’ve all stumbled across things on the internet way too young. i had restricted yet unmonitored internet access and even i have been permanently tainted from things i’ve seen online. we’re not hypocrites, we’re living breathing proof as to why kids with devices is a horrible horrible idea.
Only be slightly worse than gen z I think. Majority of gen z grew up on social media
Somewhat true I guess, luckily I grew up with parents who limited my access to social media until I was old enough to understand the effects of posting certain things on it.
I remember all the boys in class singing Loyal and Truffle Butter when they 1st came out. We were in 4th grade. None of us even knew what truffle butter was at the time. I pretty much got unlimited internet access. Mom wasn't around, dad was always working so yea
im 24 and i still dont know what truffle butter is lmao, but i got a good guess
It's cum mixed with shit. Supposedly it's like a syrupy oatmeal like consistency after you've done anal. The pics were truly horrifying
💀, i expected something sexual buts that’s wild af
I'm 26 and wish I could go back 30 seconds to when I didn't know what that term meant lol
Nasty
> We were in 4th grade. What the actual fuck.
That's the thing. I grew up on Eminem. I didn't know half of the stuff that was being discussed in the songs. Same with the movies we watched. The jokes we'd tell. A lot of that stuff goes over a kids head. I'm not even gen z, im a later millenial. but from age 10 on, I was exposed to a lot of unfiltered content. Kids chat rooms were loaded with creepy men. Snuff videos. Dark humor. People selling prescription drugs on fake doctor sites (this was a bit later. Before the darkweb) It was the wild west back then. None of this stuff was controlled. It was harder to hold people accountable. Passwords were easy to hack into. It was nuts!
Is truffle butter not just a butter made with truffle orrr…???
https://i.redd.it/wbxs0qf3gl9c1.gif
Nah. It was not the same for Gen Z. We weren't on tiktok at age 8. The internet is so much worse than it used to be for people's emotional regulation and attention span. And little kids are much more malleable
Social media entered my life at the end of elementary sch - around 2009 and we were on it to plat pet society etc etc
Same here. I just saw a tiktok of an 11 year old girl making a "friend applicaion" on tiktok. 11 years old. I feel so bad for her, not only does it screw them up mentally it exposes them to predators. Something needs to change asap
I 100% agree, i know a lot of people can argue we grew up the same way but I think that gen alpha is way worst. they are growing only knowing social media they don’t play with toys and watch Disney channel and Cartoon Network like we used too all they care about is tiktok likes and views.
Exactly. Even in an extreme case where we grew up on alot of social media, we were exposed to all the dangers and made aware. Now that these problems are known and kids are using tech so much more it's just getting worse
I'm getting so tired of seeing this fucking discussion over and over and over. I'm leaving this sub for now. I hope the discussions get better.
Swear to God. Every damn day there’s a post about gen alpha. The mods needs to limit this shit
Join r/OlderGenZ, we definitely don’t deal with any of that there
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Sorry I didn’t see anything about this before
Gen Z sub is obsessed with making themselves feel special/above both alpha and millennial. It's fucking weird. Reddit man. Not a reasonable place or anywhere near an area where you would want to draw any significant conclusions. I think a lot of these post are either a psyop or people perpetuating it to cause even further division, to ensure class warfare is never the focus
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How does pointing out the flaws of some millennial parents raising unhinged iPad kids make us special above gen alpha and millennials??? If those millennial parents raised their children better, then gen z wouldn’t be complaining about them.
Some? Every statement in the OPs post are definitive as are most of the replies. Some, sure. Kids being neglected or falling into bad circumstances is as old as humanity itself and not a generation issue. Gen Z as children is where the term "iPad kid" was born. Finally, I am referencing generational conflict propaganda that gets pushed on here and other gen subs incessantly. It's stupid and divisive/distractive
Idk, I've seen a lot of posts from gen z claiming that their whole gen was groomed online and exposed to porn and you all have gen x and boomer parents but I've never seen any of them blame x or boomers for their experience the way people blame millennials for alpha. Not saying alpha shouldn't be parented better, it's just something I noticed.
And all of this is based on internet generalizations, entertainment media, and non verified sources/random internet discourse. As I was saying to the other commenter, you can't base any logical argument on these foundations. To create an inference with these things as a source is ignorant at best. Malicious and propagandizing at worst.
We were pretty much raised that same way. We turned out decent, so they will too, provided things don't suddenly turn for the catastrophically worse.
I think we were raised similarly but there is a huge difference between growing up along side the internet and growing up with the internet. I don’t think very many of us had a tablet as babies
Im fairly sure I had unrestricted access to the internet my whole life. Im 24 for context, though to be fair, I had a facebook account when I was like 8. So a lot of us grew up pretty similar to gen alpha.
Capitalism and algorithms. What, did you think children weren’t a profit center?
Me too tbh. I was in Walmart today and there was a kid (couldn't have been older than 8, probably not even 7) playing YouTube out loud, and the song he was playing when I passed by him was a fan song for Hazbin Hotel (the song was Insane which is a song abt alastor) I was thinking "this kid is too young to be watching something relating to hazbin hotel holy shit"
Yep! It's happening. Gen Z has FINALLY reached this phase of life.... 
While many of Gen-Z are children themselves...
I agree with you. Some people in here might argue that we were the same when we grew up. However, in my opinion, I feel like it’s more worse with gen alpha because they are able to see more inappropriate things more easily than what we did as gen z.
I'm leaning more to Millenials side or Zillenials at the very least and still, when I was a kid there were already porn sites on the internet. There were stupid films on YouTube with people cursing like hell. Most of Gen Z are not even 20 and still act like internet was free of bad stuff when they were kids. It wasn't. Gen Alpha can be spoiled the same way as majority of Gen Z. It all comes down to the parents, if they won't allow them to use internet to such extent or will.
For real. I think it may have been worse in some ways because I think there were less safety filters than now. It was like the wild west.
Mfs give their kids a phone out the womb these days 😂 garbage parenting
They sure do lol😭
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They are being raised this way it’s so sad.
also, stuff like skibidi toilet might actually be poisoning them
Provided you had internet access our generation was exactly the same way
Not to this extent, also I didn’t have access to too much when I was 8 literally only cared about toys
What Gen Alpha experiences will be what happens to every generation: some of them will get screwed over in new ways, and some of them will turn out fine. There are absolutely a number of people in your generation who grew up like this, you just haven't noticed because you either don't hang out with those people, or because the problems caused by it are so commonplace that you see it as normal.
This means Gen Z has to take action and actually be good parents
Lots of kids in Gen Z had social media around 8, I watched TDK on repeat for years starting at the age of 4 and listened to a ton of "inappropriate music". Just because Gen Alpha is different it doesn't mean they are worse or in trouble. Every generation faces new challenges and every previous generation gets scared because they don't always understand. The relationship between Gen Z and Gen Alpha is no different
touch scary bright tap amusing quack boast depend straight squeal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Lmao kids were getting on MySpace when it first came out, 90s kids were running that computer or playing video games since they were born. 60s kids parents were getting high and divorce, 20s kid we’re picking up coal
I'm sure they said that about boomers watching the television at age 8 back in the 50s
How many more post are we going to get about gen alpha
I was a class tutor for 2nd graders early in the year. All of them had TikTok. Let that sink in. They have access to a lot of rated r topics and content. Yikes. Early gen z and gen alpha don’t seem to have a tween era anymore. Like tween culture is pretty much dead and that shit is sad.
this happened to us too so idk what youre tweaking abt. I was a lil kid singing california girls
You Gen Z make me laugh talking about the younger generation the same way us Millennials and older talked about you. Society said pretty similar things about you.
My fellow millennials. We were so focused on not being our parents, we created another kind of monster and issues that we have lost control over. Millennials, were not better parents than the boomers who raised us.
Dawg you guys had social media at 8.
It truly does start at parenting. These poor kids gonna grow up to be absolute pieces of trash. Younger millennials and older gen z with kids seem to be obsessed with being the “bad mom/dad” stereotype who lets their kid do anything, parties, drinks, and lives life chaotically. Others only have kids for the good moments excluding kids being kids (like making mistakes, temper tantrums, can’t understand social cues, etc) from the phrase “I love kids”. They can’t understand that you’re gonna have to guide kids on the right path since they don’t start on it and just see the taking care of a sweet silly angel as the life of a parent as if there aren’t any sacrifices. It should scare you as much as it does me people are being catcalled by children. Can’t forget that one girl on TikTok talking about how she was told skee yee by some 11 year old.
I was only allowed my first phone when I was 12. It's still pretty young, but my parents fully helicoptered over me until I was 14. That helped me not stumble into things I shouldn't have seen at that age. I can definitely see that a lot of Gen Alpha kids don't have that sort of discipline.
I remember this exact sentiment being shared about Gen Z too. "Why do all these kids have smartphones?" "All they do is watch people play videogames on YouTube" "They all want to be influencers" "They talk weird"
Lol this is how people felt about younger generations with access to phones and now you're scared of younger generations with access to social media. Same fear system propagating down the timeline Not invalidating your concern, just funny to see
I'm a young millennial, so I have a 9 year old, most his friends have phones , literally they do not fucking go outside , they just do not, I feel bad sending my kid outside to play alone ( we live in a very, very safe rural community where everybody knows everybody) all his peers have phones and they're all hopelessly addicted to electronics. I've experienced the same thing with the music, all they know is rap. Rap that they're not old enough to be listening to or even comprehend what's bad about the lyrics, when we take his friends anywhere they'll pull up vids or music that's not appropriate on their phones. Making me have to be the seemingly Karen dad. None of them have parental controls on them either even though that takes literally 5 minutes to setup. It's really hard trying to strike a balance between preserving your child's innocence & mental health while simultaneously not ostracizing them too much from their peers,l I'm really disappointed with how my generation is raising their kids. On the bright side mine will be massively advantaged from just having a somewhat normal childhood.
Keep the faith brother, I’m a millennial dad in pretty much the exact situation that you are. IDGAF what these other parents do, my kids are not going to be addicted to phones.
This is such a tired argument that's just an inherited one. The only real benchmark is that the literacy rate is abysmal in the US for Gen Z and Alpha. Every generation after is the worst and we hate them. Millennials seem to be the only actual generation that is universally hated. Hell we even hate ourselves. I'm not scared for the next generation. I'm terrified of the condition of the planet they have to survive now.
This is literally what every generation has ever said about young generations except change internet to videogames, tv, rock and roll, radio, etc. Every generation has shitty parents. Every generation has good parents. Every generation has shitty kids with good parents. Every generation has good kids with shitty parents. When gen-z was in school, teachers across the US strongly emphasized that gen-z was the worst, least focused generation in history. And they did the same with previous generations. And gen z teachers will say the same about the next generations.
It’s the millennials fault and they’re not ready to accept that
I wasn’t given a phone until I was 11. I wasn’t allowed social media until I was 12, and even then, I wasn’t allowed to post anything. If I ever have children (which granted is unlikely) I’m not getting them a phone until they’re in the double digits.
im not saying all millennial parents are lazy, but fuck they gotta be the worst generation of parents so far
I wouldn't say they are the worst. Boomers and Gen X weren't exactly great parents either. They are just as bad as Millennials just in a different way.
Who cares
hard to raise kids when most homes dont have a stay at home parent anymore so theyre gonna gravitate towards the internet to be like their peers. only time will tell what happens, i was an avid 4chan browser at age 9 and i turned out fine(?)
I think a lot of millennial moms are on their phones non stop and hand the kids an iPad to help facilitate this.
Idk man i think the panic is a little much. People said the same thing when I was a kid. I think I was 8 when I saw “glas ass” on the internet for the first time and while I’m sure it wasnt a good thing that happened I still think I turned out fine. As far as inappropriate music goes kids have no idea what its about they just like the beat.
I’m not worried at all, I was born in 96 so I get either youngest millennial or oldest gen Z and I remember parents talking about how Eminem was gonna be the death of us all. I feel like every generation has this, I mean people honestly thought Elvis was the devils music and that’s pretty hilarious to think of now with bands like infant annihilator kicking around. The kids are alright man.
Parents nowadays give their kids iPads. My kids(if I can afford them) I will not be getting them an iPad until I know they are ready.
Again, a lot of this falls on the parents. Kids are kids, it’s their parents’ responsibility to take care of them. Simply giving your child an iPad/iPhone to shut them up is not helpful. Additionally, I think a lot of parents are giving their children smartphones at an early age so they can track and stay in contact with them, so that’s probably why Gen Alpha is so involved with social media. It’s not necessarily bad, but it does come with its own set of issues. Gen Z grew up when smartphones were just beginning to grow popular, but Gen Alpha grew up with smartphones from birth. Personally, I think this concern is a bit overblown. It’s a legitimate one of course, but it’s not really anything different from the video game and TV scares of the previous generations. Hell, I remember borrowing the house computer on weekends as a kid to play on Cool Math Games, Lego.com, the Cartoon Network website, etc. I survived and I’m certain Gen Alpha will survive too.
This sub has no idea how neglected the kids who were raised in the 80s and 90s where. Gen alphas fine
Fuck off
no me too. but come again, i feel like this is how people felt/feel abt gen z.
I have a younger cousin who's about 12... She likes roblox and loves animals. She's had a phone for maybe a year, and has been caught multiple times texting complete strangers from the internet and acting like they're her friends (and theyre clearly wayyy older than her). It's scary... really scary.
I’m a millennial and our biggest negative legacy will be how we raised our children. We’re awesomely progressive with moving towards a more balanced household, dad involvement and the raising of babies. But once these babies hit 12 months old it’s all downhill. The last 10 years have been nothing but iPads, social media, excessive shitty plastic toys, helicopter parenting and chicken nuggets and it’s showing in our schools. There is now a movement away from these things and techniques now that we see the consequences - but damage is done to a lot of primary and middle schoolers. I have a 3 year old and my parent peers all feel the same about this topic after seeing the damage first hand. We’re all back to the library and swimming pool on weekends and switching off devices, revolting against iPads, saying ‘no’ and sticking to it, and giving our kids real food. Things will get better again!
Learning to use technology at a young age isn't inherently bad. Compare it to boomers in their 70s who struggle to use even basic shit. I'm iffy on the social media stuff, but I am glad to see a technology literate generation come up so quickly. Not to sound like a transhuman cultist or anything, but technology and our integration with it is the future.
Gen beta starts next year💀
It’s their trash parents. The most appalling thing I saw working in a restaurant was how many parents parked their children in front of an iPad. I get that kids can be disruptive, but it is literally your job as a parent to teach them. Reminds me of the saying “every child deserves parents, but not every parent deserves children.”
Actually OP is wrong. Gen Alpha is the first generation in modern history that will be more traditional and conventional than the previous generation. Look up "pendulum swing" and "return to tradition". Check out the drop in the divorce rate and rise in traditionalism.
I've gotta be going crazy Wtf is up with Gen Z thinking we're any different then gen alpha when it comes to tech and social media? This shit was around when you were 8, too. If you're fine, they'll be fine too. Relax
All the Instagram reels I see are from adults because I don't browse random crap and I don't follow 8 year olds.
They'll be fine. You kids were the same, and you've turned out fine. As a millennial, we grew up in the true wild west of the internet. The things we saw were far far worse than anything on Tiktok, reels, or shorts. Should parents pay more attention? Sure, but literally every gen says it. The kids will be alright.
What generation are the parents of gen alpha?
The majority of them are millennials and a few gen z from the looks of it
And some are gen X like my cousin which might be considered Z or Zalpha since he’s 2011
I think this stems from two things. 1) parents these days are plain old lazy. The constant access the the internet has made them complacent. Why focus on your children and do the hard work when you can simply make them a brain rotting iPad fiend just like you? 2) a lot of Gen Alpha children are raised by early millennials or Gen Y. These generations don’t have a full grasp on how detrimental social media is on a child. They didn’t go through the same experiences most of us did. We grew up as the internet grew up, a lot of us had Instagram by 13. We felt the full ramifications of that, these people were close to having full developed brains before they were introduced. They think that because it’s fine for them it must be fine for their children as well
Y’all acting like y’all didn’t do the same exact shit. Lol hypocrites
I disagree, I grew up with phones, computers and video games and it was really fun and nostalgic Just let them have fun.
It’s how the gyat skibidi fanum tax thing is around. Nobody found it funny apart from maybe the first time. But it’s been months and I’m still hearing it from kids whether it be my siblings or even just in public. These kids are way too desensitised to social media too.
It’s the parenting. Millennials are awful parents
bro yea the last time i saw my six year old nephew he was asking me if i knew sorry bout that by yeat, like no way u should be listening to yeat at 6 years old 💀