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The OP relates her own experience, which I'm sure is valid but was by no means universal. The 1970s weren't all that and a bag of chips for many people in many places.
Many large cities - including Dallas, where I lived, and NYC, where close friends lived & I visited - underwent massive urban decay during the 1970s.
I have a question: Would you say this younger generation has a much harder time accepting opposing viewpoints and criticism compared to older ones?
I'm an older millennial, and I am flabbergasted at just how whiny they are, how they need their ridiculous "safe spaces" in college, talk about how "triggered" they are, and seemingly outrage over any and everything.
When I was young I told myself I'd never be one of those "things were better in the good old days" old guys and I've pretty much stuck with that. The exception would be these crazy mass shootings but that's only one of many issues we face.
There were problems then, they are problems now. Just different problems. Cancer meant almost certain death back then, good luck if you were black or gay, woman had little to no chance of a meaningful career. No they were asked to get more coffee as men made comments about their ass (or worse) as they walked away.
I get sick of the belief that the world is full of more bad guys now. It's not. There were bad guys then, they are there now. We just hear more stories with the advent of the internet. We see the stories in real life simply because everyone has a cell phone, that does not mean this stuff didn't happen in 193 because it did.
I have a question: Would you say this younger generation has a much harder time accepting opposing viewpoints and criticism compared to older ones?
I'm an older millennial, and I am flabbergasted at just how whiny they are, how they need their ridiculous "safe spaces" in college, talk about how "triggered" they are, and seemingly outrage over any and everything.
It might be aggravating, but you know - maybe people are finally able to express themselves. Before we had to shut up and color. How many people just never succeeded in life because they were told to shut up?
I think back at all the kids that started school with me in the 1960s. So many dropped out and just disappeared.
Teachers were mean back then. They weren't mean to me, but others over the years have told me stories and it opened my eyes. We are all not the same.
Heck i ask myself when i hear parents complaining and whining - how can you have kids and a spouse and be unhappy? I thought that was the end all to be all or however you say that. But there you are - unhappy married parents.
I see lots of threads on different forums wondering what has happened. Why do we have mass shootings? Why do kids take drugs? Why are people so hateful?
It's not the same world we grew up in and people wonder why. I don't have the answers.
Too much tv? Too many violent video games? Social media? Lots of people seem to think it started with the internet and maybe they're right. We've mostly gone downhill, down to the lowest denominator.
I can say that I have never felt unsafe--well maybe once or twice at night in a parking garage, but mostly not unsafe in towns walking around or driving. But I know it's not really as safe as it used to be. Just read the news or watch the local news on tv. People didn't used to do things like the stuff you hear about now. If they did, it was much more rare. I can remember when I first heard of a home invasion and I think it was in the 1980s in our town--first one we ever had. After that people started locking their doors, even their car doors when the car was in the driveway.
I think what we see now is a combination of tv, video games and the internet as you mention, but most importantly bad parenting. I believe there are just too many parents who just don't teach their kids right from wrong and in too many cases, the parents are committing the wrong themselves.
Too many parents just let the kids do what they want and never instill a sense of decency or discipline into their kids. Kids end up with their own ideas, because their parents simply don't communicate with their kids. These kids turn into adults and they can't control themselves when things don't go their way.
Overall as a country we have become too lenient. It is not just the parents, it is also the justice system and the schools. This has bred a lack of respect for authority. And that lack of respect for authority often is bred by our so-called leaders because they are quite often involved in bad behavior. No names but I refer to politicians having affairs or involved in corruption, priests and their sexual scandals, teachers preying on kids, etc. Sports stars and the wrongs they sometimes commit. And with cable tv and the web, we all know about it very quickly.
Not much has changed during my lifetime, it’s now more publicized and instantly available nationwide. Parents knew what neighbor to trust and whom to keep children away from. Not many young girls that did not encounter some pervert during their young life's, but it was not talked about.
The shooting is not by mentally ill people, they are by your brothers and uncles. They are the result of a frightening American society afraid of the bogeyman, not realizing we are the bogeyman. We arm our self because everyone else is armed. I don’t fear the burglar, I fear the law-abiding citizen who is itching to be a hero.
Thank you, NRA for making this such a wonderful and safe place to live.
Deflecting responsibility to where it doesn't belong is part of the problem with the country today.
Well I don't miss my idealism...for me it was primarily due to naivete and hubris. Over the years I've gained wisdom, patience, and the ability to see that there is much more than black and white, many, many shades of grey. I do miss my youthful body though.
I see the changes in America as happening in "inflection points."
The first inflection was around 1920 -- generally moving from a frontier and rural society (see President Eisenhower's autobiography "At Ease," describing his 1890s childhood in Kansas) to a more orderly, urban society. This was encouraged as electricity and radio arrived, speeding the growth of cities.
The second inflection was the events of the 1960s -- the abandonment of central cities to suburbia. This had both sociological causes (desegregation, baby boom) and technical causes (interstate highways, air conditioning).
For people who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, the move to the suburbs was done partly to recreate the safe, child-centric neighborhoods they remembered. Consequently, those offspring (those of us born, say from 1950 to 1970) share a nostalgia for our peaceful suburban childhood that also recalls what our parents remember from leafy city districts and small towns forty years earlier.
I have a question: Would you say this younger generation has a much harder time accepting opposing viewpoints and criticism compared to older ones?
No.
What is operative, and even pervasive, is a culture of self-censorship and of fear of saying something offensive. This is promulgated by our institutions; not by individuals.
By way of example, recently I taught a class as adjunct-faculty at our local university. As a condition of my employment, I had to click-through all sorts of online training modules... about the very same safe-spaces that you mention. The terminology was exactly in concordance with the most blatant stereotypes about modern life and the supposed sensitivities of modern youth. But my actual students evinced none of that behavior. They were interested in understanding the material, in earning good grades, in moving on to the next phase of their education or career. The biggest "triggering" that they felt was when they arrived unprepared to take an exam, and felt guilty in having short-changed their own selves. It had nothing to do with politics, gender, sexual preferences, race or any other wedge-issue.
From my vantage point, today's youth is neither revolutionary (in the sense of protesting, or opposing authority) nor emotionally fragile. Each generation much resembles the prior. What is different, is the institutional conventions imposed on us all.
A better question to ask would be, "why has the institutional vocabulary changed so much"?
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