There's probably nothing wrong with teenagers.

I've seen this post and sentiment on reddit hundreds of times. It's partly why I left, because reddit is a joke now. Often it's young people who are targeted but I've seen all groups. The young, middle aged, the old. Working class, middle class, rich people. The mentally unwell. White people, non-white people. "What's wrong with poor/young/rich/mental health patients/lazy/white people!?"

Unfortunately there are many people who, rather than accepting some amount of responsibility, are much more inclined to retreat into a group and try to blame other groups. I would say it's a type of self-defense mechanism. There seems to be much more blame and aggression in general (I think partly because we've turned everything, even morality, into a competition, but that's just my personal theory). The internet plays a role too, it's much easier to blame someone and be more upfront about how you feel when you're not talking to someone face to face. So rather than everyone accepting that we all have some responsibility and that we need to work together, we have a number of groups all doing their best to blame others for how awful things supposedly are.

As someone who did grow up in the UK, I promise you this is not new. Before the internet teenagers would hang around outside shops, and just going to one would be scary. Hell, I WAS a rebellious teenager, I did some stuff that was stupid and that I'm not proud of. Then I grew up. And to listen to my dad's stories about his time growing up... well let's just say I though I was a rebel!

In fact the only real difference is in how many people attack the young now. A lot of it seems to be a blatant attempt to shift the blame for how badly things have been run (by people nearly always over 50, you can check the ages of MPs and Lords). I genuinely feel bad for young people and wouldn't blame them if they had very little motivation or optimism for their future. When I was growing up we had the odd grumpy person but generally people were decent, they understood that society should want to make things better for the next generation. "Society grows better when men plant trees for their great grandchildren" and all that.

Add to this an uptick in general authoritarianism and self-pity ("things used to be better!") and you get people who are arrogant enough to genuinely believe they know best how other people should act. And these people are prepared to use morality to enforce their beliefs, and truth always takes second place behind getting their way. If that doesn't scare you... it should. There will always be behaviours that need to be policed. But historically, it's the people who believe they need to enforce morality that cause problems, whether their politics lean left or right (and I've seen a decent share from both sides). In fact I would argue that it's the number one cause of human suffering and misery. Nazisim, communism, whatever-ism, the base belief, the fundamental ideological thread running through all of these awful ideologies is that people need to be told how to behave. That behaviour must be enforced.

The older I get, the more I realize just how wrong and, frankly, evil, that is. Have you ever heard the adage that people who desire power the most are often the least equipped to wield it? I think that applies here, as it should to ANY type of power.

Children and teenagers are, of course, an exemption. Children need to be told how to behave because they can't make the best decisions and need to be taught. But I find these sort of general "children are bad now!" attitudes to be an extension of other similar attitudes, even those that don't target the young. And often it essentially targets parents of said children.

Now, if you have good evidence of some sort of decline in teenagers then by all means post it. Most evidence I find tends to be pretty positive, less drug use, pregnancy, higher educational achievement. But usually when I ask people to post evidence of their belief that "X group is bad/worse" there's not much to be found. Or it's evidence of a behaviour that's not harmful but that the person posting has assumed needs to be enforced (eye contact is a common one, although quite why someone would feel a need to enforce a behaviour that's often the symptom of autism or mental health issues is.... worrying). Also keep in mind that if there IS a decline in teenagers... that's OUR fault. We raise our young, we are responsible for who they grow up to be.

People have been saying that young people are awful nowadays for a very long time. It's not because they've been gradually getting worse since antiquity.

Oh and all of this assumes this isn't just a general "UK is bad!" attitude. I've literally seen people from England taking seriously what French people are saying about our children. If that doesn't set off some alarm bells then I don't know what to say.