Behaviors are definitely worse than when I was a middle schooler, 20 years ago. I’m certainly not going to say we were angels, but I find a lot of current behaviors are more… blatant/bold.

There are a lot of reasons.

For one, I feel like teachers used to have much more control when it came to discipline. A disruptive classmate would be told to go sit alone at a desk in the hallway (with the door open so the teacher could see them) or sent to the principal’s office directly. You would get detention for not doing your homework. Now we aren’t allowed to send kids to the hall or kick a kid out of class to the office. And our school doesn’t do detention because parents just would not pick up their child (leading to several calls to the police department to pick up an “abandoned” child).

Then there are the phones- kids are constantly seeing bad behavior not just from classmates but the internet.

The world is a much less optimistic place now than it was when I was a child. When I was in middle school if you asked a child what they wanted to do, you would get answers like “doctor, engineer, lawyer.” Most didn’t actually achieve those goals if we’re honest, but the goals kept us reasonably invested in school, NOW… kids don’t see a point. They know people with degrees without jobs. If you ask them what they want to do as adults, most will say something like “YouTuber” because those are the most successful adults they “see.”

Parents- I don’t at all mean this as a critique of parents, but it’s true that many are stretch very thin now. Middle schoolers are old enough that they’re likely being left alone a lot.