I just finished reading "The Coddling of the American Mind", and it goes into the subject pretty well. A lot of it stems from parents not letting their kids be independent, so they never learn to deal with disagreements from dealing with other kids, then colleges cave to whatever demands they have because they just want to collect tuition money.
> Anne Helen Petersen: There are two major factors. The first is conceiving of children as mini-adults—trying to cultivate behaviors, postures, and skills that are associated with adults, like being able to carry on conversations with adults or advocating for themselves when they feel something is unfair. I think we often admire that sort of precociousness without understanding what’s lost when you cultivate that in a child. The other component is thinking of childhood as a means to an end, and that end is getting into a good college. So instead of viewing childhood as simply childhood, parents are thinking, How can these various experiences—everything from playdates to piano lessons—lead to this larger résumé-building path to college?
> When childhood is treated that way, it can eliminate space for the formation of personality, independence, or confidence. Anything not oriented toward that goal of college—things like hobbies—gets lost. One of the saddest things I heard when talking to many Millennials is that when they reach a point of exhaustion with work, lift their head up, and look around them, they're like, What else is there? Do I have a personality? Do I know what I like? There's no there there, other than their ability to work, and I think that's really difficult.
> The first is conceiving of children as mini-adults
Or it's opposite.
Children recently get so overprotected (eg they no longer can go walk in the forest alone for example), so when they reach 20, they are still children mentally, they cannot stand for themselves, and they expect protection from employee, government, society even when they hear something offensive (which is a lot).
I'm 40 and have worked with plenty of people in their early 20s, one engineer who joined my company at 19. They seem completely well adjusted, smart, eager to grow and learn, and the only distinct difference I notice which maybe could moonlight as seeing them as annoying is that they ask for raises, are demanding, and know what they deserve and won't deal with bullshit.
Those are great features, and I've learned so much from the younger people I work with that I really don't get this "entitled child-like millenial/zennial" meme that keeps going on.
This doesn't seem to be a problem in tech, maybe it's in other more mainstream industries?
the article is literally about people in tech, on top of that spotify, youtube, twitter google all having their issues with handling dissenting opinions.
I get that - I was arguing that dealing with dissenting opinions has nothing to do with the age/generation of the people.
I think it has more to do with corporate structures set up to look like democracies when they absolutely are not. That's not the IC's fault, it's the company's so they should have to figure it out.
I mean lack of protection for employment seems to be the essence of cancel culture. I suspect that this overprotection of children stems from the (often unrelated) fears of the parent, such as lack of social welfare and social services seen in other countries.
The world is pretty offensive if you listen to what people get offended by, like police shootings.
This whole panic about "sheltered millenials" or whatever seems to be projected from boomers (and older) who refuse to admit how poorly society functions compared to the idealistic but anemic view through the lens of private media (universally owned and operated by older generations).
