Writer Jake Hunn keeps it real when discussing the corruption of America’s youth
By: JAKE HUNN
Opinions Editor
“I find it harder and harder to resist the urge to run up to these kids and tell them, ‘nothing you’re doing matters at all, have fun at ACTs”— one of many wisecracks made by a close friend and I while eating at a diner filled with “degenerate high school students” fighting a battle in which the loudest idiot wins the attention of every girl in the building, all seemingly dressed to compete for Julia Roberts’ role in “Pretty Woman.” Here I am at twenty years old already asking myself, “What the hell is wrong with kids these days?” While everyone poses this question at some point in life, there is no denying that kids are becoming shittier and shittier at a younger age. Perhaps the question should be, why are kids turning out in such a way?
Let us start with the number one suspect in corrupting America’s youth: the Internet. Who thought that constant and immediate access to virtually any information would be a positive commodity in the lives of developing children? There are some things that kids need to learn on their own or from their parents. Being deprived of certain “rites of passage” can alter a person’s sense of growth. To provide an example, I scowl every time I am subjected to a sitcom “coming of age” montages— primarily because I learned how to shave, tie a tie and use a laundromat from Google.
Who else is to blame for the dwindling intelligence of our country’s teenagers? Let us try on downright ignorant parents for size. After all, in most cases careless parents are responsible for kids even having access to information not suitable for children in the first place. The responsibility of limiting what kind of access young people have to the web falls on parents.
And of course, how could I forget to point a finger at the media in general for turning the youth into an intellectual cesspool? Today’s youth is constantly being marketed to through methods of self-shame. Teenagers are made to feel as if they are flawed and by consuming they can be fixed. Such deception leads young people to act out in ways that defy the age-old reality that you cannot always get what you want.
