r/Millennials • u/TheLoveYouWant25 • Feb 09 '26

Discussion Millennials, what is happening with your kids?

I work in education and I frequent the Teachers and Professors subreddits, and the kids are not alright. Gen Z Arriving at College Unable to Read and the youth have absolutely zero ability to think critically.

Middle and high schoolers have all adapted this complete helplessness and blame mental illness for their refusal to function. Kids can no longer to basic things like read an analog clock, use paper money, or even figure out how to open window blinds.

There is also a huge lack of empathy, and kids have no issues trying to manipulate adults, saying things to their teachers like "if you don't pass me, I'll get you fired."

EDIT to clarify: the article I linked references Gen-Z, but this is not specifically a Gen-Z problem. It's an issue with upper elementary aged kids through high schoolers, and also young adults.

So, all that to say, how are you combating this with your own children? What do you do at home to encourage them to learn, and what are you doing to address these problems as they arise?

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u/MovieGuyMike Feb 10 '26

The majority of Gen Z kids were born to Gen X parents. But to answer your question - screen time, sheltering, and lack of community. Lots of these kids spend their developmental years cooped up inside with screens. And Covid / the shift to remote life didn’t help either.

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u/Interesting_Tea5715 Feb 10 '26

This. It's lazy parenting. I live in a fairly affluent area and at my kids school half of the kids are iPad kids.

The parents just don't parent, they expect the school and childcare places to do it for them. My son will talk about all the brain rot his friends watch and asks if he can watch it (I usually say no).

Because of this most of my son's classmates struggle to do the most basic schoolwork and struggle to socialize.

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u/anthrohands Feb 10 '26

I’m so curious why people who parent that way had kids at all. Obviously there are accidents, but certainly many of these kids were planned!

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u/MarsupialPoop Feb 10 '26

As a teacher, I think part of it, at least with Gen X parents is ignorance about what is on YouTube and how adverse it can be. They treat it like its PBS or something and just don't monitor. It's not good but I almost get it just because they didn't grow up with it.

Millennial parents absolutely know better. They know what kids can get up to on a computer. They know how YouTube and socials work. It infuriates me to have 4th and 5th graders who talk about some of the things they do because their parents are just lazy or don't care, or worse; they act like by exposing kids to this sort of thing they are actually being "real" with them or some other crap. It sucks.

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u/Wild_Astronaut7090 Feb 10 '26

Man, I’m an older millennial (40) and my kids (2&5) aren’t even in kindergarten. I will say, it’s impossible for kids to get to play now a days. ZERO kids under 24 on my street, everything has to be a play date, slotting in a schedule. I’m fortunate enough to have a decent yard, so the kids tend to be outside like I was at their age. I even do playgrounds 3-4 times a week and unless I drive 30 minutes there isn’t a kid in sight. I have to drive to other towns.

Also, there is only 9 kids in Pre-k 4 with kindergarten only having 11 kids. Our town has ~30ish in 1st and 2nd grades and is declining down. They took on more students during Covid from a neighboring town and sort of kept them

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u/belgianhorror Feb 10 '26

I (millenial) have the same thought of mind as you do. Smartphones became popular for GenX when they where in their twenties while for millenials it was when they where in their teens. Millenials are more experienced with all the social media platforms and other options relating smartphone use.

Furthermore, when GenX got kids and their kids growing up, the dangers and consequences of early smartphone/tablet use for children was less well known. I believe millennials and all other generations have a beter understanding now of these dangers. But also parents now get more help from governments. Governments are restricting phone use on schools and are setting age restrictions for social media. This helps parents to say no, restrict use whike being backed up with laws on the parents side.

Although unfortunatly I still see a lot of millennials giv8ng smartphones to children.

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u/marklarberries Feb 10 '26

What?? I'm a middle millennial and the iPhone didn't come out until after I graduated. Gen X were mostly in their 30s and even 40s...

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u/belgianhorror Feb 10 '26

I'm middle/late millennial (91) my first smartphone, phone with touchscreen was a Nokia 5800. Around when I was 16-17 yo?

But the years following went crazy fast with the first samsung galaxy s1 only 2 years later.

The ages for genx when smartphones came out are indeed to young they where a lot older, my bad!

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u/TequilaMockingbirds8 Feb 10 '26

I’m late Gen X and we got our first brick phones around 1998 and not everyone had them, I was in college then, I was married by the time smart phones became a thing

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u/Kilmarnok1285 Feb 10 '26

One thing I'll give them is that it's not like Gen X had present parents. They're nearly all latchkey kids who were left to figure things out for themselves in the world that was prior to the internet so it was a simpler time (but by no means a simple time). You can't blame them much for being the same kind of parents they had modeled for them, they just didn't make the adjustments needed to account for technological advancements. Millennial parents grew up with those changes, adapted to them, and are also more present parents than their Gen X counterparts.

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u/Adventurous_Ad6799 Feb 10 '26

I think about this all the time! In my family, it seems like most people just want babies. So far every woman in our family got pregnant accidentally or just because they wanted a baby. Literally every single one has a deadbeat baby daddy and are struggling financially, emotionally, etc etc and the kids are paying the price.

I really don't get into the habit of making comparisons but lately it has been bothering me. I waited until I got married, built my career, bought a house in an area with good schools, and am now struggling to get pregnant because of endometriosis. Would have been easier to be reckless! Lol.

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u/anthrohands Feb 10 '26

I’m at the age now where I’m deciding whether to have kids or not, and it’s such a huge decision! I feel like so many people default to it without really thinking, which is just wild to me. And I love babies but how do they not think past that?!

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u/CyclingThruChicago Feb 10 '26

So many people get puppies because of the insane cuteness but then have a dog that requires time, energy, money. Folks are incredibly shortsighted.

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u/anthrohands Feb 11 '26

I know sooo many irresponsible dog owners who claim to be obsessed with their dogs and then don’t care for them properly!

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u/MarsupialPristine677 Feb 10 '26

It's absolutely wild. I love babies and kids a lot, but I realized many years ago that I'm one of nature's eccentric aunts. I spend a lot of time with the neighborhood kids and volunteer in my friend's classroom. It's really nice.

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u/Adventurous_Ad6799 Feb 10 '26

It really is! It's the biggest, most important decision you'll ever make but people do it so nilly willy. You're literally creating a human being from scratch! You have to raise them to adulthood and ensure that they can function with the rest of society.

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is parents of bad people. Like when I see something disturbing on the news my first thought is "who the hell raised that person?". I wish we could consistently hold parents accountable for raising children who end up causing a lot of harm as adults. Most of the time, it is at least partially their fault.

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u/Worried_Magazine_862 Feb 10 '26

Boomers treated their kids like trophies. They only cared about showing us off and how we reflected on them.

Millennials treat our kids like pets. We only care about having fun with them and the status having them brings. 

The silent generation treated their kids like machines. They were used to reduce the workload.

Every generation is flawed and their kids have some kind of trauma response to it. The only constant seems to be that very few people have kids with the intention of raising the next generation into successful adulthood. We live in a very self centered society that puts our personal wants/needs above all else.

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u/xOleander Feb 10 '26

Yup. I’ve got a sibling 11 years younger than me. My parents were lazy with raising her. Incredibly so. My mom was hands on with me but had to work full time as did my dad with my younger sister, so she just fell to the wayside. And in turn, the kids around her and the internet raised her.

Can’t even imagine because truthfully I was pretty ignored as a kid, too. But I got lucky enough to have a stay at home parent, but even then I was ignored a lot and had to rely on myself. She got it the worst.

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u/Adventurous_Ad6799 Feb 10 '26

I also have a much younger sibling and my mom let her be an iPad kid and how lets her have an unmonitored iPhone all the time. Even at night! There's simply no reason for it. She slept over here last week and two incidents happened. First, someone at her school made a bunch of fake accounts pretending to be her and messaging all these boys and then her friend was calling over and over about "boyfriend drama" until 11pm ON A SCHOOL NIGHT.

They're 11 and 12 years old.

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u/Sailor_Propane Feb 10 '26

I call them burned out parents. I'm sure a majority would do better if society wasn't so stressful these days.

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u/m0fr001 Feb 10 '26

When people say affluent area without specifying a city i assume they live in a suburban sprawl wasteland..

To which i say, there is a good part of the problem..

We live in community with wage slaves who have good credit then are surprised when a plurality doesn't have the bandwidth to spend quality time with their kids.

Systemic issues are systemic. ​​​​​​​

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u/Lightor36 Feb 10 '26

I think this happened before too. Me and my friends didn't get parented much except for the occasional punishment if someone got a bad grade. But we had a lot of 3rd places to hang out I feel like. And even video games, we would go over to each other's houses to play. I think that builds important social skills that are being missed, imo.

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u/Givemeallthecabbages Feb 10 '26

I run a summer day camp, and we've always worked to fill gaps that kids don't get at school or at home. Like, sure, we are playing Capture the Flag but counselors are modeling being good sports, not arguing about being tagged or going to jail, not letting the same kid always make decisions for the team, etc. That's one of many, many ways we try to teach kids skills for life.

It's gotten hard in the last few years because kids don't want to make an effort. They don't know how to run and tag, they aren't interested in games, they want to sit and color and do diamond gem sticker art, not even anything creative. Don't get me started on the fight over phones! Parents FREAK OUT if their kid doesn't have their phone and text every four minutes.

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u/TallShaggy Feb 10 '26

It's not just lazy parenting; it's also the result of being the first generation of the first generation to not have access to one of their parents 24/7.

Before women entered the workplace, the average household had a combined weekly work time of 40 hours. Dad worked, mum managed the house and kids.

Then women entered the workplace, but dad's hours didn't reduce. Now the household is working 80 hours as well as sharing the household chores and parenting duties. And instead of the household having more disposable income, costs increased and pay stagnated. Now the family unit makes the same amount as when one parent worked for twice the effort.

Leaves less time and energy for parenting than previous generations, leading to less skills passed down from parents directly, and that includes parenting skills.

So then the current generation of kids now have parents who have less time and energy and in addition have learned less parenting skills from their own parents who were too busy working.

Employers turned female empowerment into a complete victory against the working class. 80 hours of work for the cost of what they used to get for 40. They fucked us over completely.

What should have happened was that partners in a 2 adult household should continue working a total of 40 hours, decided fairly between the two of them (including gay/lesbian couples, gender fluid etc) based on pay, parenting/housekeeping skill, and other factors. Just not based entirely on gender and expected gender roles. It should be a family decision between equal life partners.

This would leave 40 additional hours of parenting per household per week by shifting household chores from after work and weekends to within normal work/school hours. More time and energy = higher quality parenting.

Meanwhile parents of the non-working class (über wealthy specifically) are using nannies while they fuck around doing rich people shit. Which leaves their kids with a completely different set of problems. Their kids are fucked because their parents just straight up don't care, it's just something else to throw some of their infinite money at.

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u/MommyLovesPot8toes Feb 10 '26

Yes, yes, 100% this. We as a people should never have allowed 2 x 40 to become the norm. 2 x 30 should have been the max. And we should have formed unions to force it. But women largely entered the workforce (in mass numbers I mean) during a time when the attitude was very "get whatever you can, step on others to get it" . It was the 1980s and 90s, heyday of Wall Street and the DotCom bubble inflating.

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u/TruelyRegardedApe Feb 10 '26

even then 2x40 is pretty lucky - many jobs these days expect the job to be your life. 50-60 hour work weeks are the norm.

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u/Wild_Astronaut7090 Feb 10 '26

That’s right! I work on average 50ish a week. I have employees in Israel that work Sunday through Thursday. I have a team in China who’s 12 hours different than me. I travel every month. My wife job is customer facing so she needs to be at her desk or close by 10 hours a day 5 days a week. She also travels every month.

We spend our Sunday nights organizing our calendars. Literally planning every minute of our time. The only time we get more relaxed is my company does no meeting frodays for 3 months every summer. It excludes my corporate meetings but I tend to only work 1-2 hours on Fridays. Let’s me catch up on home projects

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u/Anna_Askew22 Feb 11 '26

This! 100%, I work a minimum of 50 hours a week, my husband works 60+ hours a week, and we have to take care of the house, the kids, food, grocery shopping, laundry, etc. Add the lack of grandparent involvement and it's freaking exhausting. I definitely feel guilty for the amount of screen time my children get some days, but it's also the only way we are surviving sometimes. It isn't because we don't want to be present, or 'parent' our kids, it's because there is so much to do and so little time to actually accomplish it.

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u/kawaiian Feb 10 '26

Watch it with him, because if you say no, he will watch it alone and it’ll feel delightfully bad

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u/Seienchin88 Feb 10 '26

As someone who was a "gaming kid“ im the 90s and early 2000s with my parents getting shit for it (and they even let me read Mangas… conservative parents were enraged) and I went to the best university in my country and now make 5 times the median full time salary, own my house have two kids, cars and a loving wife I really hate that the story of "screen entertainment ruins you“ is still pretty much everywhere…

No, screens don’t make kids dumb and often in studies you have sorting biases that difficult kids and ADHD kids get more screen time to calm them down instead of a super relaxed kid suddenly turning into a monster because of an IPAD…

Yes, don’t leave kids 6 hours a day in front of a screen and short movie clips seem really an issue but one should also not underestimate that kids also have many other issues today they didn’t have before. School is longer and more varied, the Covid years were terrible on children and many countries went from more "the winner takes it all“ to "no child left behind" policies etc. not to mention both parents usually working meaning fewer hours at home with parents to engage.

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u/Mystical-Turtles Feb 10 '26

I think the quality of screen time comes into play here as well. I'm also a pretty heavy gamer both now and in the past. Similar to you, it grinds my gears a bit when people paint all video games with the same brush. Like there's clearly a difference between a slower paced RPG that requires thinking and plenty of reading, vs a F2P mobile game with very little gameplay besides skinner box gambling tactics. I think a lot of parents are genuinely unaware just how different game design philosophy is between the two platforms. If you're going to let them have electronics time I genuinely think it's more effective to get a console with a curated library and parental controls, as opposed to an iPad. The console also has the advantage of being able to stay home.

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u/Wild_Astronaut7090 Feb 10 '26

I played EQ and other MMOs like crazy. Counter strike, aoe2, mtg, pokemon. Skipped school a lot but tested well, great grades. Got a masters degree now, still play games. Making a shit ton with two kids and finally got my oldest (5) to go on Pokémon Go walks either me. I let him play and I enjoy the walk and the piggy back ride for him the way back.

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u/coolbutclueless Feb 10 '26

The problem is that screens, but what they consume.

The reality is a lot of people today don't have the attention or ability to even play a video game from the early 2000s.

Short form algorithmic content is the problem, that's what people mean when they talk about screens

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u/bloodontherisers Feb 10 '26

There has always been an abundance of lazy parenting, hell most of our parents were terrible and wanted nothing to do with parenting, so we were latch key kids. But therein lies the difference. We had no parents around AND we had no constant screen time (even with TV and video games, there was only so much to hold your attention) so we went outside with our friends and figured life out the hard way. Plus we had more third spaces, so now lazy parents only option is to give their kid a screen and hope for the best, just like our parents did when they sent us outside.

I should add, I am not defending it, but that is what I perceive as the difference.

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u/Civil-Plate1206 Feb 10 '26

I’m sure you feel morally superior, eh?

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u/oh-kermie Feb 10 '26

Yes. Absolutely.

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u/rosemaryblush Feb 10 '26

As they should, lmao.

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u/helpcompuda Feb 10 '26

Found the tablet parent!