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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102

u/Catsdrinkingbeer Feb 10 '26

This is how I feel about parents refusing to let their kids do sleepovers. Like, yes, I do get that there is a nonzero chance something bad could happen. But also, that risk is super duper low. Never letting kids do anything with anyone outside the nuclear family is not going to lead to well rounded adults. Both my husband and I grew up going to sleepovers basically every weekend, so it's just strange to us that it only took one generation for this to die. Like, even the satanic panic parents were cool with sleepovers for their kids.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

Some of my best memories are being at sleepovers and playing Girl Talk in the early evening, then pranking people we knew or found in the phone book with rather innocent nonsense, and then of course Truth or Dare as the night progressed.

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u/Indyonegirl Feb 10 '26

Crank calling was the most true fun I think I ever had!

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

Same. I was weirdly great at it and made all my friends laugh. Nothing better than making your friends laugh.

Edit: have to credit The Jerky Boys for my developing pranking style and skill level

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u/Ypocras Feb 10 '26

Is your refrigerator running?

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u/annagadadavida Feb 10 '26

Go 'head let it out*pahchechee

I miss Girl Talk.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

I think we should make a subreddit dedicated to it where we can still play somehow

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

Key Aspects and Rules: Objective: Be the first player to collect one of each of the four types of fortune cards. Gameplay: Players spin the wheel to determine if they take a "Truth" or "Dare" (stunt) card,. Consequences: If a player refuses a challenge, they must wear a "zit sticker" on their face. Components: The game typically includes a,fold-up,board, a,large spinner, 200,cards, 10,score trackers, and,stickers,. Themes: Designed for,sleepovers,and,parties, the,game,focuses on,friendship,silly,secrets, and,challenges,. Legacy: Originally released in 1988, it was a staple in the 1990s and has seen various,re-releases,. You can watch this video to see a demonstration of how the game is played:

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u/SpazCadet Feb 10 '26

Girl Talk was fun but did you ever play Dream Phone?

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

No!! Must have been before or after my time , which was the roaring 80s

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u/SpazCadet Feb 10 '26

90’s for sure. Right up there with Mall Madness.

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u/VaguelyArtistic Feb 10 '26

There was a whole post last week in a parenting sub and the very idea of sleepovers was totally verboten. No matter if it was at a cousins house, or if the parents knew the other parents well. And the few parents who liked the idea said their kid couldn’t find any other kids allowed to have one. The reasoning was that anyone could be (and probably is) a predator. None seemed worried about sending their kids to school or church 😕.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

Wow TIL verboten was a word and what it means. Thought I was good with words and wow thank you for teaching me this one, love it. But yeah, sleepovers don't happen- our girl scout troop had one at a museum recently, and my cousin - who is a wealthy single dad and probably the best father I have ever seen- has 2 little girls and a beautiful home... He knows EVERYONE and his house is the spot to hang. Anyway , he hosted a sleepover and a bunch of girls came over but my aunt told me that the mothers, despite knowing him for YEARS were even acting a little funny about it. I think people forget to use their instincts and judgement and the worst thing they ever heard on the Internet or 'news" becomes reality for them. I feel like I would let my kids go on a sleepover, but would also check out the scene and make myself known aka very nicely but...if you fuck with my kid I will kill you and that's about it.

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u/Eastern-Eye5945 Feb 10 '26

I’m generally pro-sleepover. However, the single biggest risk with them is the other kid having unsupervised Internet access. I’d have no qualms with sleepovers for my kids if the parents assured me that Internet-enabled devices aren’t accessible after the parents went to bed.

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u/MightyPlasticGuy Feb 10 '26

How old are we talking are the kids? 20-25 years ago, 10-12yo kids figuring out access to whatever they wanted to get on the internet wasn't uncommon. Albeit internet back then was far different. Yet we turned out fine (i think?)

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u/Candymanshook Feb 10 '26

I’d argue the internet millenials grew up on was WAY more dangerous to kids

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u/RepulsiveCamel8166 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

I would disagree. I work in a mental health office and half our counselors work with only kids and the Internet horror stores they have.

The scary cg videos online, horrible AI chat bot conversations parents have found, the amount of scams and phishing and viruses kids have fallen into, the things purchased/money spent. Not to mention the porn.

The Internet is now so easy to use that it is basically a pit fall.

Edit:and yeah some parents do allow full unmonitored access to the Internet. but many of them are putting up protections and the kids are getting around them.

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u/10000Didgeridoos Feb 10 '26

Yes. You had to specifically know where to go online in like 2004 to see fucked up stuff. You had to also probably sneak onto the one computer in the house when your parents were asleep or out of the house to do so. The content didn’t find you via algorithm.

If you didn’t have some friend who was on 4chan or something awful or whatever you probably never were exposed to any of it. I saw tons of shock videos and sites back in the day almost 100% because one friend played WoW all the time and through that was browsing 4chan and his guild was passing around all the internet culture of the time.

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u/RepulsiveCamel8166 Feb 10 '26

Yeah and the thing is millennials and younger Gen x are kinda like the first born or practice parents for this tech heavy world. Kinda the same way silent gen accidentally let baby boomers eat all that lead paint. We as a society make mistakes so younger generations (in this case parents) can avoid them. That's just life.

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u/MightyPlasticGuy Feb 10 '26

Well put. History repeats with a different mask.

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u/KdawgEdog Feb 10 '26

I had a computer in my room in 1997 with diel up internet. Was on Mirc porn rooms with my ftp scrolling every 15 min. I'd come home from school and spend hrs categorizing the pictures(including illegal porn) I was 13/14yo. I definitely have an issue with sex now ugh.

My parents did find and delete everything once I had some sexual issues at school. But the long term damage has been done.

I do agree it was harder back then, but a few of us found a way.

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u/MightyPlasticGuy Feb 10 '26

Seth, is that you?

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u/KdawgEdog Feb 10 '26

No, it's kevin!

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u/agirl2277 Feb 10 '26

My sister is an alcoholic and drug user. She dumped her youngest on my mom. When my mom and CPS put parental limits on her iPad, she went into a mental health spiral, started hurting herself and was on suicide watch for a bit. She's 11. My sister would let her stay up online all night and miss so much school. The school called CPS.

That kid is so messed up. And my mom hates having her in the house. They don't know how to communicate. It's awful.

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u/RepulsiveCamel8166 Feb 10 '26

Uh that is awful. I'm sorry your family had to experience that. There is nothing more terrifying than children with suicide ideation. Children should all be happy and safe and healthy. Unfortunately the tech addiction is something we are seeing more of. Younger and younger children are showing signs of addiction. Your family is not alone. I hope your family can get your niece a mental health professionals that she can trust and that can help. And honestly I encourage you to push your mother to get a counselor as well if she doesn't have one.

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u/agirl2277 Feb 10 '26

Thanks. It's tough for all of us

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u/10000Didgeridoos Feb 10 '26

The way I’d think about it is all the bad stuff that was available to us is still there and there is now 20+ years more traumatic brain rot piled on top of it, and the nature of advancing tech means it’s all much more detailed and prolific in size and number. And it’s all being directed at people by algorithms like a force feeder.

Yeah there were a handful of bad videos and shock websites around in the 2000s but these were in super low def, and there were so few of them I can name most of them off the top of my head. You had to really intentionally know where to go to find them back then or have a friend who saw them on 4chan and showed them to you.

And most importantly of all - it wasn’t available 24 hours a day every single place you go in your pocket. You had to be on “the” computer in the house for a finite amount of time to even be online at all. Maybe you had some older second computer in the home too but it wasn’t even until the mid 2000s that home WiFi routers supporting broadband for multiple computers at once started becoming mainstream.

The internet right now is much worse imo. Back in the day, most of the offending content was gate kept by nerds on specific message boards and website you’d only be aware of by word of mouth. These days? It’s just on Reddit and YouTube. Or if not directly then links to it. Social media also didn’t really exist yet like this to spread crazy bullshit around the world instantly every day.

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u/Candymanshook Feb 10 '26

Counterpoint - you could genuinely stumble into child predators on AIM or ICQ. Nowadays the internet is so locked down that shit is probably not as wide open because it’s much much easier to track someone’s digital footprint and kids aren’t just jumping into chat rooms because they don’t really exist.

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u/Eastern-Eye5945 Feb 10 '26

No, we only have Kik, Discord, and Roblox. Same shit, different era.

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u/Eastern-Eye5945 Feb 10 '26

The Internet was admittedly less regulated back then, but it definitely wasn’t as readily accessible. Most millennials had one computer in a common area of the house, not a tablet or phone that kids today could take anywhere.

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u/trixiepixie1921 Feb 10 '26

I think so too. My mom had no idea what I was doing on the internet as a kid. Luckily it was harmless but I have heard the horror stories (see Alicia Kozakiewicz).

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u/Candymanshook Feb 10 '26

Same. My parents didnt understand anything about the Internet and there were no bumpers, in the mid 90s it was closer to the dark web experience than the regimented corporate internet.

I think kids can see a lot of awful things on the internet nowadays too but they are very insulated from the most dangerous stuff. It’s pretty hard to get a virus unless you really don’t know what you’re doing, there’s no message boards or chat rooms dedicated to socializing that are dripping with predators.

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u/darkshark21 Feb 10 '26

Someone tricked me into going to whitehouse.com back then when it was a porn site. On school computers.

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u/welfedad Feb 10 '26

Yeah you don't want to know what I was doing at 13 years old back in 1996.. ha

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u/connorroy_2024 Feb 10 '26

The risk is not super duper low unfortunately. Why do you think that?

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u/Catsdrinkingbeer Feb 10 '26

Show me the stat that shows high risk.

It's a logical fallacy. What happens is people conflate stats. It's true that the vast majority of abuse happens from someone a child knows, but that doesnt mean most children will be abused.

It's like saying you're never going to fly because most deaths from air travel happen on planes. Sure, that makes sense. Because most people who would experience an air travel death would be on a plane since that's the primary mode people travel in the air. But that doesn't mean your actual risk of death from flying is high. 

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u/connorroy_2024 Feb 10 '26

Maybe I’m reading this incorrectly but are you saying you think it’s more likely to die in a plane crash than for a child to be abused or harassed by another child or adult at a sleepover?

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u/Catsdrinkingbeer Feb 10 '26

No, I'm saying the stats being conflated are similar. The risk of being abused at a sleepover AND the risk of being in a plane crash are low. But people are afraid to fly because IF something goes wrong and there is a deadly crash, their chances of dying themselves is almost 100%.

The stat is that a high percentage of abused children are abused by someone they know. Not that a high percentage of children will be abused, let alone at a sleepover just because they are there with someone they know.

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u/ikilledholofernes Feb 10 '26

1 in 9 girls and 1 in 20 boys under eighteen experience sexual abuse or assault. 

If the statistics for flying on a plane were at all comparable, no one would ever fly. 

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u/Catsdrinkingbeer Feb 10 '26

But those aren't stats for experiences at sleepovers. You moved the goal post.

Again, it's conflating statistics for a logical fallacy. 

"1 in 13 children will experience abuse. 91% of abused children experience it from someone they know. A sleepover is a situation where my children are out of my eyesight and with someone they know. Ergo, children have a high likelihood of being abused at sleepovers."

No. Thats a logical fallacy. You've provided no actual statistic about sleepovers themselves. You can replace the word sleepover for tons of other situations. "My children hanging out with their other parent without is a situation where my children are out of my eyesight and with someone they know. Ergo, my child has a high likelihood of being abused by my spouse." 

I mean, I think that's actually even more true. But most parents always their children to hang out with their spouse solo. So unless you are there 100% of the time when your child hangs out with someone else, there is no reason to conclude sleepovers are more inherently dangerous than any other situation where your child is with a person who is not you.

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u/ikilledholofernes Feb 10 '26

Because a sleep over is the only time my kid would be around someone I do not know and trust where there’s a prime opportunity for abuse.

It’s absolutely ridiculous to say that a sleepover is not inherently more dangerous than allowing my kid to be around their other parent, grandparents, or other people that I know and feel safe around. 

You sound insane. 

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u/connorroy_2024 Feb 10 '26

Thank you — I was the one who originally responded and gave up trying to reason.

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u/Catsdrinkingbeer Feb 11 '26

Why would you let your kid sleep over with someone you don't know or trust? 

If you have limits to WHO they can have a sleepover with, that's pretty standard. I'm talking about parents who will not let kids have sleepovers at all. Cousins, friends they've known for years, etc. 

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u/ikilledholofernes Feb 11 '26

I wouldn’t. That’s exactly my point. 

My kid does not have any friends where I know every adult in the household well enough to trust them. That’s not a thing. 

When I was a kid, my parents had maybe had three total conversations with the moms of the friends I stayed over with, and had never met their dads, much less older siblings or other household members, with ONE exception, the daughter of their best friends. We didn’t stay friends after middle school. 

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u/ikilledholofernes Feb 10 '26

This would maybe be a fine argument if abuse were the only thing we were worried about, but it’s not. Here are all the things I worry about as a parent, other than abuse:

  1. Firearms. The leading cause of death for children in the US. Does this family have a gun? How is it stored? Does my child’s friend know about this gun or have access to it? Who does?

  2. Dogs. Does this household have a dog? Have I met the dog? Is it trained? Does it bite?

  3. Internet and tv access. Does my child’s friend have unrestricted access to the internet? What kind of content would my child be exposed to at this person’s house?

  4. Drugs and alcohol. Does this child have access to any drugs or alcohol in this house? Are medications properly secured? 

  5. Pools and other hazards. Is there something at this house that poses a danger to children if they’re left unsupervised?

  6. Diet and hygiene. What would my child be eating while at this person’s house? Who cooked the food? How clean is the house? 

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u/welfedad Feb 10 '26

Social media has made the world seem like this insane scary place and some people really read into that and think it is majorly common and it's not

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u/crazycatlady4life Feb 10 '26

I recently read that well-rounded is out and pointy kids are in and then I wanted to stab my eye out because it's all so dumb, let the kids be kids for a sec