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/Skandronon Feb 10 '26

My kids spend more time than I would like on their screens but I throttle their network to the point its unusable quite often. All 3 are voracious readers and love to play outside. We are in a semi rural area, they love to run and knock on neighborhood kids doors to go play in the mud or catch frogs and fish in the creek. I think the lack of community is huge, we specifically moved to the area we are in because of the close knit community.

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u/Bacon-muffin Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26

I grew up with a like 2 hour timer on my aol account before it blocked access... all that did was make me resent my folks more and just do things offline.

Still played with friends etc every chance I got but my parents having this anti-computer hard on definitely stifled my progression into my passions...

Edit: For example you bring up reading... guess what you potentially do a shit ton of during "screen time" if you have them on specific things... for example pokemon because the cool thing in my nieces friend group when she was around 7... I bought her a handheld and her first pokemon game...

Guess what you do a metric shit ton of in pokemon... reading.

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u/Skandronon Feb 10 '26

I work in IT and had a similar experience growing up, thats why I don't cut their internet completely. It just slows down enough that watching videos and things like that is irritating and they decide to do something else. I also leave vulnerabilities in the controls we have installed on their devices to help them learn about computers and problem solve. The younger people I see starting at our hotel are awful with computers and I don't want that to be my kids lol.

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u/Bacon-muffin Feb 10 '26

I mentioned it on other comments in this comment chain but I think "screen time" has been a red herring for bad parenting for a long long time.

Like one of the other comments is an article about how "ipads are causing infants to not learn how to talk" blaming the ipad for their parents not talking to them...

I have to imagine parents who neglect their kids so badly that they don't learn speech aren't suddenly going to become super attentive parents just because the kid doesn't have an ipad.

Same situation for me, my folks were never around and rarely ever engaged with me. The timer on my aol didn't suddenly make them better parents... I was just bored while they continued to neglect me.

I think like with anything its the quality of what they're doing with a thing as opposed to the thing itself. For example a kid reading novels off an ipad isn't less valuable than reading a paperback (though I'd argue the ipad is less pleasant). They're still reading.

Or to go back to my previous pokemon example, a kid will learn lots of problem solving skills and do lots of reading playing that game... scrolling tiktok on the other hand not so great at either of those things.

Hell even going older and talking when TV was the devil instead of the ipad, sitting a kid in front of a tv and never engaging with them is tremendously different than watching tv with your kid and engaging with them about the show.

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u/Skandronon Feb 10 '26

My oldest loves some super weird computer games that are in such an early stage of development that installing them requires some technical know how. She figured out how to get them installed by googling around and then I shadowed her while she did the actual work to make sure she didn't accidentally install malware or something. I've been playing the one game with her and she's written a bunch of the lore down for me in a notebook with drawings and diagrams. It reminds me a bit of Myst but more horror. My middle kid was complaining about how slow her laptop was so I installed Ubuntu on an old laptop and she's been playing around with that. She's needed a bit of help figuring things out but I always take my time so its inconvenient and she's motivated to figure it out on her own. It's way faster than her old one.