The question of “What’s wrong with young people today?” came up at a social gathering the other day. By the time we were done considering, the question had morphed in my mind into, “How have today’s young people managed to survive so many major traumas?”
When I was young, the only people who wanted to kill me were the Russians, the North Koreans, the Viet Cong and maybe the Chinese. I can’t remember any instances of loner gunmen invading schools and deliberately shooting and maiming and killing students at that time. I wonder how I would have reacted to mature American adults seemingly uncaring about the risks that youngsters face daily from a well-armed population. I grew up believing that almost all adults had my best interests at heart.
I keep getting hung up on Covid 19, not to mention the separate but equally devastating ongoing pandemic of Long Covid. Specifically, I wonder about dating and relationships with the opposite sex. When I was young, I worried a little about my commitment to postpone sex and a possible pregnancy until marriage, but not much else. Today, if one puts a lot of faith into the ongoing prevalence of Covid-19 as indicated by the data developed every week by waste water monitoring programs, which I do, the consequences of simply going on a date or being around other young people risks death and long-term disability. Right now, there is a HIGH prevalence of the Covid-19 virus in the wastewater in Texas as well as in most of the southern states.
I wonder how I would have reacted if Covid 19 and Long Covid had rampaged through the population when I was young. I wonder if I would have thought it was all so unfair… if I would have wondered how responsible adults could have been so thoughtless and uncaring about the risks to young lives, not to mention to everyone else.
I don’t have an answer. I’d like to think that I would have lived as carefully in a world with Covid 19 as I’ve done as a mature adult having worked in healthcare and having an educational background in public health. But I don’t know. I really enjoyed my time as a teenager and young adult dating and exploring relationships with a variety of boys and young men. Could I have given that up? Postponed? Could I have worn a mask on dates? Worn a mask while dancing? Foregone good night kisses? I doubt it… but I don’t know.
Coupled with the unnecessary hatefulness of a politically divided populace, it sometimes seems to me that today’s young people have been dealt a particularly rotten deal… and unfortunately, mental health statistics bear this out.