Kids are getting ruder, teachers say. And new research backs that up | Hacker News Reader

Kids are getting ruder, teachers say. And new research backs that up

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37 pointsamichail46 comments

My SO is a Occupational Therapist, so she spent part of her master's degree studying pediatric development milestones. A LOT of those milestones (ability to handle objects with hands, develop muscle strength, resolve conflict with others, etc) depend on playing with other kids in the real world. If a child is proportionally spending more time on a device than interacting with peers, they're going to have problems.

Prime example: W-sitting. Lots of "iPad kids" have an unusual sit pose where they splay their legs out. Oftentimes it's because they're sitting on a device so often that their core muscles are underdeveloped.

My daughter sits in a W pose and has since she could sit independently. She never uses an iPad or other device. The doctor said it’s due to having flexible hips. Just an anecdote.

What age kid are you talking about? I remember preschoolers doing this before wifi existed but maybe you're talking about older children that would normally have stopped doing it?

My 8yo boy has gotten much nicer after 8 months of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) training. Before he was in trouble for fighting at school, he was rude to his grandma, and just generally unpleasant.

Now he makes his grandma happy, and is fun to be around. Well worth the $250 a month I pay.

I think martial arts is worth a shot if you are trying to improve your kids kindness. Why does learning how to fight make you kinder? Could be because if you are mean to a more experienced training partner you quickly get your ass handed to you. Could be because boys just need to wrestle. Could be the student creed they recite at the beginning of each lesson. Anyway, I can't argue with results.

Disciplining the youths with martial training is a time honored tradition.

This seems to be the study (gated): https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2025-40514-001

Can somebody see if they asked the same students (between 9 and 14, an age range where behavior changes quite a bit)?

> The goal of the current work was to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic school shutdowns may have impacted classroom incivility in children and adolescents.

> Study 1 compared prepandemic (Fall 2019) to postpandemic school shutdown (Fall 2022) rates of classroom incivility in a sample of 308 adolescents (49.7% boys; 61.0% White) between the ages of 9 and 14 (M = 12.06; SD = 1.38). Classroom incivility was significantly higher postpandemic shutdowns, while bullying, emotional problems, and friendships remained stable.

> In Study 2, we surveyed 101 primary educators (95% females; 88.1% White). Findings suggested that young students lacked social skills and knowledge of classroom expectations, contributing to increased classroom incivility. Our results highlight the need to monitor ongoing levels of classroom incivility.

To me it reads as if this is unpaired data. Though sampling the elementary schools with at 83% participation rate and the destination high school at an 87% participation rate is sure to cover a LOT of the same students.

> Adolescents in Grades 5–9 at Time 1 and 8–12 at Time 2 completed both self-report and peer nomination questionnaires as part of the larger study. Research assistants visited classrooms to assist in data collection, and all questionnaires were completed on electronic tablets via the online platform Qualtrics. Active parental consent and adolescent assent were required for elementary students (Grades 5–8) while passive consent was used for high school students. In the first wave (November 2019; Grades 5–9), the overall returned consent form rate was 83.78% (including 77.15% positive consent). Students also provided assent to participate; no students who had parental consent chose not to participate. For Wave 2 (November 2022), consent was only collected for the Grade 8s (86.6% returned), and for Grades 9–12, the consent rate was 98% with a participation rate of 87%.

> All measures and procedures received ethical clearance from both the university and school board research ethics boards.

I should also point out that this is from five Ontario schools. Any statements about the behavior of students in other regions would be an extrapolation.

Thanks. (I don’t have access to the full text).

So not the exact same population, but still a comparison of “adolescents in grade 5-9 at time 1 and grade 8-12 at time 2”?

That would compare a pre-puberty to a puberty population, with the unsurprising result of them being less compliant.

But again, I don’t have access to the full text.

The authors specifically said that the elementary schools sampled at Time 1 fed into the high school at Time 2, but they didn't say that the data was paired ie: the set of students sampled at Time 1 = the set of students sampled at Time 2. The response rate is so high that there is likely considerable overlap tho.

When I was a kid, the most advanced tech we had was an electric calculator. If our parents didn't watch us, a babysitter did. At most, we had an Atari 2600 for video games on the spare B&W TV that got replaced with a Color TV for the father and mother. We played outside and kickball in the streets until the lights came on.

Today's kids have smartphones, PCs/Macs, Video Game Consoles, and movie streaming devices and are unsupervised on the Internet. For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs. They have no respect for teachers or other adults and don't know how good they have it compared to me and the rest of Generation X. No wonder they are getting ruder.

https://www.chron.com/business/article/Why-didn-t-Steve-Jobs...

Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPads. He must have known something of the side-effects in kids and iPads. Just try to take the iPad or iPhone away from a kid and see how they react.

I grew up before internet really and there were always kids that had absolutely no problem with physical violence, you'd get stones thrown at you(good scenario) or punched or kicked(bad scenario) if you did something they did't like. But sure, they didn't swear as much I guess? One time I came back with a bloody nose because I got punched in the face for walking in the wrong place and some kid didn't like it, and my dad's response was "well, did you hit him back? why not?"

Don't get me wrong - I do actually think that kids nowadays are rude. They have no respect for teachers, parents, elders or anyone really. But I'm also 100% sure that my dad used to think the same thing, and his dad before him too.

I had a bully who wanted to copy my answers on a science test, I refused so he said he'd beat me up. After science class, he followed me in the hall and kicked me in the back of the head. He was a black belt in TKD with the spinning roundhouse kick. All I could do was back up to avoid being kicked in the head. Until a vice principal broke up the fight. Sometimes you can't avoid bullies and sometimes they have a black belt in a martial art. Nobody brought a gun to school back then, but now kids bring guns to school.

In some rural areas it used to be pretty common for high school students to bring guns to school so that they could go hunting afterwards. Their families needed the meat.

> Today's kids have smartphones, PCs/Macs, Video Game Consoles, and movie streaming devices and are unsupervised on the Internet. For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs.

I don’t know if there are any stats to back this up but anecdotally I know plenty of kids with all kinds of freedoms and gadgets who are extremely respectful, well-mannered, and responsible. They respectfully disagree with their parents on some issues and some of old fashioned parents may consider disagreement as disrespectful. And they might not accept mistreatment from authority figures, but hardly any real misbehavior issues.

Maybe it’s my circle but average gen z kid seems like way more mature than us when we were their age.

Rude kids that I have encountered are mostly from parents who are already rude, entitled, or have macho mentality. Kind of people I rarely hangout with. Many of these kids have more restrictions too, no video games, must play sports, extra tutoring, cannot dress certain ways, etc.

> Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPads. He must have known something of the side-effects in kids and iPads.

The first iPad was released in Jan 2010, and he died Oct 2011. His kids would have been 19, 15, and 12 or so. Even if the kids had access to it before official release, I doubt Jobs has much data specifically on an iPad’s side effects on kids, especially little kids, considering he didn’t have any.

The best source I could find was this interview, which seems far from an indictment of kids using iPads, but rather a general aversion to his kids using modern computing devices:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-...

> “So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

> For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs

Such topics should really be limited to the opera, Shakespeare, and ancient Greek drama – where they belong.

I would encourage anyone in the U.S., who has the opportunity, to become a substitute teacher. In my area it requires a degree and background check. So you can observe first hand.

How many more bits of evidence do we need to acknowledge that in the war between culture and counter-culture, culture lost.

turns out the more control you remove from a class of people's lives, the more petty disobedience they engage in, in order to wrest some semblance of control back

this is measured "post-pandemic" but especially in North America it's also post-Trump's first term, during economic struggles largely affecting middle and lower classes, at a breaking point in classroom surveillance escalation that's included sealed bags for cell phones and monitored devices, all coupled with declining funding, training, and educational quality for teachers. throw a generation that self-organizes action against every wrong (many real and some mostly perceived) and you get a school environment that is actively hostile the more one tries to enforce order upon it

but also just look at "quiet quitting", slacker culture, civil and labor rights movements, and most of the rest of American history at various inflection points. dismissing student misbehavior as children being inherently bad for some reason means willfully looking past all of the major events and figures around them that are influencing that behavior

"Kids today have no respect."

-- Socrates, probably

"These children ain't got no behavior. Them children were taught too blooming slack." - H. Belafonte

I think the "every generation always thinks the next one lacks respect" thought terminating cliche is not warranted when we've gone through such a shift in media consumption over the past 10 years.

They would have been correct saying it about the first generation of kids raised on television too.

If there's one thing people like more than a simplistic idea, it's one that allows them to virtue signal being above both sides of a debate.

And there is that recent study assuring us every generation thinks things are just turning more to shit.

I know, even the ancient Romans were lamenting that the young generation will be the empire's downfall, and look where Rome stands today... oh wait...

So what are you saying? That there are never any changes to children ever?

Yes, maybe there's a bit of complaining from old coots throughout the ages, but that doesn't mean there are never any structural problems ever. Maybe there are real problems today. And maybe there were real problems in Socrates' time too. Merely posting this without any thought is just dismissive nonsense.

Certainly for the situation today, there are huge changes to how kids are raised. Maybe that has zero effect. Or maybe it does. Either way, whatever Socrates did or didn't say has no bearing on it.

"Things never change."

-- Random wisecracker on the interweb

Aristotle

what about the parents and teachers?

They're getting ruder also, just not as fast.

I would say that they are getting more tolerant. At the risk of appearing promotion of domestic abuse, my parents resorted to cane when I was not acting “socially acceptable”. Presently, children resort to tantrum if parents do not bow down to their whims.

I understand that violence is not an answer, but some methods of discipline is relevant. Also I can claim to be old fart now and get the privilege to say, back in my days, children would show some manner in public places and had the decency to respect others in their surrounding, while kids these days are like somekind kind if weird world where they pretend that no one matters around them. I experience this utter disdain for elders everyday when I am out at public places. My parents rewarded obedience and civil respectful behavior, an incentive that I see entirely missing.

Also, parents these days are also hands-off, while the kid is whacking another in the playground, the moms are too busy scrolling through the insta/tiktok, so it is definitely a lot of factors in the end.

May be not, it could be just new normal. Reading old books I noticed how nicely people are talking to each other. But it may only sound nice by modern standards while being actually the same by old.

#MoralPanic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS4GFaG7Ypw

2 or 3 generations of being coddled instead of paddled. New moms on their phones.

Coddled wouldn't make you rude. Being exposed to too much internet would make you rude. If you look at the default sidebar in Youtube it's a shitshow.

People outside America are exposed to the internet too, and aren't nearly as rude as modern Americans. Personally, I think the modern rudeness is due to something unique about American culture.

The American Dream curdled into misplaced entitlement and overbearing arrogance.

> and aren't nearly as rude as modern Americans

You haven't been in Russia or post-USSR.

We probably live in different places because I haven't found people to be all that rude where I've lived (cities), but America is huge and has hundreds of different cultures so I'm sure there are some where rudeness is more prevalent.

You must have been asleep during the Pandemic.

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