Are succeeding generations becoming dumber?

[Traveler]

50 years ago, in my youth, the owner's manual for a car said things like the spark gap and timing information along with instructions on how to do most repairs and fixes.  Now days the owner's manual say things like "Do not drink the battery fluid".  As a child, during the summer we would leave home and as we left mom would say , "Be home when the street lights come on".  Now days kids cannot walk to grade school on their own - sometimes not even high school.  I never recall my parents ever mowing the lawn and we did not have a power mower.  Now days, at least in my neighborhood, I never see teenagers ever mowing their lawn or doing yard work - it is always exclusively the parents.  My grand kids do not know how to fix a flat on their bicycles - there parents take the bike to the bike shop for stuff like that.

Every so often our sun will emit a super massive electrical manganic pulse.  We are lucky that most such pulses are not directed at earth.  The last time one happened that was pointed at earth was almost 200 hundred years ago - the last SMEMP was just last year but it was off in a different direction.   If we were to have another like the one 200 years ago we could lose power for months.  This is because we would lose thousands to power transformers and we do not have anywhere near that many backups in storage.  Talk about a supply chain problem!!!  Many electrical appliances would be fried along with most electronics in cars.  I do not think many of the rising generation are smart enough to survive.

 

The Traveler

[LDSGator]

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything
 

Got love for you bro, but every generation since the dawn of time have said the same kind of things you are saying! Lol 

[Still_Small_Voice]

36 minutes ago, Traveler said:

Every so often our sun will emit a super massive electrical magnetic pulse.  We are lucky that most such pulses are not directed at earth.  The last time one happened that was pointed at earth was almost 200 hundred years ago - the last SMEMP was just last year but it was off in a different direction.   If we were to have another like the one 200 years ago we could lose power for months.  This is because we would lose thousands to power transformers and we do not have anywhere near that many backups in storage.  Talk about a supply chain problem!!!  Many electrical appliances would be fried along with most electronics in cars.  I do not think many of the rising generation are smart enough to survive.

The Traveler

 

If this were to happen I heard trucks and automobiles would be knocked out of commission as well.  Supply lines would be cut then.  This would be a catastrophic scenario.  I hope it does not happen again for over a thousand years.

[NeuroTypical]

"Dumber" is a bad choice of words.  If you mean IQ, then the answer is obviously no, it's inherent in the definition of the word.  If you mean intelligence, I'd say also no - younger folks are just experts in other things.

Here's a random screen shot from a random young person's computer screen.  @Traveller, let's test you to see if you're smarter or dumber than the person whose screen this is.
 

 

- Can you describe what is happening?  (Without reading the rest of my questions for context?)
- Are they connected to voice chat, and if not, how would they connect?
- How many notifications does this person have?
- Can you tell who is sharing their screen?
- If you wanted to read the chat comments, what would you do?
- Do you recognize any of the icons or avatars?  Tell us which ones, and what you know about them.
- Can you take an educated guess about what these folks are discussing?
- If someone here was planning to commit crimes, what actions would you take?

 

I mean, I get your overall point - if civilization crumbles into anarchy overnight due to a catastrophic and long-term failure of our national power grid, I'm guessing most of these folks will die.  I probably will too though. 

[Grunt]

55 minutes ago, Traveler said:

50 years ago, in my youth, the owner's manual for a car said things like the spark gap and timing information along with instructions on how to do most repairs and fixes.  Now days the owner's manual say things like "Do not drink the battery fluid".  As a child, during the summer we would leave home and as we left mom would say , "Be home when the street lights come on".  Now days kids cannot walk to grade school on their own - sometimes not even high school.  I never recall my parents ever mowing the lawn and we did not have a power mower.  Now days, at least in my neighborhood, I never see teenagers ever mowing their lawn or doing yard work - it is always exclusively the parents.  My grand kids do not know how to fix a flat on their bicycles - there parents take the bike to the bike shop for stuff like that.

Every so often our sun will emit a super massive electrical manganic pulse.  We are lucky that most such pulses are not directed at earth.  The last time one happened that was pointed at earth was almost 200 hundred years ago - the last SMEMP was just last year but it was off in a different direction.   If we were to have another like the one 200 years ago we could lose power for months.  This is because we would lose thousands to power transformers and we do not have anywhere near that many backups in storage.  Talk about a supply chain problem!!!  Many electrical appliances would be fried along with most electronics in cars.  I do not think many of the rising generation are smart enough to survive.

 

The Traveler

I don't think they are getting dumber, just their focus and skills are shifting.   50 years ago many young men worked on engines and what not with their fathers around the house and had at least a basic understanding of how to fix things.   I try to maintain that (and many other things) with my children.  However, many of today's youth are well versed in things that we aren't.  My kids are doing things with electronics and as such have developed the same innate ability there that I have with engine repair.  They naturally connect dots I can't.

[Jane_Doe]

1 hour ago, Traveler said:

50 years ago, in my youth, the owner's manual for a car said things like the spark gap and timing information along with instructions on how to do most repairs and fixes.  Now days the owner's manual say things like "Do not drink the battery fluid".  As a child, during the summer we would leave home and as we left mom would say , "Be home when the street lights come on".  Now days kids cannot walk to grade school on their own - sometimes not even high school.  I never recall my parents ever mowing the lawn and we did not have a power mower.  Now days, at least in my neighborhood, I never see teenagers ever mowing their lawn or doing yard work - it is always exclusively the parents.  My grand kids do not know how to fix a flat on their bicycles - there parents take the bike to the bike shop for stuff like that.

Like @Grunt, I think it's more of a change in focus where culture & intelligence is going.  

In hunter/gather societies, your intelligence went to hunting & gathering.  In agricultural societies, intelligence went to farming.   Basic industrial it went to figuring out motors.  Today's society is about electronics, the internet, and such things.  If I wanted to just fix my car, it could be a mechanical problem or a computer issue, but I'm not allowed to touch it without forsaking my warranty.   Kids wiz around the internet, when my grandpa can't figure out how to check his voicemail.   What's obviously a phishing scam to younger generations mercilessly trick & exploit older folks.  

As to "don't drink the battery fluid" is an obvious statement.  It's included in the manual not because it's "hard to figure out", but because car company needs to officially state that warning to not be liable for the one idiot that will drink it as part of a dare or something.  Such idiots have always existed, but in today's legal climate their mom can sue the car company for lots of money.  

Walking to & fro unsupervised: this is also a cultural shift.  The world is more dangerous, and we are more aware of hurts that have always existed.  Plus the different legal environment.  An obvious example of this even at church: 20 years ago you could just be alone with some else's child.  Such is not remotely ok today-- we are very aware of the dangers that one wolf in the flock can do.  

 

[Backroads]

3 hours ago, Traveler said:

As a child, during the summer we would leave home and as we left mom would say , "Be home when the street lights come on".  Now days kids cannot walk to grade school on their own - sometimes not even high school.  I never recall my parents ever mowing the lawn and we did not have a power mower.  Now days, at least in my neighborhood, I never see teenagers ever mowing their lawn or doing yard work - it is always exclusively the parents.  My grand kids do not know how to fix a flat on their bicycles - there parents take the bike to the bike shop for stuff like that.

I would see some of your complaints and acknowldege them, but largely as cultural, for good and bad. Were I to criticize anything, it would be less about "are they doing it?" and more about the skill. @Jane_Doe said the world is more dangerous. I don't believe that as the data doesn't really support new dangers--for example, there are far fewer kidnappers/rapists on the street these days then there were 30-40 years ago. I do agree that we are getting better, however, at recognizing dangers that have always existed. We've beefed up our wisdom on how to navigate or even avoid dangerous things and no longer feel we have to do something dangerous just because that's how great-great-grandpa managed.

As far as kids not knowing how to walk to school, this is cultural, and it is a point of frustration with me. On the rare days when I have to pick my kids up from school, it's a point of high stress. I am honestly terrified of getting into a car accident. Cars line the entire road. I find it much safer to simply have my kids walk, and the oldest has been doing it, largely alone, since kindergarten. Granted, we don't live very far from the school at all, and she crosses  but one street with a crossing guard and there are a horde of kids walking that way anyway. I find the skill of her being able to navigate her own neighborhood a useful and crucial one. I have no problem with her walking a few blocks to play with friends. On the other hand, I have a neighbor and a friend since elementary school. She lives around the block. Walking to her house would be exactly one extra minute from the school. She drives her kids to and fro and, due to the crazy line of cars, has spent up to an hour trying to get home. It takes my kids 5 minutes to walk from the school. Her reasoning is that it's dangerous, she doesn't want her kid to be that one statistic of getting kidnapped (despite the insanely low risk, let's be honest), and like many, figures it's a far more dangerous world.

Now, there's a lot that goes into this. Not everyone lives in a walking distance from the school. Not everyone has schedules conducive to kids walking to and fro school. Not all kids have the skills for doing so. 

But... I think far more than are doing so could manage this. I certainly think high school students should be able to. 

It's not that I don't think all kids have to walk solo. I don't think there's anything wrong with a parent in attendance. But... what is so wrong about being able to navigate one's neighborhood? This hyperactive fear of kids being abducted, to me, stems, from the fact that we now have relatively little in our lives to fear. 

As a teacher, I've seen increasing issues of kids lacking independence. I've had kids, when I was in the brick-and-mortor schools, repeatedly ask if they could take a fun STEM project home for their parents to do for them, refusing to enjoying the magic of learning. This is a broad brush, but  culturally parents seem to be expected to truly helicopter. I think much of this is with good intentions, of modeling and scaffolding for their kids, but it carries on too long. 

There's certainly a lot of good that comes from advancing techology and even the ability to pay some other guy to handle an issue for us, but I do think we are indeed losing some important "do hardish things" skills.

Edited January 25, 2022 by Backroads

[Backroads]

As for the general notion of kids getting dumber, I blame the pushing down of educational standards. And I"ll say standards is the very general sense. We are honestly expecting too much for kids way too early, and by the time many figure out and are trying to attempt mastery, we move onto something else, and mastery of basic skills never happens. Part of this is systemic: standards were created beginning at high school graduation and filled in backwards. We also have parents themselves declaring that just because one kid is ready for more advanced things, they all should be ready. I've seen people crying because their three-year-olds can't read. 

So, while we may be somewhat meeting the needs of kids quicker on the uptake, we're doing the rest a disservice. Let a few years of school go by and you have kids with gaping holes in their knowledge. 

[JohnsonJones]

In all reasonable excuses, Engines have become a lot more complex than they used to be.  I can still change the oil, and other basics, but these days take it in to the shop in many instances.

A reason for this can be explained very easily with why I take my car into the shop to change the battery.  Changing the Battery used to be extremely easy.  You'd unsecure it, take off the cables, take out the old battery, put in the new battery, attach cables, secure battery and you are done.

Last time I had to do this they had the battery secured in a new fashion where the bolt was unreachable without a special tool that I did not have.  I had to get the special bolt sized tool (luckily one of my neighbors had it) and then inch it in an impossible space where turning the tool was almost impossible anyways.  Than, I had to maneuver the part out and undo yet another bolt to actually loosen the battery itself.  After that, replacing it was relatively the same until I had to secure it again.  Trying to get the portions back to secure it was like trying to thread the eye of a needle while blind.  It took a half hour just to get the bolt finally in place for the first portion to secure it.  The second also took almost as long.  It was NOT that easy.

It seems that whoever designs cars for some companies these days likes to make self-repairs REALLY difficult for the common consumer.  This is why I just finally started taking it into the shop for all maintenance just to avoid the pain of it.  The cost of tools to do some of these things would cost me just as much as the shop charges in some cases.

This is why my last vehicle we got a Dodge.  I looked at the engine of the Dodge and felt relief.  The engineer actually put space under the hood so you could actually get to things!  There are still basic items that are rough because everything requires a computer these days.  Calibrating certain things NEEDS the right computer to do it or something like that....which is ridiculous.

Repairing the modern vehicles has become a LOT harder than it used to be.  I can remember taking apart and engine and transmission and putting them back together when I was younger.  Now days I would try that as the computer itself would probably detect half a dozen faults and refuse to cooperate.

6 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

"Dumber" is a bad choice of words.  If you mean IQ, then the answer is obviously no, it's inherent in the definition of the word.  If you mean intelligence, I'd say also no - younger folks are just experts in other things.

Here's a random screen shot from a random young person's computer screen.  @Traveller, let's test you to see if you're smarter or dumber than the person whose screen this is.
 

- Can you describe what is happening?  (Without reading the rest of my questions for context?)
- Are they connected to voice chat, and if not, how would they connect?
- How many notifications does this person have?
- Can you tell who is sharing their screen?
- If you wanted to read the chat comments, what would you do?
- Do you recognize any of the icons or avatars?  Tell us which ones, and what you know about them.
- Can you take an educated guess about what these folks are discussing?
- If someone here was planning to commit crimes, what actions would you take?

 

I mean, I get your overall point - if civilization crumbles into anarchy overnight due to a catastrophic and long-term failure of our national power grid, I'm guessing most of these folks will die.  I probably will too though. 

That appears to be discord and I would assume they are able to talk to each other via their microphones, but they could also chat if they so choose. 

I don't use discord (popular with some students though), I prefer to use Zoom after getting used to it over the pandemic with the school.  The School has made the move for many of us to Microsoft Teams, which is built into our computers these days.

[Ironhold]

As far as cars go - 

My 1990 Buick Skylark was designed in such a fashion that if you couldn't reach a component just by popping the hood and reaching down, you could get to it by jacking the car up and going from underneath.

My 2006 Dodge Stratus is such a horror story you have to pull the left front tire just to replace the battery and pull the right front tire just to check the belts. 

I hate working on my Stratus for the simple fact that it's such a knuckle-buster, and I credit one of my three blown vertebrae to trying to crawl underneath it and do work with inadequate floor jacks. 

[mordorbund]

On 1/25/2022 at 11:31 AM, Traveler said:

Now days the owner's manual say things like "Do not drink the battery fluid".

Maybe they shouldn’t make it so tasty….

[Traveler]

30 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

Maybe they shouldn’t make it so tasty….

You remind me of a comedian on a cruse my wife and I took.  He informed us (incase we did not know it) that the water in our toilets on the curse ship was salt water.  He then expressed his sorrow for those that already knew about the salt water in the toilets.  

 

The Traveler