Science proves 'kids these days' are fine—it's the adults who tend to be oblivious a-holes

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"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more
worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more
corrupt." - Horace in Book III of Odes, 20 BC

"Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline, the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth--all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative conditions." - Psychologist Granville Stanley Hall in The Psychology of Adolescence, 1904

The "kids these days" trope has been around forever. We have documentation for centuries of aging generations complaining that the young people are simply the worst. They have no respect. They've lost all sense of discipline. They're impetuous and impulsive, self-absorbed and self-indulgent. Millennials, millennials, blah blah blah.

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The original Gerber baby met the newest, and the moment was magical.

You know the Gerber baby, right?

She's an American icon. And if you've ever wandered down the baby food aisle of the grocery store or checked out the pantry of a new parent, you've definitely seen her adorable face peering at you from the label of a tiny jar.

That baby was 91 years old in the early part of 2018. Her name is Ann Turner Cook, and aside from being a teacher and writer of mysteries, she's now the great-grandmother of six.

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All those articles about how selfish millennials are? A new study disagrees.

We all know that millennials are entitlement-oozing, spoiled, special snowflakes, who need to grow up, get over themselves, and get a damn job.

And need to cool it with those damn selfie sticks. Photo by Marco Verch/Flickr.

But ... science just won't stop telling us we're wrong about that.

A new study, which will be published in the journal "Psychological Science," found that even after all those participation trophies, helicopter parents, selfies, Insta-pics, and snappy chats, young people these days are ... basically no more self-absorbed than young people 30 years ago.

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