Landsteiner posted:"We have entered a "push button" era in history where with few exceptions, everything deemed necessary is being done with the smartphone."
I'm constantly amazed and disappointed at these sorts of comments about younger people. I can only guess that it's because the folks making these comments don't actually have much contact with people in their teens, 20s and 30s, or are making entirely superficial judgements about the younger generation, based upon what they read or casual observation in McDonalds
.
I daily deal with highly motivated professionals and students in the younger age groups. In my experience, these sorts of clueless and demeaning remarks are thoroughly unfair and, most importantly, totally wrong. The interest amongst young people in nature, outdoors activities, the environment, the well being of others, crafts, literature, the arts, etc. is much greater than the generation I grew up with in the 1950s and 1960s. Just because children don't build Revell or Monogram plastic model aircraft models or make doilies doesn't mean they have no interest in creativity or the creation of "stuff." How many young people today are writing apps, using 3D printing, learning to be plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, etc.? A whole lot. Get off their case, curmedugeons! And get off my grass!
I agree totally, this is the same drivel my generation heard about tv and "instant gratification", the 30's kids (who became the 'greatest generation') were supposedly lazy, lacked the drive to work (despite the fact that the depression kind if robbed them of the jobs they could have had), this is typical. Not to mention that hobbies have generally been an older generation thing, I think more than a few of us forget what we were like in our teens and 20's, when cars and dating and school and other things caught our fancy, and back in the 1970's when I was growing up most of the people i saw in Model Railroader magazine, or the guys at local clubs, were generally older, 30 somethings were the young turks, maybe some kids/young people in their 20's.
You are correct about the arts, by the way, it is probably the reverse of 'instant gratification'. In things like ballet kids have to commit at a very young age, and literally by the time they are a late teenager it is make or break time. With music (talking classical music here) kids commit very young, the level of playing required to get into a top level music or arts school is light years higher than it was a generation or two ago. My son is a grad student on the violin and by the time he was 11 or 12 had to make a committment to it on a level few adults would make, and has to handle something that is full of all kinds of pitfalls and requires a level of toughness few would understand, rejection, teachers like the guy in the movie "whiplash" (and yes, folks, that type of teacher exists on various levels)...and this is not rare. Sure, my son is part of the 'electronic age', but he also has had the dedication where he likely is playing better than a lot of professionals from an earlier generation because his committment had to be much more than theirs.
Hobbies have tailed off, but I think that reflects a different world more than kids being 'virtual kids'. People simply don't have the time, the days of 9-5 jobs and working in your local town with a 10 minute commute died a long time ago for many/most people. People (and kids) work much harder than they did a generation or more ago, jobs require more hours and we drive or commute longer distances, then often come home to work, kids are loaded with a ton of homework we never had (and I took honors level courses in high school, mind you, and kids these days have a ton more homework than I did), and parents both are working, and when they get home likely have things to do with the kids and so forth. Weekends are often the time to get things done they can't during the week, it is when I get to things in the house that need doing, do the yard work, the garden, and maybe have some time with my wife, during the week I leave home before 7 and usually get home between 8 and 8:30 at night...and this is not uncommon. It is why so many of us on this board are retired or near retirement, the time is there to do those thngs. I remember predictions for the death of model railroading back in the 80's, how it was graying, young people weren't interested, yet the hobby is still very much alive based on the number of companies making products for it and the wealth of stuff out there across the board.
It isn't that young people have changed, they are different, of course, but so were we from our parents and grandparents in more than a few ways; my dad was of the depression generation, and his view of things , the way he would do things, are different than I see and do things (not that I didn't learn valuable lessons from him and my mom , of course), it is that we have gotten older and forgotten what we were like when we were young, or how we saw old farts like ourselves now when we were young.
Hobbies and Hobby shops will survive, they are kind of like the classical music world I am very familiar with now, people have been decrying the aging of the audience, how tough it is to make a living in it, how no one cares any more, but they were saying that 200 years ago when the nobility stopped the patronage they once could do, they said it in the 19th century when it was hard to get people to pay for tickets, it was said in the 20's and 30's when economic hard times hurt the arts..and somehow, it survives
