On Cristina Odone’s “What’s wrong with today’s youth?”

Dear followers,
Last week I pursued a recommendation to read the article “What’s wrong with today’s youth?” by Cristina Odone. I won’t tell you when it was published just yet (but I will at the end), so you can leave a guess in the comments below.

As the title might suggests, Mrs. Odone is complaining about the youth, at the time she was 31 years old. The article is a reaction to two events. A few teenagers throwing a party with sound equipment and alcohol on farmers property, and in Australia Sydney's national parks suffering from arson attacks by some juveniles.
Mrs. Odone compares this behaviour to her youth where kids would be going to the Scouts or helping out somewhere, which isn’t the case today anymore. The reason for the loss of public interest in teenagers minds, Mrs. Odone justifies through the use of the common youth destroyer: The internet, specifically social networks.

From the text my guess would be that Mrs. Odone sees the internet as a thread rather than a change to society. And I guess I would agree with her if I were her age. Even today my thoughts on younger people are rather negative and I would find the reason behind that also on the internet. Thus, although I disagree with her on the specific topics she names I can understand her point of view and the events which lead to such an opinion.
I think as we grow older we all have to accept and learn to live with a fast changing society through technology we live in. I can totally see myself ranting about my kid’s community because at some point I am not able to keep up. So the obvious thing to do would be comparing behaviours from different times.

Cristina Odone also generalizes the whole youth as one, everyone is behaving and acting the same. She puts all the blame on everybody even on those who know how to be reasonable on the internet. Therefore her expression is flawed a bit but it’s also just convenient to put them all in one group. Obviously there are only a small percentage of teenagers who throw a bad light on all of us but we have to know whether we feel addressed or not. My point is, don’t feel embarrassed when reading such an article as long as you know that you are not one of them.

We as the younger and new generation have to stand these grievances thrown at us because with all the new technology we have, we can make the world a better and more efficient place to live in. We are the ones who will drive society and humankind forward and we shouldn’t get discouraged on our inherent strive to progress and succeed. But we also have to keep the opinions of those who disagree, like Cristina Odone, in mind. We are not totally free in our decisions and it should be our goal to compromise between billions of little thoughts.
After all, we have to thank our ancestors for the society and technology they have given to us. It is now our responsibility to enhance everyone's experience here on earth, whether young or old. Let’s keep in mind that at some point we will be the ones complaining about teenagers doing weird things, and there will be a little bit of Cristina Odone in all of us.

Let me know what your thoughts are. I’ll send you a copy of the article if you request one.
And now the big reveal. The article could be from any of the last few decades but this specific one was published January 2002 in “The Observer”. I’ll be waiting patiently to see if you guessed it right.

That’s it for this week. I’ll see you soon™!
Dominik