Another long one, folks. Hold on tight… When I hear the word “nickelodeon” I think of a music player, like the old song. “Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon, all I want is loving you and music, music, music…” [ That one’s for you, Lofter; maybe that’ll get the crawdad song out of your head. 🙂 ] But over at the blog A Ruach Journey, there’s an interesting post involving nickelodeons of a different sort and the lingering adolescence of America, beginning with a very apt quote from Diana West’s new book The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. Here it is in a slightly more focused version:
“…The National Academy of Sciences has redefined adolescence as the period extending from the onset of puberty, around twelve, to age 30. And, leaving CNN aside, here’s another cartoon statistic: One third of the 56 million Americans who sat down in 2002 to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon each month were between 18 and 49 years old. (Nickelodeon, incidentally, thought its core demographic group was the six- to eleven-year old set.) …The point is, aspects of the maturation cycle have stalled, leading to significant changes not only in pop culture, but in ourselves as a people.”
The group that Ms. West speaks about I will heretofore label the Nickelodeon generation, just for easy reference. And like any good, critical blog, I’ll start the ball rolling with religion. Or lack thereof. A fast-growing segment of the population is not currently active in or affiliated with any religion. And we all know how pathetic the school system is, so two pillars of “how to be a good and responsible grown-up” are gone, or horribly corroded at best. One cannot be a “grown-up” without facing responsibility, without being held accountable for one’s actions and understanding what repercussions those actions have.
Religion and education (in more traditional and ideal forms) are actually quite good at that. So are parents, when they actually bother parenting their children. But the parents of the Nickelodeon generation seem to have failed, perhaps distracted by that second job, or that second mortgage, or that second marriage. At any rate, a frightening percentage of people under 30 have no experience in being “grown-up”at all. Half of them still live at home, or leech off their parents for support. (“Oh, yeah, I’ve lived on my own since I was 18. But, you know, Daddy pays the rent when I miss it, and sometimes makes the car payments. And my insurance. And, you know, when I need some cash they give it to me… But I’ve totally been on own for years…”) They have never been responsible for anything. They have never been held accountable for anything. Most have never had to work a real day in their lives and seem to think they somehow deserve their every desire handed to them.
There is no religion saying to them “work hard because you can; help your fellow man; the most worthwhile things in this world have nothing to do with money or materials” (which are basics in pretty much every major religion, not just the typical Judeo-Christian beliefs). There is no real education reminding them “great things take time, patience, persistence, discipline; some things are worth trying whatever the outcome.” There are no parents telling them “you’re an adult now, act like it; we’ve shown you the way, now it’s time to pull your own weight.” In reality, there were no parents showing them the way. So it is not entirely the Nickelodeon generation’s fault they continue to linger in adolescence long after they should; many of them were raised by TVs and Nintendos, computer monitors and cell phones. It’s all they know.
When their parents did acknowledge them, it wasn’t with wisdom of the world but “here, take this and go away; if I buy you that will you be quiet?” A new game to shut them up, another movie to keep them busy and out of the way. Which left the children – now the Nickelodeon generation – without a real understanding of value and worth, work and reward, compromise and pay-off, duty and privilege. They should be able to get something simply because they want it, and get it easily. If it can’t be had quickly and easily, something in their world is horribly awry and someone else is going to have to fix it. They are without drive and commitment, beyond reaching the next level of a video game or scoring more friend requests on FaceBook or beating out rivals for the next latest fashion. Which is great for a consumer-driven, 100% disposable society like the one we’ve built here, but not so great compared to the society we were – and were aiming for – about 50 years ago.
The Nickelodeon generation also seem to make no tangible connection between a temporary compromise and a long-term goal. Yeah, who doesn’t want to sleep in late on a Saturday or buy something that catches their eye or otherwise feed their impulsive nature? But part of being a grown-up is learning that you can’t always do those things, that in fact you often can’t do those things no matter how much you want to. Part of being a grown-up is learning to settle, to compromise, to accept. But there are trade-offs. So maybe you can’t sleep in this Saturday, but maybe you can this Sunday, or next weekend, or for an entire week next season. And maybe you can’t afford that almost-irresistible store-front treasure right now, but if you save up for a few weeks it can be yours and will mean that much more to you because you had to work for it.
Working for things gives them their worth. There is no intrinsic value in pieces of rock in the mud. We walk on them every day and never even look down. But let someone dig them out, clean them up, cut them, polish them, and you have a precious stone worth something. It’s the labor behind the product that gives it value. But who wants to labor? Who wants to get down there in the mud and muck about? That’s not cool. That’s not glamorous. And that sounds so much harder than, like, being a movie star. Only poor people get down in the mud like that, preferably third-world poor people that we never have to see…right?
Responsibility is not cool. Or glamorous. Or easy. But it is worthwhile. It isn’t something you can learn at the end of a game controller, or buy with daddy’s money, or con with the good looks mommy gave you. I know dozens of young people who can’t balance a checkbook; who constantly miss payments because they’ve overspent or flat-out forgotten the bills were due; who would rather buy it new off the shelf then find a good used one for a fraction of the price; who will go to rip-offs like Rent-A-Center and cheque cashing joints to get it now get it now get it now instead of saving up a few weeks, months to buy it outright. I see children with total control over their parents; spoiled teenagers completely lost in the world with no urge to find their way; adults who remain oblivious to how things really work; and people who should have given up the trappings of adolescence years ago still clinging to it principally because it was a time of some freedom and few responsibilities.
I don’t understand it. I wouldn’t want to be a teenager again, and I know without question that there is more to life than a screen and a dozen buttons. Technology is not the best part of the day. And what do most teenagers really dream of? Being in charge of their own lives. So why this adolescence? Why this crippling immaturity and emotional/psychological constipation? I don’t understand. Maybe I was raised old-fashioned, but god, do you really think someone who spent five years of free time trying to beat a video game has a good grasp of who would make the next best leader for this nation?
Life Obscure 