Kids These Days Only Seem Dumb If You Think You’re A Genius

What is it about kids these days that makes older generations so touchy? Maybe it's because they don't read enough books, spend enough time outdoors, or have enough appreciation—at least that's what their more senior counterparts say. And it's not just today's adults who think that. In some way or another, older generations have been lamenting the youth's decline since the earliest days of civilization. Even Aristotle talked smack about how young folks thought they knew everything back in the 4th century BC.
So, why all the shade on the next generation, a study out earlier this month in Science Advances shows that negative opinions about kids aren't always based on their actions; it's more about how adults laud their past and current selves.
John Protzko, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and lead author of the paper, says he was inspired while studying delayed gratification in children. A survey of cognitive development experts found that the majority of experts thought kids hadn't gotten better at controlling themselves around rewards like candy over the past 50 years. Protzko's study, however, proved them wrong. This got him thinking … what is it about adults that make them assume the worst about kids? And how does it lead to grumblings about “kids these days”?
Protzko’s latest research looked at a trio of traits in three groups of U.S. adults: respect for elders or authoritarianism, intelligence, and enjoyment of reading. He and his collaborator then asked the participants whether they thought kids in the modern age shared the same qualities. They found that adults who tested especially strong in one of the categories tended to see children today as weak in it.
For example, if an adult got tagged or self-identified as intelligent, they were more likely to see “kids these days” as less intelligent than they used to be. This, Protzko thinks, is because they remembered their younger selves to be smarter, whether true or not. What’s more, they only reserved their strong opinions for traits they related to. In another stage of the study, the authors assigned random scores to participants to trick them into thinking how well-read they were. Many of the adults changed their opinions on kid’s reading ability, past and present, as a result.
Protzko posits that there are two reasons for the shift: how memories can be fallible and the lack of objective knowledge of what childhood is really like. “People who are high in a trait, say respect for elders or authority, are imposing their current high standing in that trait back in time, thinking ‘oh this must have been what all kids were like,” he says.

By – Abhishek Singh
Content - https://www.popsci.com/kids-these-days-only-seem-dumb-if-you-think-youre-genius/