By Christopher Moore
See, what happened was — contrary to popular belief — the “next generation” didn’t get dumber. Nope. They just kept getting smarter. Much smarter, even while parents got less and less involved. Why? Because they were, in large part, raised by tech.
And I’m not shitting on parents from my generation. I’m proud of us. We showed up. We stuck around. We gave a damn. I see a lot of us absolutely crushing it. I see others struggling. Not because they didn’t care — but because they were fucking working. Real talk: 63% of kids today live in households where both parents work (Bureau of Labor Stats). And with the cost of living climbing, housing, childcare, and healthcare alone eat most of a middle-class family’s paycheck (Economic Policy Institute). So yeah — mom and dad weren’t home teaching kids to cook, fix a car, or balance a checkbook. They were out busting their asses just to keep the damn lights on.
Meanwhile, the kids got good at what was right in front of them: tech. 95% of teens have a smartphone, almost half are online “constantly” (Pew). By age 8, kids are logging 5 hours of screen time daily outside schoolwork (Common Sense Media). Of course they became brilliant with tech — but it came at the cost of real-life skills parents should have handed down.
And let’s be honest — the system set this up. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, fear campaigns like “stranger danger” and nonstop crime porn on the news convinced parents the world was too dangerous. Truth is, violent crime against kids has dropped hard since the 1990s (FBI). But parents locked kids inside anyway. And when you lock kids inside, screens become babysitters, teachers, and best friends.
Then the system twisted the knife — tried to pit generations against each other. Boomers calling Gen Z “lazy” or “soft” is convenient, because it distracts from how bad the system is fucking us all. Boomers gripe that Gen Z doesn’t have hands-on skills, but let’s be real: a lot of that shit never got passed down to Gen X in the first place, especially after schools axed shop class and home ec. We can fight feelings vs facts all day, but it won’t change the scoreboard.
So yeah, Gen Z might not know how to change their own oil. But they sure as hell know how to build an entire business from a damn phone. They know how to weaponize memes to roast Boomers online — and admit it, some of that trolling is funny as hell. As a Xennial, I can laugh because I remember when they didn’t like us either.
At the end of the day, Gen Z didn’t inherit all the ignorance from the past — and that might be their biggest win. The system wants us fighting. What I see is our kids using tech in ways that scare the absolute shit out of the old guard.
So yeah. Go, Gen Z!!!
-The Gun Loving Hippie Dad … Who Fixes Stuff
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