Therumancer said:
Well, speaking for myself I think that one of the problems is the constant evolution of humanity. You look at guys like Johnny Weismueller who was a swimming champion that played Tarzan in some of the old movies. He was an incredible athlete in his day, but nowadays his records are something of a joke. People (despite all of the talk about obesity, laziness, and other things) become stronger and more capable with each generation.
The thing is that this is also a factor with intelligence, and the thing is that kids tend to be inherantly smarter than their parent's generation, combined with attitudes about the capabilities of children that are mired back in the 1930s where kids as old as 12 are expected to be entertained by mindless toys. A youth from that time period probably couldn't get his head around a lot of current video games (even older adults have problems) which current kids are able to figure out fairly easily.
Actually, I think they could. It's a well known fact that there are various learning processes and cognitive developments that are easy while the brain is in certain stages of development (read: childhood) that get progressively more difficult as one gets older. Language is an obvious example - children that are taught to from an early age can pretty easily learn two, even three languages, whereas it'd be much more difficult for the same person to do the same thing as an adult.
The point being, kids today easily pick up and grasp complex forms of entertainment like video games that their parents or grandparents have difficulty fathoming because they're kids, growing up around that sort of thing. Their brains haven't "hardened", so to speak. Besides, what you've described is a generalization, anyway - there are plenty of parents, even grandparents, who are able to pick up video games, even if they're less likely to be able to.
There isn't any evidence that children are fundamentally more intelligent or clever than they were x amount of decades ago - none that I've seen, anyway. They're just being exposed to different things at earlier ages. The difference between athletes also likely has a simpler explanation: athletes of today have access to better training methods, equipment, diet, etc than they used to.
Therumancer said:
Today you have children getting involved in crime very early with the full knowlege of what they are doing, outgrowing toys VERY quickly, and seeking intellectual stimulation of a sort that utterly terrifies the older generation who using themselves as a comparison figure that what they are seeing must not be possible.
"intellectual stimulation of a sort that utterly terrifies the older generation"? What kids are you watching, pray tell?
Therumancer said:
Please not that this intelligence does not come with maturity, but when you consider that you have young children who have allegedly found, loaded, and successfully employed firearms to do things like shoot babysitters, you need to really stop and look at the capabilities.
None of that is difficult or requiring of any great amount of intelligence. Finding a gun is easy if you've seen Daddy put it away. Loading and firing it are also easy, if you've seen him do it a couple times, or seen it elsewhere.
Therumancer said:
The generational issues are obvious when you say look at the "Heavy Metal" crowd for example. To some people there is a big differance between some creepy lyrics and album cover art and say an interactive experience where you have demons and such actually running around. Not saying that it's "right" but you can see how games take things to a higher level than the similar entertainment before hand, just as heavy metal took the conventions of things like "Tales From The Crypt" and took them even further to an extent.
Really the problem with never stop until society adjusts to the increasing capabilities of children. When child rearing is grounded in the same practices that have been around since the 1800s when you get down to it, you begin to see some of the problems.
Truthfully I have no idea how to solve the problem. Honestly given the intelligence, but lack of maturity held by kids a parent can't really just be their friend or let them do whatever they want. Shows like "The Gilmore Girls" show what I actually consider to be a very unhealthy mother/daughter relationship (despite women raving about it) that is not truely workable outside of fantasy, yet a lot of people want their parenting to be like that. Children, especially teens, need their parents to be authority figures not just close friends.
You're exaggerating and seeing great, fundamental changes where there are none, but you do have a point, in a way. The parenting doctrines of the 1950s probably aren't going to work today - not because children have somehow evolved superior intelligence over the past two or three generations, but because they're being raised in different environments that expose them to different things.
