Kids today huh? Those millennials! Those Generation Z types! One minute they are telling someone they’re racist, the next they are making the point that saying something homophobic is in fact a bad thing. Whatever next!
You’ll rarely see someone say “kids these days” anymore because on some level they’ll know that it makes them seem old and out of touch. Instead we’ve seen countless griping headlines about millennials and their love of spending more on avocado toast than saving for a house or the current obsession with Generation Z (aka the generation younger than millennials) and their “too sensitive” PC pre-occupations with gender identity, feminism, issues around race and representation.
People who would rather not have their viewpoint challenged by a different generation
It’s become a lazy assertion over the last few years that you “can’t say anything these days” and that people are “too sensitive” and young people are getting the brunt of this backlash against being “too PC”. It’s a viewpoint that both assumes young people are too young to know what they’re angry about and also that their concerns aren’t legitimate. And as much as this is being wrapped up in debates about free speech on college campuses or outrage on social media the forces behind it are the same ones they’ve always been: People who would rather not have their viewpoint challenged by a different generation lest they have to examine stuff they’ve long assumed to be true.
Sure, sometimes parts of social media can feel like people trying to aggressively out “woke” each other, but the chance to read, engage and understand new viewpoints has never been easier for many of us. You can make crap jokes about gender identity and people actually daring to improve things but it’s forward-thinking young people who will change the world, not those unwilling to even listen to them.
Conor Behan is a DJ.
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