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Kids are getting ruder, teachers say. And new research backs that up (www.cbc.ca)
11 points by amichail 2 hours ago | hide | past | web | 11 comments | favorite





This seems to be the study (gated): https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2025-40514-001

Can somebody see if they asked the same students (between 9 and 14, an age range where behavior changes quite a bit)?

> The goal of the current work was to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic school shutdowns may have impacted classroom incivility in children and adolescents.

> Study 1 compared prepandemic (Fall 2019) to postpandemic school shutdown (Fall 2022) rates of classroom incivility in a sample of 308 adolescents (49.7% boys; 61.0% White) between the ages of 9 and 14 (M = 12.06; SD = 1.38). Classroom incivility was significantly higher postpandemic shutdowns, while bullying, emotional problems, and friendships remained stable.

> In Study 2, we surveyed 101 primary educators (95% females; 88.1% White). Findings suggested that young students lacked social skills and knowledge of classroom expectations, contributing to increased classroom incivility. Our results highlight the need to monitor ongoing levels of classroom incivility.


To me it reads as if this is unpaired data. Though sampling the elementary schools with at 83% participation rate and the destination high school at an 87% participation rate is sure to cover a LOT of the same students.

> Adolescents in Grades 5–9 at Time 1 and 8–12 at Time 2 completed both self-report and peer nomination questionnaires as part of the larger study. Research assistants visited classrooms to assist in data collection, and all questionnaires were completed on electronic tablets via the online platform Qualtrics. Active parental consent and adolescent assent were required for elementary students (Grades 5–8) while passive consent was used for high school students. In the first wave (November 2019; Grades 5–9), the overall returned consent form rate was 83.78% (including 77.15% positive consent). Students also provided assent to participate; no students who had parental consent chose not to participate. For Wave 2 (November 2022), consent was only collected for the Grade 8s (86.6% returned), and for Grades 9–12, the consent rate was 98% with a participation rate of 87%.

> All measures and procedures received ethical clearance from both the university and school board research ethics boards.

I should also point out that this is from five Ontario schools. Any statements about the behavior of students in other regions would be an extrapolation.


My SO is a Occupational Therapist, so she spent part of her master's degree studying pediatric development milestones. A LOT of those milestones (ability to handle objects with hands, develop muscle strength, resolve conflict with others, etc) depend on playing with other kids in the real world. If a child is proportionally spending more time on a device than interacting with peers, they're going to have problems.

Prime example: W-sitting. Lots of "iPad kids" have an unusual sit pose where they splay their legs out. Oftentimes it's because they're sitting on a device so often that their core muscles are underdeveloped.


"Kids today have no respect."

-- Socrates, probably


And there is that recent study assuring us every generation thinks things are just turning more to shit.

I think the "every generation always thinks the next one lacks respect" thought terminating cliche is not warranted when we've gone through such a shift in media consumption over the past 10 years.

They would have been correct saying it about the first generation of kids raised on television too.


"These children ain't got no behavior. Them children were taught too blooming slack." - H. Belafonte

turns out the more control you remove from a class of people's lives, the more petty disobedience they engage in, in order to wrest some semblance of control back

this is measured "post-pandemic" but especially in North America it's also post-Trump's first term, during economic struggles largely affecting middle and lower classes, at a breaking point in classroom surveillance escalation that's included sealed bags for cell phones and monitored devices, all coupled with declining funding, training, and educational quality for teachers. throw a generation that self-organizes action against every wrong (many real and some mostly perceived) and you get a school environment that is actively hostile the more one tries to enforce order upon it

but also just look at "quiet quitting", slacker culture, civil and labor rights movements, and most of the rest of American history at various inflection points. dismissing student misbehavior as children being inherently bad for some reason means willfully looking past all of the major events and figures around them that are influencing that behavior


When I was a kid, the most advanced tech we had was an electric calculator. If our parents didn't watch us, a babysitter did. At most, we had an Atari 2600 for video games on the spare B&W TV that got replaced with a Color TV for the father and mother. We played outside and kickball in the streets until the lights came on.

Today's kids have smartphones, PCs/Macs, Video Game Consoles, and movie streaming devices and are unsupervised on the Internet. For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs. They have no respect for teachers or other adults and don't know how good they have it compared to me and the rest of Generation X. No wonder they are getting ruder.

https://www.chron.com/business/article/Why-didn-t-Steve-Jobs...

Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPads. He must have known something of the side-effects in kids and iPads. Just try to take the iPad or iPhone away from a kid and see how they react.


> Today's kids have smartphones, PCs/Macs, Video Game Consoles, and movie streaming devices and are unsupervised on the Internet. For role models, they have rap stars who sing about sex and drugs.

I don’t know if there are any stats to back this up but anecdotally I know plenty of kids with all kinds of freedoms and gadgets who are extremely respectful, well-mannered, and responsible. They respectfully disagree with their parents on some issues and some of old fashioned parents may consider disagreement as disrespectful.

Maybe it’s my circle but average gen z kid seems like way more mature than us when we were their age.

Rude kids that I have encountered are mostly from parents who are already rude, entitled, or have macho mentality. Kind of people I rarely hangout with. Many of these kids have more restrictions too, no video games, must play sports, extra tutoring, cannot dress certain ways, etc.


I grew up before internet really and there were always kids that had absolutely no problem with physical violence, you'd get stones thrown at you(good scenario) or punched or kicked(bad scenario) if you did something they did't like. But sure, they didn't swear as much I guess? One time I came back with a bloody nose because I got punched in the face for walking in the wrong place and some kid didn't like it, and my dad's response was "well, did you hit him back? why not?"

Don't get me wrong - I do actually think that kids nowadays are rude. They have no respect for teachers, parents, elders or anyone really. But I'm also 100% sure that my dad used to think the same thing, and his dad before him too.


I had a bully who wanted to copy my answers on a science test, I refused so he said he'd beat me up. After science class, he followed me in the hall and kicked me in the back of the head. He was a black belt in TKD with the spinning roundhouse kick. All I could do was back up to avoid being kicked in the head. Until a vice principal broke up the fight. Sometimes you can't avoid bullies and sometimes they have a black belt in a martial art. Nobody brought a gun to school back then, but now kids bring guns to school.



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