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Juvenoia

Generations often criticize the generations before them as too rigid, and the generations after them as out-of-control.

In book III of Odes, which is estimated to have been written circa 20 BC, Horace said: “Our sire’s age was worse than our grandsires. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.”

There is a name for this phenomena, coming forth as a blend of the word Juvenile and Paranoia: Juvenoia. It manifests itself mainly under a distressed concern, or resentful criticism that because of all the new smartphones, the Kardashians, the pop singers, and internet culture the world just isn’t fit to raise well-adjusted kids anymore. It’s also the blown out of proportion animosity some might arbor towards kids these days and how ‘entitled’ they may appear to be, and how they take for ‘granted’ what used to be prized and privileged. Sociologist and director of Crimes against children David Finkelhor came up with the name of the concept in his paper ‘The Internet, Youth Safety and the Problem of “Juvenoia” ’ in 2010, initially stating in his thesis that internet technologies have provoked a widespread wave of anxiety amongst parents because the web is a risk-promoting environment; it is easier for predators to hunt online for their victims and take advantage of them, as it is easier for children to find widely available prohibited sexual materials, and degrade their mental health by exposing themselves to bad influences. Finkelhor proved over all that these worries were actually nonfactual before naming the phenomena: Juvenoia. He also remarked on a funny note that using generational labels, such as calling the precedent generations as close minded and the following as simple-minded, has an amusing tendency to praise those using them.

Hitchcock wrote in Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove family in 1790: “The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge.”

Juvenoia isn’t anything new or only proper to our century: It has been going on for more than a millennia. After all, Colossians 3:20 in the bible “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” is a commandment for a reason; it tried to remediate to the generational clash and reconcile between the wit of the old age and the passion of the youth. Peter the Hermit preached in A.D. 1274: “The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.” It might as well have been a sermon made by a 21st century grandparent. An article published in 1859 in Scientific American kindled against a ‘perverted’ game that weakened morals and physical abilities – chess, and it could also have been used nowadays to criticize video games: “A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiator ship.”

Despite the ceaseless concerns about the bad influences on the younger generations, and the genuine belief that today’s youth are doing worse than before; kids these days are considered to be the best-behaved generation on record. As originally cited in Vsauce’s video about Juvenoia; The Center of Disease Control published reports and data showing that the Teen birth rate has plummeted from 60 per 1,000 in 1990 to 29 per 1,000 in 2010, and separate data demonstrated that it has also coincided with striking drops in teen abortion rates. The number of teenagers self-harming or killing themselves has dropped dramatically for many years in the US approximately 37.5% from 1990 to 2007. Drinking, smoking, and drug use is down, and instead exercising is up. Math and linguistic aptitudes have increased, juvenile crimes have declined, and bullying and hate speech in schools has dramatically decreased. But, Juvenoia prevails.

The point is that Juvenoia remained mostly unchanged; a generation goes and a generation comes but the conflicts between them are doomed to happen. It is an ever-present tendency, and many fields from evolutionary biology, sociology and psychology have speculated on its origins. According to the Darwinian school of thought, as an earthly species; as humans it is totally plausible that we would have been wired with mechanisms to keep our offspring from harm, as we can assume that we would have evolved naturally to prefer the old ways because they are tested and proven to be right rather than the new ways that are untrustworthy and may have unfavorable outcomes. Any manners, or influences that have brought them to the point of a successful reproduction have been satisfactory enough, and any deviation from the same certain choices might be problematic; the survival of the species is critical, due to that many would prefer taking as less risks as possible and using the old ways because they are safer. Children will always appear as vulnerable to their parents because they are more prone to take risks because they have less experience, and therefore less reasons to prefer the old ways. Another annotated reason for Juvenoia is Nostalgia. Parents often talk to their children about their worries by comparing the past to the present, and reflecting a false perception that they were better behaved and in a safer environment. Whereby it only might seem to parents that their children engage in more reckless and risky behaviors than they did when they were younger simply because they had less responsibilities and experience to be aware of the dangers that were always there. This is due to the Selective perception effect, which is the process in which some people might selectively choose to understand and accept only what they want, and ignore anything that opposes their morals. Cognitive psychology tries to explain this as stemming from the fact that our brains perceive the past in a rosy light: The Rosy retrospection effect, as well as Neuroscience found that our memory is consolidated by emotion: we rarely remember boredom in detail, but we recall exciting events in full details, simply because there simply isn’t enough room to remember every single thing or there never was an evolutionary need to recall events in great details. Expressly, you might filter out of your memory the bad times of the past, and still leave raw the present with its petty annoyances because you didn’t fully process it yet, thus you have more chances of preferring the past to the present. Most of the books, songs, movies and slang words and behavior you are fond of are a part of your past, and once past the earliest stages of your life up to your adulthood, in which memories are higher in emotional value, you might feel discomfort towards anything new because you will be more judgmental towards it.

Be that as it may, it is often omitted that when clarifying the concept of Juvenoia, and its generational quality is the fact that its nature has shifted. Culture used to be crafted by the elites of society for the elites, only the aristocracy could profit from art and literacy. Nowadays culture is dumbed down and distributed to the masses who demand simplicity and rapid gratification instead of complex philosophical truths, or rational thoughts of scholars. The nature of Juvenoia has shifted because of this; it has become widespread after being restricted to a certain intellectual class for centuries. It blossomed into the full blown fear we all know today, and the mocking commentaries have attained unlimited multiple facets; on the health care system, on the educative system, and many other areas.

Even if Juvenoia is mainly based on non-factual fears and unbiased ideas; it isn’t harmful. As stated before, it’s a natural phenomenon, therefore positive in healthy doses. The leaning humans have towards worrying has helped draw necessary attention to issues such as pedophilia, mental illness and physical health, and helped correct them. One thing the commenters, and researchers on Juvenoia do at least agree on is that we can educate the general public on dangers without exaggerating their nature; we need to understand the problems of our societies and remediate to them, but for that we only need to be aware of them, and not necessarily to argue or speculate about where they stem from to justify them. Pablo Picasso once said: “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies” and the same can be said about Generations and Juvenoia.

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