>"Kids these days" never really goes away huh?

And it's seldom wrong either.

Kids do have different behavior in different ages. Whether that's good or bad is another thing (in some things it's bad, in others are good). But culture, habits, etc, are not the same blob of sameness for centuries. Kids in 1950 are different than kids in 2020 or kids in 1900.

In this particular case, indeed, kids these days seldom read books, whether in print or eBook form.

Whether they still read social media pages, and online news, is beside the point when it comes to reading books.

It’s frustrating because it’s based on anecdotal evidence and preconceptions. It also defaults to the assumption that all change is bad.

I know plenty of kids these days who read books, lots of them in fact. Often reading fiction and literature especially.

>I know plenty of kids these days who read books, lots of them in fact. Often reading fiction and literature especially.

Well, since you've mentioned anecdotal evidence, all the statistics say kids read less than ever. Down to 1/4 or so of what kids in the 70s read (including eBooks).

https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.as...

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

~ Socrates

In case you're wondering why you're being downvoted, the quote seems to be fake [1]. The picture that sometimes go with it, [2], is fake as well.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/

[2] https://imgur.com/jwSls6X

The other stupid thing about that supposed quote is that the presumption that he must have been wrong may not be justified. Socrates is thought to have lived 470-399BC. By the end of that lifetime, it would have been obvious to an impartial observer that Athenian power was fading; another generation or two later and Athens was no longer an independent power.

Yeah, it seems like the previous generation is always upset about the next generation, but they're not always wrong. Humanity has survived, sure, but most of the civilizations those sentiments were coming from haven't.

That's an interesting observation. I wonder whether a falling empire correlates to children misbehaving at schools.

I wonder whether studies were done on it in Britain or Spain, both of which you could say had empires which collapsed (though this did not threaten their whole existence).

To be clear, I'm not claiming that it does correlate... I'm only saying that you can't be sure it doesn't. It could be a selection effect, in that while it is said by everyone everywhere, we only hear from people in their cultural prime, which is just before the collapse. On the other hand, it may not be something everyone everywhere says, and it may be something that is mostly said by people in collapsing empires, in which case, it may very well be a true observation.

My main claim would just be that we don't have enough data to cite this quote (were it real) in mockery, as it is not quite as obviously wrong as it may seem from the very casual view of history.