is gen alpha screwed?
Ahoy there!
I, and probably you, have seen a lot of these videos of anecdotes from various teachers about how bad Gen Alpha is doing. Lacking basic reading and arithmetic skills, emotional dysregulation, no respect for teachers. The list and gripes go on. It's not hard to see why.
A seeming majority of Gen Alpha kids are born into hyper-stimulating environments, ready access to addictive technology, and being fluent in iPad use before they are forming coherent sentences. It's like the adage of "don't sit too close to the TV or it'll hurt your eyes", except now it's huffing gasoline.
Kids are getting fucked over in a big way. I had a conversation with my mother-in-law who's sister is a teacher and relayed the message from the sister that essentially more affluent districts have more well-behaved kids. To the shock of nobody, kids who grow up in secure environments where at least one guardian is consistently there are growing up more well-behaved (god help you if you mention the numbers 6 and 7 in succession, though).
It shouldn't be a shock to you that metrics of intelligence usually rank higher amongst richer families, that's because they can actually afford the quality education necessary.
Regardless, I am around a lot of early Gen Alpha kids by proxy of my wife having a lot of younger cousins. The interactions are... interesting sometimes.
For example, while I've seen articles floating around about how studies are showing higher levels of technological literacy in Gen Alpha, I gotta call bullshit on that. If by "technological literacy" you mean "basic computer and smart device navigation that even older Xoomers have figured out", then yeah it makes sense. However when it comes to practically anything else, Alpha kids are not great with technology that isn't designed like a Fisher-Price toy. Basic trouble shooting is out the window it seems (this is also a problem of late Zoomers too), and even just messing with settings is foreign to them. I know it's a rather small sample size, but the Gen Alpha kids I know would be lost if you told them to change the background wallpaper on their computer (smartphones and tablets are a no brainer though).
One of the older cousins doesn't even know what a USB is... look, I'm probably gonna sound like an old man here, but how tf do you not know what a USB is? It's not like a floppy drive where it's been outdated for decades at this point, USBs are still very much a current technology.
Again, I'm aware of this small sample size, but the anecdotes seem to be piling up.
Gen Alpha isn't to blame here. It's the people behind the phones recording them having a meltdown because they took the kid's iPad away and posting it online for others to make a spectacle out of that are the problem.
These dolts who evidently haven't taken a breath through their nose a day in their life know that there's a problem, but do fuck all to resolve it. It's the same kinda people who see someone having a seizure in public and their first instinct is to whip out their phones.
That being said, I understand FULLY how tempting it is to just let a kid go wild on a TV or something because you're mentally dead and exhausted from the never-ending demand of neo-liberal capitalism. My wife and I are guilty of this too, we let our daughter watch Wiggles on the TV.
However, I do think there is a STARK contrast between a curated show from the 90s-00s and a show like Cocomelon that is designed to be like heroin for babies. I walked in on my MIL and daughter watching Cocomelon together one time, and it was jarring seeing how, for one, low effort the animation and songs are, and two, how stimulating this show is, between the incredibly saturated colors to the jump cuts every second. What I learned was that this show uses focus groups of children to make it so there is not a break in the concentration. If a kid shifts his eyes away from the screen, the scene gets edited to address that.
Companies are literally designing everything for addiction these days. Trying to get you hooked on whatever they can profit off of as early in your development as possible.
There are also parents, like another one of my wife's aunts, who is completely incompetent at raising her kids. Both kids have severe speech impediments one kinda talks with a slurred speech and the other is borderline incomprehensible. The latter is in middle school and can barely articulate their words. It's really sad. A lot of members of the family basically tell her to get her kids into speech therapy, but she won't because it "overwhelms her"... how about put your fucking big girl pants on, get the fuck over yourself, and be a fucking MOTHER you quarter-wit. The older sister recently crashed her step-dad's truck trying to pick up her boyfriend and is likely going to face getting barred from having a license until she's 18. The rest of the family is basically telling the aunt "you have nobody to blame but yourself". If you think the aunt is negligent, their bio-dad is even worse. It just kinda reminds me of the book Careless People, and reminds me of the dad who slowed down, whilst driving their actively bleeding-out daughter to the hospital, to look out for the fish in a river. I digress, this wasn't meant to be a takedown of my gripes with my wife's aunt, just kinda had to get that out.
All this being said, I do have some hope though for Gen Alpha...
A growing number of parents ARE becoming aware of how fucked technology has become for kids. One of my wife's aunt and uncle approached me for advice on dumb phones because they know I use it and want to have their kids use a dumb phone to reduce screen time.
I do see kids hanging out outside with their friends, playing sports, etc.
During Halloween 2025, I saw that kids are still out there. They're playing, making friends, trick-or-treating isn't dead even among some of the younger teenagers. It gave me a hopeful feeling that maybe we can do something about this. Maybe Gen Alpha isn't screwed.
I think the shift is going to come from these older generations who recognize the damage of social media and even how technology is designed these days and try to reverse course. I see this shift in Zoomer's who are becoming parents. A lot of them seem to share the same sentiment as me when it comes to technology.
I think setting age-appropriate boundaries with technology is the right way to go. Limiting screen time, curating the entertainment so it's not just an algorithm determining what our kids watch, hell just BEING present with your kid is like 99% of the battle.
I understand that can be difficult, especially if you and your spouse work full time jobs (or multiple jobs), but we owe it to our kids to try. It won't be easy, hell parenting is probably one of the hardest things I've had to do, and I'm not even the primary parent, but we put our kids into this world, we do them a disservice doing anything less than giving them the best chance at succeeding in this world.
Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com
as of writing this...
I'm bored as hell at work. I came in early enough and there's barely anyone here, and I just wanna go home to my wife and daughter who are both sick now. They were up since 3:30am. Thankfully, the perk of living with my MIL is she came down to help my wife get a little rest and watch our daughter. I fucking hate this place and the obtuse boomers in charge who ushered in the RTO mandate. They know people are pissed, but they're hoping it goes away. I hope it doesn't. Just gotta get through this shit until I either graduate from my Clinical Social Worker program, or there is an opportunity that comes around that is too good to pass up.