Recently we had a terrible tragedy in our area. Nine people, eight of them teenagers and the ninth a 23-year-old adult who was driving (and was allegedly drunk), were packed into a car that crashed in the middle of the night, killing four of the teens. A fifth died a few days later.
It turned out these kids were out looking for fun…at 2 in the morning. A local reporter who is the father of five children has written several columns about this terrible event. In the first, he suggested that parents need to crack down on their kids, and that there’s no need for them to be out at that hour. In a second column, he shared a message he received from a 19-year-old reader, who said kids are out running around in the middle of the night because they’re bored, and because today’s adults won’t provide them with places where they can hang out with their friends. He goes so far as to blame today’s adults for the accident.
Obviously the accident was the fault of the driver, not adults who won’t let them go tobogganing (an example the 19-year-old uses). But the point he makes about there being “NOTHING to do” says more about some of today’s youth than anything we adults could say about them.
At 19, I was in college and working to pay for college. So was my husband. My father was in the Air Force at 19, my mother was in nursing school, my father-in-law was in college and my mother-in-law was working as a secretary and planning her wedding. We were all too busy to need to be entertained.
Isn’t it ironic that with all the entertainment we have available in today’s world, there are young people who demand to be given something to do? What has made these kids think that the world owes them anything, much less entertainment?
This young man also says, “That’s why so many kids do drugs and drink and set things on fire etc.; they’re all just bored!” Being bored is no excuse for doing those things, and in a world where there is so much work to be done, there is no excuse for being bored.
Originally posted 3/5/07
I think it’s such a shame that, as Wordsworth said, ‘the world is too much with us, ….we lay waste our powers…little we see in nature that is ours.’
We (all of us) have made a world in which certainty is prioritised above people – above how people think, act and desire – not only are we told what to do, we are told what to like, to do and so on..ad nauseam.
Hanging out is seen a a waste of time – doing nothing is seen as a waste of time, but it is not actually possible to ever ‘do nothing’. Doing nothing brings on thought, whereas being entertained by someone using what they think you like brings on stultifying boredom. The imagination isn’t fed by bombarding it, it’s fed by being given room to operate – by being left alone. Again, it’s not possible to ‘not think’ – we are a thinking species – we can’t help thinking, it’s just that when someone in advertising or education or entertainment tries to do our thinking for us, we ghet bored – switch off – young first, older last – perhaps. I think there is more pressure to watch and listen on young people than there is on me (a 64-year old) – I’m not targeted anymore – nobody is interested what I think – which is actually liberating because it means I am freer to think what I like – the result is that I’m rarely bored – I can find interest in watching the world go by – I don’t have to be ‘doing anything’ for my imagination to get going. Youngsters are hit on from all sides – from well meaning Mums and Dads (remember what Phillip Larkin says about parents!) – from peers – and from companies trying to make them into consumers even before they earn a living.
Read some more – Marcuse – ‘One dimensional man’ et al, or look around you and see what is happening to our youngest and our brightest – I was one once, I didn’t have time or money for anything to buy until I got a job – then I bought a motorbike – and later beer and stuff, and little by little i got sucked into the economy – but before that, I had room and time to roam – in my head and on foot.
You make some interesting points, Robert. I do believe that most kids have been raised to be busy all the time, and they don’t get much time to think. That’s one reason we homeschooled ours. But boredom is no excuse for drinking and driving, vandalism and the like.
Will have to look up Larkin as I’m not familiar with him. And I hear you on not being targeted anymore. It’s definitely freeing!
Thanks for stopping by.