Generation Gap Between Teenagers and Their Parents
There are a few things that most young people agree on, and one of them is that the older generations “just don’t understand”. On the other hand, older people often think that the younger generations are more ungrateful, less respectful of authority, and that young people are too “obsessed with the phone”.The misunderstanding between members of different generations is nothing new and unusual, but the subjects of discussion and the reasons for the conflict are changing. Issues of LGBTQ rights, global warming, and social networks are just some areas in which millennials and members of Generation Z stand out from the older generations. The controversial topic is a matter of university and high school debates and a question for students and researchers alike.This intergenerational gap is essential for future social developments and hides more profound messages about the relationships between teenagers and parents. Accordingly, we will tell you more about the generation gap in general and hopefully offer a few ideas to bridge it.
Are Teenagers and Their Parents Doomed to Misunderstanding?
Contents
A certain amount of misunderstanding between the younger and the older is almost inevitable, but that does not deny that today’s generation gap is different and potentially more profound. The rapid development of technology and financial insecurity create significant obstacles in understanding younger and older generations.Generation gap issues are an endless source of topics for an essay on teenagers-parents misunderstanding for a sociology and humanities student. The growing acceptance of various forms of sexuality and gender orientation goes hand in hand with the earlier issues. It seems like any teenage pregnancy problem is unsolvable for parents and can make misunderstanding even deeper. But does it have to be like that?According to recent research, adults need to understand the cultural patterns of the new age and the needs and problems of their teenagers. Conversely, young people must recognise the effort, importance and help they receive from their parents and other adults from the immediate and broader community. Therefore, they should invest more in education about respect and appreciation that step up instead of all that misunderstanding.
Inevitable Conflicts and Desired Compromises
Where intergenerational confrontations arise over what is satisfying for young people and uncomfortable for adults, such as top media entertainment, the conflict should be treated not as an authority scrabble over who will endure but as a possibility to use the contrast debate to improve contact and familiarity.For adults, authority is not renounced by listening. Instead, they should learn how to behave in particular quarrels. Parents can gain valuable insights when treating an adolescent not as a staunch rival to be defeated but as a priceless informant who can help them fully understand their teenager and his world. Taking this course of action in life will help.
Educational System as a Source of Conflicts
A new level of problematization is the degraded educational system, reduced to educational services and fragmented education. However, we cannot blame school teachers and university professors only for this situation.It is generally known that they can lose their jobs and academic licenses due to the slightest mistake and misinterpreted interference in students’ lives’ moral and personal areas. They strictly adhere to defined coursework tasks, and from once influential and respected adults become only some college officials and bystanders in our lives.As with all other social groups, in the case of intergenerational relations, it is necessary to work on sensitizing and pointing out generational needs and the importance of solidarity and cooperation. So, advise and encourage, not humiliate and reject. Allow young people to express themselves through music and clothing styles, through new ideas and creativity. It is a search for identity through an acceptable rebellion that enriches the subcultural color of a society. We should not expect young people to be our copies; the spirit seeks flight and innovation. These stages lead to creativity, which is necessary for complete socialization.
Is There a Way to Minimize Effects of the Generation Gap?
The most acceptable way to downsize the impacts of the generation gap is for parents to treat their adolescents as a companion who can help them apprehend the time of growing up, which can be culturally dissimilar from their youth. Parental curiosity and readiness to listen are significant gains when raising adolescents. In addition, better-educated parents are often less afraid than parents who prohibit debating what they do not apprehend.In addition, it can support parents and teens to stay close when they hang out, accomplishing what they still enjoy – whether it’s sharing some of the traditional interests they still hold. They can eat together, read books, go to the library, support each other, watch movies, or just laugh at something that they both find ridiculous.This is the task of bridging the intergenerational gap for both; what needs to be done is to stay connected while separating them.
Summary
Well-educated young people will undoubtedly build the bridge over the generation gap. Today, everyone agrees that modern times have led to the Flynn effect. This is part of the theory put forward by James Flynn in 1984: in the world’s population, the average IQ is growing mysteriously by three points per decade. Whoever has an average IQ of 100 today would be a real intellectual giant in Napoleonic. James Flynn claims that modern jobs require intelligence, knowledge, and abstract understanding of hypotheses and categories. Emotions are not desirable. We can agree that we live in a time of cruel meritocracy, which cares about profit and its rise without respecting the years of life. However, although they are winning, the young are counting on the old and their experience.
