The Coddling of the Boomer Parental Guilt-Complex
I’m simply gobsmacked that an author who is popularly known as one of the lead critics of safetyism and the risks inherent in figuratively wrapping one’s children in cotton wool to protect them for the world, should now whirl in-place and start demanding bans and blocks to stop kids talking to one another — finding community, finding agency, and possibly finding themselves — because somehow in the past 5 to 15 years he reckons that everything has changed?
It’s not even science, it’s speculation to the point of admission, and (worse) it’s going to be infecting other talking heads who will “preach the controversy”; there are others who are brave enough to fight to hold back this spillage of gut feels but, really, we don’t need this pseudoscience, not ever, but especially in a US election year.
So why do this? We don’t need detailed studies and evidence of pros and cons, obviously, so it’s clear from correlation that all this coverage is:
- in support of Jon Haidt’s new book
- in support of clicks for advertising
- because, like everything documented in The Coddling of The American Mind, fear affects a generation who are prone to being scared of that which they don’t understand, won’t read independent peer-reviewed research regarding, and which reactionary media tells them to blindly be scared of
…and in this case it’s the generation who just launched their kids and are looking to make reparations by making the same mistakes their parents did, differently.
