You know when people start a sentence off with 'Back in my day...', and it's super annoying and you roll your eyes? You have to wonder how long this has been going on for. Because there has always been a 'back in my day'. Right now, everybody thinks that my generation (my generation is a very broad term, I don't even know if I am in the generation I am talking about), is the most selfish generation there is. 'Teenagers, nowadays,' and such on and so forth. But seriously, every generation is equally as selfish. All it takes is new technology or items to make someone selfish. But because I am in the age of technology, where almost everyone has a laptop/cellphone /iPod, we are selfish. No, these are not necessary products. But you know what else wasn't a necessary product when it first came out? Pre-made clothes. It used to be a big deal when people were able to go to a store and purchase clothes. Only the rich could afford it. And the rich girls and boys wouldn't really care about it, because they knew they'd be able to attain it.
Just as sewing machines, when they were first widely available. Everyone used to sew by hand. Sewing machines weren't necessary, and I can guarantee that quite a few rich people back in the day would complain when they're new machine broke on them.
Just because our generation has more new items than ever before, does not make us selfish. How could it? We are not the ones who are creating and inventing these new items, the new technology. We've adapted to living with this technology, just as people adapted to buying clothes, and sewing machines. No, they aren't necessary, and yes, there are other ways of doing things, but if things are constantly going to be invented, how are we to be held responsible for what we can and can't buy?
Women weren't able to or respected for working just 70 years ago, and now, at the age of 15, everyone is expected to have their own jobs. We are paying for what we get, most of us.
And for the spoiled children that everyone keeps complaining about, maybe you should start blaming your own generation on that one, as well. Because if their parents weren't teaching them it's okay to be spoiled, they wouldn't act like that. People aren't just spoiled brats for no reason, it's a learned thing. They learn it from their parents. Most teenagers have jobs and are able to afford cell phones, laptops, iPods, and the technologies we have adapted to loving. It doesn't mean we are selfish, it means we are accepting the times, just as generations before us have.
It doesn't mean we are spoiled, it means that a lot of us are working hard for the money to pay for them.
As for people getting these items as presents, yeah, I'm a little vague on how to defend that, but as I sit here, typing on my gift of a laptop, I'm not going to look too far into it.
Also, in case you were wondering, I do have an iPod. I have two. One I won in an electronic game, the other was given as a gift. My real iPod, the gift, recently broke. I haven't been completely hopeless without it, and I know, at this point, I cannot afford it.
Maybe people in other generations need to start looking at the positives, not the negatives, of the generations preceding them. And need to look at their own generations as spoiling the new ones.
Seriously, who gives a 12 year old a Blackberry?
--t
