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Addendum to: The Political Rhetor and the Future. 6.2.b. Children:

The concept of “child/children” appears to have been changing along with technology and globalisation. But adults change, too. We’re the ones studying children, reporting on them, hypothesising about them, and rearing them! — and we have the technological means to distribute these worries and observations. The upshot is that our concept of children might have changed more than children actually have.

All life stages of humans are affected by the material conditions in which humans are situated. Rather a duh. World War 2, for example, rocketed social, political, and technological changes throughout all generations for affected nations. People had to grow up quickly, as it were, when the situation demanded. Worries about children have also always lingered, such as in Plato’s Republic and during the Victorian Era. As such, I find the following examples interesting but I take their claims with a dose of healthy skepticism. Or at least with a broader perspective.

1. “Jean Twenge…adds that in terms of adult behaviors, 18-year-olds now look like 15-year-olds of the past.”
   • Stetka, Bret. “Extended Adolescence: When 25 is the New 18,” Scientific American, September 19, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/extended-adolescence-when-25-is-the-new-181/, accessed May 1, 2025

“With generational divides wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults. Born after 1995, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person – perhaps why they are experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

But technology is not the only thing that makes iGen distinct from every generation before them; they are also different in how they spend their time, how they behave, and in their attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and politics. They socialize in completely new ways, reject once sacred social taboos, and want different things from their lives and careers. More than previous generations, they are obsessed with safety, focused on tolerance, and have no patience for inequality. iGen is also growing up more slowly than previous generations: eighteen-year-olds look and act like fifteen-year-olds used to.

As this new group of young people grows into adulthood, we all need to understand them: Friends and family need to look out for them; businesses must figure out how to recruit them and sell to them; colleges and universities must know how to educate and guide them. And members of iGen also need to understand themselves as they communicate with their elders and explain their views to their older peers. Because where iGen goes, so goes our nation—and the world.

Drawing from nationally representative surveys of 11 million young people as well as in-depth interviews, iGen is the first book to document the cultural changes shaping today’s teens and young adults, documenting how their changed world has impacted their attitudes, worldviews, and mental health.”

• Jean M. Twenge, iGen, https://www.jeantwenge.com/igen-book-by-dr-jean-twenge/, accessed May 1, 2025

3. “We are living through an era of rapid and far-reaching transformation. As the world has changed — becoming more digital, more globalized, and more diverse — childhood is changing with it. The Changing Childhood Project — a collaboration of UNICEF and Gallup — was created to explore these shifts, and to better understand what it means to be a child in the 21st century. The project seeks to answer two questions: What is it like growing up today? And how do young people see the world differently? To answer these questions, we wanted to hear from children and young people themselves. Comparing the experiences and views of young versus older people offers a powerful lens to explore how childhood is changing, and where generations diverge or converge. The ultimate goal of the project is to centre young people — their experiences and perspectives — in the work of improving life for all children, today and into the future.”

• The Changing Childhood Project, Unicef, https://changingchildhood.unicef.org/en/about, accessed May, 2025