Are we creating a generation of self-absorbed bullies? || Motherhood In Progress

we're gen Alpha influencers of course we are obsessed with skin care things that I hate people like okay I don't know how to say this without sounding so self-absorbed but when people get views off of me what is going on with Gen Alpha students and their poor Behavior at school they don't care we're Jen alfit influencers you're four got to keep those wrinkles away you've been asked before our thoughts on discipline I don't know what is discipline they do not care about Authority it's wild perhaps we need to have a serious conversation pretty soon about

whether or not it is healthy for young people to be plugged into the internet the moment that they are able I think it's going to be equally interesting and heartbreaking to see like the psychological effects that we see later down the road of using social media at this age for Gen Alpha we all love making fun of young people it's almost like a right of passage when a new generation is labeled to separate ourselves from them by putting them on a lower pedestal than ours we Pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for being

better children than the current lazy entitled and self-serving youth while we now have research showing that for the most part this isn't true and that the kids these days mindset comes from our own memory bias of our childhoods there is still growing concern for the newest generation gen Alpha with their unique struggles specific to being born between 2010 and 2025 may be causing permanent damage to their development between growing up chronically online and surpassing the level of coddling that the participation ribbon generation was raised with Gen Alpha is now facing a label of their own

a label that may be forever imprinted on them as the most narcissistic generation yet I went into this video hesitant to make such claims because for one I don't love labeling large groups of people let alone the group of people that my own children are in but the more I've researched the more concern I've grown for these kids so let's dive into it and try and decode these symptoms of growing up gen Alpha [Music] have you guys been keeping up with Gen Alpha influencers it is both terrifying and fascinating hey guys this is Johnny with

a get ready with me for school next up my glow recipe firm serum got to keep those wrinkles away so like I got this new moisturizer from glow recipe cuz they love me been a rough day guys of course I needed moisturiz in my face outfit of the day so this is from Kendra Scott I don't have any earrings in this is from L lemon before I get more comments from people being like that's not a real little lemon jacket you can afford little lemon which first of all why do you care it okay second

of all this is Lululemon I just took the hair tie out if you're wondering how this happened it of course all started with the iPad kids in 2010 when the iPad came out parents were quick to adopt it as their new parenting hack a 2011 study found that 39% of 2 to four yearolds have direct access to digital media just a year after the iPad's Inception in 2011 to 2013 the percentage of children under eight that were using digital media increased from 38% to 72% and as kids grew up and grew out of iPads they

needed the next upgrade which was of course the smartphone a 2019 review of NPR found that over half of children have a SmartPhone by the age of 11 these smartphones of course came with all the bells and whistles that you get from your iPad with the constant entertainment but with the convenience of being able to bring it everywhere and kids have been getting smartphones earlier and earlier every year since they came out some kids are getting smartphones as early as age five and I know of some schools struggling with cell phone issues in the classroom

as early as grade three and with this access to smartphones children are using video sharing apps like Tik Tok and YouTube at even earlier ages these kids are spending much more time on technology than any other generation at the same age they found that 65% of those ages 8 to 10 are spending up to 4 hours a day on social media I don't know what's in the water right now but all of the Educators I know are experiencing this like Collective shift around one particular issue it's phones the levels of addiction range from mild to

this is not an exaggeration students who are on their phone scrolling every class the entire hour like the entire your school day whatever is happening in the classroom if you are on your phone like that's more interesting than whatever we're doing so even if you're like kind of in and out like no your phone is what's dominating your mind but I think what's worse for me is the social element like it is so weird and disturbing to just see kids not like talking to their friends like I'm like I want you guys to talk to

each other like goof around be kids like I almost want them to like act up in the traditional ways where they're just like haha talking joking passing notes time to do something what are we going to do despite the minimum age for using these platforms being 13 we know many children under 13 are on these apps and that's how we've gotten the Gen Alpha influencer because while there is a minimum age of 13 there's no regulation preventing children from downloading and using these apps and not to mention that these companies don't want to keep children

off their platforms because the earlier the children join the more likely they are to build those scrolling habits that they'll take with them into adulthood and in my opinion the worst offense of them all which is preventing anyone from shutting down these gen Alpha influencers is that a lot of these kids have parent run accounts which allows them to get around the rules I just don't understand why parents would think that this is a good idea a good thing to do for your kids I think it's about time someone said it I think that parents

who have entire Tik Tok accounts and Instagram accounts for the entirety of the content is them filming their like babies and toddlers need to stop because like what the actual am I watching you're telling me as a parent especially the ones who like their entire life is this family Tik Tok account you're telling me one of the main sources of income in your house is videos of your baby feel like a lot of them don't really have much say in the matter they're so small and they're just doing what their parents are telling them to

now I can make a whole video on the negative repercussions of having children on social media but today we're talking specifically about the narcissistic repercussions the reason children should be kept off social media is because prepubescent and pubescent kids are the most vul vulnerable at this age during this time their brains are still malleable and the neuron Pathways that they make during these years will stick with them for the rest of their life children are of course Very impressionable that is how they figure out what path they want to take and who they want to

be and with that they often copy whoever they see to be the most accomplished or having the highest status older gen Alphas are forming their habits now and these habits have impacts on children's aspirations one survey found that today's children are three times more likely to Aspire to be a YouTuber than an astronaut this is of course because they're primarily seeing influencers being the most accomplished in society and so that's what they want to be as well during the time of life when kids are finding their own identities gen Alpha influencers are hijacking their attention

and retraining them to Aspire for their version of success since succeeding on social media requires primarily a focus on the self especially when these children are too young to have any life experience that would allow them to offer anything of value these children will continue to turn inwards to try and reach the same level of success that these gen Alpha influencer Role Models have reached and so these young people focus obsessively on themsel and their Public Image and even if you don't want to be an influencer you're still dealing with the increased social comparison from

being on these apps which increases your self focus as well now if you are a well balanced person who has the capability to compartmentalize all these effects from social media then you can get away with minimal negative repercussions the problem is really only adults can do that not even all of them because your brain is fully formed children's brains are just too sensitive to prevent these negative repercussions that this obsession with the self can make you prone to narcissism research shows that higher amounts of social media use predict higher levels of grandiose narcissism this includes

time spent on social media frequency of posts or tweets number of friends slf followers and how often participants post pictures of themselves on social media as well in a 2018 study researchers tracked 74 participants aged 18 to 34 over 4 months and Quantified their narcissistic traits they found that participants who posted large quantities of photos and selfies showed a 25% increase in narcissism it's a cyclical issue too where the more you're online the more prone you are to narcissism and the more your narcissism grows the more likely you are to be chronically online one study

found that young adults with grandiose or vulnerable narcissism were at higher risks of tick Tok addic addiction if we don't cut out these gen Alpha influencers whether that's through government agencies shutting down the content or parents taking control of their children's access online we will continue to see children's brains being warped to see success in narcissism this portion of today's video is sponsored by UL like did you know that you can have 90% of your leg hair permanently removed in Just 4 weeks from a 10minute home treatment well when I heard about that I said

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try out the you like Air 10 for yourself check out the link in the description and you'll also get a 90day no reason return or exchange thank you so much to you like for sponsoring ing today's video now let's get back to our video [Music] essay the use of smartphones and the overall internet by gen Alpha expands to more than just the consumption of gen Alpha influencers between video games messaging apps streaming platforms and more children are growing up with their eyes glued to a screen a survey from Pew research showed that in the smartphone

and social media era nearly half of the nation's teens say they are online almost constantly specifically they found that overall screen use among teens and twins increased by 177% from 2019 to 20121 Growing more rapidly than the four years prior on average daily screen use went up among tween ages 8 to 12 to 5 hours and 33 minutes from 4 hours and 44 minutes and to 8 hours and 39 minutes from 7 hours and 22 minutes for teens ages 13 to 18 now there have been arguments that say that this increase in screen usage isn't

all bad because it can be used for educational reasons like schoolwork or for messaging platforms that of course connect people together the problem that is rarely brought up is that the time spent on these screens takes away the time available for other activities that children need for proper development specifically children are not getting enough in-person social time with others despite living a life centered around social apps Millennials were fine cuz they had flip phones they didn't they weren't online all the time jenz is not fine I agree with him that perhaps we need to have

a serious conversation pretty soon about whether or not it is healthy for young people to be plugged into the internet the moment that they are able to be plugged into it is that beneficial for their education are they learning I don't know but as a millennial I remember peace I remember that I remember peace growing up I remember not having the noise the constant noise of connection of screens of being able to just grab for something to look at it when you were feeling a certain way of observing large groups of people that were being

present because they had no choice and you could go days days without looking or or seeing looking at or seeing a screen there was a slowness and a peace to that life and Millennials experienced it when they were young and then it was slowly chipped away as they grew into adulthood yeah I mean I knew that piece I knew that piece when I was like8 n or 10 uh and now it it doesn't really exist anymore you have to find ways to carve out peace because there's just so much there's just so much noise all

the time so are they fine I mean I don't really think anybody is fine but it's different they're not fine but it's different yeah I don't know prior to the 1990s the time that children and teens spent with their friends stayed fairly consistent and then when we hit 2010 we saw a massive drop off of the amount of time that kids are spending with their friends daily this trend of self-isolating is confidently said to have been caused by the introduction of smartphones and other Technologies taking up the attention of children and teens this is because

the decreased time spent with friends follows the same timeline as the increased usage of social media platforms and as we were seeing the time spent with kids on the decline then of course we got hit with the pandemic where this social Trend downward got accelerated while children were only forced to stay locked down for a few years like I said earlier children are very sensitive to the habits they make in their youth and this sets the path for their habits to be self-focused we're now finding that children haven't rebounded or regained the social lives that

they had in the early 2000s and this is what's leading children to having fewer and fewer friends and feeling loner than ever not surprisingly this isolation is having an impact on children's social skills which is showing a rise for the potential of a narcissistic generation I feel like because of the internet gen Z and gen Alpha do not know the Power of Words just because you cannot see a person's face and the pain that registers on their face when they hear horrible things written about them on the Internet or spoken about them does not make

their feelings any less valid or real if you are a parent or someone that has influence over gen alpha or gen C please remind them the power of their words one of the most important things kids are supposed to do in their youth is to learn social skills and Foster emotional development during adolescence friendships are vital they help young people Forge a sense of Independence and ident identity while teaching them valuable skills like compassion and empathy while children do maintain some friendships through online platforms they need face-to-face interaction to learn the skill of empathy Dr

Michelle borba who wrote the book unselfie why empathetic kids succeed in our all about me world said our children become very plugged in around the year 2000 it's very hard to be empathetic and feel for another human being if you can't read another person's emotions you don't learn emotional literacy facing a screen you don't learn empathy and face to face connection if you're looking down and texting you don't learn emotional literacy with Emojis raising empathetic children is important for them to become well-adjusted kids but it's just as important for them to become well-rounded people in

general I've been seeing a lot of teachers on here talk about how they can tell in their classrooms who the iPad kids are because they're inattentive they have a lot of problems with focusing and I just want to take it one step further and tell you that that's not only going to be a problem with attention later in life but also personality as a whole you're going to raise an apathetic child if you are a chronic iPad kid and that's because in developmental psychology and cognitive Neuroscience we have this term called theory of mind and

that's a developmental like necessity when you're a child that allows you to understand how you interact with your environment and how it interacts back with you if you're stuck in front of an iPad for your whole adolescence there is no way that you are going to develop your place in the world world and your interactions with other people what's appropriate what's not appropriate and at the end of the day if you don't develop it it leads to different psychiatric disorders and also just a complete lack of empathy children do better in school work and life

when they have the capacity to be empathetic research shows that empathetic children are better adjusted socially more likely to rise above peer pressure and are less prone to aggression or bullying they tend to become effective communicators and find it easier to form bonds with others empathy also empowers children to understand to cope with their feelings and the feelings of others as you can probably predict what I'm about to say a lack of empathy leads to an increase in narcissism at extreme ends empathy and narcissism are like oil and water highly narcissistic people lack empathy and

genuinely empathetic people aren't narcissistic for this reason raising empathetic children who have a healthy balanced sense of self and feel connected to others is a kind of psychological insurance policy we can invest in as therapists parents caregivers teachers family members and neighbors nurturing the next generation of Global Citizens if we continue to let our children's stay face down in screens instead of experiencing people in the real world then they won't have the capacity to learn empathy during these developmental years when they learn the social skills they will use for the rest of their [Music] lives

one of the biggest ongoing concerns that people have with genen Alpha's upbringing is the parenting style Millennials have chosen to use news which is of course gentle parenting there has been an uproar of opposition against gentle parenting because while it may seem wonderful on paper acknowledging and responding to your child's emotions staying calm and showing mutual respect it doesn't seem to be putting out the best kids mhm oh my god did my son just curb stomp your son my baby fig fig newton come here buddy okay buddy first of all are you okay let's do

a check-in let's do a full body scan okayy figgy we don't do that but that was a really good throw buddy will you tell your kids to stop throwing things oh we don't believe in the word stop only go Millennials gravitate towards the style of parenting to try and break the pattern of some toxic parenting techniques that many Gen X and Millennials had to endure growing up things like spanking and screaming if you watch my videos you know that I have talked about gentle parenting before and that I stood behind it saying that gentle parenting

is good for kids but since then I've learned more and I have more concerns the problem that seems to be izing is that while gentle parenting is good for our children many Millennials are not in fact gentle parenting but permissive parenting I didn't think this was the case before because I saw so many surveys showing that Millennials are gentle parenting not permissive parenting but many of these surveys were just Millennials saying that they're gentle parent and not actually proving that they are gentle parenting but since then more surveys have been taken from these parents practicing

gentle parenting saying that 40% of them don't actually know what they're doing and many of them have said in gentle parenting they felt exhausted over stimulated and hanging on for dear life like I said in my previous video if you are correctly gentle parenting it is great for you it's great for your children but there is a slippery slope towards permissive parenting if you aren't careful if you haven't looked into gentle parenting the idea behind it is to approach your kids with respect and empathy to offer choices rather than making demands to give space to

your children's feelings and emotions and to avoid losing your cool and frustrating situation and that's why it's not hard to see why it's become such a popular parenting style but while the outline of gentle parenting may seem clear the day-to-day application can become blurry having natural consequences instead of timeouts seems like a great idea but what are the consequences for say biting a sibling or refusing to get your shoes on which will lead you to be late for an appointment parents are finding that real life application of gentle parenting isn't straightforward enough for their day-to-day

despite wanting to do their best for their kids so I can always tell permissive parents like out in public I'm not judging them but I always just notice it um when they give in it is really like the classic no we're not going to buy you a toy today or no you have to sit in a booster seat or have to hold mommy's hand in the parking lot and the kid will be like no no or whatever I want what I want and the parent will be super sensitive and not tolerate the kid's negative emotion

and give into it and and um I'm not judging that at all I didn't like my my kids had negative emotion either but because I'm a psychologist I was always more afraid of conditioning them to not tolerate their own disappointment by giving in I thought that was interesting unless you've previously thought through the exact natural consequence for each scenario prior to the event happening it's really hard to think on the spot of what makes sense right here when you could just give them a timeout Annie Piza an assistant professor of psychology said that the problem

is that it's not straightforward to describe or explain what gentle parenting says these parents should do instead from our study of 100 parents we found that parents who identified as G usually note three things they regulate their own emotions in the middle of a conflict and try to name their child's emotions you look angry do you feel angry they try and give their child coping skills like sitting with their feelings and they give affection there is a lot of hugging it out when we asked about a time when their children misbehaved and how they handled

it many parents said I asked my child if they needed a hug one thing these parents emphasize is giving their child a voice many parents that I've talked to have felt disempowered by their own parents are there Authority has been undermined by them and that can lead to them feeling like no one's going to listen to them anyway so what's the point are not believing that they can be in charge and instill their values and set boundaries with their kids and that can lead to an imbalance of control where the child feels like they're in

charge and they can set the rules and expectations in the home and then that can lead into school as well these kids will be bossy defiant argumentative disrespectful when they become adults they can often be self-centered but dependent in relationships they could be demanding of others but then fail to follow through with responsibilities and obligations on their end and that often results in a very lonely life in the process of moving away from traditional discipline and towards gentler strategies we find ourselves exhausted from the emotional weight required to Gentle parent in authoritarian parenting you just

react and shut down the situation and emotions while gentle parents have to go through the whole routine of acknowledging feelings calming the situation coming up with applicable consequences in real time and holding your ground despite the backlash that your child will give you gentle parenting is really hard especially when you were not gentle parented you are doing the work to reparent yourself so you have that stress of breaking generational trauma and then on top of that you have to parent in a healthy way so I'm sitting there and while my son's about to Dart into

the street I'm like okay what do I say in this moment so he doesn't get scared and he can learn because his limpic system isn't freaking out oh baby stay in the grass and that interaction although it was 2 seconds of his day was 40 minutes of my brain power so I come home my son won't nap and you know what I did I went to The Pantry I closed the door and I screamed as loud as I could and then I crushed my soda can instead of throwing my phone through a window breaking the

glass um so it's just really hard to be a parot and especially nowadays because knowledge is power but you know burying your head in the sand seems really nice right about now this mother gave a great depiction of what it actually feels like to try and hold those boundaries as a gentle parent if a kid is screaming for a third cookie and a parent is trying to avoid a response like you won't ever get dessert acting like that or eat another bite of broccoli and then we'll see the other choices are these give the kid

the cookie to make the screaming stop not great or explain that you've already discussed the rules about dessert beforehand because that's what gentle parents do obviously and affirm your child's disappointment while holding the line even as the storm rages for minutes or even hours meanwhile good luck having a much needed conversation with your spouse who you haven't seen all day or making a phone call I'd hand over the cookie for peace or maybe yell stop crying or I'm canceling Christmas but that's just me of course I'd pay the price it's harder to hold the line

later when you've already caved The Gentle Way is better but very very hard it's no wonder parents often choose the easy out and unintentionally indulge their kids another example is Hannah a single mom of two boys at Asia 6 and N who says she met with a school psychologist because she was noticing a lot of disrespect at home the psychologist said the kid needed boundaries Hannah readly admits that she might be a tad permissive as a parent she has a hard time holding the line with screen time on school nights and gives in to stop

the mind-numbing negotiating her kids have perfected when Hannah's kids misbehave she finds that talking about what what they're feeling or taking a few deep breaths in the other room doesn't seem to help and while she's convinced that her kids don't walk all over her she knows she isn't consistent with expectations and limits she's getting tired of the escalating back talk throwing and ruthless negotiating she tells me she wonders if she's been too soft no one wants to Usher a generation of entitled jerks but are well-meaning gentle parents doing just that so what does this mean

for the children when gentle parenting is taken too far when we overindulge every last emotional experience to the point where we become The Regulators for our children's emotions well funny enough just like the neglectful abusive and authoritarian parenting style that the Boomers grew up with which has been shown to produce narcissism in children permissive parents are just as likely to produce the same narcissistic children differing from the cold and aloa parent the second type of parent to create narcissists was described as using their child as a direct source of self-esteem they saw their children as

extensions of themselves and therefore played up all their strengths while downplaying all of the child's shortcomings and we are already seeing this start to affect the older end of gen Alpha it seems like everyone's talking about how horribly misbehaved and self-entitled they are I keep seeing these videos of teachers saying that they're actually scared of gen Alpha because they have no respect for authority and just live according to their own rules they do not care about Authority it's wild they are so aware of their power and what they want and what they don't want and

they are not afraid to share it they don't buy into the argument that this is good for you so learn it in the current school system they found a lack of empathy and emotional intelligence demonstrating feelings of entitlement and self-absorption struggling with self-image and social comparison and a lack of moral compass make for a future generation of narcissistic bullies they are spurred and protected by their parents who set a trend to continuously rescue their child or to completely ignore that their child is the wrongdoer parents who exhibit power in their own behavior and attempt to

bully other parents set an example and become poor role models to their own children this is one of the most disturbing things I've read in a while a post on r/ teers has gone viral titled it's going to get worse isn't it this person has been teaching for 14 years and they teach grades 9 through 12 English language arts or Ela they start out by saying that all grades seem to have in common a oneandone aesthetic meaning all students get a chance to improve their grades with revisions but fewer than onethird even try and then

the parents complain when the doesn't have an A even though the kid refused to do revisions didn't address The Prompt and had tons of spelling errors even though it was a digital assignment he says the parents just stare stone-faced and say but you assigned a one-page essay and he turned in a one-page essay and this was only Amplified by the pandemic where parents bent and twisted to their children's desires as they tried to navigate at home learning while maintaining a happy household cleen a first grade teacher at a private school in Manhattan said that there

has been a significant shift it as as if parents feel their children missed out on something and now want life to always feel special with no disappointments I haven't noticed an uptake in overly disruptive behavior but more of a it's my world and everyone should revolve around me mentality where I used to see kids rolling with a paper cut lately they need a Band-Aid now kids refuse to carry their backpacks and parents are more than happy to oblige them kids are less resilient they don't know how to compromise parents of course have such a big

role in the development of their children but I didn't realize that the loved too much style of parenting could actually be so detrimental for your kids the gentle parenting movement comes from a great place and I've said it a million times but it can be so good for you and your kids but we now know that it can be pushed to the point where the power Dynamic is flipped and the kids start running the [Music] show so all of that is quite discouraging to say the least like I said I went into this cautiously not

wanting to to make outrageous claims without strong evidence to back it and strong evidence I found I'm having a hard time trying to put a positive spin on this I've realized that I kind of unintentionally do that in my final thoughts is find a positive Viewpoint to end on and not because I'm an optimist but because I think I need a little bit of Hope and I also want to give people the benefit of the doubt that we can be greater than these big claims but there's so much compelling data showing that genen Alpha really

needs to fight for their life to not be harmed emotionally and mentally from just being born after 2009 I do and must still have hope I have to especially cuz my children are gen Alpha and everything that's been said about gen Alpha is a generalized statement not a claim for every child for the parents who have been exposed to this information whether through my videos or other resources obviously you have the power to change the narrative and spare your children's developing brains from the impacts of a technology focused world no other generation has grown up

from birth with internet access and this so-called guinea pig generation has been giving us warning signs that it's not working we need to change our tactics no when to be protective of our children and no when to let them take the Reigns otherwise if all these stars align of what we talked about today I'm really worried we have a big problem on our hands [Music]