Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

[DXZeke]

There are all these debates about America this and America that.

All of society has changed. As we expand and technology expands, changes come with it. As people get more "sensitive" and push for laws and changes (for better or wose) things change. That's Evolution.

I think that the problems stem from various things.






Lets Start with The Media.

It's always been an influence. Hollywood, The Music Industry, TV, Magazines. It's always showing images of things that are glitzy and glam. It's always about the "next thing." It's about how you should look and act. What's cool. Technology ... which is becoming a very cool, but very huge problem.

https://www.changeyourhealth.net/wei...verweight.html

60% of america is overweight.
The Media only pushes women that are 100lbs that look primarily like 13yr old boys, some of which have D cups and a flat rump. That's not the kind of women that centuries of mankind would talk about... those women were curvy. They had a figure. they were viewed as what is now "Hot."

The Media glorifies this 5%. Women feel that's what they have to be. They only show the other 60% typically when it's putting them down.

It's not very easy to promote healthy eating when the Media pushes fast food, deserts, and food that's not so healthy.

People don't know how to step back. We've been pushed to embrace Excess.





Myspace Effect (other sites like it).

it's sickening to see all these Teen kids that are clearly UNDERAGE trying to show off their bodies. You have a horde of young guys that are all trying to out 6pack ab each other. Then you see comments that ridicule the Average and Overweight people.

Kids have bigger peer pressure than most of us did growing up. Sex, keeping up with the latest gadgets that cost $100s of dollars, etc.

They don't show much respect towards anyone. Which leads to parents.




Parents.

You can't spank kids now. There's lawmakers that are about to make it illegal.
You end up with sites like www.nospank.net They like to go on about how horrible spanking is. That "reasoning" with a kid works. Uhh... yeah, that's really working out.

They talk about how spanking a kid will make them voilent, abusive, sexually abusive, deviants... uh... if a parent is going to be a kid they'll do it even if it's illegal. It won't matter. You're only hurting the majority of good people that won't BEAT their kid, but sternly smack them of cuff them behind the head. You finally get the message after a few smacks.

So how can you discipline a kid that's yelling? I see all these parents try and "reason" with them and it does nothing. Thus they cave in and give them what they want. THUS the current 5 to 21yr old age group. All they know about is getting what they want.

Parents that want to be parents can't act them anymore. They can't discipline like it.

Thus lies the other problem... the Typical Parent.

Now, typical is always blaming someone else. It's never your fault. If you let your kids be *******es you blame someone else. You sue. These parents aren't teaching any kind of responsiblity.





Schools.

Teachers used to be able to repremand and assert some athority. Now you're left with teachers that get sued or harrased by parents for being mean to Jane or Jonny. It drives me insaine.

They don't pay teachers enough to be babysitters for these parents.

Not to mention our federal government keeps taking from education and spending it on Wars and helping OTHER COUNTRIES that typically don't like us for anything, but our money.

If they keep going like this we are going to have an extremely uneducated USA that will no longer be the world power it used to be on ALL Levels. Now the USA can only really claim the tag of "World Police." We don't really lead in much now. Our economny trails to China and parts of Europe. Our Military has amazing Tech, but would be railraoded by China due to sheer force. Some of the brightest Doctors and Scientists are leaving the country for better jobs abroad.

They've placed and over emhasis on "College" to make up for their defencies in High School. Now you need a Masters Degree just to be able to compete in life. That's sad.

I have 8 people in the copmany that I work that came from college with a Masters. Only one of them has a clue, the rest are egomanics that feel everything can be solved by spending money instead of working with what you have.




More Thoughts Later....

What do you guys have to think or add?

[Cebby]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Your generation was perfect growing up. Thank God there was no sex, drugs, violence, or social hierarchies. Nobody ever bought into any trends. You never listened to stupid music or wore stupid clothes. You guys knew calculus by 8th grade and studied astrophysics by 10th.

You know those old folk you used to laugh at (to yourselves because you were never rude at all) when they'd tell you how they used to walk 14 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways?

That's now you.

[The Chef]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

I personally dont think its the Media at all, its the lack of discipline, its the nature of people having to work longer and longer hours to survive and their kids spending more time with relatives or babysitters then in the past and thus not receiving any guidance from anyone they take seriously. Lets face it, there were controversial things in the media year ago just like today. In the end the parents cant smack their kid when they step out of line, I would venture a guess that there are more broken homes today then there were 10 years ago, kids are getting pregnant at younger and younger ages due to poor parenting and the single home parents are working longer and longer days to survive while they pray their kids arent acting the fool while they are at work.

[DXZeke]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Your generation was perfect growing up. Thank God there was no sex, drugs, violence, or social hierarchies. Nobody ever bought into any trends. You never listened to stupid music or wore stupid clothes. You guys knew calculus by 8th grade and studied astrophysics by 10th.

You know those old folk you used to laugh at (to yourselves because you were never rude at all) when they'd tell you how they used to walk 14 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways?

That's now you.

I'm 29.
My generaiton was the start of what's wrong. Since 1995 teens have gotten more and more "Me." That's why it's been dubbed, "Generation Me." We didn't get the internet mainstream until 2000. Cell phones were rare to find. If you had one it was a big deal. There weren't any kids that had them (maybe in rich areas, but not your normal run of the mill town). Yes, you had cliques, crappy clothes, and crappy music... actually 90s Rock really kicked tail.

At least you could still have a school yard fight and not get sued. you didn't have Columbine type events happening.

We had better public schools.

We had parents that were home more often.

Which leads too the next part....

I personally dont think its the Media at all, its the lack of discipline, its the nature of people having to work longer and longer hours to survive and their kids spending more time with relatives or babysitters then in the past and thus not receiving any guidance from anyone they take seriously. Lets face it, there were controversial things in the media year ago just like today. In the end the parents cant smack their kid when they step out of line, I would venture a guess that there are more broken homes today then there were 10 years ago, kids are getting pregnant at younger and younger ages due to poor parenting and the single home parents are working longer and longer days to survive while they pray their kids arent acting the fool while they are at work.

The displays in the Media get viewed over and over again. It's up to the parents to point out what's wrong and what isn't wrong.

Parents have too work longer hours. They use Video Games and TV as the babysitter. Then complain and sue someone when the kids get out of line.

Teen Pregnancy is down... however it is getting younger.
Teen Drug use is down... but illegally using prescirbed medicines are increasing.

Which goes back to College... there's to much push on college degrees. You can't find good factory jobs anymore, which had been a staple in the American job life. Now that the majority of those jobs have been pushed out of the country (Cars, Textiles) you now have jobs that pay even less, which sucks... so they work 2 jobs. There's not much we can do about it.

Then you have a bigger push now by the Rich and our Government that's basically trying to eliminate the middle class (much like in a lot of european countries) so that the Rich get Richer with more power.

There's so many parts that play roles in this current slide.



NOT ALL of these young people are bad. You used to have more good hearted people 20yrs ago.

You used to have people open doors out of curtiousy. Most strangers would kindly say hello. Yeah, fruity kind of crap like that which is no longer the norm.

[MachoMyers]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

People have been asking whats wrong with America since the very beginning.

[SoMiss2000]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

if spanking makes a child violent then i'm a violent as hell with as many times I had the extension cord put on my ***, arm, back, and wherever else it connectd. Mama didn't play.

[GAMEC0CK2002]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

I agree with most of the comments by the original poster. It's just sad, especially in SC, that the emphasis is on funding college when it should be on K-12 education. K-12 is where a kid's education is decided. Dangling a scholarship at the finish line isn't enough to make up for an underfunded K-12 education. I don't buy "education" lottery tickets b/c less than 30% actually get to education with most of it going to college scholarships. Oh yeah, then there's the fact that the people buying most of the lottery tickets (poor and uneducated) will never see a ROI.

And I've never heard SO many cases of teachers having improper relationships with students. I guess it happened back in the day, but hard to believe it was with this frequent. My theory: 1)Those that would be good teachers are going into different fields b/c of the low pay 2)Public education is in dire straits so they are accepting lower caliber candidates 3)Just a microcosm of our incresingly degenerate society.

In the end, everyone has to take responsibilty and step up. If there is anywhere in the world where you can make something out of nothing, it the USA.

[davin]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

I agree with a lot of what the original poster said. I'm not saying that things were way better in another era, but I just would like to make my comments about what I think.

I agree with the original poster's stance on the problem with women. I could remember when I was looking through some of my Roman history stuff and when my girlfriend and I were in the Mediterranean this summer. She looked at the statues and in the books and was amazed that the women looked normal to her, not 100 pounds. That was actually what was attractive back then. Compare that to now, where you have the stars that put on 3 pounds and people are wondering if they are pregnant. I'm not saying I find 300 pounds attractive, but I want there to be something to her. The amount of eating disorders in high school for girls is really getting up there. I can't make any comment as to how it was 20 years ago, but I know what I know now. And it is tough trying to help somebody through that, and the media doesn't make anything easier with half the coverage they do. It isn't just the E! entertainment now, CNN breaks "stories" about celebs now. If I want serious news, I don't care about speculation as to whether or not a celeb is dating another.

The Myspace effect I don't know if I agree with. To me, it simply gives another avenue for people to express themselves, for good or for bad. What I will agree on is the no respect. That isn't all of them though, but most of the kids from my high school were like that. There were times that some guys and I would actually yell at some of these kids in class for severely disrespecting a teacher. I hated the class but they were dragging my grade down too.

Parents: I don't think spanking turns you into a deviant. When I was really little, my parents spanked me. They stopped shortly thereafter, but it got the point across. Sometimes it is neccessary. I turned out alright (well at least I think so), and many others have. One thing I am glad my parents did though was to let me make my own mistakes, and make me fix them. For the most part, they tried to help me whenever possible, but on some things you only learn from your own experiences. I am very thankful to them for that.


Public Schools: My god I could go on about this. High School was filled with teacher-student wars where the students would win because a teacher would get mad at a student acting like an ***, give him a punishment, and the kid would talk their way out of it. We had a kid my senior year in an English class (the one I talked about above). The kid was a real winner. He was doing coke from his fingernails, they were hideously long so he could put it in there. He was about the biggest *** you could have in a class, constantly jawing off with the teacher and disrespecting him. He then threatened to put LSD in the teacher's drink, and was caught with LSD the next day. He got a 3 day suspension, and yes the school knew about the coke. The school had no way to really punish him, because
of course his parents were loaded and you can bet he would never be expelled. Despite all of this he is still going to college where last I heard he was failing as he didn't show up to a single class all semester, yet lived there. Whenever a teacher took action they always got rebuked by the school. How can you send a message if you don't have a united front? Add into it that at my school the only things that mattered to be taught were math and science, the amount of humanities or social sciences dropped every year. It really scared me that people couldn't identify where the hell Japan was. They don't know where Japan is, but they can do calculations to figure out how many moles of Carbon are in a solution? Something is wrong with that. I'm all for science and math being important, but for the love of god eliminating social sciences and most foreign languages is not the way to go. Maybe it was just my school, but thats what happened.

Another thing that scares me about education, is the OGT here in Ohio. It stands for the Ohio Graduation Test. My class was a test class, and what we got did not matter. Over 95% passed their first time. You have 3 years to pass it to graduate. Some of the glorious questions were "which flag is the flag of the United States?" or "What is (3+3)/2?". The test is a joke. And yet, people fail it, all three years. One of them last year was a senior getting a full ride to the University of Toledo, and was complaining the test was too hard? People actually protested this test saying it is what is wrong with education, it is too hard. If we make this test any easier we might as well just have the kids take it in junior high. I understand that standardized tests are hard for some people, or that some people's academic strengths aren't included in the test, but if you cannot pass the citizenship area of it, you have no business graduating, same with the reading. If you can't identify which of the three looks like the United States, or can't identify who was our first president (actual questions) then you shouldn't graduate, or even who we fought in our war of independence. Mind you in the state of Ohio American History is a required class. Hundreds of people protested this last year. Am I just overreacting on this?

[pk500]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Every problem that Zeke described in his original post can be cured by one concept: Personal responsibility.

The problem isn't the media. The problem isn't society.

The problem IS that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. America has become a society of professional victims -- it's never MY fault.

Can't find a job? It's the rich guy's fault. Kids don't behave? It's the school's fault. Overweight? It's the media's fault for pushing fast food. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? It's the Internet's fault. Violent tendencies are infesting our kids? It's TV and video games' fault. Up to your neck in credit card debt? It's the credit card companies' fault for pushing all of these low-interest cards in my face.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. It's all bullsh*t. It's about time that most Americans pull out paper towels and Windex and clean their bathroom mirrors so they can get a clear look at the root cause of most of their problems -- themselves.

Can't find a job? Work harder to find one. Get an education that will allow you to get a better one. Kids don't behave? Then work harder at teaching your kids the right way to live and enforcing discipline. It also would help if fathers stuck around after parenting children, too. Overweight? Then exercise and eat healthy. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? Then restrict and monitor their Internet usage. Afraid your kids are learning violence through TV and video games? Then turn off the tube and the Xbox 360. Up to your neck in credit card debt? Then don't use a credit card or only use it to pay for purchases that you can pay off IN FULL at the end of each month.

It's not rocket science. It's called hard work, something for which that many Americans have lost their appetite. It's also called personal responsibility, something to which many Americans have become as allergic to as cat hair mixed with pollen.

If you put in the disciplined, responsible work, then results will come. If you don't, then don't b*tch about the lousy consequences.

I'm far from perfect, and I'm not trying to preach from an ivory tower here. But the answer to the problems that plague America is so simple -- it's called hard work and personal responsibility. I struggle with it at times -- who doesn't? -- but I firmly believe it's a struggle worth fighting more than any other.

Merry Christmas, fellas.

Take care,
PK

[Cebby]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

We didn't get the internet mainstream until 2000. Cell phones were rare to find. If you had one it was a big deal. There weren't any kids that had them (maybe in rich areas, but not your normal run of the mill town).

So? The 1800s people lived without electricity, indoor plumbing, and basic sanitary practices. As you get better technology, you get better stuff. And the internet was mainstream in about 1995.

We had better public schools.

I'd beg to differ. Inner city schools have always sucked, but suburban schools have continued to expand in programs. Fact is, you probably haven't stepped foot in a public school in 12 years. With increasing collegiate competition, there's been an increase in the classes kids take. Whether that's good or not is up for debate, but in terms of academic knowledge gained in schools, it's probably increased among similar schools.

You can't find good factory jobs anymore, which had been a staple in the American job life.

Is that a bad thing? We also don't have anywhere close to the pollution that the factories bring in. Developing countries phase out jobs. If you want to blame people for the downfall of factory jobs, blame factory workers and their unions.

You used to have more good hearted people 20yrs ago

Because you definitely saw the world the exact same when you were 9 as you are now.

[dave360]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Every problem that Zeke described in his original post can be cured by one concept: Personal responsibility.

The problem isn't the media. The problem isn't society.

The problem IS that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. America has become a society of professional victims -- it's never MY fault.

Can't find a job? It's the rich guy's fault. Kids don't behave? It's the school's fault. Overweight? It's the media's fault for pushing fast food. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? It's the Internet's fault. Violent tendencies are infesting our kids? It's TV and video games' fault. Up to your neck in credit card debt? It's the credit card companies' fault for pushing all of these low-interest cards in my face.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. It's all bullsh*t. It's about time that most Americans pull out paper towels and Windex and clean their bathroom mirrors so they can get a clear look at the root cause of most of their problems -- themselves.

Can't find a job? Work harder to find one. Get an education that will allow you to get a better one. Kids don't behave? Then work harder at teaching your kids the right way to live and enforcing discipline. It also would help if fathers stuck around after parenting children, too. Overweight? Then exercise and eat healthy. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? Then restrict and monitor their Internet usage. Afraid your kids are learning violence through TV and video games? Then turn off the tube and the Xbox 360. Up to your neck in credit card debt? Then don't use a credit card or only use it to pay for purchases that you can pay off IN FULL at the end of each month.

It's not rocket science. It's called hard work, something for which that many Americans have lost their appetite. It's also called personal responsibility, something to which many Americans have become as allergic to as cat hair mixed with pollen.

If you put in the disciplined, responsible work, then results will come. If you don't, then don't b*tch about the lousy consequences.

I'm far from perfect, and I'm not trying to preach from an ivory tower here. But the answer to the problems that plague America is so simple -- it's called hard work and personal responsibility. I struggle with it at times -- who doesn't? -- but I firmly believe it's a struggle worth fighting more than any other.

Merry Christmas, fellas.

Take care,
PK

Spot on post PK. It's always someone else's fault. I was taught personal responsibility at a young age. My dad won the olympic gold medal for *** whipping in 1976, 1980, 1984, and 1988. I deserved every single spanking I got.

[Jackdog]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Every problem that Zeke described in his original post can be cured by one concept: Personal responsibility.

The problem isn't the media. The problem isn't society.

The problem IS that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. America has become a society of professional victims -- it's never MY fault.

Can't find a job? It's the rich guy's fault. Kids don't behave? It's the school's fault. Overweight? It's the media's fault for pushing fast food. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? It's the Internet's fault. Violent tendencies are infesting our kids? It's TV and video games' fault. Up to your neck in credit card debt? It's the credit card companies' fault for pushing all of these low-interest cards in my face.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. It's all bullsh*t. It's about time that most Americans pull out paper towels and Windex and clean their bathroom mirrors so they can get a clear look at the root cause of most of their problems -- themselves.

Can't find a job? Work harder to find one. Get an education that will allow you to get a better one. Kids don't behave? Then work harder at teaching your kids the right way to live and enforcing discipline. It also would help if fathers stuck around after parenting children, too. Overweight? Then exercise and eat healthy. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? Then restrict and monitor their Internet usage. Afraid your kids are learning violence through TV and video games? Then turn off the tube and the Xbox 360. Up to your neck in credit card debt? Then don't use a credit card or only use it to pay for purchases that you can pay off IN FULL at the end of each month.

It's not rocket science. It's called hard work, something for which that many Americans have lost their appetite. It's also called personal responsibility, something to which many Americans have become as allergic to as cat hair mixed with pollen.

If you put in the disciplined, responsible work, then results will come. If you don't, then don't b*tch about the lousy consequences.

I'm far from perfect, and I'm not trying to preach from an ivory tower here. But the answer to the problems that plague America is so simple -- it's called hard work and personal responsibility. I struggle with it at times -- who doesn't? -- but I firmly believe it's a struggle worth fighting more than any other.

Merry Christmas, fellas.

Take care,
PK

Good points. No surprise considering the source.

Merry Christmas to the Kelly clan!!!!

[ThreeKing]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Every problem that Zeke described in his original post can be cured by one concept: Personal responsibility.

The problem isn't the media. The problem isn't society.

The problem IS that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. America has become a society of professional victims -- it's never MY fault.

Can't find a job? It's the rich guy's fault. Kids don't behave? It's the school's fault. Overweight? It's the media's fault for pushing fast food. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? It's the Internet's fault. Violent tendencies are infesting our kids? It's TV and video games' fault. Up to your neck in credit card debt? It's the credit card companies' fault for pushing all of these low-interest cards in my face.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. It's all bullsh*t. It's about time that most Americans pull out paper towels and Windex and clean their bathroom mirrors so they can get a clear look at the root cause of most of their problems -- themselves.

Can't find a job? Work harder to find one. Get an education that will allow you to get a better one. Kids don't behave? Then work harder at teaching your kids the right way to live and enforcing discipline. It also would help if fathers stuck around after parenting children, too. Overweight? Then exercise and eat healthy. Kids succumbing to predators on the Net? Then restrict and monitor their Internet usage. Afraid your kids are learning violence through TV and video games? Then turn off the tube and the Xbox 360. Up to your neck in credit card debt? Then don't use a credit card or only use it to pay for purchases that you can pay off IN FULL at the end of each month.

It's not rocket science. It's called hard work, something for which that many Americans have lost their appetite. It's also called personal responsibility, something to which many Americans have become as allergic to as cat hair mixed with pollen.

If you put in the disciplined, responsible work, then results will come. If you don't, then don't b*tch about the lousy consequences.

I'm far from perfect, and I'm not trying to preach from an ivory tower here. But the answer to the problems that plague America is so simple -- it's called hard work and personal responsibility. I struggle with it at times -- who doesn't? -- but I firmly believe it's a struggle worth fighting more than any other.

Merry Christmas, fellas.

Take care,
PK

Damn good post. You shut this bitch down like Mariano in the 9th.

[DXZeke]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

Every problem that Zeke described in his original post can be cured by one concept: Personal responsibility.

The problem isn't the media. The problem isn't society.

Take care,
PK

PK,

Right on PK!!!

Personal Responsibilty.


Only one thing to say though about the Media and Society.

They glorify not taking responsiblity. They show all the stories of such. THAT'S a problem too.


Society IS a problem.

People that don't take responsiblity are what's making up the MAJORITY of this society. Since the majority blames everyone else and doesn't take responsiblity for their actions, sadly, that majority IS Society.






The Solider,


The internet

1995, it was mainly the rich and upper class suburban america that had the Internet. It wasn't lower income familes that had access. You can't consider something Mainstream when not everyone can afford it. It was a lot harder to find cheaper to low budget computers until the past few years... another PRO of technology getting better.

Dial-up was the thing of that time. Broadband was 100s per month and it wasn't afforable for middle class to lower class families. It would hardly be considered mainstream.

The largest boom for the Internet was in 1996 - 1997 when AOL went to a monthly rate thus dropping their hourly charges. it finally became affordable for your average houshold income. AOL might have sucked, but it got people introuduced to the Internet.



Schools

I do have a pretty good idea of how the Public School systems are right now.
There's a reason that I stopped going to college for a Teaching Degree. I've got many cousins that are in HS that talk about the issues that they have. There's more of them, partly because we've thorwn in technology to the mix.

New Programs don't mean success or that a school is doing better. The class of 1997 and 1998 at Frontier Regional HS in Deerfield,MA was given a new program for math called, "The Arise Program." it was from a dutch company. All we really learned how to do for 2yrs was program a TI-81 calculator instead of learning how to do hard math... Alegebra 1 and Geo 1. In the PSAT, no one scored above 10% out 100%. The program was a MAJOR flop. It screwed over 200 kids out of getting into decent colleges. Nearly all

http://www.mathematicallycorrect.com/arise.htm

It gives a good description of how it works or doesn't work.

I don't want to teach anymore. There's not enough funding or support for teachers. There's to many parents that fuss and fight with you over their kids. Most of the current crop of parents won't take responsiblity for their kid acting up in school, not doing homework, etc. instead they blame the teacher. Their kids never does anything wrong.

When parents don't teach their kids responsiblity and teachers can't do the same, it's over with.

Media... we've ALWAYS had teacher/student relationships. There's at least a story or 5 that people can tell you about from HS. With the media now, they report it, glorify it for days in the news. A lot of this stuff wasn't reported in the past. For better or wose. I think it's a good idea. One of the few things that the media is doing right.

During the 80s and 90s... in school...
how many kids had Cell Phones? how many kids sent text messages?
how many kids had portable music players? how many kids had access to the internet via cell phones/blackberries/etc?

ALL of those are distractions in the classroom today in the 00s.

At least we weren't hiding under desks practicing for a Nuclear Attack as they did in the 60s.



Factories.
You do realize that there are more factories and companies that are becoming compliant with Greenhouse Emissions and Standards... It's not like every plant is a smog maker. People need to realize that companies are taking major steps to get cleaner. It takes time. it's not something that can be done overnight.

I'm lucky enough to have a DECENT factory job. I work at a Plastics Company that recycles 99% of our waste. We send it out and it's then re-peleatized. We use water that we recycle for cooling our machines and rollers. We don't have any machines that use radioactive material. It's pretty damn cool. We are proof of what "CLEAN" can be. Eventually other companies will folllow.


The point of the factory comment is about College.
With the overemphasis on college and factory jobs moving out of the country, people that are HS grads don't have has many aveunes to go down as you did 20yrs ago. I think that all ages, races, sexes, and income levels should have a fair shot at being able to make a decent living. When these compaines leave the USA they leaves Thousands of people without jobs. Profits... yeah it's great to make money, but when you're a multi-million dollar company that ends up wanting MORE, you end up destory familes lives by moving these jobs out of the country. Those business owners didn't have to do that. The majority don't leave due to poor sales, they leave due to not seeing giant increases each year in sales. When does making sick amounts of money slow down? The owners, leaders already make amazing money, so why care about the people that are just a "number" below you?

College "loans" Most people that have bad credit, which a lot of middle class to lower income people do have (that's why the credit card companies prey on the weak minded people that don't take responsiblity), how can you get loans with crappy credit?



Seeing the World Differently than when I was 9.

When I was age 9 - 15 i had a pretty ****ty social life. HORRIBLE school expierences. I hated people for how they treated me and my family... yet those same people would be cordial when walking by, open doors, say "thank you," not fuss at people trying to get something for free.

People have gotten colder, more picky, point blame at everyone else. I can go out on any given night, hold a door open kindly and have no one say thank you... and in the same night i can have people let doors fall back in my face. It's small things like that.



History.

Too often people overlook it.

When you talk to people that are older they have seen changes. Not every decade was bad nor was every decade good. You can find pros and cons of each one.

I did have good manners as a kid. I was taught to be RESPECTFUL to adults that were Senoirs. There was no smack talking them. There was lots to learn and hear from their stories of life. It was nice having that kind of a relationship, instead of viewing them as some old fool.


You make a statement:
"You know those old folk you used to laugh at (to yourselves because you were never rude at all) when they'd tell you how they used to walk 14 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways?"


The WW2 generaiton mainly did do it like that. The Depression Era and the Post Depression Era of the 50s-60s.

We have a lot of stuff that we take for granted becasue it is now, it is mainstream. A lot of us don't look back and see how things were done. We all came from some where. They've seen the good and the bad that's come from technology. They've seen the climate of the world change between countries and people as a society. They also keep seeing people repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Wars being a major one. The majority ignores them.






Social Gropus and The Internet

BEFORE the internet became widespread in the 90s how often did you talk to someone that lived states away? How did you make friends outside of school, church, or other clubs and activities? How did most people find someone to date?
EVERYTHING was local!!!

With the Internet and Myspace. You don't have those same boundries. It's an awesome thing, but it's also a problem in it's self.

These sites like Facebook, myspace, windows events... etc. This current crop of teens put a lot of emphasis into these sites and social gatherings. These are extensions of those groups, quite of few of which expand when you network via the internet and meet people from other areas, states, and countries. This is a pretty big deal in the last 10yrs.

Take OS for example. Without this site how many of us would have a group of guys to talk about Sports VIDEO GAMING on the large scale level that we can. If we talked about this stuff in person to most people, you get laughed at for playing video games even though it's become just a big of a medium as movies and music.

There's a lot of us here that talk to one another that NEVER would in the real world, mainly because of the typical society ways. You have all the stereotypes represented here. The Jocks. The Nerds/Geeks. The outcasts. The Popular Kids. NO ONE really sees that here. We all co-exsist. Yeah, you might have some people that are in their own cliques, BUT it's not as chaotic as HS was or your typical cuebicle job. That's why i like it here.

[ILLCHILL]

Re: Media, Kids, Parents, Society - What's Gone Wrong?

I don't see a difference between the media and society. Society runs the media. The media isn't a machine, it's generated by what people (society) pays to see and human beings (society) realize this and thus give it to them. I hate when people say society is down because of media. Media is society. Society is media.