Are children these days out of control or are they just pawns of the system? Are they on the warpath against civilization, blowing up schools, or are they just shills for gadgetry and merchandise? Are they too rebellious or too submissive? Don't ask your average adult, because they will say something different depending on the context from which the question is asked. Adults think contradictory things about the collective nature of children.
There is nothing human beings of any age like more than to build things up just to tear them back down. As children do with block towers, adults do with other human beings, and children are not off limits. Are they truly innocent or are they culpable? Are they society's "raison d'etre" or just a social burden? Are they "too young to know" or are they stupid, irreverent, or ignorant? Adults can't even seem to agree on whether young people know how to work or whether they really know how to have fun.
The one thing they rarely do though, unless brought to this understanding, is let the new generations define themselves. It is not unreasonable, at least not as unreasonable as dismissing "the modern kids" for being one thing, and then dismissing them as the opposite when it applies. It doesn't help then, that adults create many of the circumstances that they later dismiss young people for either falling too infatuated with or falling too far away from. Perhaps they are all these things at once just because there are so many of them.
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