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A friend shares an elderly post on social media, one that we’ve all seen on numerous occasions, or versions of it. Essentially, the point of it is that everything’s shit nowadays and it was so much better in The Old Days. It is entirely possible that when the worldwide web was invented, I may have shared something like it. If I did, I was an idiot
Nonetheless, I’d like to offer a critique. Some will say , “Well, it’s just a bit of fun” and I’ll understand why they might think that. I don’t see it that way at all. I see posts, like the one that follows, as pernicious, cynical and an ugly attack on today’s young people. Anyway, here’s the post:
This is brilliant……
KIDS THESE DAYS WOULD LAUGH AT THIS, BUT IT’S SO TRUE…..
When I grew up our tea time was at a regular time, Sunday’s was a roast, simple as that!
Eating out was not heard of, we only had a take away on special occasions, only received a present on birthdays and at Christmas. None of this Halloween, Easter and
congratulations
you have a pulse day 
.
Fast food was fish and chips and having a bottle of panda pop from the shop was a real treat.
You took your school clothes off as soon as you got home and put on your ‘playing out’ clothes. – children looked like children, we didn’t pout, wear makeup or have anxiety. There was no taking or picking you up in the car, you walked or rode your bike!
Our house phone had a cord attached, so there was no such things as private conversations or mobile phones! Ours was out in the hall.
We didn’t have Now TV, Sky or Netflix, we had only 3 channels to watch. Channel 4 and 5 was an exciting addition! 
we had to watch all of the adverts unless you switched to BBC.
we had to watch all of the adverts unless you switched to BBC.We played Army, British Bull Dog, Kerby, Hide & Seek, knock or door run, Tag, Football, climbed trees, made mud pies, daisy chains, rose perfume 
never smelt brill and Rode Bikes.
never smelt brill and Rode Bikes.Everyone could play ball! We used tops for goalposts and even made a ball out of paper if we needed to. A wheelie and bunnyhop on your bike was a standard skill and we used cartons in tyres so it sounded like a motorbike.
Staying in the house was a PUNISHMENT and the only thing we knew about “bored” was — “You better find something to do, before I find it for you!”
We ate what mum made for our tea or we ate nothing at all. If we rushed our tea we weren’t allowed to go back out and if we didn’t eat it, we weren’t allowed back out either 
Bottled water was not a thing; we drank from the tap.
We had scraps, some we lost, some we won but we always had a go back…. Or we got another one when we got home
We watched cartoons on Saturday mornings, and rode our bikes for hours and ran around.
We weren’t AFRAID OF ANYTHING. We played till dark… street lights were our alarm.
If someone had a fight, that’s what it was and we were friends again a week later, if not SOONER.
We watched our MOUTHS around our elders because ALL of our aunts, uncles, grandpas, grandmas, AND our parents’ best friends were all extensions of our PARENTS and you didn’t want them telling your parents if you misbehaved! Or they would give you something to cry about. Everyone had respect.
I did my research by borrowing books from the library. Internet was non existent and no Google! 
We saw toys on adverts and had to wait until ‘santa’ came before we expected. None of the amazon same day crap
These were the good days. So many kids today will never know how it feels to be a real kid .
.Copied and pasted. Feel free to do the same…… Best days of our lives!
I struggle with so much of this and, quite frankly, don’t have the time nor inclination to fully take it apart, but here’s the thing: how can a world with almost no variety in takeaway food, no internet (and so no online shopping), no mobile phones, just three TV channels, being beaten by older relatives, going out fighting be better than the one we have now?
The lazy assumption is that the kids of today sit around in their rooms all day messing around with computer games. It’s true that many do enjoy computer games. Well, lucky them. Where I live, children are always out playing on their bicycles, scooters or simply kicking a ball around.
Perhaps the author is a bad parent and his – it’s bound to have been written by a He, isn’t it? – children are morbidly obese, glued to their PS4s and mobile phones and are subject to regular beatings for not eating their food or misbehaving? What else does ‘Or they would give you something to cry about’ mean? The idea that ‘Everyone had respect’ is a delusion. No one ever respected people who beat the shit out of you because they weren’t capable of good parenting. They were more likely to be terrified of getting another beating. That is not the same as respect. Respect is earned; always has been, always will be.
I was brought up in a very poor household. We had no house phone until I was well into adolescence, we had a poxy little rented black and white TV, we lived off the scraps my mum could get from the butcher, I didn’t routinely swear (like I do now) and if I misbehaved, my mother explained to me the error of my ways and how I should do better. She didn’t beat the shit out of me. I saw other parents do that. Trust me: the children did not respect their parents at all for doing that. The exact opposite was the case.
And I don’t remember them as ‘the good days’. And to say that ‘so many kids today will never know how it feels to be a real kid’ is vacuous nonsense. It literally means nothing, other than to say that things were so much better In The Old Days than they are now, when patently they weren’t.
‘Best days of our lives!’ my arse. Our freezing cold house, with no fridge, no washing machine and no food beyond what we ate that day? Doubtless the author, who remembers a happy contented time when most people had nothing but were happier for it, never uses a mobile phone, doesn’t watch any TV beyond the three channels, never uses a takeaway apart from a chippy, never uses a computer and certainly never orders anything online, lives a quiet life, certainly never posts shit like this on Facebook. Oh, wait…
Finally, I take issue with one of the many ignorant comments in this post. ‘Children looked like children, we didn’t pout, wear makeup or have anxiety.’ Maybe he is a she after all, or maybe s/he isn’t quite sure? Either way, children still look like children because that’s what they are. I don’t really understand the ‘pout’ reference but many girls do wear make-up like they always did, but the anxiety reference makes me angry. Anxiety is an illness. And children suffer from it too. When I was a kid, I had friends who suffered from crippling anxiety, as to a lesser extent did I. My great uncle suffered from what people called ‘bad nerves’ which, I later learned, meant anxiety. If anything sums up this miserable attempt at nostalgia, it’s that.
Nostalgia can be a good thing but here it is weaponised in order to create a false vision of the past and a mistaken vision of the present. In my world, the Kids Of Today are generally awesome. When I look at my own children, their stellar achievements dwarf my own. They had had their moments but I never felt the need to attack them physically or give them something to cry about, as our author so delicately put it.
And if you’re children didn’t turn out well – and I am guessing from the tone that the author’s didn’t – maybe you should consider whether you had anything to do with it?
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