Hollowed Out Youth Crisis
High School teacher Jeremy Adams describes a dystopian youth culture of cell phone addiction, isolation, and inability to sustain human relations or spirituality. Hollowed out youth. It’s chilling.
We’re all wrapped up in the (mostly negative) midterm election results. And that’s understandable, even if we’re still trying to understand why there was no red wave.
Politics is downstream of the culture, as Andrew Breitbart used to say. And the culture is really bleak.
We cover education extensively, and how the left targets even the youngest grades for ideological grooming. But it’s even worse than that, we are raising a generation of hollowed out youth, and we can’t blame it on the teachers.
That was a theme in a presentation at the Parents United Conference I attended in Boston on October 28. I usually only post my own speech videos (there’s a psychological term for that, I can’t remember what it is). And not to worry, I will still do that.
But I want to present first the speaker who was immediately before me, Jeremy Adams, whose book on the subject is Hollowed Out: A Warning about America’s Next Generation:
Jeremy is a high school teacher in Bakersfield, California, and he describes a dystopian youth culture of cell phone addiction, isolation, and inability to sustain human relations or spirituality. Hollowed out youth. It’s chilling.
How do you think those hollowed out youth will vote when they reach adulthood? That’s more depressing than the midterm results.
Watch the video.
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Comments
Gosh, making life easy for children sure has ruined them.
We tried to teach them but they were more interested in Tik Tok dances.
We have to fix why they were more interested in that nonsense.
Rupert Murdoch is in his 90s. He’s proving almost as malignant as Soros:
The Murdochs Think They Get to Pick the Next President:
After Tuesday’s elections, entities owned and managed by Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan have lined up against President Donald J. Trump. There is now a “coordinated effort” across the New York Post, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal against Trump.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/11/12/ellis-the-murdochs-think-they-get-to-pick-the-next-president/
Can we try to keep comments on (or at least close) to topic. This post is not about Trump, there are plenty of other posts for comments about him.
Amen
Yea. Let’s ignore the elephant in the room, the hollowed out adults, the ones that ignore the theft of the republic because acknowledging that would require action.
Where’s your action??
Put your money where your mouth is, tough stuff.
You’re one of the hollowed out. You and your fellows are why we are losing our freedom. You like election cheating. You like the results, among them the hollowing out of the youth.
Oh, put my money there?
I have, a lot. Not to mention time. My guess would be you haven’t spent a penny.
Blah blah blah more big talk while you divide a voting base and ensure Dem victory.
You personify the means by which we are divided.
“Put your money where your mouth is, tough stuff.”
Just more of your nastiness. It’s all you neverTrumper cultists have ever done.
Elections are being stolen and not a word from you. Which means you’re fine with it and fine with being a slave.
No one here is a NeverTrumper. No one. Your claiming this is just making the rest of us more firm in our view that Trump can’t win. He hasn’t won since ’16 (against the most-hated pol in America).
Here’s a hint: winning people over requires thought and a convincing argument (on the right, at least). This adoption of the language of the left just confirms our stance. It changes no minds, wins no hearts. It just makes you sound like a bunch of leftist-inspired crybullies. No, thank you.
Thank you.
I have no less than 12 members in my immediate and extended family who are teachers from Elem. to H.S. and two in Administration. All work in small NYS school districts. I mention this only to give reference to the subject of your post today. Perhaps not to the statistical point but by the challenges which are a part of all our conversations and in ways teaching has changed so over the previous +10 years. This past summer it seemed that coming off 2021/22 was like coming back from a war zone for them and knowing that this year was going to be as hard if not harder to make the needed achievements. Though I wasn’t a teacher but in support services of Business and Personnel when in my last 5 years, 9 years ago, even then teachers only nearing 25 years of teaching were seriously reviewing their retirement options. Their consistent explanation was teaching was not what they were doing. Parenting, disciplining and consoling the students and pandering to administrators who were charged to have their teachers adhere to state Dept. of Ed. mandates attached to compliance reporting. My sessions with them came down to ‘I became a teacher to teach and they now want a facilitator. I can’t do my job no longer’ . Young adults are still becoming teachers, but they are also leaving the profession at a faster rate. Perhaps they have not been given a chance to perfect the capability to BE a teacher before having to take control of the other responsibilities.
Because I am a strong Trump supporter, I feel compelled to chime in on this. We can and should have a robust conversation about who should be our next Presidential candidate. For me, this is a very important question. Right now, I think Trump is more capable of delivering the policies I want than any other politician at the national level. But, I’ve got 18 months or so to think it over, and I want to see what develops in that time frame.
I prefer that discussion take place where it’s relevant. I really like to see an orderly discussion that is on-topic. The state of our children is also important. It will be easier to walk and chew gum at the same time if we proceed in a somewhat orderly manner.
I believe that I can do as Our Esteemed Host would prefer, responding to Fine-R’s link n notion.
/cracks knuckles
I think there’s a take behind the take: What’s really going on here?
The media players like Murdoch only work on pre-hollowed people. The Forges of Opinion(tm) are these days in some “doesn’t work exactly like that anymore” territory lately. They don’t get that; their clapping seals get it less.
Now, to let myself muse…
If yr gonna say “hollow” about people in Big-C Culture, ya kinda gotta reference C. S. Lewis’ Men Without Chests. People without the fullness of themselves, their own judgments, or their own agency are ill-equipped to deal with consequential, complex things. They have no “chests”. They’ll run to slogans and saviors, whether a brashly bombastic reality TV personality, or a smoothly bombastic symbol package.
The Great Unhollowing has been going on for a while: the twenty years’ wars, financial collapses, ‘rona occupations, prosecurtions and persecutions (What is it with those people and bakeries?), amplified non-plague and draconian over-reactions, made many less hollow. This last election un-hollowed a few more.
The Orange Crush was both part of, and beneficiary of, the unhollowing. His policies and willingness to engage in kind were very not-hollow. That he did them was unhollowing. (For an interesting take on Running Again-Guy, find the recent clip of Piers Morgan — yeah, I know — asking Jordan Peterson — yeah, I know — about him.(*))
Meanwhile, it’s hard to mass-media herd people adapted to living their own lives. They are unruly, and cannot be ruled. as The Bad Guy With The Big Idea declared ending the first Avengers movie. How in-con-veeeeenient. These so-called “conservative” ideas keep infiltrating the popular media on the DL. How in-con-veeeeenient. People thinking for themselves may have their own preferences and make their own decisions. How in-con-veeeeenient.
From the perspective of the hollowed herded and the hollowing herders, Trump was a problem. They still don’t get that he’s not a cause; he’s a symptom. The Bad Orange Man got somewhere because some people weren’t so hollow. He got what he wanted becasue he went and did it, appeals to people who saved up for their own fishing boat becuse they wanted.
People are getting the game, and opting, not out, but to play their own game vs. one that’s rigged for them to lose. Look what’s happening;
— China’s youth are practicing Irish Democracy.
— European nations are playing “Sod off, swampy.”
— Trucker and farmer strikes are world-wide.
— Red states and alternative industries are doing it for themselves, without permission.
Between Musk’s Boring Company, Jeremy Boreing’s razors and That Commercial, and Dave Chappelle, there’s another game afoot. The opinion-wranglers are wound up about Mobile-Journo-Lost because if they don’t set the herding agenda, there’s no telling what might emerge. One inconsistent notion changes the whole game. (Look up Brett Weinstein’s “Zero is a Special Number” for a take on that, from another source of wrongthink they couldn’t squash.)
The insufficiently infamous Life of Julia was only secondarily horiffic for its encroachment. The Life of Julia was horiffic because it wasn’t Julia’s life: it was the story of hollowed out Julia, being kept hollow. Hollow Julia being herde by message moguls to a life not to her advantage, but making her more convenient fodder.
The Hollowing only works if nobody notices. And The God Emperor isn’t the only one changing the nature of the livestock. (See the book for the thematic connection.) Murdoch’s herding works on the Hollow, and we’re having a Great UnHollowing. Sad.
(*) Whatever my take on Kermit Hitler’s conclusions — hey, if they slime you; own it — Peterson always passes The Penn Gillett test: If I know what you’re going to say, why do I want to bother talking with you? I always encounter some new fact, frame of reference or tool to go explore, and decide my un-hollow self what to make of it.
Lemmie check what I just commented.
— On the point of the article.
— Navigation hints, so reader can skip after the quick take up top.
— References and expands parts of the article and book; the “hollow.”
— Wrangles in The Orange Crush in terms of the theme of the article and the book.
— Wrangles in media manipulation and king making, in terms of the theme of the article and book.
— Wrangles in off-site references, illuminating and illustrating, vs. injecting other themes.
— On a read, it’s kinda entertaining.
Hey, I’m an amateur with a broken brain. If I can do that, it’s clearly doable. To the point at hand …. advance!
Tik Tok should be banned. It represents a huge national security liability.
Governments are so cute.
They think they can ban stuff… but they can’t.
Why ban them? “Libs of Tik Tok” has done more to stop abusive behavior than any government, and all it does is pass on people’s videos as they made them.
You are missing that China is using Tik Tok to compile massive amounts of data about Americans. That is why it should be banned.
He’s right. A lot of our youth are fantastic, but the majority of kids I see are totally lost, but don’t understand that there is anything wrong. They are missing a sense of identity. Nothing matters. Hollowed out is the perfect description.
I don’t know how to fix it. In eleven years of teachingI have gotten through to, maybe, three kids like that. Not a good percentage.
which is why so many are looking to transition – there is “belonging” in that community. And they are DESPERATELY hungry for belonging, for meaning in their lives.
Amos 8:11-13
11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:
12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.
13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
Also 2 Timothy 4:3-4
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
Malachi 4:5-6:
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”
Maybe if their parents paid them ANY attention.
I concur. This author/speaker is really outlining an indictment against parents, who have abdicated what should have been their #1 priority: raising their kids.
From the boomer years through the next 50-60 years, with the great plenty and advances in technology, the explosion of divorce, the pill, woman’s lib, legalized abortion, etc. etc. raising kids became secondary if not way further down the line in what was important or meaningful. It became increasingly “all about me”, to the sacrifice of what was best for them. And here we are.
exactly!
Woman danced off to join the work force, convinced they’d all become top level executives while still having energy to make dinner, discuss school problems, etc. etc. ‘Cause sleep is optional! There are all different types of jobs, but careers can become all encompassing. And the “this hurts me more than it does you” is just not very popular anymore. I think mothers have substituted attending their kids sports games as spectators for meaningful parenting.
Their hollowed out existence is easier than facing growing pains.
That’s why we used to make it clear that it was tough but necessary to grow up. Somewhere along the way that stopped.
it isn’t about the percentage–is about the ones you DID reach and what they will be / become
I have been substituting for almost a year and I am shocked at education.
It isn’t what I experienced in the 1970s
There was an episode of, believe it or not, Care Bears in the 80s that speaks to our time in a way that a kid could understand.
The villain Cold Heart disguises himself as a boy and announces his candidacy for a city’s Mayor For A Day event. He runs on a platform of letting kids break rules and be as generally nasty and uncaring as they want. And stuffs the ballot box for good measure. He wins and the city quickly breaks down into family-friendly rioting (with adults conveniently absent).
As Cold Heart tells his lackey: “You see, Frostbite? Appeal to the worst in kids, and teach them not to care, and you can control EVERYTHING.”
Unfortunately for us, the difficulties of our time will take more than a few Care Bear Stares to set right.
“He runs on a platform of letting kids break rules and be as generally nasty and uncaring as they want. And stuffs the ballot box for good measure. He wins and the city quickly breaks down into family-friendly rioting”
Like 1984 and Animal Farm, another cautionary tale that the left adopted as an instruction manual?
Another minor, but important lesson from this video:
before you speak in public, straighten your tie, and always button your jacket.
Yes, the slovenliness is very distracting. But he’s very energetic and expresses his ideas well (it’s easier if you don’t look at him).
His microphone might have something to do with that
Good point.
You sir or maam, are part of the problem. You focus on ridiculous things like how his tie is or that his jacket is unbuttoned. Facts are that those comments of yours are irrelevant. Listen to WHAT HE SAID. Its rather boring to watch these cookie cutter ramblers who make money talking to an audience about things they want to hear. Much like saying Obie made great speeches because he was dressed so impeccably and his enunciation was so precise. But if you read his speech, you found him to be juvenile, pedantic and rather racist. Don’t get me wrong, anyone giving a speech should be able to talk where those they are talking to can easily understand them. But the cookie cutter ramblers are sad.
It is depressing.
The kids Adams is describing are perfect candidates for what Desmet calls “mass formation.”
Or, disaffected Rebels without a Cause.
If today’s youts are more interested in changing identities perhaps they should head for the Miami Bus Terminal,
https://pics.me.me/one-night-in-the-miami-bus-terminal-change-change-deposit-16091251.png
This story reminds me of the end of Rosemary’s Baby. I wasn’t scared in the traditional sense by that movie, but at the end with the new baby brought into the world, I felt like I was part of the family in a way – OMG, we are so screwed….
“The thing that now suddenly struck Winston was that his mother’s death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason. His mother’s memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.”
When I was a kid, we had actual families. Married parents, one stayed home to perform “family management” duties (a full-time job, like it or not), the other worked an “average” job which even so (in the words of Vin Suprynowicz) “supported their families in free-standing homes on a single salary, and paid cash for a new car every four years.”
Now we have casual divorces, never-marriages, “blended” families, custody arrangements, and dual careers; and the kids’ voids are filled with InstaGramma and Grandpa Theft Auto. All made possible by that drunk, animal-abusing Great Societopath.
“Now we have…”
All part of the plan.
Grandpa Theft Auto for the win!
My Daughter graduated HS last year and I can confirm anecdotally that I observed similar things, but certainly not to the level the speaker described. The phone was a major point off contention. I was adamantly opposed to getting her a phone until HS. My wife was worried about her ability to contact us in an emergency. So you already know my daughter got a phone in the 7th grade. Which was a very late start and a source of embarrassment for her.
The kids aren’t beyond redemption. In many ways they are like all teens with the same hopes and dreams. The Rona lockdown drama and constant fear mongering left damage. A whole cohort of kids has been impacted. It exacerbated every existing problem. As a whole these kids bounce between very anxious and apathetic and the attention span is short.
Setting and keeping firm boundaries with kids is as important as it always was. Not just about phone use etiquette. Many Parents today fail to provide structure and consistency. Every time my Daughter had a sleepover her friends quickly adapted to the basic rules and some commented that they lacked that at home and wished they had them.
As Parents it’s our job to raise the children. That doesn’t just mean a roof, clothing and meals; the Army will give them those when or if that day comes. It means making time for them not as their friend but as their Parent while demonstrating we value them as individuals. Setting boundaries, following a routine, being disciplined in our own actions to provide the example. We made mistakes but by demonstrating we held ourselves accountable and actually cared my wife and I raised a pretty good kid. Lots of other Parents are doing the same or better.
There exist schools, the students of which are nothing like what Jeremy Adams describes. They are private Christian schools and home schools.
The government schools cannot be reformed. Get the kids out now.
get out, get out. GET OUT.
Public schools are not in my opinion salvageable.
If I were raising children today, I would be living out in the country on a small farm- farm animals, garden, chores, fresh air, conservative neighbors.
Homeschooling or sending them to a small thoroughly vetted private school.
Limited screen time and more reading of books including the Bible. Teaching life skills. Family time. Let them know they are loved and valued and they are part of family/extended family.
I’d be keeping them as far away from the culture of corruption as possible.
Parents have to learn how to be parents and realize that the present attitudes of children are a result of the attitudes and mindsets of the boomers who became parents Secular media and social media should be avoided and if you gs d a choice opt out of the public schools Ic you have any traditional moral and family values think seriously about other options for your family as to where to live and raise your children
It is important that families either learn to live on one income, or perhaps each parent works 20-30 hours a week, with both parents being involved with child rearing on a nearly equal basis. The latter is what we did with our children.
Another important issue is to not buy a large house right off, consider starting smaller and perhaps adding on over time. In my case, sweat equity over time meant much less money expended in interest.
I built (myself) a 2700 sq foot home about 40 years ago. Now it is way too big. I am preparing to move to a different state, specifically conservative. I am planning on a shipping container home with a pole barn to leave to a disabled, now adult daughter. It is designed to keep property taxes low and to be low maintenance, low operating costs.
This is all due to the digital revolution, along with cheap and plentiful food. The proper balance between man’s dignity and the conveniences offered by modernity was the period from 1955 to 1975. If we could go back to rotary phones, 3 network television stations, vibrant public libraries, typewriters, carbon paper, and more expensive food, we would all be wiser and slimmer.
Alas, we are now a society of doughy, soulless, sensation seeking automatons.
True. An easy life, devoid of danger is the path to failure that befuddles the adherent when it occurs.
Part of the problem isn’t so much “cheap, plentiful food” as it is frankenfood – highly processed crap containing ingredients with unpronouncable names which sound more like they belong in a chemistry lab than they do on your pantry shelf. God only knows what effect all these synthetics have on the human body, let alone developing brains. Can’t imagine it’s doing anyone any favors.
Eating real food is a good start, and it can’t hurt. Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.
Being a good parent is hard. A lot of people just abdicated that responsibility–parked their kids in front of the TV; gave them cell phones; threw money at them; and then ignored them–and now we have people who think that free speech, democracy, and other core values are bad–I’m afraid of the next revolution coming
Yep, there are way too many like that. I don’t think it ends well.
that the progs have to deceive/manipulate/cheat to prevail says a lot about THEM–these “hollowed out” children aren’t irretrievable or beyond hope but it must come from us(in THIS world)
Very powerful presentation. Thanks for posting. (My Mother was a teacher.)
Imagine this phenomenon on steroids, when a generation of children who were forced to wear masks as young kids matures.
We know that the ability to see each others faces, and more specifically the mouths, is a crucial part of ‘verbal’ communication. We also know that children’s brains are quite literally ‘wired’ during their formative years through repetition and practice. Or if such practice does not occur their brains simply don’t get ‘wired’ correctly (or the same way as normal).
I fear what we’re going to discover when these young kids who were forced to mask up for years mature into teenagers whose brains simply ‘don’t work’ with respect to face-to-face verbal communication.
Our governmental response to covid was a massive crime against humanity, the repercussions of which we are only starting to realize.
I see the battle occurring with my grandchildren. My children are doing a good job, but it is a constant battle when all the friends have parents not paying attention.
Restrictions and paying attention to the friends are important. You can never let up.
Very true. There are Parents out there doing the right things, some less so and some not at all. The Parents who put the rat race and their next promotion above their kids aren’t helping.
Professor Jacobson:
I see this as having started when parents ceded their responsibility to raise their children to the government school systems. Starting with John Dewey in the 1900’s, who wanted the schools to produce essentially mindless drones for a labor force, and moving through to our current system of endless indoctrination and brainwashing, it has been a steady regression from education to cultivation of collectivist values, standards, ethics and morals. The parents thought they could warehouse their children with these collectivist, statist, authoritarians without any ill effect on their children’s minds. They were wrong.
Any parent who leaves their child’s impressionable mind to the vagaries of government schools is, de facto, guilty of child abuse. If they have attempted to move their child to a private school, only to have it enter into the dreaded “private/public partnership”, they have failed in their attempt to stop the abuse. The only ways to go are a private school dedicated to classical liberalism, a religious school (although those are now mostly co-opted by the government,), or home schooling with networks of like-minded parents.
I fear for our country’s future if these children grow to be “adults” without ever having learned what it means to be an American.