Spoilt Tweens !! invasion in India

We live in an age where the world is spinning faster and faster, we all want instant gratification and we want it now or in some cases before the actual moment. As a mother of a teenager and a young adult, I have come to realize the mantra is getting things right now. Technology available to us is delivering fast results. This means we are accustomed to getting what we want at our fingertips. Disposable Income means we are buying things instantly without having to budget, save and to buy later. Today’s teen is a spoilt child, who wants things and with the external bombarding of clever marketing that scores in the product again and again the kid is convinced that he or she cannot survive without the product. A whole new wide world is available to them, and they are not shy of voicing their opinion. .

Once upon a time, children were seen and not meant to be heard, parents were the masters of the house, and youngsters did what they were told to do. But slowly, and slowly the power balance is changing and it has shifted to them subtly. A new study shows 7-14 years have more power on their parents than before. . More than half of them confess that they are influenced by what their children want in the manner of groceries, what they want to eat. Children also say they want the ‘it’ product of their times where the possession of that personalize/ bespoke product will singularly set them apart and set them apart from their peers. Societal pressures dictate how they should dress, what to wear what to do and how to behave, the way they should speak. Marketing hype demands and states the law for the teenagers to have that it product.

Kids dictate what laptop to buy, mobile phone to carry.

56% of the kids want instant gratification and they want to spend their time on their virtual umbilical cord connection to the www. You never know, what one may miss when they were talking or heaven forbid conversing with the family, someone might have just posted a status update.

This generation is called the dumbest generation. It is a paradox of the times- we have the maximum advantage of education, learning political action, cultural activity, but also on the same hand instead of using the world wide web to learn as a center of knowledge we are using it as a place of gossip, follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with ever shifting lingua- franca of being school / college.

Social life is the most tempting to and to miss out is the most painful. This peer- to –peer activity is worrisome, as it stifles one, kids seek out what they want, want it fast, and with minimum effort.

They do so with bad spellings, civic illiteracy and a complete disregard of family and endless postings of trivia. Educators, parents need to not ignore this down ward spiral, and they need to check this only by checking themselves. How many times, have you while the commercial comes, started surfing the net meaninglessly?

We can get students to raise the bar, delay their gratification, by being there for them to begin with for starters. It’s all about parenting , and we need to take a leaf from our parents lives . Children must be taught how to think, and not what to think. Margaret Mead.