Is each generation getting lazier?

Answer 1

Having taught college undergraduates for a decade now; yes. Doing as little as possible seems to give younger generations a feeling of importance, as actually doing things requiring discipline or effort would be beneath them. After all, if you're really "somebody" in popular culture, you should be able to pay people to do anything difficult for you.

I like the above answer of "more dependent". This ties in with the above as well. Very few of the current generation can do anything productive, e.g. sew, do home repair, cook, etc. For example, if you're a nerd, you play video games, and if you're not, then you go out to the clubs. If it requires any type of effort then it's not a valid form of entertainment.

Answer 2

I don't think it's lazier. I think that the tasks have been redefined. Instead of performing manual labor most of the day, today's society spends more time on intellectual labor (not to be confused with being intellectual!). In other words, people are using their eyes and brains and fingers to answer questions instead of going out to the yard to pull weeds.

So, lazier physically, but not mentally.

Answer 3

why do you say that?

Technology does make it easier for new generations to get lazier, but they are the same people inventing all this stuff, so its a catch 22.

No. We are screwed if they are.

Answer 4

Well there is this Egyptian letter on Paprus? It was written about two thousand years ago by a certain gentleman to a friend in Syria, and in the letter the man was complaining about his son and the young people of the day. They were so lazy and it seemed to him that all the young ones of the day were nothing but rebellious and lazy. They don't know what a day's hard work is.
So I guess in todays world your question may seem valid, but.........it's been a common complaint for more than two thousand years....really.

Answer 5

I believe so. I don't think it's on purpose, just the advances in the world. My parents both picked Cotton growing up. I have NO idea the kind of physical draining job that must of been. They were young and it was hot. Today, kids rarely go outside in the heat just to play.

Answer 6

I don't thik that each generation gets lazier, I think it is natural for us to alter our memories to show ourselves in the best light. " I walked to school thirty miles uphill in the snow...."

Answer 7

The during the later years of his life, Plato (in Book VII of the Laws) wrote:

Who is unable to count one, two, three, or to distinguish odd from even numbers, or is unable to count at all, or reckon night and day, and who is totally unacquainted with the revolution of the Sun and Moon, and the other stars. . . All freemen, I conceive, should learn as much of these branches of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the alphabet. In that country arithmetical games have been invented for the use of mere children, which they learn as pleasure and amusement . . . I . . . have late in life heard with amazement of our ignorance in these matters; to me we appear to be more like pigs than men, and I am quite ashamed, not only of myself, but of all Greeks.

Even the one of the oldest short essays in human literature (dating around 4000 years ago from Sumer) laments that the young are disastrously more ignorant than the generation immediately preceding.

Historically, every generation has debated this topic. The true issues are what do we learn from the mistakes of the generations before us? What great knowledge will we bestow to the generation of our children - to our children's' children? Will we be remembered for the unsolved problems left for the next generation to fix?

Answer 8

Yes, with the Tech Toys we have today, the children stay inside and play with their Gaming Systems instead of going outside and playing tag, Hide-n-Seek, Baseball, Softball, they do not run. The do not ride bicycles. They do not catch lightning bugs (fireflies)

Answer 9

yes the gerenation is getting lazier and fatter.

Answer 10

not lazier, more dependent.