Feral Minds, Rational Responses

What if kids are more rational about the future than us, adults?

“Feral.”

That was the word a friend of mine used to describe kids in schools today — an observation coming from someone who hardly ever overreacts to everyday chaos.

Then The Economist used the same word to talk about kids at the cinemas throwing popcorn in the air watching Minecraft (they see it as a good sign: at least kids are going to the cinema).

Then that Substack essay about college students being literally illiterate and unable to sit in a lecture without checking their phones went viral, even getting cited in Wall Street Journal.

Then I watched Adolescence, an outstanding Netflix series about what might lead an otherwise unremarkable 13 y.o. boy to kill a girl, which shocked me with its realistic depiction of how broken many schools are: chaotic, unsafe and useless.

Ben Blackall/Netflix

Yes, there are plenty of good reasons to be concerned about the state of the youth today. People are quick to point the finger to social media and its AI algorithms, Andrew Tate and other toxic influencers, and smartphones that fragment our attention and are correlated with increased rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide.

But it’s not the whole story.

Kids sense the future better than adults

It’s easy to imagine that if only there was no social media and no smartphones with easy access to inappropriate content, kids would happily study French and geography before playing football after classes and all would be well.

Nothing would be well. It’s deeper than that. Kids intuitively sense the state of the world. In particular, they know deep down that what schools are teaching will be of little use in the world.

Yes, social media, smartphones and toxic influencers don’t help, but how would you feel about spending a decade forced to go to an institution designed for another era?

Maybe, given where the world is going, not taking the school seriously is actually a sane response? And then, it’s aggravated by all other factors mentioned above.

What if many kids are actually right when they see school as pointless, very much like every prisoner knows that there’s nothing correctional about correctional institutions?

We all just want to be safe and loved

Reflecting on the popularity and toxic influence of the likes of Andrew Tate, I also wonder if part of their appeal to insecure young men is also rooted in an intuitive sense of a more dangerous, chaotic world ahead. Maybe kids don’t understand the complexity of it all, but they see many adults being really worried about the future in some way. From this angle, what the likes of Tate promise is a sense of safety — and the more dangerous the world is, the stronger the appeal.

Sure, it’s easy to blame Andrew Tate, but I wonder if what the schools (and parents, and the society) need to do is not to ban the smartphones in schools (although it’s probably a good idea) but to make sure that schools are actually preparing the next generation for what’s coming?

If my assumption that in the coming decade we might experience something akin to the fall of the USSR is correct, we all will need a different set of skills to navigate the changing world — strong sense of agency, character, emotional intelligence, self-regulation, tech/AI proficiency, etc.

Sadly, many schools don’t even try to cultivate the skills necessary to navigate uncertain future — and I can’t blame them; it’s a systemic problem. But the behaviour of many kids that comes across as unruly or worse might be a rational response to being forced to be part of a system that doesn’t come close to preparing them for the future they sense is coming.

Perhaps those who are truly irrational are us, adults, who keep insisting that the educational system is still an adequate way to prepare for adulthood?

What’s the alternative?

First, as adults we must learn to be okay ourselves. Children pick up on the anxiety of adults. If we don’t feel confident in our ability to handle the future, including the technological disruption, climate emergency, geopolitical realignment, culture wars and more, how can we expect children to feel any different? As they say, put on your own mask first before helping others.

If we don’t model confidence by managing our own information diet, having a healthy relationship with our digital devices, and building community resilience, how can we expect children to learn all of this? At school?

Second, we must understand technology and in particular AI well enough to have a thoughtful conversation with kids about how it works. For example, thanks to AI, a photo without any obvious features can be easily geolocated. Explaining the safety risks to children with a specific example is better than a blanket ban on phone use or photo sharing.

Third, prioritise a sense of agency, self-regulation and strong character — resilience, integrity, adaptability — over grades. Sure, grades are important but they don’t guarantee success in life. They never really did, but going forward it’ll matter even less in the world that demands adaptability over memorised knowledge.

---

John Lennon wrote:

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

Lennon’s point strikes even deeper today. When the future is unknown, perhaps the most vital ‘assignment’ is indeed inner work — the resilience, adaptability, and maybe even happiness — that allows us to navigate the uncertainties of life, a task far removed from traditional schooling.