I'm going to preface this rant by acknowledging that fact that I'm only twenty-three years old. So there.

Now, with that said . . .

These kids today! I mean, damn!! Children as young as eight or nine all the way up through the teenage years have such a sense of . . . entitlement. It drives me crazy! I work with three sixteen/seventeen year-olds; they're still kids, really. Now, I've no problem with them as individuals. I actually love all three of them like they we're my own nieces/nephew. But they have served as a window looking into the heads of kids today. And because I stay up late all by myself with nothing better to do, I've thought long and hard about some things and come up with a theory: There is a direct correlation between technological advancement and the steadily increasing sense of entitlement in each generation.

First of all, here's a key to words/phrases I'll be using throughout this little rant. Generation - I'm thinking in terms of every six to ten years. Not the real definition of the word, but it'll serve. Things - Stuff, crap, junk to own and say it belongs to you. 'Nuff said. Entitlement - The somewhat snotty and demanding attitude of some people, the expectation of having something without working to get it. Making Life Easier - Should be read with sarcasm in mind.

Dig on this. I'm not going to bore you with a long and drawn out history lesson. We'll only go back, say . . . about 80 years. Back to the Great Depression. The economy was shit, people starving and working as hard as they could just to feed their families. Even children had jobs; any amount of money, no matter how small, meant the difference between eating and empty stomachs. Point: Even a seven year-old kid knew the value of a dollar. He watched how hard his parents worked to scrape and save, and even took part in the money-earning himself and therefore understood where things came from and what it took to get them.

Flash forward a couple of decades. America's just finished with the second World War. The economy's been boosted, the Depression has ended, and people begin to have money again. We see the beginning of a technological trend, devices created for the sole purpose of entertainment or making life easier. Television, washing machines, electric toasters, FM radio, the list goes on and on. We now have a string of things to buy, operate, and possess.

Keep moving forward through time to present day. Now we have personal computers (one in almost every home), cell phones, fast cars, hundreds of channels on TV, TiVo, CD players, electric toothbrushes, PDAs, and a hundred million other things to make life easier. So how does this relate to entitlement, you ask? Here's the answer. With every generation that is born, we have a slew of technology ready and waiting for them. Every generation that has come in the past 60 years has been born into a world filled with things waiting for to make their lives easier.

The teenagers I work with were born in 1986. They don't remember a world without MTV, VCRs, cordless phones. A world without microwave ovens, cable TV, digital pocket calculators. A world without Nintendo, CDs, camcorders. They were born with this stuff practically coming out of their asses. They've no sense of the work put into the creation of these "life-enriching" devices, no sense of the work put into saving for their purchase. They grow up feeling (and here's the point now, so pay attention) entitled to have these things for themselves. They want a cell phone or a new car or a fucking X-Box, but they don't want to have to work for it. They expect the world to give them things simply because they grew up with things already there for them.

Bullshit.

I will now say again that I know I'm still young. I also know that my generation is not exempt from this entitled way of thinking. But where the hell does it end? I imagine my niece (now just three years old) growing up in a world where she's constantly surrounded with these gadets and doodads and thingamajigs, not having a clue as to the work put into ther design and eventual purchase. I imagine her growing up wanting the world handed to her on a silver platter while she sits on her ass doing nothing but making demands. I imagine her getting married and having children of her own, each with their own demands and expectations, and so on and so on until time infinite. I imagine all this and I cringe.

So what's the lesson for today, kids? Technology is evil? No. Teenagers are evil? No, although I'm sure there are some parents out there who might argue with me on that one. No, the lesson for today is to remember that kid digging in the dirt for food to feed his family during the Depression. Remember a time before cell phones and microwaves. Talk to your parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents (if they're still alive) about what it was like for them growing up. Try to keep focused on the fact that everything that exists today does so because someone worked hard. Then simply work hard yourself. Technology is not evil; it just makes it easier for us to become lazy assholes.

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