"Kids These Days"

Question

This is a question more about culture than language specifically but I hope it is still appropriate here.

It's a common topic in current media commentary (in English) to complain about the problems with younger people. They don't want to work, they're lazy, men are becoming more effeminate and women more masculine, they all drink too much.

But it is somewhat naive to say current. This has been a trend for a while. Our parents may say it about our generation, but their parents said it about their generation. And it keeps going.

This has been a trend through the ages. There is an apocryphal story about Socrates' such complaints.

Here are some examples in English (source) and here:

Examples:

• (1937) "Nobody wants to work anymore".
• (1916) "Nobody wants to work as hard as they used to".

My question is: Is there a historical trend for people to complain about the laziness of youth, generation after generation, in German culture and media?

All the examples in that image are from US newspapers, but I am just so unaware if there is a similar possible situation in German culture and language for people to complain so openly. But there still may be examples in literature that I am also unaware of.

If you can, please give quotes from newspapers, books, or other media from before 1900.

Answer 1

"Kids these days" means "Die Jugend von heute" in German. This is a standard German phrase. It is certainly not a translation from another language because the concept is known in all cultures. It seems to be a sort of human archetype which finds words in all languages.

A Google search for "Die Jugend von heute" gives ~152,000 results. But it is difficult to say when "Die Jugend von heute" was used for the first time. Perhaps Google Ngrams helps a little:

Potentially useful sources are 1 and 2.

Quote from source 1:

Im »Dietrich von Bern«, einer anonymen mittelhochdeutschen Heldendichtung, entstanden im 13. Jahrhundert, wird die Klage Walther von Wasgensteins, eines Neffen des Kaisers, laut, ob denn die Jugend von heute noch etwas anderes könne als "den Becher schwingen." (Vgl. Benner/ Oelkers, 2004: 175-179).

Translation via DeepL:

In "Dietrich von Bern," an anonymous Middle High German heroic poem written in the 13th century, Walther von Wasgenstein, a nephew of the emperor, laments whether today's youth can do anything other than "swing the cup". (Cf. Benner/Oelkers, 2004: 175-179).

Note that Benner/Oelkers refers to this.

Quotes from source 2:

Später sieht man die Jugend sogar als Krankheitszustand an, und Melanchton verlieh Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts der Meinung Ausdruck, der grenzenlose Mutwille der Jugend sei ein Zeichen, daß der Weltuntergang nah bevorstünde. Klagen über das extravagante Verhalten der Jugend werden zu einem Klagelied des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ein Schulmeister schreibt: »Das Sittenverderben unserer heutigen Jugend ist so groß, daß ich unmöglich länger bey derselben aushalten kann.« Die Disziplinschwierigkeiten werden so groß, daß sogar der Unterricht im Klassenverband in Frage gestellt zu sein scheint: »Ja, oft geschieht es, daß die nicht in Schranken gehaltene oder nicht gebührend ausgetriebene Zuchtlosigkeit eines einzigen Jünglings von ungesunder Triebkraft und verdorbenen Auswüchsen auch die übrigen noch frischen und gesunden Pflanzen ansteckt. Deshalb konnte Quintilian mit Recht die Frage aufwerfen, ob es besser sei, die jungen Leute gemeinsam in Schulen oder einzeln in Häusern zu unterrichten.«

Later, youth was even seen as a state of illness, and Melanchton expressed the opinion in the mid-16th century that the boundless wantonness of youth was a sign that the end of the world was near. Complaints about the extravagant behavior of youth become a lament of the 18th century. A schoolmaster writes: "The moral corruption of our youth today is so great that I cannot possibly endure longer with them." The disciplinary difficulties become so great that even classroom instruction seems to be called into question: "Yes, it often happens that the unrestrained or improperly exorcised immorality of a single youth of unhealthy impulses and depraved excesses infects the rest of the still fresh and healthy plants as well. Therefore Quintilian could justly raise the question whether it was better to teach the young together in schools or individually in homes."

Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts verfaßt Kajetan von Weiller eine »Jugendkunde«, in der u.a. zu lesen steht: »Ihr sprühet von den Ambosen eurer Thorheiten und Laster gefährliche Funken ...«

At the end of the 18th century, Kajetan von Weiller wrote a "Jugendkunde" ("Study of Youth"), which read, among other things: "You spray dangerous sparks from the anvil of your follies and vices ...".

1852 heisst es in einem Regierungsbericht: »Es ist die Wahrnehmung gemacht worden, daß bei der Schuljugend die früher kundgegebene Anständigkeit und das sittliche Benehmen ... mehr und mehr verschwinde.«

In 1852, a government report stated: "It has been noticed that the school youth has lost the the formerly proclaimed decency and moral behavior ... is disappearing more and more.

Answer 2

You wrote: "This has been a trend for a while".

"A while" sounds like a couple of years. But complaints about the bad behavior of young people have already been found on 5000 year old pottery shards in ancient Sumer. And I bet people were complaining about youth tens and hundreds of thousands of years before writing was invented, too.

There is a website with quotes about complaints on the youth, and the oldest entry on this list is this (my translation):

The youth no longer respects age, deliberately shows an unkempt appearance, is bent on overthrow, shows no willingness to learn, and is dismissive of inherited values.

According to archaeologists, this statement was written around the year 3000 BC, so it is about 5000 years old. The next statement is about 4000 years old:

Our youth is run down and unruly. Young people no longer listen to their parents. The end of the world is near.

The next quote is from the Bible, from the Old Testament (written around 725 B.C.) (English translation from this site.)

Micah 7:6
For son treats father contemptuously, Daughter rises up against her mother, Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; A man’s enemies are the men of his own household.

There are many more quotes on that site, all in their German translation (sorry, I don't know a similar English resource). There are also quotes from Plato, Aristoteles, Horaz which are all younger than the quotes posted here, but still older than the languages German or English (which both emerged only after the years 500 A.D.).

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You asked about a trend in the German media. Yes, there is a trend: The complaints about the youth have remained at the same level since there has been German media. They have even remained at the same level since the German language has existed, and the examples from above prove that people already started complaining about the youth when they invented writing.

So it is not far-fetched to assume that people were already complaining about the young when mankind had started to speak.