re: Do we have it completely backwards when we say “kids are so soft today?”

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was in Catholic school until 66

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Nuns were the best educators!

Not sure where you grew up, but We had homework, tests & real grades in 2nd grade.

And sports where I come from, were way tougher back then.

Wayyyy tougher!

Now a days, I hear more clown park coaches giving speeches “it doesn’t matter to win or lose, we want to have fun”.

the tackle football game was leaps and bounds tougher when I was playing versus today’s game.

Helmet to helmet was expected!

You dreamed for a WR coming across the middle to try and decapitate him.

When legit Crack blocks were brutal and legal!

And even playing basketball, we drew blood, it was like full contact versus today’s pansie game.

But I’ll say this to support your overall point,

I believe the kids today have a different type of stress due to social media and all this woke BS. And the fact that more than half the country is divorced, which is by design to break up the family unit where both parents having 2 jobs and crap & kids are raising themselves with tv and video games.

The world sucks much worse than it did back in the 80-90’s

I think today's children are the first generation that will largely struggle and parents know it. AI/automation is phasing out a lot of jobs, outsourcing is still in full effect and it's depressing the job market, and tangible assets have never been more expensive relative to inflation.

As a result, they are pushing their children harder at a younger age and it certainly contributes to the stress of their children. It sucks but I am one of the ones pushing my children to have a work ethic that won't quit and to think critically. My hope is they have a job that pays well enough to actually not live with the stress of poverty.

I think it really depends, do parents tend to baby their children through shite they shouldn't, yes. Do kids nowadays have possibly more stressers in their life due to parents who compare theirs to others and showcase their every move on social media (and other things not mentioned)? Yes. I mean, I can see the argument for both sides and I think it's too broad of a statement to really imply that most kids are softer than ever. I think the ideas and choices that their parents implement as well as society as a whole has gotten "softer" in the cult-name of progressivism and that things are much easier than they used to be in terms of convenience. We live in times where some people put merit as a non-priority unfortunately and some kids have everything handed to them and many participation trophies are given out.

I know top universities are way more competitive today than in the past. Harvard used to have a 15-20% acceptance rate in 1980. Today it is 3%. It was 5x to 7x higher in the 80s. This is a trend across every top 50 university. Even Tulane went from like 50% to now 10%. Average ACT scores are up significantly at all these top universities like 3 points higher than the 80s. The number of seats has stayed the same, but there are hundreds of thousands of more applicants now that the internet exists.

This is why seeing a teen or someone in their 20s that went to Harvard is a lot more impressive than seeing someone who is 80 and went to Harvard. Standards are a lot higher today.

What this does is filters many kids to lower ranked universities that would've gotten into higher ranked universities in the past. Universities like LSU or Bama are now taking on 30,000-35,000 undergrads. LSU went from 20% out of state to 40% out of state enrollment today in just a decade. Universities like Texas State have 2x the enrollment as a decade or so ago.

The ACT isn't easier, it's a test that basically ranks you amongst other test takers that year. It's not like get 100 out of 150 means you get 67th percentile, it compares you to others of past 5 years I think, so there will always be an even distribution of scores no matter what set of 5 years.