Where are you in the debate that baby boomers had things much harder than Generation X?

Well said Sergeant Major

Excellent response, SGM Bill Frazer.

That's a pretty good point. I was was uploading some old high school pics a while back with my wife to share with our old friends on FB (some still live nearby, many don't). One thing we found ourselves doing was being grateful that we didn't live under this constant digital lens that the new generation does. Swapping stories, realizing what we got away with, and realizing that our faults, embarrassing incidents, and moments of doubt weren't being recorded and shared with the entire world. As 80s kids, we also got to see the Internet, fresh out of the Arpanet metamorphosis take shape and evolve into what we now have, too.

Here is the problem with that. Most of these kids bring it on themselves by recording and tweeting and posting on FB absolutely EVERYTHING they do. Their personal heroes are the Kardashians and idiots like PewDiePie who have gotten famous, simply for being famous. They are more interested in having a ton of facebook friends and followers who constantly reply to them than they are of personal privacy. The attention itself is more important to them than any concept of being humble. And you can't exactly limit all their time with technology, schools give them computers because that is how we disseminate knowledge these days. I have an 18 yr old teenage daughter that I have done my best to teach about the harm that doing these things can cause. You can only hope that they listen and learn from it before it's too late.

Cpl Tom Surdi - But, that is part of the problem. While we had to dodge the peer pressure of smoking, they have that...plus maintaining their "streaks," # of social media friends, # of "likes," etc. They have the same peer pressures and bullying problems that we had and this new social media dynamic. If I did something dumb in the lunch room and everyone laughed at me, it wouldn't probably spill over into the next day. Today, it goes viral. Even if a kid is limited (online) by his parents, that one dumb act is known by most of the school and every other school in the community. God forbid it is caught on video...today's teenage miscues are like herpes, it lasts forever.

PO1 Don Gulizia - I disagree, people eventually forget or stop caring or something new happens, kids have short attention spans so the next shiny thing will always take front seat. The problem is they wont stop, they continue to blast everything they say and do on-line and they don't learn that if you just stopped, a lot of it would go away. But they just gotta get those likes, so they don't. It's both a symptom and a cause.