What is the story with teenagers and their terrible social skills?

v638sg7k1a92bx

I'm sorry if I sound like an old fogey here but I am alone when I say that teenagers (and those in their early twenties) are seriously under developed in their social and interaction skills outside of their small group of friends.

I've recently been in more contact with a few teenagers and some in their early twenties (19 - 21) and they are literally incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together or always seem to respond to a question with "I dunno". What happened in these kids development that when they enter a room with other people that it is considered normal behavior to at least make you presence known by saying hello.
I'm only recently out of my twenties but I was taught by my parents to say hello, speak up, look people in the eye, answer you aunties and uncles when they speak to you. Did parents forget to teach their children these skills in the last ten years?

coffee_cake

Dalton Faint Seamstress wrote: »

What happened in these kids development that when they enter a room with other people that it is considered normal behavior to at least make you presence known by saying hello.

What's wrong with them saying hello?

Vito Corleone

Everybody run, it's old man tickers!

Geekness1234

TBH it sounds like you're just completely generalising teens,based on your experience of a few shy individuals.

Tordelback

Yes Mr. Patterson.

censuspro

OP, you're not going to get to many favourable comments on this forum probably because what you're saying flies directly in the face of most parents on this forum who have children in their teens and is probably something that they realise but choose either choose to ignore or convince themselves that their kids are only young, their individual or they're special and they'll eventually grow out of it.
In my experience, what you're are saying is broadly correct driven by a number of factors over the past ten years being: Internet, mobile phones, single parent families, both parents working and not to mention that these are Celtic tiger cubs coming of age.

alleystar

"Celtic tiger cubs coming of age."

God, I hate that saying. You do realise that not all of the children who grew up in the Celtic Tiger years were spoiled?

Complete generalisation from the OP. Don't limit that attitude to a specific age group, I've come across plenty of rude middle aged and elderly people who would barely utter a word to me out of complete bad manners on their part.

As another poster said, it can come down to just being shy. With regards to my own age group (19-21), I can usually gauge whether it's plain rudeness or shyness. There's a difference. And yes, there are rude teenagers but you can't tarnish the lot of them with the same brush. There's plenty of polite, well adjusted individuals across a broad spectrum of age groups, including teenagers (believe it or not :rolleyes:).

JenEffy

It's called being shy. Even now at 24 I can still be quite shy and not know what to say in certain situations. Judgmental people seem to find this unacceptable and accuse me of being a bitch or up myself.