It’s hard to measure societal progress, isn’t it? It’s hard to tell if things are getting better – or worse. Spend ten minutes reading the Daily Mail, or scrolling through social media, and it would be easy to think humanity was going to hell in a handcart.
On the other hand, if you read the first three chapters of any Steven Pinker book, you’ll turn into a character from The Fast Show. “Infant mortality is at its lowest ever rate, there’s a vaccine for malaria and equal marriage legislation exists in 29 countries. Isn’t modern life brilliant!?”
I am unfailingly and annoyingly optimistic. It’s a trait I have in common with all of us who were raised on musicals – the happy Technicolor ones, with Judy Garland or kids in. Not that difficult Sondheim stuff. Absorb enough musicals at a young age and you have some unerasable programming in you: the sense that, when someone is at their lowest point and sobbing, “I have lost all hope!” that that is the moment you burst into a song called Chin Up! Things Will Get Better Now! or Gene Kelly’s Jazz Ballet Solves Everything!.
Last week, I took part in a project about the difficulties 21st-century kids and teens experience. There is a whole slew of problems they face that our generation could never have conceived of: trolling, online bullying, revenge porn, gender dysphoria, Covid. We had a lot to discuss. Afterwards, a group of kids approached me and asked what they clearly thought was a very simple question: “Do you think being young is better than it was when you were our age – or worse?”
That is, of course, a very complex question. It would have required about six different answers and a range of pie charts. On top of this, my train was leaving in half an hour, so what I launched into was, basically, a song that would have been called This One Little Thing Gives Me Hope! if it been sung by Judy Garland. If it had been in a modern, edgy musical by Tim Minchin or the Hamilton people, however, it would have been titled Hurrah! Kids Don’t Shout “Gaylord” Any More.
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For there might be exceptions, but kids in the playground don’t really shout, “Gaylord!” any more. Or “Spaz”, or “Mong”, or “Lezza”, or “Flid”. That is, I know, an ugly, cruel collection of words (now we know what they are, let’s asterisk them from now on, so they don’t make the page any uglier than they already have), but those verbal flick knives were regularly taken out and used to inflict pain when I was a child. The playground was a choir of insults based on the presumption that the worst thing you could accuse another child of was being gay or having cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome or disabilities caused by thalidomide. The lexicon of childhood cruelty was based on punching down, hard, on the biggest societal prejudice bruise you could find. The cruelty was the point.
These days? Well, obviously, things are not perfect – I’m sure every schoolchild, or their parents, could tell you a whole bunch of monstrous words that have been chucked around – but compared with Seventies and Eighties playground insults, Generation Z have a vastly superior sense of fairness, kindness and equality. With one in five of them now identifying as “queer”, homophobic slurs have lost a great deal of their ability to shock and shame. Even insults around mental illness, such as “mad” or “crazy”, increasingly meet with disapproval. Try jokingly saying, “You’re a bit OCD,” around a teen who has a friend who has OCD and you’ll rapidly be lectured about how ignorant and hurtful it is.
So what insults are Gen Z enjoying? This is what gives me a very niche joy. The word I hear the teens in my house using with the most vim is “paedo”, alongside “nonce”, “incel” and “a bit rape-y”. Twenty-first century kids’ insults punch up, hard, and at the people they should theoretically be the most scared of. Modern children have a pleasingly informed view of any adult behaviour that is inappropriate. Watch them scream, “YOU PAEDO!” at any ageing, male TV presenter who introduces a younger woman with a simpering, “You look very beautiful tonight,” or, indeed, any classmate who fancies someone in the year below. These days, insults are based on the understanding that abusive or criminal behaviour is the most abhorrent thing, rather than, as when I was young, simply being more vulnerable or different.
That would be the gist of my number Hurrah! Kids Don’t Shout “Gaylord” Any More. Obviously, working out where the jazz ballet fits into it will take some time. But the simple answer to the question, “Do you think being young is better than it was when you were our age – or worse?” is: I think young people are better than they were when I was young. I think you are good, good kids.
