Seems like young people behaving in a different way to what old people expect is an entirely new concept....
“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.
…
They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Rhetoric, Aristotle.
4th Century BC
“The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money.”
Horace
1st Century BC
“Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased … The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say ‘raise the carriage shafts’ or ‘trim the lamp wick,’ but people today say ‘raise it’ or ‘trim it.’ When they should say, ‘Let the men of the palace staff stand forth!’ they say, ‘Torches! Let’s have some light!’”
“Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased … The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say ‘raise the carriage shafts’ or ‘trim the lamp wick,’ but people today say ‘raise it’ or ‘trim it.’ When they should say, ‘Let the men of the palace staff stand forth!’ they say, ‘Torches! Let’s have some light!’”
Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), Yoshida Kenkō
1330 – 1332
(Essays in Idleness), Yoshida Kenkō
“Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie . . . the ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded.”
The Wise-Man’s Forecast against the Evill Time, Thomas Barnes
1624
“… I find by sad Experience how the Towns and Streets are filled with lewd wicked Children, and many Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names, and it would grieve ones Heart to hear what bawdy and filthy Communications proceeds from the Mouths of such…”
A Little Book for Children and Youth – Being Good Counsel and Instructions for Your Children, Earnestly Exhorting Them to Resist the Temptation of the Devil, Robert Russel
1695
“Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…”
Letter in Town and Country magazine republished in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History
1771
“The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth…”
Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, Reverend Enos Hitchcock
1790
“…a fearful multitude of untutored savages… [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits…[girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody…the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly.”
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Speech to the House of Commons
February 28, 1843
“… see the simpering little beau of ten gallanting home the little coquette of eight, each so full of self-conceit and admiration of their own dear self, as to have but little to spare for any one else…”
“Children And Children’s Parties”, published in The Mothers’ Journal and Family Visitant, S.B.S. 1853
“Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline…”
The Psychology of Adolescence, Granville Stanley Hall
1904
“We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.”
The Conduct of Young People, Hull Daily Mail
1925
brat.
“The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz … women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing…the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honoured custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.”
Hour of Decision, Oswald Spengler (translated by C.F. Atkinson, 1942)
1933
“Probably there is no period in history in which young people have given such emphatic utterance to a tendency to reject that which is old and to wish for that which is new.”
Young People Drinking More, Portsmouth Evening News 1933
“Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties. They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.”
Problems of Young People, Leeds Mercury 1938
“Many [young people] were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there was such a thing as walking, and they made automatically for the buses… unless they did something, the future for walking was very poor indeed.”
Scottish Rights of Way: More Young People Should Use Them, Falkirk Herald 1951