“Kids these days have no resilience”
By Richard Wyman
How often have you heard this phrase, or even said it yourself? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t, or maybe you don’t believe it’s true. Whatever your view, I think it’s worth exploring. Rather than simply saying children have less resilience than they used to, perhaps we should ask why. What has changed over the last 20 years?
It was 2007. I had just been appointed as a newly qualified teacher of Physical Education. Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, Sean Kingston was at the top of the charts, and the Nokia N95 was the biggest selling mobile phone, just as the iPhone was launching in the UK.
Life was certainly different.
Lessons in school were very much traditional ‘chalk and talk’. No laptops or iPads, no fancy PowerPoints, no virtual learning environment. Registers were still done on paper.
Have I really been teaching that long?!
I still remember my very first football team. I was given a group of Year 7 boys and coached them right through to Year 11, when they left school. They were great. My captain has since gone on to play professionally and I’ve had the privilege of watching him play on several occasions.
Week in, week out, they turned up for training and matches, eager to play, I can’t remember ever having to forfeit a game against another school throughout those five years.
One week, we were due to play a County Cup game at home. The night before, around two feet of snow had fallen, there was absolutely no chance of the game going ahead. We don’t have undersoil heating in secondary schools, although I suspect even Pride Park would have struggled with that much snow!
A few of the boys approached me while I was on break duty.
“The game is still on, yeah, sir?”
I laughed, assuming they were joking. They were deadly serious.
“We can clear it all off at lunchtime. If we all get together and get some brushes and shovels from the caretakers, I think we can do it in time.”
I was amazed by their determination. Unfortunately, even if health and safety requirements had been less demanding than they are today, we would never have got the pitch into a suitable condition for playing.
Fast-forward nearly 20 years.
One of our school teams was due to play a big game against relatively tough opposition. I had stepped in to take the team because the usual member of staff was unavailable.
A couple of the boys were in detention that evening and would therefore miss the game. They were decent players and would be missed, but fair enough, I thought. Others would have to step up, and we would give it a good go.
I arrived at the changing rooms at the end of the school day.
We had seven players.
Word had spread around school that we would be two good players down. Unfortunately, rather than galvanising the team, it seemed to have the opposite effect. A few of the others had dropped out or simply hadn’t turned up, knowing the game would be difficult.
We had to concede the game at the last minute.
The minibus we had booked was waiting outside. The risk assessments had been completed, parents had been contacted and first aid support had been arranged. All that preparation, and we couldn’t even get a team on the pitch.
I remember thinking: would this have happened with my old Year 7 team?
My instinct was that it wouldn’t. I could imagine them turning up with nine players if they had to or finding someone else in their year group to make up the numbers. They wanted to play, regardless of the opposition or the chances of winning.
Of course, these are two individual experiences and I can’t say for certain that the same situation wouldn’t have happened with my earlier team, but the contrast stayed with me.
It made me think. What has changed?
It was the same school, serving the same catchment area, but the world around those children had changed enormously.
I’m not suggesting that mobile phones, screen time or social media were solely responsible for what happened that evening. There could have been all sorts of reasons why those boys didn’t turn up. However, I do wonder whether the way children experience the world today has affected the opportunities they have to develop what I would call authentic everyday resilience.
Think about how often we see young children using tablets or phones in pushchairs, in restaurants while waiting for food, on buses and trains, or throughout an entire flight with headphones on.
There are, of course, some perfectly understandable reasons for this. Screens can entertain children, provide educational opportunities and make everyday situations easier for parents. I’m not suggesting that every child using a tablet is missing out on something important.
However I do wonder what happens when a screen becomes our automatic response to boredom, frustration or having to wait.
Those moments might seem insignificant, but they can provide opportunities for children to learn how to occupy themselves, tolerate frustration, solve problems and manage uncomfortable feelings. If every quiet moment is filled with entertainment, are children getting as many chances to practise these skills?
Being a parent is hard and being a good parent can feel like the hardest job in the world. I wouldn’t for one minute suggest that children shouldn’t be allowed to use screens, nor would I judge a parent who has come home after a tough day at work, is trying to get dinner ready and has a child who is screaming or demanding attention.
Sometimes, a screen is simply a practical solution. Most parents have been there in one way or another.
But does it always have to be the first thing we reach for?
Neither of my children used screens very much while they were growing up. Yet now, as adults, they spend plenty of time on them. It’s a reminder that this isn’t just a childhood issue; we are all caught up in the same digital world.
One evening, when my son was a teen and he had left his phone in our room, the sheer number of notifications coming through was astonishing. Messages, alerts and updates, one after another. It made me wonder how much of our attention is being pulled in different directions and whether the constant stream of information can leave us feeling distracted or overwhelmed.
Society seems to have developed an expectation that we should always be available, always checking, always responding. There are messages to reply to, comments to like, Snapchats to open and TikToks to watch.
Next time you’re standing in a queue or waiting for someone in a shop, take a look around. How many people reach for their phones when they have even ten seconds to spare?
Is it simply habit? Have we become uncomfortable with doing nothing? Or have we forgotten how to let our minds wander?
How often do we see children watching television while simultaneously scrolling on a phone or tablet?
I do wonder whether the endless nature of so much short-form content, with one video leading straight into the next, makes it harder to step away and become comfortable with quieter moments. I certainly don’t think the constant availability of entertainment has necessarily helped us develop the ability to sit with boredom.
The world is a very different place from the one I started teaching in nearly two decades ago. The pace of life, the rise of smartphones and social media, the constant distractions and changes in how children spend their free time have all created a very different environment in which to grow up.
There are also many other factors to consider, including family life, school pressures, fewer opportunities for independent and physical play in some children's lives and the challenges young people face both online and offline. We shouldn’t assume that every child is less resilient, or that previous generations had everything figured out.
Perhaps the question isn’t whether children today are less resilient than they used to be.
Perhaps it’s whether they are being given enough opportunities to practise resilience.
We know that resilience doesn’t develop overnight. It grows through experiences: facing setbacks, dealing with disappointment, working through problems, learning from mistakes and discovering that things don’t always go to plan.
Sometimes, it means turning up to play a football match even when your best players are missing. Sometimes, it means finding something to do when you’re bored, waiting patiently when things don’t happen straight away, or having another go when something feels difficult.
We can’t turn back the clock and I’m certainly not suggesting we should. Technology is part of modern life, and it brings many benefits, but perhaps we can be a little more mindful about when we use it and when we allow children the space to work things out for themselves.
Maybe we don’t need to entertain children every minute of the day. Maybe we can let them be bored sometimes, encourage them to persevere when things get difficult and give them the chance to discover that they can cope with more than they think.
After all, resilience isn’t about never struggling. It’s about learning how to respond when we do.
And perhaps that starts with giving children more opportunities to practise.
