Posted on 06/02/2005 8:32:02 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
"IT'S not that I don't care on purpose," says 17-year-old Tom Siklic, "it's just that I don't care." Tom, a Melbourne Year 12 student, typifies his generation's shoulder-shrugging attitude to global warming and logging of old-growth forests.
"Ignorance is bliss," he says.
Apathy and scepticism among Australian teenagers has identified them as part of a global backlash generation labelled the South Park Conservatives.
According to the author of South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, Brian C. Anderson, teenagers are more attuned to the bad attitudes of the animated characters created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker than to those of their liberal parents.
They are more likely to ridicule social guidelines for politeness towards women, minorities, the disabled and disadvantaged and less likely to enroll to vote.
New research released yesterday on Australian attitudes across all generations supports the theory that adolescents are not as green as their parents.
Only 41 per cent of 14- to 17-year-olds call themselves environmentalists, compared with 75 per cent of baby boomers in the 60 to 64 age group, who were at the forefront of political activism. Advertisement:
The new report blames youth's fading idealism on John Howard's environmental scepticism.
Drawing on a poll of 56,344 people, the Australia Institute's report on this generational divide says "Howard's Children are characterised by apathy and scepticism", despite the focus given to environmental threats by schools and the media.
The youngest teenagers and the over-65s are weakest in their environmental activism, countering a national awareness that intensifies as people move through life.
Despite his own apathy, Tom Siklic says his family recycles glass and plastic, but like 27 per cent of the 14- to 17-year-olds interviewed by Roy Morgan Research, he believes threats to the environment are exaggerated.
Fellow skateboarder Stuart Morton, 19, is more passionate, in line with the poll's finding that 54 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds demonstrate more environmental concern than younger Australians.
"I don't think the threats are overdone," he said. "I care about the environment, about pollution and forests."
What in the hell kind of statistic is that supposed to be?
South Park Generation, Gen-X, Gen-Y, Baby Boomers. Freepers despise just about all of them. You pretty much have to go back to the Greatest Generation to find one Freepers can actually tolerate.
...i don't mean to be rude or anything like that...
BUT FREAKIN' GET A JOB!!!
I remember going to college in the 1980's and listening to the professors complain that our generation was unmotivated because we wouldn't go out and protest like the 60's students did.
Fact was almost everyone of my age thought Reagan was cool and many wanted to be like the capitalist Alex P Keaton of Family Ties.
You tell me. What I found interesting is that the younger they are, apparently they are more conservative.
Only 41 per cent of 14- to 17-year-olds call themselves environmentalists
I'll bet two dollars this skippy authorette is in her twenties.
We won't get fooled again! Is more accurate of the South Parkers. They are not in a reefer and LSD induced brainwashing state like the liberal pukes from the past.
I also don't think Gen X should go all the way til 1981. I was born in 1981, so am technically a Gen X'er. But I have never identified with that group - all the movers and shakers in Gen X seem at least 10 yrs older than me. I would rather be grouped with "Gen Y" or the "Millenials" but both terms tend to be associated with vacuous teeny boppers. The "South Park Generation" is a much better term.
1983 here also.
Not to be critical but the baby boom generation started in '46, that makes them 59 and younger.
64 year olds were born before Pearl Harbor, hardly a boomer.
Thought you might be interested.
they are pop culture oriented and that's it......
I know there are good ones out there...I have one as a dtr...but some of the rest.....
self-absorbed, whiny, lazy, little idiots.....
Brittany Spears ...thank you very much.....
...and you blame a pop star not the parents. That's interesting.
Perhaps you're looking at the wrong group. Why not take a look at home-schooled kids? Or the ones who are fighting in Iraq for our country?
Thank you so much for qualifying that. I really hate to be lumped in with the far leftists. There's probably an equal number of us who are not leftists among the boomers.
I hate the far left boomers as much as anyone. This world won't be safe till the last one is dead and buried. They make me cringe.
"They are not in a reefer and LSD induced brainwashing state like the liberal pukes from the past."
These kids aren't smoking any weed? Guess again.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Ping
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