Abuse is never the right couse of action regardless of how bad kids have become. I bet if the internet was around then the stories we would have heard about during that generation would have been horrifying, but because it was done in secret nobody ever knew about it.
A paddling is not abuse. When we gave the teachers the ability to corporally discipline the kids we had better education. Now we just have day care centers where the kids can’t learn anything because the trouble makers can’t be fixed and can’t be excluded.