Complaints about youthful inattention may partly reflect declining authority

Evidence

The declinist discourse likes to direct two contradictory criticisms at digital natives. On the one hand, ‘the young’ are completely devoid of critical spirit, naively swallowing all the nonsense posted on the internet; on the other hand, they are considered to be uncivilized wild things, rebelling against all forms of authority. We wonder instead whether they might not be demonstrating another form of critical spirit, which their elders find all the more offensive because of the way it exposes naivety and hypocrisy. What are we intellectuals and teachers complaining about when we lament the attentional deficits that characterize our different audiences? That they are not listening in large enough numbers or with enough devotion to the precious words coming from our mouths and pens? And what if, as was suggested above by Robert Caron and Cathy Davidson, it were also (a little) because what we are saying is (perhaps) ultimately not so brilliant or fascinating as we would like to imagine? — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 474

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: moral panics over ‘distracted youth’ have historically functioned as defenses of institutional authority — connects to current debates about phones and Gen Z attention.
• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s argument that moral panics are class/identity/political signaling by threatened authorities.
• XREF: connects to: Children’s inattention often reflects unlistenable teaching, not distraction — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 260

Broader Connections

• Children’s inattention often reflects unlistenable teaching, not distraction #complicates (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 260