Hope for the young

Mike Ruskovich put his politics on a shelf and crafted a timely, valuable column (A 'senior' teacher's tips for parents) published in Wednesday's Press. We would like to add one bullet point to Mr. Ruskovich's list:

- Wean your children from their "electronic gadgets," as Mr. Ruskovich refers to them.

Increasingly, research is showing how these gadgets - smartphones, tablets and similar computing/communication devices - are becoming less tools to be used wisely and more the world in which many of our young people now live. This should be alarming on many levels, yet to this point, excessive use of these devices and time within the environments they falsely create seem only to be expanding.

In one week, several examples of where this dependence is leading at least one generation surfaced.

- A story about a Pac-12 conference school dealing with massive student departures at halftime of football games revealed one big reason they were leaving: The stadium's infrastructure could accommodate only about 8,000 people using their smartphones at a time. Conclusion? Students were leaving because they couldn't text, stream video and otherwise communicate with their friends like they wanted to. Despite being surrounded by 50,000 other fans, they felt isolated and alone.

- During a visit to another Pac-12 conference school last week, a local observer noted how many students were walking from class to class (it's summer session) with their smartphones held out in front of them, never taking their eyes off the screen or fingers off the keys, completely oblivious to the gorgeous summer day around them or another person's possible attempt to greet or interact with them.

- This story from a Capitol Hill employee who met with a service academy leader. The military man described too many of today's young men and women as lacking "resilience" - or, put another way, toughness. Where previous generations would fail and bounce up off the mat quickly and strive to do better, today's college-aged students falter and then collapse, sometimes staying down and out for a week or more. Remember, these are the best of the best, so what happens to all the average achievers out there? And no, this isn't a tiny fraction of the population. The service academy leader estimated upwards of 90 percent of those he oversees lack the resilience he would expect them to have.

Maybe that last example has more to do with society at large or increasingly stressful academic pressures than our theory that younger generations live too much in insulated, electronic environments protecting them from the real world, which can be harsh. But we feel certain of one thing. To the degree we parents and grandparents can encourage younger generations to interact more face to face, to communicate in the physical presence of one another, to learn from failure and grow because of it, the better off they and society will be.

These kids are bright, and they're capable. With a little help from their older loved ones, they might well accomplish things we can't even imagine.