Read the full transcript of Jim Harris’ talk titled “What’s Wrong With Kids These Days? Start With A Better Question” at TEDxMarshallU, Sep 27, 2025.
The Universal Question We All Ask
JIM HARRIS: Good evening. What’s wrong with kids these days? I’ll tell you, if you’re over the age of 30 and you’ve ever asked yourself this question or someone else, would you raise your hand for me? Okay. Look around. If someone close to you, leave it up there for just a second, if you admit to asking yourself such a question. If someone close to you clearly looks over the age of 30 and does not have their hand up, they will lie about other things, too.
For those of you that held your hand up, I’m with you. I get you. I’ve asked that same question myself. And I work with young people as a behavioral health therapist and educational consultant, trying to figure out and help them navigate the world. And I still ask that same question.
And I can even run into this in the community. I’ve had situations in line at Walmart, and it’s kind of a conversation that comes up about what I do, and I work with young people. And people go, “Well, you know what’s wrong with kids these days,” and pull their pants up like they’re going to wrestle a kid at any moment, right? And then they share with me their thought on that thing, that if we just did this thing, then kids would be okay these days.
The Danger of Simple Answers to Complex Problems
But the H.L. Mencken quote keeps me in line, which is, “For every complex problem, there’s an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” But I get why we like simple answers to complex problems. If you look at this equation, X plus child equals healthy adult, our brains like patterns, they like sequence, because then we can just solve for X, do X, healthy adults. But the thing is, if we take a moment and pause and think about the idea and use common sense, we know it’s more complicated than that.
Now, why am I so obsessed with this question, “What’s wrong with kids these days?” Because I believe the questions we ask point us towards what we believe to be effective and thoughtful solutions. So if you get the question wrong, the answers will be wrong automatically.
Two Very Different Questions
Now, let’s consider these two questions. “What’s wrong with kids these days” versus “What do kids need these days?” Now the first one, let’s take it, let’s bring it a little closer to home. Let’s say after the event tonight, you and your significant other are sitting there, your significant other looks at you and says, “I was thinking about you a lot tonight.” Okay, so I even made a list, like a list. Wow, that’s touching. “Well, share, please.” And they say, “I made a list of all the ways I think you can improve as a person.”
Now, you’re going to be like, “Well, let me go get something to write with and a cup of coffee so I can write down all the ways you feel like I’m failing as a human.” Are you going to start to come up with a little list yourself? Your reaction is to contempt.
The Power of Contempt
Now, contempt is different than criticism. Contempt has a hierarchy about it. Contempt is about speaking down to the other person or seeing them as less than. In fact, John Gottman, who’s one of the most famous relationship researchers in the world, found that the frequency and intensity of contempt in a marital relationship is the number one predictor of divorce. And what I’ve found is when people ask that question, “What’s wrong with kids these days,” it tends to have a tone of contempt.
Let’s think about this other question. “What do kids need these days?” That vibe is completely different to me. It feels like what I call hip to hip. Hip to hip is different. “What’s wrong with kids these days” is nose to nose. It’s about me versus you, me beating you, me fixing you. But hip to hip is about shared perspective. If you think about the stature of standing beside someone, understanding where they’re from, where they are, where you’re from, where you are, and both looking on to something that neither of you have been in.
So I believe this hip to hip posture is the mindset that we need to bring into supporting young people.
Understanding Our Own Past
Now, what’s the first thing we can do to better get into that mindset? Well, the first thing we have to do is to consider ourselves, where we came from, how we grew up. So look at this slide. Everything on this slide, a previous generation thought was going to ruin the current generation. Is that right or wrong? I’m on it, right? Okay, who is the guy in the upper right hand corner? Elvis, right?
The Evolution of What We Consider Shocking
Okay, so quick trivia, 1957 Ed Sullivan show, something unique about the way they broadcasted Elvis on the show. Does anybody, and I’ll give you a hint, cameras, does anybody know what they did with him? Waist up, right? Why? His hips, right? Here’s the thing, when Elvis was on previous television appearances, his dancing was so provocative that the Ed Sullivan show decided that they would show him from the waist up because they were afraid that his hip gyrations would cause a social uproar.
Think about today though, think about today, right? Like, have you ever seen Dancing with the Stars? Not too long, it’s been a few years back. My youngest and I are watching TV, flipping through the channels and Dancing with the Stars is on. I look and there’s a former NFL wide receiver standing in the middle of a dance floor and out runs an almost dressed lady, right?
Climbs up one side of this man, down the other side of this man, doesn’t touch the ground in between. I look over and my son is leaning in. Her lack of clothes alone in 1957 is pornographic, right?
Now, what about these cats in the middle, who’s that? Kiss, yeah. You’ve got to be a little older for this, you might have to be in the 80s or 70s or a little before on this one. Anybody remember they used to say it was an acronym? Does anybody remember what they used to say the acronym stood for? Yes, all we got to, yes.
Lessons From Vacation Bible School
You know what I learned when I was a kid what it stood for? “Kids in Satan’s Service.” You know where I learned that? Vacation Bible School, 1987, right? If you haven’t been to Vacation Bible School, there’s a lot of glue and glitter and yarn. It’s the only place you can get an off-brand vanilla Oreo with a subpar amount of cream and get fruit punch at room temperature and no one seems to have a problem with it, right?
But I was in Vacation Bible School and we were, there was a little bit of downtime and I think our leader thought it was a learning opportunity. She got us together, she goes, “Do you kids know who Kiss is?” Yes, Bible School lady, we know who Kiss is. She goes, “But do you know what Kiss stands for?” No, Bible School lady, we don’t know what Kiss stands for. She says, “It stands for Kids in Satan’s Service.” And I was terrified.
But think of, have you heard Kiss’s music now? It sounds like pop music, right? We went from rock to hard rock to heavy metal to death metal. It’s amazing how much things have changed.
Would You Trade Places With Today’s Teenagers?
Now, this isn’t a trick, I promise. I did a hand raising thing, it was a little bit tricky. If you are raising a teenager in your house, raise your hand for me. Okay? Leave it up for just a second because I have a second question to see if you want to leave your hand up. If you had the chance, would you trade places with your teenager now and run back your teenage years in today’s context? Is anybody interested? Leave your hand up if you’re interested in doing that.
Now, what’s interesting, there’s one person leaves their hand up. There’s always that guy, right? But, I’ve traveled all over the country and asked that question to large rooms of people. And almost every time I ask that question, people are not interested in trading places with teenagers today.
What’s interesting about that, from my experience and what I’ve read and understand, I think for the first time in our history, the older generation looks at the younger generation and says, “They have it harder than I did.” I’m not talking about cell phones and microwaves and all that. I’m talking about the social context that young people are growing up in today is more complicated than the social context that I grew up in.
And when I think about that, I think about their ability to make a life changing mistake with a click or a picture, it’s pretty intimidating. I think back to myself in my late teens and early twenties and my buddies and I hanging out, making a series of bad decisions. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it. You probably didn’t get out much. And I feel confident that there were times, as a result of our series of bad decisions, we might have thought we should record this for the people that couldn’t make it and send it to them so they can see the times we had.
But thank goodness back then, we didn’t have cameras in our pocket. And if you wanted to record something, you had to look like a Channel 3 newscaster for anything. You know, it’s so easy for us with our 30, 40, 50, 60, 70-year-old minds to have contempt for some of the things that young people do.
But given the same social situation in our younger minds, might we have made the same mistakes? Might we have also done things that don’t make sense long-term because we were in the moment? I think so.
I think what young people need today is not criticism and contempt. What young people need today are conversations, information. Don’t get me wrong, older generation, I’m not telling you to go be friends with kids. It’s a whole other talk. I’m telling you to be a leader, be a thought partner, be a mentor to young people. Help them work toward their goals. Help them identify to even have goals.
The Real Goal of Parenting
Because if we think about what is the goal? Now, we’ve got a slide here, I’m going to show you a picture. These are my boys. They’re older now, but they’re not cute anymore, so I use old pictures of them. Sorry, boys. This was the peak of cuteness and all downhill since then.
You know, I think about the goal. I think about a conversation my wife and I had with Jake. Jake’s our 17-year-old. He’s getting ready to go to college. He’s mowed yards for years to make money. But in order to get the mower to the yards where he mows, we have to put the mower in my van. Yes, I drive a van.
On Sunday, a few years back, we were kind of planning the week out. I said, “Jake, Tuesday’s the day we’ve got to mow.” He was like, “Well, Ethan and I are going to go play ball on Tuesday.” I was like, “Tuesday’s the day.” He’s like, “Why can’t we just pick another day?” I said, “Son, Tuesday’s the day.” And he said, “You’re mean.”
Has anybody ever had your kid or a kid you’re in charge of tell you you’re mean? It happens, right? It happens.
And I looked at him, I smiled, and I said, “Son, you are mistaken. Our goal in this house is not to raise happy children.” Looking for assistance, he yells into my wife, who happens to be the principal of our local elementary school, and says, “Dad doesn’t want us to have a happy childhood.” My wife yells in, “Me neither.”
I said, “Son, here’s the thing. Our goal is not to raise happy children, but to raise functional adults.” And I said, “Your mom and I have realized that sometimes we’re going to have to have an unhappy landscaper taking care of his responsibilities, other than a happy basketball player not taking care of his responsibilities.”
The Balance of Acceptance and Growth
Now the tricky part of this, I don’t want you to think that I’m just giving you a simple black or white answer here, is this continuum of acceptance and growth. Now this is where the work for us comes in as an older generation supporting young people.
What is acceptance? Acceptance is considering the unique differences of every young person, the neurology difference they may have, their temperament, maybe traumatic experiences they’ve had, and just the hard part of being a young person.
But the growth side is about understanding there’s essential experiences that a person needs to have. Failure, struggle, consequence, success, in order to develop the skills to be a formidable adult. And it’s our balancing act between those two.
If we’re not careful and we go too far to one side, there can be negative consequences. If all we do is accept, accept, accept, and “you can’t help it, you should never be in a situation where you’re uncomfortable” or whatever it might be, then all we do is weaken them. But if all we do is push, push, push, without any sense of their unique differences and unique needs, we can break them.
So our challenge is to bring a level of curiosity to the equation and to ask ourselves, who is this young person? What is this young person’s world? And how can I help them achieve a better version of themselves?
So Now What?
What do we do with all this information? Well, if we had another six to eight hours, we could talk about things like mindset and grit and how social media and all those things are impacting the mental health of young people, but that’s not what today’s for. Today, I just wanted you to think about a different perspective.
A Better Question for Our Future
Because there’s going to be a time where you’re going to find yourself frustrated or irritated about something that a young person does. And that question’s going to come creeping in your mind, because it still creeps in mine: “What is wrong with this kid?” And I hope that you’ll consider a different perspective and pause and maybe consider a better question. What does this kid need? What does this kid need from me?
Thank you.
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