Under the keyword »today’s youth«, the Internet supplies a potpourri of quotations, from Sumerian clay tablets to ancient philosophers to modern diagnosticians, who unanimously proclaim: the morality of contemporary Youth is a real catastrophe.

Now, a platitude like »Youth knows no virtue« does not have to be completely wrong from the outset. The only thing that is suspicious is how stubbornly the older Generation at all times have attested to the worthlessness of the younger generation. This smacks of stereotypical prejudice.

For if social decline were actually a lasting trend, as claimed in the oldest written testimonies, then naked barbarism should have reigned everywhere long ago…