British journalist and television presenter Piers Morgan effectively dismantles the Snowflake Generation and their parents in this two-minute video, which is subtitled:

It is amazing that some comments to that tweet ask how he would know about the snowflake Generation. Uhh, the clue is in the first sentence:

Well, as a father of four kids …

Here they are, as seen on Christmas Day:

The person who tweeted the snowflake generation video received an interesting selection of comments. Half were critical and half were supportive.

I am glad to see that retired Australian cricketer Shane Warne agrees with what Piers said:

Morgan points out that there has never been a better time to be alive. We are living in peacetime, largely speaking. Our health advances are much greater than any time before. Our technological advances continue in leaps and bounds. What’s not to like?

Yet, he says, we are creating a generation of Young Adults who cannot accept the realities of life because we have sheltered them too much, whether at home, school or elsewhere.

Along with this comes the continued criticism of the world as it is: imperfect. Sure, we can always do a better job of things and, for the most part, we are. Yet, the criticism is vehement. Furthermore, most of it comes from the snowflake generation who expect a prize just for participating in an event.

As Morgan points out, kids are happy to place 25th in an event. He says that if one of his kids came home with 25th place, he would ask them why they didn’t do better. Absolutely! In my day — so last century — if we came second or third, our parents would ask why we didn’t come first!

This mollycoddling attitude of parents and teachers is not doing the current crop of twenty-somethings any favours. We have encouraged them to be too soft and to collapse at the drop of a hat.

I sometimes wonder whether much of this recent child psychology is a deliberate way of weakening, if not destroying, Western society. I very much doubt the Chinese or the Russians give out participation trophies to all. Nor do other non-Western countries. They make their respective younger generations toughen up from an early age. Consequently, their young adults move to Western countries for work, especially in technology. Their aptitude is better, because they had more structure in the classroom — no curved grades — and at home. Meanwhile, we have millions of children entering university who cannot do what used to be secondary school maths. Nor do they know the rules of grammar or spelling anymore. As a result, our universities offer remedial courses to bring first-year students up to speed.

It’s a parlous state of affairs. Heaven forfend if we are ever in a national crisis.

There is winning, which is easy to handle. Then there is losing, which requires a) knowing how to cope and b) learning from it when it is one’s own fault. That pertains not only to sporting events but to employment as well.

Life isn’t easy. Life has never been easy. There are lessons to be learnt at each stage of our journey, whether individually or together.

Let’s stop indulging young adults so much. And let’s watch how we raise the next generation.

We can take a lesson from nature here:

Snowflakes are for winter and the great outdoors. They should not be a personality type.