Interesting theory.
Without necessarily agreeing entirely, let's look at something that changed in the past 20 years.... the rise of the Internet.
Could anyone here disagree that many people seem far more inclined to be rude and callous to others amid the anonymity of the Internet, than is normally the case in FTF RL? Well, if you've been on DP long you'd have a hard time disagreeing.... and DP is moderated more strictly than most internet forums! Yet we still see a lot more rudeness, if not downright hatefulness, than you normally see in FTF interactions between adults.
Reason? You can be rude, crude, lewd, mean, petty, spiteful and hateful on the Internet.... and generally be insulated from your victim's immediate reaction. They can't punch you through the computer screen. If they even know who you really are, they can't get at you until much later after the initial fury and indignation has perhaps worn off or cooled down... and I think that makes a huge difference.
Another reason I think those who primarily socialize on the internet are often less empathetic than they would be IRL FTF, is because they don't directly and personally SEE their victim's emotional response, the hurt and pain on their face, that they would in person.
And over time perhaps some of these folks become more insensitive in general, enough so to carry their online behavior into the RW.
Now we've got a generation of children reaching adulthood who grew up with the Internet....
Makes you wonder, anyway.
Well... I dunno.
I think experiencially, although I'm slightly older than the gen we're discussing, you could put me in the same pot as them. I grew up with a super-geek who knew the internet was the future, and I was on it in my early childhood. I was proficient and using forums and chats by the time I was 8 or so maybe? Yeah, not quite as immersive as our modern internet, but I was on it and I was interacting, and I saw the rudeness that some people display when they have anonymity, and I stumbled on the occasional thing that maybe I wish I hadn't. I wasn't unmonitored online, but the tools weren't as good as they are now. So, I grew up on the internet.
As a mod, perhaps you can also agree that, having not been infracted in over 2 years, I'm a reasonably un-rude poster? Occasionally snarky, but I stick to my point, and believe you me, I'm snarky in person as well, and I'm actually less snarky than, say, my mother, who can barely use a computer.
Speaking of, do you find that younger posters get in trouble more than older ones? Ehh, gotta say, I don't really see it...
Most of my peers didn't catch up to my level of internet proficiency until maybe their tweens, or even later. I mean, they were all using the early form of Google and related sites (a heavily filtered educational searching tool at that time, and nothing more). But none of them had as significant interactions online as I did too long before, say, Facebook went age-public. And I was in high school by then.
People were just as rude online in the early days. And most of them were older -- 30's and up, the geeks with a real interest in technology.
Did that hurt me? I don't think so. I'd say if anything it fueled my concern about the world around me. But then, I was taught the internet is a tool, not just fun alone -- that the purpose of it was to be a glue for the people to advance and engage, and to make it possible, for the first time really, for the common men and women to write their own history, so that we won't be relying on the half-truths of the rulers to tell our stories later.
Did that help? I'd reckon so.
Were kids better back in my childhood before most of them had internet, beyond a simple scholarly search? Well, I have to admit I never got feces dumped on me, but then again, I was an early bloomer who was bigger than most kids until I was 12 or so, and thus wasn't as easy of a target. But I did get literally run down by bullies a couple times. And in middle and high school, there were some pretty serious incidents -- serious beatings, someone having goldfish dumped on them in a toilet, death threats, etc.
An older friend of mine -- mid-30's now -- got hazed so badly at boarding school that he says he honestly felt nothing when he heard one of his tormentors had died. This isn't because he has no empathy. He's one of the most sensitive people I know. They just tortured him THAT badly.
I think there's a case to be made kids are overwhelmed with more input than they're capable of managing at younger ages, and this can certain make them scattered and perhaps frustrated. But are they really worse?
I'm not convinced.
I mean, let's keep in mind we used to keep people like this wheelchair-bound autistic boy in what were basically petting zoos -- some mental institutes used to have walk-throughs for a fee to come look at "the freaks."
And it was adults who did that. Not kids.
Let's keep in mind if we go a little further back than that, watching people hang or get their head cut off in public, sometimes for the most minor or even imaginary offenses, used to be considered afternoon entertainment.
Now we have serious debates about whether that kind of stuff should even be recorded, much less whether we should do it in the middle of town.
Hell, we've even stopped most of our animal tormenting "sports" like bear baiting and bull fighting -- we can't even stomach doing it to other animals, let alone actual humans.
Are we worse?
I wonder...
