Let’s just get to the point – any kid that was born after 2000 is part of the most concerning generation I feel we have seen over the past centuries. As a senior at Santiago, every year the incoming freshmen seem to get shorter and less mature. Walking through the halls, it seems like we upperclassmen attend to an elementary school because we can see right over their heads. This isn’t to say that every single freshmen and sophomore is like this but from what I -and many others – can tell, it applies to most of them.

Every year in journalism, we have an evenly distributed amount of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. There was even a distinct difference in just the same year of freshmen during my sophomore year. What I came to find, though, was that those more mature freshmen were either older than me or were only a couple months younger than me. That means they were still born in the 1990-2000 decade.

One reason for this could be Common Core. I know that, personally, I can’t help any of my younger siblings with their homework because I just don’t know what the heck is going on. Obviously, I know what they should be learning and the way I was taught, but this isn’t the case anymore. Common Core has made a huge change in the way students learn and might contribute to their thought processes as well.

Another common factor could be technology. This younger generation parading through the hallways are always attached to their phones. This is the generation where parents gave their kids cellphones at the age of 10 and they became glued to the child’s hands. Millennials seem to have a more well-rounded intelligence which may stem from the fact that our parents were more strict on our technology uses and how we spent our time.

Knowledge and maturity isn’t the only thing that has changed drastically. Social aspects of every year has differentiated from the others. The older people of this generation are more social than the younger ones and the younger kids seem to keep a lot more to themselves. Younger kids have multiple friends rather than just one friend that they become super close to in elementary school. Older kids are the same way and they don’t seem to care about their education as much as those in the millennial generation.