We Have Lost Our Role Models... Lost Minds and a Wasted Generation

Not every crisis we face today is an educational, parenting, or awareness crisis; there is a deeper and more serious crisis that transcends educational shortcomings to reveal a moral decline, evident in certain behaviors and practices that no longer shy away from violating standards of decency, modesty, and values.

We clearly observe this on some social media platforms, where rudeness is presented as boldness, vulgarity is marketed as personal freedom, and violations of public etiquette are practiced openly without any concern for their impact on public taste or the distorted concepts they instill in younger generations.

This is a crisis concerning those who are supposed to be sources of awareness, carriers of values, and shapers of future generations. The crisis is defined by the absence of role models; when some adults become a burden to the concept of maturity, when age advances while wisdom declines, and when the dignity of maturity is replaced so that vulgarity becomes a familiar behavior, and lack of composure is presented as spontaneity, and transgression as freedom; in a scene where the balance of values is disrupted and role models disappear.

Where is modesty in speech, where is respect for others, and where is the awareness that what we write reflects a part of our upbringing, culture, and level of consciousness?

Social media platforms are not an unregulated open space, nor is freedom a justification for transgression or abandoning values and ethics. What we see today in some tweets and low-quality content does not reflect boldness in discourse as much as it reveals intellectual shallowness, and even exposes the absence of upbringing and the collapse of moral barriers. More lamentable is that this decline has not stopped at objectionable behaviors; it has extended to language that reveals the emptiness of awareness and the absence of refinement and elevated morals—indecent and obscene words exchanged by some users of these platforms, unfortunately, by both genders, and vulgar phrases written and circulated with complete ease, along with cheap behaviors and practices that lack even the basic standards of taste and respect, as if the digital space has become an open arena for transgressions, where the boundaries of public decency are violated.

Most painful of all is that some of these behaviors come from individuals belonging to fields that are supposed to be based on education and guidance, and from whom role models are expected.

How can we demand modesty from our children when they see older individuals treating vulgarity as a legitimate right, and crossing the boundaries of etiquette and taste as if it requires no shame or accountability?

How can we speak to them about self-respect when they see people reducing their presence to the amount of rude and unrestrained boldness they display?

Upbringing does not need mouths that excel in preaching as much as it needs behavior worthy of emulation. Generations are not lost suddenly; they are lost when they search for role models and do not find them.

Maturity is awareness translated into self-control, respect for others, and an understanding of the impact of words and the consequences of actions.

How can we aspire to elevate our peoples and societies if some models who are supposed to be role models for generations present behaviors that contradict values, and empty the concept of refinement of its substance?

What have you left for teenagers, if those who are supposed to be more mature and aware have reached these ages, yet still engage in such behaviors, and treat digital platforms as open channels for random acquaintances and exchanges of conversations and relationships that exceed the boundaries of public decency and lack the minimum level of refinement and dignity.

It is imperative to restore balance in the use of technology, ensuring that social media platforms serve as venues for positive interaction and the exchange of ideas and culture, rather than arenas for low-quality posts, banal videos, images that transgress modesty, and verbal abuses increasingly practiced by adults as well as children, openly in dialogues and replies, as if courtesy and modesty are optional rather than essential. When adults lose their composure, they do not merely damage their own image; they leave a void in the consciousness of a generation seeking role models it can trust.

Societies do not advance through the sheer volume of technological tools they possess or the breadth of their digital presence, but through the values they uphold, the ethics they preserve, and the exemplary figures they offer as models for future generations.

The poet Ahmed Shawqi said:

“Nations endure only as long as their morals remain;

When their morals vanish, they too vanish.”

A Kuwaiti writer