Why so Dark, so Young?

Stina Leicht over at SfSignal has a thought provoking article on the prevalence of dark young adult fiction.

During the last panic over the dark trends in YA fiction,
a few questions cropped up over and over: “Why are our kids are so
attracted to dark literature? Why do they seem to think the older
generation are out to get them? Or is this attitude merely being
projected onto them?” I believe this trend in dark fiction for young
adults happens for a reason, and yes, they do sense hostility from older
generations. They’ve good reason for it. It exists.

Her theme is that there is indeed darkness in modern juveniles, but
that the darkness is merited, because the hostility of the older
generation to the younger does indeed exist, and growing up can indeed
be a dark and scary prospect.  She points to the tripod trilogy of John
Christopher (a trilogy I loved in my youth, I must admit) as being an
apt symbol of the fear of aging. Her point is trenchant. In that book,
upon reaching the age of majority the alien overlords of Earth ‘cap’ the
youth with a mesh of wires, altering his brain to make him docile. Any
youth reading the book is surely reminded of the conformity of opinion
of the adults who rule his life, and wondering if he also will become
merely a worker or a housewife without that divine spark of heroism or
sainthood that leads to revolution as well as evolution in life.

She lists that the younger population is harder hit by the current
depression than the older as an evidence of the hostility between the
generations. The reasoning is obscure to me, since the ability of
persons longer in the workforce to save and weather a depression is and
must be greater than the young. I could see it as a source of envy from
the youth toward the old, but not of hostility from the old toward the
youth.

So rather than actually addressing the issue, the writer here
dismisses it as a “panic”, something not unique to this generation.

I would have speculated that the hostility of the old toward the
young had some unique aspects in this generation, unrelated to the
depression.

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