The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley

The ‘youth of today’ are shallow, selfish, spoiled, feral good-for-nothings full of rampant narcissism and trained to have ephemeral attention spans, says one commentator. They spend too long in cyberspace, says another, where their grey matter is being ‘scalded and defoliated by a kind of cognitive Agent Orange, depriving them of moral agency, imagination and awareness of consequences’. Balderdash. Of course, there are twerps and geeks in every generation, but today’s young are volunteering for charities, starting companies, looking after their relatives, going to work – just like any other generation, maybe more so. Mostly when they are staring at screens it is to indulge in rampant social engagement. The Sims 2 game, which sold more than a million copies in ten days when launched in 2004, is a game in which the players – often girls – get virtual people to live complex, realistic, highly social lives and then chat about it with their friends. Not much scalding and defoliating there.