Coddled kids stressing out

Bloody young people. What a surly, pampered, junk generation they are ... Good lord, I'm turning into my father.

But then, of course, this sad sentiment might have been expressed at any instant between the beginning of time and this moment by a member of one generation looking down on the ones that have followed.

That's the trouble with human nature, it's repetitive and predictable.

But there is something different, something worrying about the latest lot to briefly possess the title the younger generation.

And tonight's DNZ documentary Children Of 1984 (8.30pm, TV One) is a serviceable survey of just why that it is.

The documentary's director, writer and narrator Dan Salmon, points to the obvious fact that today's teenagers were all born after 1984.

That may or may not mean anything to them, but it does for us fogies.

Their memories do not include an understanding of what it was like to have high inflation, limited consumer choice, strong unions, free education, a health system that didn't need to send patients to Australia for treatment, or car-less days.

As Salmon points out, they have only known the user-pays-through-the-nose, madly consumerist system (excluding GST) that resulted from the so-called reforms brought about by the 80s and 90s finance ministers Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.

So what sort of teenager has this created? Well, for Salmon the answer to this isn't an entirely academic exercise.

"I wouldn't want to be growing up these days," he says at the beginning of his programme.

"I made this documentary because I am worried about my children's future. I wanted to find out about the world I'm about to send them into."

Children Of 1984 is a documentary of talking heads, some young, some old, but most with an interesting view on what Salmon is sending his kids into.

They are Generation Coddled - no walking home from school for them - and even they think so. "Everything is so protective," says one teenager. "You are creating a society of freaks."

They are more materialistic. "You are what you wear," says one.

But another adult interviewee observes they are the most marketed-to generation in history.

Perhaps the most astounding aspect of the programme is how utterly goal-oriented and career-minded they seem to be.

When I was growing up, the smart ones wanted to be lawyers and the less-smart ones aimed for a trade.

Some us had no idea what we wanted to do for a living.

A quick survey of the kids in tonight's documentary finds one wanting to be an actor, two who opt for teaching, one wants to be an ad industry "highflyer" in New York, another a business owner, one a fashion designer and two professional rugby players.

And then there is the girl who wants to get three degrees and cure multiple sclerosis.

I'm sure this is all very fine - it's good to have goals, etc - but, as English author and television presenter Alain de Botton (who makes a couple of brief appearances) points out, "being ordinary is no longer an option" for the young.

So this is probably the most stressed-out peacetime younger generation, with one of the worst rates of suicide.

But if it can be bad for the privileged, it is worse for those who are less privileged.

Salmon finds the underbelly of the 80s and 90s reforms is the other group of young people, the around 300,000 children living in poverty, 29 per cent of all children and double the number of the late 80s.

In many senses there is not much new or perhaps surprising in what Children Of 1984 finds.

Reading newspapers and walking around with your eyes open will have already revealed much of what Salmon discovers.

But his documentary is a disquieting inspection of the little monsters the political Frankensteins of the 80s have created.