I actually consider it bad that kids aren’t misbehaving anymore or at least at the same rates. The problem with that is that getting in trouble (provided it isn’t crime or hard drugs) does two things that are important for making stable healthy adults. First, it allows kids to make mistakes and learn how to make better decisions, and second it teaches them that even pretty serious mistakes are things you can recover from. The biggest problem for anyone raised with screens from birth is that they just don’t seems to develop the same sort of independence older generations did. We got into all kinds of Trouble. But the things that let us get into trouble made us independent: time alone, unsupervised with our peers. We fucked up, paid for it, fixed it, and realized it wasn’t that terrible. They never do it, don’t learn from making the bad decision, and never learn that those mistakes can be corrected and you’ll be okay.

To be honest, if I’m hiring and I want a leader, I want people who fucked up at least a little. Not because I want someone who makes bad decisions, but because I want somebody who isn’t afraid to try things. Someone who can make a mistake without going to pieces. Any kind of leadership, design, creative work, or even just getting things done requires a mindset that you need to move fast, break things, and figure out how to recover from that. Meekly sitting around waiting for someone to tell you exactly what to do and exactly how to do it not only means that you’re never going to get good at anything, but that you’ll have anxiety because you don’t think you can. In the mind of these kids who are afraid of messing up is the fear that if you make a mistake, you’re just done.