I guess. I didn't really see this article written that way though, especially with this kind of conclusion: Having spent several years among teens who have freely laid bare their inside jokes, their Facebook messages, and their deepest thoughts, I think there are three phases of understanding the teens. At first you loathe the teens, because you know nothing about them and think they’re idiots, beneath you. Then you love the teens because you figure out they are smarter than you, and you make peace with the death of your cultural relevance, because you know you’ll be in good hands. Finally, you recognize the shape of the adults they’ll become, corrupted by money and vanity and hubris just like everyone else. And you’ll see yourself in them because they’re relatable: That moment you realize the teens are just like you.... The conversation turned to teens; the consensus was that modern kids are dumb and boring. “Girls these days don’t keep diaries,” one woman said. “I think that means they don’t have inner lives.” That we would soon depart for a thirtieth birthday party was no coincidence—you don’t have to fear the teens if you can live in denial about your own looming obsolescence.
Phase two also happens to be the phase were you realize you are now on the outside looking in. Or in other words "getting old". I find myself in this phase were I now realize that teens aren't getting dumber, I'm just older and now replacing the last generation who thought teens were getting dumber. The things they like are also as silly and forgeign to me as the things my generation liked were to adults at the time. It's almost like people try to deny their adolescence by saying kids today are worse when really we all "sucked" in our own way.