So I’m flipping through the TV guide on my 2010 flatscreen, and I happen upon PBS, my preferred childhood cable channel. I’ve got that lazy 2 o'clock feeling, so I stay on public broadcasting to see what’s up, and I am astounded—absolutely astounded!—to find my favorite homey ol’ channel broadcasting computer-generated, condescendingly synthetic garbage!

How dare PBS retire the classics played when I was a kid! Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is absolutely brilliant and not at all boring. How will any of today’s children know “we’re a happy family” if they don’t have a man in a purple dinosaur costume singing it to them from their television screens? Honestly, you have to wonder what kids are learning these days.

Huh. That’s a familiar mantra. I’ve read it from the imaginary lips of cantankerous old men in YA novels; I’ve heard it snarked by the sassy grandmother on just about every quirky family comedy-drama, her exclamation immediately followed by the laughter track; I’ve even seen it in the way my mom tried to goad me into reading David Copperfield, which I petulantly abandoned not forty pages in despite her staunch disapproval.

But why are people so obsessed with what the kids are learning? Why do they think the kids’ll grow up “wrong”? When I was about eleven years old, my mother pushed me to peruse every classical novel from Little Women to The Call of the Wild. My mother, a Chinese farm girl who had received only the most technical English lessons, who would not send an email without asking me to help proofread, who could hardly differentiate “taboo” from “tattoo,” was somehow familiar enough with classical literature to have browsed through Austen’s novels  and Tolstoy’s tomes and became worshipful enough to cajole her daughters into reading them, too. This remarkable awareness can only be attributed to the pervasiveness of high opinions on older “classical” novels in American culture.

Consequently, a low opinion is also formed about newer books due to their lesser eminence; modernity makes novels more susceptible to adults’ criticism because of unestablished prestige. My mother never did recommend that I read Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief or Maximum Ride. And she never stopped insisting on my perusal of a second hand copy of David Copperfield. Evidently, the fear that children will become “wrong” is a result of believing that newer media is inferior to older, more established ones.

Yet you might protest that this is a leap in logic. I’m just a teenager; what would I know? And Little Women is obviously a masterpiece and not a wonderful sleep aid. How would such an age-biased cultural outlook spread so far in the mightily progressive US of A anyway? What force could homogenize even one of the Melting Pot’s eclectic societal views?

Answer: the Internet.

I love the Internet like I love my dog; Donnie is heartwarming to have around, but he listens to my parents too much. Also, sometimes he stinks. At least once a week I see something on the Internet along the lines of “Modern kids are weak; they can’t even imbibe their coffee black with a side of engine fuel,” or “When I was your age I didn’t have a single trophy in my room because we only got awards if we deserved them,” or “If you don’t appreciate this movie icon from the ‘80’s I will punch you in the face, you uncultured swine.” These posts reek of insipid egocentrism, condescendingly directed towards me and my “unlearned” generation.

But what’s really funky is that some of those writers are probably in their twenties. Some may be in their teens. People of those ages watch Say Yes to the Dress and drop smartphones into toilets and read John Green’s romances; they shouldn’t have the perspective to address us from on high. They shouldn’t have the incentive to cast judgement on a culture they’re a part of.

But, they do. I do. It’s strange. We’re so adamant about supporting what we grow up with: hometown sports teams, dialects, childhood TV shows, cultural heritage. Yet, when it comes to generational culture, we bash ourselves like the parents we abhor listening to. Maybe it’s because there really is something wrong with kids today. God knows I’ve heard that said enough. But I think it’s because older generations, to preserve their lifestyles, relentlessly teach us to debase our beliefs and culture. Adults have been much more influential with the youth through viral fads, so by internalizing popular web content, we learn unconsciously to value their criticism of our technophilic culture, though we’ve also learned to resist change. Just last year I wrote passionately about how smartphones are sucking the life out of face-to-face interaction, and last month I upgraded to an iPhone 6. I call myself a staunch devotee to Kurt Vonnegut and Hermann Hesse. Have I finished even a page of Demian? ...Not exactly. But simply saying this allows me to feel the satisfaction of cultural superiority and self-righteousness, like a real adult. And that’s enough to recompense for the eternal bit of self-loathing that grows with every hypocritical criticism I broadcast to the younger generations.

But that’s just me. So, am I the only rotten apple in a bushel of well-adjusted, properly respectful, filially devoted teenagers? Well. That depends on what kids are learning these days.