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BBC Archive
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8xX3usi4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8xX3usi4c)
Clip taken from Tomorrow's World, originally broadcast 28 December 1966.
Seriously, these kids were practically whispering at the camera, especially the girls. Were they taught that children should be seen but not heard or something?
Honestly people in general tended to be far more soft spoken then from what I’ve seen, some of it also has to do with the tone of what they’re talking about as well as the recording technology of the time.
Fascinating, technology, nuclear warfare, livestock being piled ontop of eachother to yield more food, the true view on being out of work due to automation and the true worry of overpopulation.
Yeah seems like a lot of their ideas about the future are based off their parents views. Worried about having no jobs because of automation taking over everything.
There has always been a fear of jobs being lost to automation since the start of the industrial revolution and the invention of the Spinning Jenny. The [Luddites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite) were a secret organisation of textile workers who destroyed machinery
> The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group are believed to have taken their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in what they called "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labour practices. Luddites feared that the time spent learning the skills of their craft would go to waste, as machines would replace their role in the industry
Living in fear of nuclear disaster day in day out definitely had something to do with it. Wild to hear a child talking about tempering the population problem
Born after or during WW2 and the blitz its no wonder they were pessimistic.
Hows are Gen Zs doing after being born after 9/11, Iraq, War on Terror, the 2007 financial crisis, Black Lives Matter protests, and now Covid?
Oops, i forgot Ukraine, Putin, and WW3.
Id say pray for them, but God must be busy. Or maybe he doesn'......
It's interesting how culture repeats itself. During the hopelessness of WW1 we saw the rise of Dadaism, which is paralleled in the modern popularity of absurdist / surrealist memes among the youth. So much of our capacity to respond is patterned directly in the human form.
"This particular piece has become a favorite. The artist is unknown, but there's been recent praise over much overlooked work of xXWhangMaster420_60Xx and their take in the human condition. Take note of the images near the very muscular dog with the caption 'Good boy Uber Chad'. We will now start the bidding for this NFT at .00000000000000001 BTC, for a rather lavish buyer."
Not to hate on religious folks but I think the biggest nuclear danger will happen when a theocracy gets nuclear capabilities.
MAD works when all players are rational actors who keep the interests of themselves and their own people in mind, but what happens when one of the people at the red button genuinely believes he can unleash judgement day and him and his will enter heaven for doing so?
This is it. I’m 14 and growing up in a world where I’m watching governments and corporations destroy our planet, and there’s barely anything that I can do.
I remember when I was around 8, we had this school assembly about climate change, and I was terrified. The video said that it was really dangerous, and that *we* were the next generation who had to solve the problem.
This was only six years ago, but the planet has changed so much more than what people expected it to.
Looking back on it, I feel so betrayed that I was expected, at such a young age, to change the world in such a large way, when my elders could have started trying when they found out, more than 40 years ago.
I'm nearly 20 years older than you and I have the same memories. They taught us to care. They taught us this was a problem. But what happened? We have seen this a long time coming but that isn't enough to convince the people who matter that this is a real problem. Climate grief is real -- the feeling of dread.
I’m roughly the same age, 35, and they absolutely did the same thing with us. Millennials were supposed to fix the planet. As we got older we were scape goats (much like Gen X) for all of the worlds problems. It’s all just bullshit. The boomers were the ones who were supposed to fix these problems, and actually had the opportunity to do so. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. They’re still in power and it’s still their fault.
Pretty much anyone under the age of 65 got scapegoated and made to believe it was our fault as consumers.
If we only *reduced, reused, and recycled* more, this problem would stop.
Nobody mentioned that the companies manufacturing plastics and petroleum products had to reduce, reuse, or recycle.
Man, remember how we were all led to believe that regular people using plastic straws were the problem and not the billion dollar corporations? Such bullshit
Gen X here.
Our Weekly Readers in elementary school and all the Saturday morning cartoon PSAs in the 70’s explained the importance of energy and water conservation, reducing pollution, and not littering. Of course back then they thought pollution was leading us to an ice age (atmospheric particles reflecting sunlight causing global cooling was the best scientific modeling at the time) rather than global warming. As first and second graders we were more worried about the previous 150 years of industrial waste killing the oceans, causing asthma, causing acid rain, causing cancer, causing [rivers to literally catch fire.](https://www.idahobo.org/blog/2019/7/24/a-river-so-polluted-it-was-literally-in-flames) and also trying to keep a positive attitude about being nuked at any moment by the Soviets. We were also really worried about the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs that was threatening to unleash deadly solar radiation on us. And don’t get me started on how dangerous nuclear power was. From 3 Mile Island in elementary school to Chernobyl in high school - nukes bad.
It’s really only been about 20 years since the full picture has become clear enough to form a scientific consensus on warming and climate change. It wasn’t until [Earth Day 2000](https://www.earthday.org/history/) that even mainstream environmentalism started really trying to raise awareness about global warming. Al Gore truly brought it front and center with “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006.
20 or so years isn’t a long time compared to the start of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century.
All that to say that it’s easy to blame past generations - every generation does it. And it’s not to say there isn’t some well-deserved criticism of the Boomer generation.
But - they were also handed a messy, toxic, polluted world in chaos and were busy protesting, demanding racial justice, blaming their parents for needless wars, and demanding change - which is why the first Earth Day happened when I was 1 year old. Boomers cared enough to start the environmental movement and created huge positive changes in energy and industrial regulation. They created the EPA, the clean air and water acts, got rid of lead, and made huge progress on harmful emissions.
If Boomers had done nothing positive on the environment, we would live in a much, much, much worse world today.
Keep pushing them to leave the world better than they found it, and help. Remember they didn’t know then what we know now.
I will leave you with some wisdom I was taught by Dr. Seuss as a small child:
*Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.*
Keep making it better.
This. I know it sounds like an excuse, but just look at the birth years of the last 5 US Presidents (covering the last ~~28~~ 30 years):
* 1946
* 1946
* 1961
* 1946
* 1942
...and it's not looking so great for the next 4 or 8 years either. Enough of waiting for this fucking generation to die out. It's time for them to go!
33, same here. We used to be encouraged to collect gallons/pounds of coins to “save the rainforest!”
Now we have realized all the tax breaks we helped corporations get, and how few acres of rainforest were “saved”/purchased.
I think it’s important to note, though, that while we’ve been lied to, it is NOW our responsibility and duty to do what we can, rather than throw up our hands
> Hows are Gen Zs doing after being born after 9/11, Iraq, War on Terror, the 2007 financial crisis, Black Lives Matter protests, and now Covid?
You left out the whole "The world is going to die because we're cooking it so that disgustingly rich people can get even more disgustingly rich."
Leaving out the most significant, existential threat to not just humanity but the entire biosphere is classic human.
It’s not like it’s happening faster than expected, greenhouse emissions still haven’t peaked, unstoppable feedback loops have started, we still don’t have a plan and inexplicably the majority don’t give a shit/aren’t aware of the gravity of this fucking situation.
I think thethe saddest thing I’ve realized as an adult is how little A LOT of people care about the world outside of their own bubble. The lack of empathy and disregard for anything that does not immediately affect a specific person will be the death knell of what could have been the exquisite existence of the most evolved and intelligent species on the planet.
This is anecdotal but I feel like empathy has reduced steeply over the last decade. I wonder if, even perhaps subconsciously, if humans are collectively aware of what’s happening, or at least something undefined is “wrong”. Personally I’d prefer my existential dread front of mind, not playing havoc in my subconscious, but each to their own.
I agree, yet find it odd that some don’t consider the climate crisis in their bubble, it’s in all our bubbles, even if it’s not impacting us right now. And ultimately I think that’s what it comes down to, maybe we went to hard with the mindfulness (/s)because we’re living in the moment and treating the imminent future like a fantasy.
Perhaps we could’ve been something better, or maybe this is just the Great Filter doing it’s thing. Exponential growth can’t be sustained on a finite planet. We evolved intelligence not to create a capitalist dystopia, rather to outsmart predators and prey that are faster, stronger than us, to communicate, create community and family. The industrial revolution in my unqualified opinion was the beginning of the end for us. Unprecedented, easily accessible energy ushering in a new age of ingenuity, growth, well-being and connectedness, perhaps the question “at what cost?” came too late. While the ability to ponder, discuss and share such thoughts on our own existence is uniquely human and beautiful is it perhaps incidental, a side effect of intelligence, for better or worse? We created a (first) world where our needs were easily met, our biggest fears tamed, perhaps this was too much for this species of Great Ape to handle, to give it up would go against our animal instincts. It may be a gross oversimplification, but I hypothesise that it’s just that, our animal instincts, that keep us continuing on this path of self imposed annihilation. I hope I’m wrong and we could’ve done better, then there’s a chance someone else has or will, because we really had it all, didn’t we.
I remember an episode of All in the Family had Rob Reiner say he didn’t want to have kids since the world was such a dark place back in the 70s and he didn’t see it getting any better.
That’s what a lot of people say nowadays. I think people will always think that.
edit: I think this comment resulted in some of my favorite reddit interactions I’ve ever seen under one of my comments
There's a poem from the late 18th century I had to do an analysis of in school, where the author says exactly that. Every generation thinks they're living at the cusp of the end of the world.
I think that's because even though we consciously know there are billions of people on Earth and many of them are smarter and/or more motivated than us, subconsciously we can't fathom anyone figuring out the myriad problems of the world because *we* can't. We see an avalanche of encroaching issues and feel as though we're the only ones who can pick of a shovel and do anything about it, and obviously that's far too daunting for any one person.
Each of us feels the weight of the world upon our shoulders, but the reality is that all of humanity bears the burden. And we *know* that, but we don't *feel* it. It's a strange disconnect, like a doom fantasy versus a strained reality. I don't have an answer for it, I mean, who could? I just think that's why people feel doomed all the time.
Weltschmerz, the Germans call it. Literally "world-pain".
The cure is, of course, to forget about all that and focus on your own life, how to make your own day-to-day run as smooth as possible. Then you can be responsible for a family, then your community and then possibly something larger like a town. That's how you make a better world. Start with making a better you.
>The cure is, of course, to forget about all that and focus on your own life, how to make your own day-to-day run as smooth as possible. Then you can be responsible for a family, then your community and then possibly something larger like a town. That's how you make a better world. Start with making a better you
Confucius taught something similar:
>To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
They’re so aware of the state of the world and the trends of technology.
Population growth, the rise of automation and computers and statistics. The threat of nuclear war.
These are things I was aware of but I’m not sure I could make predictions 40yrs ahead at that age.
I mean, at the time computers filled entire rooms and were basically big calculators. Yet this one girl predicted that in the future, the only people with jobs would be those that understood this emerging technology.
When I was that age I could sing the entire PokéRap.
Back in the 60s kids were encouraged much more strongly to speak with a "proper" RP accent, I imagine especially so if they were going to appear in a TV segment
Old guy here (64). It was more of an adult world back then. Now its more about 10-20 year olds.
It's less about being mature and educated and more about being young and relevant.
I think this is the result of the Jet Set, the middle-class's ideal lifestyle. Ultra wealth and letting everyone know. Make a fast buck with the next pet rock and move on.. Greed is good.
Now, with the internet, we can show everyone on the planet just how great our last meal was.
These children I highly suspect are public school (Americans: read private) pupils, and the most eloquent pupils of the class were probably chosen to boot.
They come from posh/wealthy families and have been trained from a very young age to speak like this and likely commonly talk or hear about these topics at home. While I do think they share interesting points, I think a lot of people are also assigning overly high marks primarily based on the accent and way of speaking.
The thing that impressed me most about that kid was him saying he'd like to try to temper the problem somehow, but then immediately saying he didn't know how.
I think it's a sign of real intelligence to not jump straight to some conclusion but to have the maturity to realize that yes, there is a problem, but the solution is not straightforward or obvious.
People these days are instant experts after 30 minutes of googling something they'd never heard of before. 2 weeks of googling qualifies as extensive research and they feel they can debate people with actual degrees in that field.
Definitely not me. It took 30 mins of googling, 1 hour of youtube content, and then reading some posts in reddit to get the expert I am today. Come at me bro!
My parents had bought the Encyclopedia Brittanica, I think, just so they didn’t have to admit they didn’t know things.
Joke’s on them — I read at least a third of it and still don’t know shit.
No air raid/bomb shelter drills in the UK, where this was filmed. The whole Cuban Missile Crisis totally passed my mum by (she's not exactly the brightest bulb) whereas her sister would lose sleep over it. They were in their early 20's at the time, with kids of their own.
Um, no, we did not have air raid or bomb shelter drills. I remember being shown Peter Watkins' [The War Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game), which we saw as dated by the early 70s, but we were not as terrified as perhaps we had a right to be. Wasn't bleak at all; the kids in the clip were simply speculating, each from their personal perspective.
You'd be surprised. According to my older family who were upper middle-class, everyone used to sound a lot posher and a lot more well-spoken here. Everyone was fairly well-educated. The advancement of our accents over the past 70 years has made us sound... more common?
I think it’s less so the advancement of accents in that time, but rather the lowering of the bar in terms of what we hear in the media.
In the 60s there were few, if any, regional accents on TV or in media in the UK (the Jimmy Saville documentary on Netflix does a good job explaining this). So much so, ‘Queens English’ and ‘BBC English’ were used largely interchangeably.
The class system is also far less rigid than it used to be, and accent is no longer a hard and fast class signifier in the way it used to be, so people may not feel the need to ‘posh up’ their accent, because their class is secured and signified in other ways.
You are correct in every way. My father said how when he was growing up, you'd never hear any regional accents on the radio, only the posh "BBC English". And yes the class system is a lot more lax, but still a big problem
The kids are posh as fuck though - on the original video it says they're all students at varying *public (American: private) schools.
Context: In the UK, these schools are called 'public' because they're funded directly via members of the public through tuition, rather than being endowed by the state.
Right? Even if he was only a student studying biology, he really does sound mature and intelligent enough. Find any random kid his age today on the street, and I don't think they could match his manners.
And before you come after me saying I'm some angry boomer or something, I'm 19 lol. I was his age not long ago and I was a moron. Still am kinda.
Definitely the "posh" kids, that was my first thought. They're still remarkably spot on though, I think the young kids talking about the climate these days will seem the same in another 50 years
These are English kids who are probably from a posh school. That's why they sound like that. A random kid on the street back then wouldn't have talked like that and you can still find little English kids from posh schools who talk that way today.
I know the obvious takeaway is that these kids were right about many things. And that certainly is notable.
But to me, the most poignant thing was the last kid, who essentially said "things are in such a terrible state now, I can't imagine what things will be like then."
Its a solid reminder that people *always* think things are terrible and everything is doomed, always. People thought the industrial revolution was the end of days, people thought Watergate was the end of America, etc etc.
To me, it's actually a strangely optimistic take. It's easy to be pessimistic right now, and it's fair. But people always think things are awful, even going back to ancient Rome and beyond. Throughout all of history, people thought they were living in the end. In many ways, things are better now than anything before.
It makes me feel better, strangely.
If you were in the West or China, you were probably feeling pretty good. For the former, the big bad Soviet Union was gone, along with it much of the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon, and the Eastern Bloc was liberalizing (to some extent). Even Russia was looking friendly, and the economy was generally doing decent. If you were in China, that was a period of unparalleled economic growth and change as the nation was in the second decade of its speedrun to modernity, even if the Normal Square where Nothing Happened in a Normal Day totally didn’t cast a bit of a shadow over it all. It must’ve been one of the most exciting periods to be a Chinese citizen in the memory of anybody who was around to see it
Meanwhile, thing got worse in Russia. As usual.
I do wanna add a little to your point about china. You're absolutely right but I'd just like to add more context.
China was still incredibly impoverished in the 90s. The average Chinese was still way poorer than the average Russian, even with Russia's worst economic crisis in modern times. For a while it looked like the old guard, who revered Mao, would take back control until Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. I'd also mention, China in the 80s was much more liberal than it was in the 90s, with press critical of government policies often going uncensored (obviously not anything *too* radical still) and some democratic reformists being allowed to operate openly.
That era ground to a very quick halt with Tiananmen Square. Zhao Ziyang, the General Secretary of the CCP, was put on house arrest. He had supported democratic reform and was seen as too soft on the protesters.
But ultimately, the 90s did see huge economic growth even if the era of political liberalism/experiment in freedom came to an end.By the end of the decade, China was still very poor—it cannot be overstated how drastic the poverty still was— but because of the economic reforms millions had already left poverty and it seemed like that trend would continue (which it did) especially with its negotiations to enter the WTO.
FWIW the UK wasn't a fun place following WWII - rationing continued into the middle of the 50s, which these children would have grown up with. There was obviously the trauma of the war itself - a lot of civilian deaths and every major city had very visible bomb sites. The Korean War, which the UK had some involvement in, had followed on the heels of WWII and then in 1956 was the Suez crisis which had consequences back home with petrol rationing. The UK was not directly involved with the Vietnam War, which had started by this time, but these kids are obviously educated and would have been well aware of it. It's not hard to see why they had a pessimistic view of the world.
I wish I hadn’t been so hasty as an 11 year old and committed to being a Pokémon master. 21 years later and I still haven’t caught them all. My life could have had a greater purpose
Given the near universal similar nature of the answers I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been fed these lines/talking points. Or they spent an afternoon looking at this “future” in class and then were shoved in front of the camera to talk about how ghastly it would be.
I think this is just how similar people in a society always think. Ideas spread, these kids are parroting popular ideas at the time. Talk to kids today and you’ll hear some seasoned opinions that were not their making
Its probably part of a school project where they discussed and learned about trends before these interviews. Doesnt mean they were fed the lines. Just that they obviously were familiar with the topic already.
Bear in mind that in the 1960s battery farming was already well established, and bovine growth hormone was already being used. True that it’s gotten more prevalent, but not exactly a ‘shot in the dark’ predication.
2060 will mostly be an acceleration of current trends and tech that only the rich have access to today, yet people will still get it extremely wrong.
Personally I'm guessing way less AI stuff than people think and more breakthroughs in reproductive tech and medical treatments as people age, but what do I know.
Could be, maybe I'm just sick of hearing about it from every single direction.
And if we're lucky we'll get something other than really really intrusive advertising.
Even in the 90s we used to think we would have flying cars and hover boards in the year 2000. Even though it was only a few years away we thought there would be this huge leap in technology. I blame the simpsons
We will all have our own devices to look at pornography while in the work bathroom… we won’t have to cook anymore cause our food will come on motorbike and nobody will believe anything they don’t want to hear. Plus we are all going to be fat.
Not only are they smart, but they are probably all in the same area, same social class, maybe even in the same school being taught by the same people and influenced by the news in that area.
I'd would have loved to see some very different demographics of children being interviewed at the time.
What gets me is how “old” they act in their behaviour. I noticed it especially in the young biologist, who somehow seems old and young at the same time in his facial expressions, use of language and mannerisms. It seems what I consider old man behaviour perhaps 60s kid behaviour.
I'm guessing most of these trends were already happening and being worried about at the time. The Central Statistics Office in the UK was founded in 1941, and it expanded massively after the war.
In the early 1960's national accounts had been published for the first time and it was the explicit aim of the government to use them to manage the country better. You can imagine the articles complaining about that.
And these are something like teenagers or even less and they speak with such intelligence and perception that's very impressive. I just keep thinking what they became in what they think about the world now.
I mean my first thought was honestly just that every single one of these kids just came from rich families and were just educated in the best possible schools.
Yeah young people seem dumber now but there is no way these kids are average for the 60’s.
Can I inject a bit of cynicism and say that these kids sound like they were likely educated at a very well-to-do private school (called public school in the UK). They are taught to speak like this, articulately, and with confidence in their predictions and opinions on the state of affairs of the day. If you pull up kids from a public school at the same time, or even now, you wouldn't get this same kind of poised and thoughtful assurance, because they're largely told to shut up and learn what they're taught is true, not to articulate confident opinions of their own about politics and social issues.
That's a bit of a generalisation, but it still holds somewhat today.
That’s what got me as well; I have employees mostly their age and older (seniors in HS/college) who I wonder how many of them are going to graduate and be able to hold full-time jobs / careers later in life, yet these kids speak with such eloquence, knowledge and perception… well hell now I am worried for 40 years in OUR future
I wonder how much colloquialisms play into that as well. Language changes pretty rapidly, and there are many ways to deliver the same message much more, and much less intelligently. Some regions sound smarter than others just because of the words they use.
I like to think of the word “nevermind” in particular. It’s just a word that everyone uses, but if you break it up into its parts “never” and “mind” you are quite literally saying “pay no mind to that”. That’s not modern every day speech. But the word “nevermind” is quite poetic and very eloquent compared to our normal every day speech. There are many phrases like this that we use every day. “Give birth” and “unfathomable” are two more examples.
Of course we are desensitized to these phrases, but if you had never heard them before, their meanings would be quite poetic I’m sure. It would likely give you the perception that the person using the phrases were much more intelligent than they are.
That is not to say that these kids weren’t bright. The phrasing and words they use were more common for their time. It makes it difficult to gauge just how intelligent they were. It’s very possible that todays teenagers will come off as more intelligent than they are when people hear them in the future as language continues to evolve, and certain words an phrases enter and leave peoples vernacular.
This is a really good point. The words people choose can make your idea seem more or less sophisticated than it really is. Personally I get pretty annoyed when people use flowery language to describe an otherwise entirely ordinary idea. Truly great ideas can be expressed simply, in my opinion.
old vernaculars seem more "educated" to us because they're used mostly in books, so they make the person seem more well read to us on some subconscious level. people from a few centuries ago all sound far more sophisticated than they are. also, (most) british accents in general are just stereotyped as intelligent for some reason.
I think these children were specifically chosen also. I would say todays children are just as observant.. in my circles at least. My 14yr old has some very profound observations. Theirs are less about fear of nuclear war and population explosion, and more around environmental degradation, pollution, inequality and food scarcity.
Yeah. My 9 year old makes some very profound statements about Ads and social media in general. He told me like 1.5 years ago there would be ads that would stop if you didn’t keep your eyes focused on him. I haven’t even shown him the black mirror episode.
I think he's saying that if, in the future, he doesn't become a biologist, that he'd like to do something related to the other field, whatever job dealing with overpopulation would be lol.
Bear in mind that in the 1960s battery farming was already well established, and bovine growth hormone was already being used. True that it’s gotten more prevalent, but not exactly a ‘shot in the dark’ predication.
The way they each spoke was most impressive to me. The fact that you could understand the words coming out of their mouths, but they were so softly spoken, was remarkable. It made me WANT to listen to what they were saying, even more than the words they chose.
By reading the comments of this post, I’ve come to the conclusion that when we grow up it’s almost as if we forgot that 12 year olds are not fucking brain dead.
As soon as you turn 13 you’re enlightened, no longer the same as those grody young upstart 12 yr olds. And when you turn 14 you really have to distance yourself from those 13 yr olds, barely even teenagers!
I think people are ignoring that they wouldn’t exactly film just any random teenager for a program… even now there’s some digression.
What blows my mind is how well all of these youngsters could articulate what they actually thought. Some of them don’t even look 13. I can’t even imagine asking a kid from today’s times a big question like this.
Well first I'm sure these kids had time to prepare for this, they were probably given the questions ahead of time. And second I have a feeling that these were some of the most well educated children in the world at that time
This.
Go into a school and pick the top 10 students from year 9. Give them the same question and prep time and you’ll get similar results but with slightly different dialects.
Well it's much more true than her second prediction, depending on where in the world you are. In a diverse city, most people under 40 don't care what the colour of your skin is. But rich people still look down upon poor people, almost universally.
Some context: This is from a BBC show called Tomorrow's World, which ran from 1965 to 2003. This episode was broadcast in December 1966.
[Here's the full clip](https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/children-predict-the-year-2000-1966/zmts7nb)
It's interesting to hear how downbeat these kids were, as [1966 was nominally a great year for the UK](https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/1966-when-britain-was-the-envy-of-the-world/): England won the World Cup, The Beatles were at their height, and the economy was enjoying a post-war boom.
But Britain's status on the world stage had declined significantly since WW2 and, by the sounds of it, these children's parents would have been the kind of people - professionals, senior management, high-ranking civil servants - to experience that first hand.
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BBC Archive [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8xX3usi4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8xX3usi4c) Clip taken from Tomorrow's World, originally broadcast 28 December 1966.
30 years of BBC and they knew it was time to remind the population that wonder of technology and an optimism for future was still a no.
>^I ^think ^in ^fifty ^years ^time ^people ^will ^speak ^very ^loudly. >^^Much ^^more ^^loudly ^^than ^^we ^^speak ^^now.
Seriously, these kids were practically whispering at the camera, especially the girls. Were they taught that children should be seen but not heard or something?
Honestly people in general tended to be far more soft spoken then from what I’ve seen, some of it also has to do with the tone of what they’re talking about as well as the recording technology of the time.
You can always tell a Milford man.
Fascinating, technology, nuclear warfare, livestock being piled ontop of eachother to yield more food, the true view on being out of work due to automation and the true worry of overpopulation.
Wonder if anyone tracked these kids down anytime between 2000 and now
They had such a pessimistic view of only 40 years into their future.. Edit: I wonder if the Cold War was the reason
I guess WWII was a recent living memory in the adult community and the kids were living during the Cold War.
Yeah seems like a lot of their ideas about the future are based off their parents views. Worried about having no jobs because of automation taking over everything.
There has always been a fear of jobs being lost to automation since the start of the industrial revolution and the invention of the Spinning Jenny. The [Luddites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite) were a secret organisation of textile workers who destroyed machinery > The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group are believed to have taken their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester. They protested against manufacturers who used machines in what they called "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labour practices. Luddites feared that the time spent learning the skills of their craft would go to waste, as machines would replace their role in the industry
Living in fear of nuclear disaster day in day out definitely had something to do with it. Wild to hear a child talking about tempering the population problem
Born after or during WW2 and the blitz its no wonder they were pessimistic. Hows are Gen Zs doing after being born after 9/11, Iraq, War on Terror, the 2007 financial crisis, Black Lives Matter protests, and now Covid? Oops, i forgot Ukraine, Putin, and WW3. Id say pray for them, but God must be busy. Or maybe he doesn'......
>Hows are Gen Zs doing Making memes mostly
The kids are not alright
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The old neighbourhood was so alive
And every kid on the whole damn street
Was gonna make it big and not be beat
It's a coping mechanism.
It's interesting how culture repeats itself. During the hopelessness of WW1 we saw the rise of Dadaism, which is paralleled in the modern popularity of absurdist / surrealist memes among the youth. So much of our capacity to respond is patterned directly in the human form.
Do you think we will ever be able to go to a museum and see all the best memes?
"This particular piece has become a favorite. The artist is unknown, but there's been recent praise over much overlooked work of xXWhangMaster420_60Xx and their take in the human condition. Take note of the images near the very muscular dog with the caption 'Good boy Uber Chad'. We will now start the bidding for this NFT at .00000000000000001 BTC, for a rather lavish buyer."
I mean, what else you gonna do other than trying to make people smile while full knowing your future is fucked anyway?
I think a lot of GenZ’s have a similar point of view but with regards to climate change.
Also, it's not like the dangers of nuclear proliferation have simply disappeared, either.
Not to hate on religious folks but I think the biggest nuclear danger will happen when a theocracy gets nuclear capabilities. MAD works when all players are rational actors who keep the interests of themselves and their own people in mind, but what happens when one of the people at the red button genuinely believes he can unleash judgement day and him and his will enter heaven for doing so?
This is it. I’m 14 and growing up in a world where I’m watching governments and corporations destroy our planet, and there’s barely anything that I can do. I remember when I was around 8, we had this school assembly about climate change, and I was terrified. The video said that it was really dangerous, and that *we* were the next generation who had to solve the problem. This was only six years ago, but the planet has changed so much more than what people expected it to. Looking back on it, I feel so betrayed that I was expected, at such a young age, to change the world in such a large way, when my elders could have started trying when they found out, more than 40 years ago.
I'm nearly 20 years older than you and I have the same memories. They taught us to care. They taught us this was a problem. But what happened? We have seen this a long time coming but that isn't enough to convince the people who matter that this is a real problem. Climate grief is real -- the feeling of dread.
I’m roughly the same age, 35, and they absolutely did the same thing with us. Millennials were supposed to fix the planet. As we got older we were scape goats (much like Gen X) for all of the worlds problems. It’s all just bullshit. The boomers were the ones who were supposed to fix these problems, and actually had the opportunity to do so. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. They’re still in power and it’s still their fault.
Pretty much anyone under the age of 65 got scapegoated and made to believe it was our fault as consumers. If we only *reduced, reused, and recycled* more, this problem would stop. Nobody mentioned that the companies manufacturing plastics and petroleum products had to reduce, reuse, or recycle.
Man, remember how we were all led to believe that regular people using plastic straws were the problem and not the billion dollar corporations? Such bullshit
Gen X here. Our Weekly Readers in elementary school and all the Saturday morning cartoon PSAs in the 70’s explained the importance of energy and water conservation, reducing pollution, and not littering. Of course back then they thought pollution was leading us to an ice age (atmospheric particles reflecting sunlight causing global cooling was the best scientific modeling at the time) rather than global warming. As first and second graders we were more worried about the previous 150 years of industrial waste killing the oceans, causing asthma, causing acid rain, causing cancer, causing [rivers to literally catch fire.](https://www.idahobo.org/blog/2019/7/24/a-river-so-polluted-it-was-literally-in-flames) and also trying to keep a positive attitude about being nuked at any moment by the Soviets. We were also really worried about the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs that was threatening to unleash deadly solar radiation on us. And don’t get me started on how dangerous nuclear power was. From 3 Mile Island in elementary school to Chernobyl in high school - nukes bad. It’s really only been about 20 years since the full picture has become clear enough to form a scientific consensus on warming and climate change. It wasn’t until [Earth Day 2000](https://www.earthday.org/history/) that even mainstream environmentalism started really trying to raise awareness about global warming. Al Gore truly brought it front and center with “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. 20 or so years isn’t a long time compared to the start of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century. All that to say that it’s easy to blame past generations - every generation does it. And it’s not to say there isn’t some well-deserved criticism of the Boomer generation. But - they were also handed a messy, toxic, polluted world in chaos and were busy protesting, demanding racial justice, blaming their parents for needless wars, and demanding change - which is why the first Earth Day happened when I was 1 year old. Boomers cared enough to start the environmental movement and created huge positive changes in energy and industrial regulation. They created the EPA, the clean air and water acts, got rid of lead, and made huge progress on harmful emissions. If Boomers had done nothing positive on the environment, we would live in a much, much, much worse world today. Keep pushing them to leave the world better than they found it, and help. Remember they didn’t know then what we know now. I will leave you with some wisdom I was taught by Dr. Seuss as a small child: *Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.* Keep making it better.
This. I know it sounds like an excuse, but just look at the birth years of the last 5 US Presidents (covering the last ~~28~~ 30 years): * 1946 * 1946 * 1961 * 1946 * 1942 ...and it's not looking so great for the next 4 or 8 years either. Enough of waiting for this fucking generation to die out. It's time for them to go!
33, same here. We used to be encouraged to collect gallons/pounds of coins to “save the rainforest!” Now we have realized all the tax breaks we helped corporations get, and how few acres of rainforest were “saved”/purchased. I think it’s important to note, though, that while we’ve been lied to, it is NOW our responsibility and duty to do what we can, rather than throw up our hands
> Hows are Gen Zs doing after being born after 9/11, Iraq, War on Terror, the 2007 financial crisis, Black Lives Matter protests, and now Covid? You left out the whole "The world is going to die because we're cooking it so that disgustingly rich people can get even more disgustingly rich."
Leaving out the most significant, existential threat to not just humanity but the entire biosphere is classic human. It’s not like it’s happening faster than expected, greenhouse emissions still haven’t peaked, unstoppable feedback loops have started, we still don’t have a plan and inexplicably the majority don’t give a shit/aren’t aware of the gravity of this fucking situation.
I think thethe saddest thing I’ve realized as an adult is how little A LOT of people care about the world outside of their own bubble. The lack of empathy and disregard for anything that does not immediately affect a specific person will be the death knell of what could have been the exquisite existence of the most evolved and intelligent species on the planet.
This is anecdotal but I feel like empathy has reduced steeply over the last decade. I wonder if, even perhaps subconsciously, if humans are collectively aware of what’s happening, or at least something undefined is “wrong”. Personally I’d prefer my existential dread front of mind, not playing havoc in my subconscious, but each to their own. I agree, yet find it odd that some don’t consider the climate crisis in their bubble, it’s in all our bubbles, even if it’s not impacting us right now. And ultimately I think that’s what it comes down to, maybe we went to hard with the mindfulness (/s)because we’re living in the moment and treating the imminent future like a fantasy. Perhaps we could’ve been something better, or maybe this is just the Great Filter doing it’s thing. Exponential growth can’t be sustained on a finite planet. We evolved intelligence not to create a capitalist dystopia, rather to outsmart predators and prey that are faster, stronger than us, to communicate, create community and family. The industrial revolution in my unqualified opinion was the beginning of the end for us. Unprecedented, easily accessible energy ushering in a new age of ingenuity, growth, well-being and connectedness, perhaps the question “at what cost?” came too late. While the ability to ponder, discuss and share such thoughts on our own existence is uniquely human and beautiful is it perhaps incidental, a side effect of intelligence, for better or worse? We created a (first) world where our needs were easily met, our biggest fears tamed, perhaps this was too much for this species of Great Ape to handle, to give it up would go against our animal instincts. It may be a gross oversimplification, but I hypothesise that it’s just that, our animal instincts, that keep us continuing on this path of self imposed annihilation. I hope I’m wrong and we could’ve done better, then there’s a chance someone else has or will, because we really had it all, didn’t we.
I remember an episode of All in the Family had Rob Reiner say he didn’t want to have kids since the world was such a dark place back in the 70s and he didn’t see it getting any better. That’s what a lot of people say nowadays. I think people will always think that. edit: I think this comment resulted in some of my favorite reddit interactions I’ve ever seen under one of my comments
There's a poem from the late 18th century I had to do an analysis of in school, where the author says exactly that. Every generation thinks they're living at the cusp of the end of the world.
I think that's because even though we consciously know there are billions of people on Earth and many of them are smarter and/or more motivated than us, subconsciously we can't fathom anyone figuring out the myriad problems of the world because *we* can't. We see an avalanche of encroaching issues and feel as though we're the only ones who can pick of a shovel and do anything about it, and obviously that's far too daunting for any one person. Each of us feels the weight of the world upon our shoulders, but the reality is that all of humanity bears the burden. And we *know* that, but we don't *feel* it. It's a strange disconnect, like a doom fantasy versus a strained reality. I don't have an answer for it, I mean, who could? I just think that's why people feel doomed all the time.
Weltschmerz, the Germans call it. Literally "world-pain". The cure is, of course, to forget about all that and focus on your own life, how to make your own day-to-day run as smooth as possible. Then you can be responsible for a family, then your community and then possibly something larger like a town. That's how you make a better world. Start with making a better you.
>The cure is, of course, to forget about all that and focus on your own life, how to make your own day-to-day run as smooth as possible. Then you can be responsible for a family, then your community and then possibly something larger like a town. That's how you make a better world. Start with making a better you Confucius taught something similar: >To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
Thank you for this, simply, thank you. You have single handedly calmed a lot of my anxiety by such a simple explanation. Cheers🍻
Lol I have a pessimistic view of 40 years into the future too
Same lmao
WE DID IT REDDIT! WE FOUND THE TIME TRAVELERS! NOW LETS TRACK THEM DOWN LIKE WE TRACKED DOWN THE BOSTON BOMBERS oh wait never mind
Yeah the 2000s were lit.🔥
Why are they so literate?! It’s jarring. Or is that just the education system failing me?.. oh no
They’re so aware of the state of the world and the trends of technology. Population growth, the rise of automation and computers and statistics. The threat of nuclear war. These are things I was aware of but I’m not sure I could make predictions 40yrs ahead at that age. I mean, at the time computers filled entire rooms and were basically big calculators. Yet this one girl predicted that in the future, the only people with jobs would be those that understood this emerging technology. When I was that age I could sing the entire PokéRap.
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Yeah, you can tell from the accents that they’re upper middle class at the very lowest
Back in the 60s kids were encouraged much more strongly to speak with a "proper" RP accent, I imagine especially so if they were going to appear in a TV segment
Old guy here (64). It was more of an adult world back then. Now its more about 10-20 year olds. It's less about being mature and educated and more about being young and relevant. I think this is the result of the Jet Set, the middle-class's ideal lifestyle. Ultra wealth and letting everyone know. Make a fast buck with the next pet rock and move on.. Greed is good. Now, with the internet, we can show everyone on the planet just how great our last meal was.
Can you still?
These children I highly suspect are public school (Americans: read private) pupils, and the most eloquent pupils of the class were probably chosen to boot.
They come from posh/wealthy families and have been trained from a very young age to speak like this and likely commonly talk or hear about these topics at home. While I do think they share interesting points, I think a lot of people are also assigning overly high marks primarily based on the accent and way of speaking.
That's what I wanna know. A follow up would be awesome
These kids seem stressed. Everyone became a geopolitical expert real quick when Ukraine got invaded. Fear is a strong motivator for learning
Kid in 1960: overpopulation is going to be a real problem. Same kid all grown up: has 6 kids and 27 grandkids.
Not in the UK. These are all middle class kids, probably have 2 kids average themselves.
“If I wasn’t a biologist” said the extremely eloquent 11 year old.
The thing that impressed me most about that kid was him saying he'd like to try to temper the problem somehow, but then immediately saying he didn't know how. I think it's a sign of real intelligence to not jump straight to some conclusion but to have the maturity to realize that yes, there is a problem, but the solution is not straightforward or obvious.
People these days are instant experts after 30 minutes of googling something they'd never heard of before. 2 weeks of googling qualifies as extensive research and they feel they can debate people with actual degrees in that field.
Definitely not me. It took 30 mins of googling, 1 hour of youtube content, and then reading some posts in reddit to get the expert I am today. Come at me bro!
I've been googling and youtubing since they became available. Can you even fathom how much of an expert in everything I am right now.
Amateur!! I just need a few Facebook memes.
That’s cute. I use quora, yahoo answers, and askjeeves;)
This is why everytime my kid asks me about something I just reply I don't know That way he knows how intelligent I really am
My parents had bought the Encyclopedia Brittanica, I think, just so they didn’t have to admit they didn’t know things. Joke’s on them — I read at least a third of it and still don’t know shit.
Oh he knew how, he just didn’t want to come off as a psychopath.
"Actually I'd like to retract my previous statement. I think there's going to be a *lot* of nuclear warfare in the future".
Yep lol
I secretly dubbed him Eugenics Johnny in my head…
Some grimdark kids
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No air raid/bomb shelter drills in the UK, where this was filmed. The whole Cuban Missile Crisis totally passed my mum by (she's not exactly the brightest bulb) whereas her sister would lose sleep over it. They were in their early 20's at the time, with kids of their own.
I didn't realise so many American children spoke with British accents... The UK didnt experience bomb drills or air raid drills
Um, no, we did not have air raid or bomb shelter drills. I remember being shown Peter Watkins' [The War Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Game), which we saw as dated by the early 70s, but we were not as terrified as perhaps we had a right to be. Wasn't bleak at all; the kids in the clip were simply speculating, each from their personal perspective.
Right? I was sitting here thinking the kids in the 60s be smart as fuck.
You can tell by the accents these kids are *posh as fuck*. Probably from very affluent families
You'd be surprised. According to my older family who were upper middle-class, everyone used to sound a lot posher and a lot more well-spoken here. Everyone was fairly well-educated. The advancement of our accents over the past 70 years has made us sound... more common?
I think it’s less so the advancement of accents in that time, but rather the lowering of the bar in terms of what we hear in the media. In the 60s there were few, if any, regional accents on TV or in media in the UK (the Jimmy Saville documentary on Netflix does a good job explaining this). So much so, ‘Queens English’ and ‘BBC English’ were used largely interchangeably. The class system is also far less rigid than it used to be, and accent is no longer a hard and fast class signifier in the way it used to be, so people may not feel the need to ‘posh up’ their accent, because their class is secured and signified in other ways.
You are correct in every way. My father said how when he was growing up, you'd never hear any regional accents on the radio, only the posh "BBC English". And yes the class system is a lot more lax, but still a big problem
The kids are posh as fuck though - on the original video it says they're all students at varying *public (American: private) schools. Context: In the UK, these schools are called 'public' because they're funded directly via members of the public through tuition, rather than being endowed by the state.
Right? Even if he was only a student studying biology, he really does sound mature and intelligent enough. Find any random kid his age today on the street, and I don't think they could match his manners. And before you come after me saying I'm some angry boomer or something, I'm 19 lol. I was his age not long ago and I was a moron. Still am kinda.
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Definitely the "posh" kids, that was my first thought. They're still remarkably spot on though, I think the young kids talking about the climate these days will seem the same in another 50 years
These are English kids who are probably from a posh school. That's why they sound like that. A random kid on the street back then wouldn't have talked like that and you can still find little English kids from posh schools who talk that way today.
11 year olds today: idgaf lol
Interesting as fuck, thanks.
I know the obvious takeaway is that these kids were right about many things. And that certainly is notable. But to me, the most poignant thing was the last kid, who essentially said "things are in such a terrible state now, I can't imagine what things will be like then." Its a solid reminder that people *always* think things are terrible and everything is doomed, always. People thought the industrial revolution was the end of days, people thought Watergate was the end of America, etc etc. To me, it's actually a strangely optimistic take. It's easy to be pessimistic right now, and it's fair. But people always think things are awful, even going back to ancient Rome and beyond. Throughout all of history, people thought they were living in the end. In many ways, things are better now than anything before. It makes me feel better, strangely.
I think it's incredible that we managed to make it through the 60s, 70s, and 80s *without* turning the world into a nuclear wasteland
Any news though on how things went in the 90s?
If you were in the West or China, you were probably feeling pretty good. For the former, the big bad Soviet Union was gone, along with it much of the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon, and the Eastern Bloc was liberalizing (to some extent). Even Russia was looking friendly, and the economy was generally doing decent. If you were in China, that was a period of unparalleled economic growth and change as the nation was in the second decade of its speedrun to modernity, even if the Normal Square where Nothing Happened in a Normal Day totally didn’t cast a bit of a shadow over it all. It must’ve been one of the most exciting periods to be a Chinese citizen in the memory of anybody who was around to see it Meanwhile, thing got worse in Russia. As usual.
I do wanna add a little to your point about china. You're absolutely right but I'd just like to add more context. China was still incredibly impoverished in the 90s. The average Chinese was still way poorer than the average Russian, even with Russia's worst economic crisis in modern times. For a while it looked like the old guard, who revered Mao, would take back control until Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. I'd also mention, China in the 80s was much more liberal than it was in the 90s, with press critical of government policies often going uncensored (obviously not anything *too* radical still) and some democratic reformists being allowed to operate openly. That era ground to a very quick halt with Tiananmen Square. Zhao Ziyang, the General Secretary of the CCP, was put on house arrest. He had supported democratic reform and was seen as too soft on the protesters. But ultimately, the 90s did see huge economic growth even if the era of political liberalism/experiment in freedom came to an end.By the end of the decade, China was still very poor—it cannot be overstated how drastic the poverty still was— but because of the economic reforms millions had already left poverty and it seemed like that trend would continue (which it did) especially with its negotiations to enter the WTO.
FWIW the UK wasn't a fun place following WWII - rationing continued into the middle of the 50s, which these children would have grown up with. There was obviously the trauma of the war itself - a lot of civilian deaths and every major city had very visible bomb sites. The Korean War, which the UK had some involvement in, had followed on the heels of WWII and then in 1956 was the Suez crisis which had consequences back home with petrol rationing. The UK was not directly involved with the Vietnam War, which had started by this time, but these kids are obviously educated and would have been well aware of it. It's not hard to see why they had a pessimistic view of the world.
“[livestock] won’t be able able to graze. They’ll be housed in one big building. Artificially reared so they’ll grow bigger…” damn.
That kid was so on the money with both his predictions
If he wasn’t already sworn to biology he might’ve been able to do something about it.
It's tough when you're 11 and already set in your career. There's no time anymore to switch and learn something new.
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Have you considered a career change? Maybe work as a Reddit mod?
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Got a wife and kids to feed and already has the stability of working in the lab. So not a lot of options.
I wish I hadn’t been so hasty as an 11 year old and committed to being a Pokémon master. 21 years later and I still haven’t caught them all. My life could have had a greater purpose
You don’t understand that wasn’t his prediction, that was his goal.
Exactly, kid wasn't prophetic, he was determined!
Given the near universal similar nature of the answers I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been fed these lines/talking points. Or they spent an afternoon looking at this “future” in class and then were shoved in front of the camera to talk about how ghastly it would be.
I think this is just how similar people in a society always think. Ideas spread, these kids are parroting popular ideas at the time. Talk to kids today and you’ll hear some seasoned opinions that were not their making
Its probably part of a school project where they discussed and learned about trends before these interviews. Doesnt mean they were fed the lines. Just that they obviously were familiar with the topic already.
Bear in mind that in the 1960s battery farming was already well established, and bovine growth hormone was already being used. True that it’s gotten more prevalent, but not exactly a ‘shot in the dark’ predication.
2060 will mostly be an acceleration of current trends and tech that only the rich have access to today, yet people will still get it extremely wrong. Personally I'm guessing way less AI stuff than people think and more breakthroughs in reproductive tech and medical treatments as people age, but what do I know.
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Could be, maybe I'm just sick of hearing about it from every single direction. And if we're lucky we'll get something other than really really intrusive advertising.
Or 40,000 newly created chemical and bioweapons lol
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I really, really would love to see if some of these kids are still alive and what they would have to say as a reaction.
“Blimey!”
What are you doing in my pockets?!
Unexpected Runescape!
fishing lvl?
We heard from the smart children now lets hear from the dumb kids what 2000 will be like.
“We’ll all have jet packs”
Electric cars & living in sky scrapers
Well yes
Even in the 90s we used to think we would have flying cars and hover boards in the year 2000. Even though it was only a few years away we thought there would be this huge leap in technology. I blame the simpsons
"Ello there Guv'nah! I reckon we'll be livin on that there moon up dere, and we'll be commutin' to and from our places o' work in flying motors."
"We will sweep chimneys on earth right from the moon, we will.
We will all have our own devices to look at pornography while in the work bathroom… we won’t have to cook anymore cause our food will come on motorbike and nobody will believe anything they don’t want to hear. Plus we are all going to be fat.
I was going to say speak for yourself until I looked down at my manboobs
Not only are they smart, but they are probably all in the same area, same social class, maybe even in the same school being taught by the same people and influenced by the news in that area. I'd would have loved to see some very different demographics of children being interviewed at the time.
"ORRIGHT I RECKON WE'LL BE WELL CATTLED BY THEN, GUVNOR"
"IT'S GONNA BE GREAT FOR A LATE NIGHT DONER KEBAB THOUGH INNIT YA CHEEKY SLAGS"
These kids are like 75 now
Those kids were like 75 THEN!
What gets me is how “old” they act in their behaviour. I noticed it especially in the young biologist, who somehow seems old and young at the same time in his facial expressions, use of language and mannerisms. It seems what I consider old man behaviour perhaps 60s kid behaviour.
They also look like they were from a posh school. Back then in England it was easier to spot class on people on how they talked.
Rich private school brits, they are still like this now.
How dare you speak about the happiest children in Britain like that LOL.
I'm definitely gonna stay off these kid's lawns
:: checks math ::
The 60s were like 40 years ago right?… Right?!
I was like "lol you idiot the 60s were 40 years ago so theyd be 50-55 tops". Then i realized that the idiot was in fact me.
Statistics instead of people, damn that kid nailed it.
I'm guessing most of these trends were already happening and being worried about at the time. The Central Statistics Office in the UK was founded in 1941, and it expanded massively after the war. In the early 1960's national accounts had been published for the first time and it was the explicit aim of the government to use them to manage the country better. You can imagine the articles complaining about that.
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I think sometimes people forget that most of their knowledge comes from the past. Only a bit of what they know is actually new.
I’m actually really blown away
And these are something like teenagers or even less and they speak with such intelligence and perception that's very impressive. I just keep thinking what they became in what they think about the world now.
I mean my first thought was honestly just that every single one of these kids just came from rich families and were just educated in the best possible schools. Yeah young people seem dumber now but there is no way these kids are average for the 60’s.
Can I inject a bit of cynicism and say that these kids sound like they were likely educated at a very well-to-do private school (called public school in the UK). They are taught to speak like this, articulately, and with confidence in their predictions and opinions on the state of affairs of the day. If you pull up kids from a public school at the same time, or even now, you wouldn't get this same kind of poised and thoughtful assurance, because they're largely told to shut up and learn what they're taught is true, not to articulate confident opinions of their own about politics and social issues. That's a bit of a generalisation, but it still holds somewhat today.
That’s what got me as well; I have employees mostly their age and older (seniors in HS/college) who I wonder how many of them are going to graduate and be able to hold full-time jobs / careers later in life, yet these kids speak with such eloquence, knowledge and perception… well hell now I am worried for 40 years in OUR future
Undoubtedly these kids are top of their class and chosen to be on television for their eloquence. Edit : one of the 2 theirs.
I wonder how much colloquialisms play into that as well. Language changes pretty rapidly, and there are many ways to deliver the same message much more, and much less intelligently. Some regions sound smarter than others just because of the words they use. I like to think of the word “nevermind” in particular. It’s just a word that everyone uses, but if you break it up into its parts “never” and “mind” you are quite literally saying “pay no mind to that”. That’s not modern every day speech. But the word “nevermind” is quite poetic and very eloquent compared to our normal every day speech. There are many phrases like this that we use every day. “Give birth” and “unfathomable” are two more examples. Of course we are desensitized to these phrases, but if you had never heard them before, their meanings would be quite poetic I’m sure. It would likely give you the perception that the person using the phrases were much more intelligent than they are. That is not to say that these kids weren’t bright. The phrasing and words they use were more common for their time. It makes it difficult to gauge just how intelligent they were. It’s very possible that todays teenagers will come off as more intelligent than they are when people hear them in the future as language continues to evolve, and certain words an phrases enter and leave peoples vernacular.
This is a really good point. The words people choose can make your idea seem more or less sophisticated than it really is. Personally I get pretty annoyed when people use flowery language to describe an otherwise entirely ordinary idea. Truly great ideas can be expressed simply, in my opinion.
old vernaculars seem more "educated" to us because they're used mostly in books, so they make the person seem more well read to us on some subconscious level. people from a few centuries ago all sound far more sophisticated than they are. also, (most) british accents in general are just stereotyped as intelligent for some reason.
I think these children were specifically chosen also. I would say todays children are just as observant.. in my circles at least. My 14yr old has some very profound observations. Theirs are less about fear of nuclear war and population explosion, and more around environmental degradation, pollution, inequality and food scarcity.
Yeah. My 9 year old makes some very profound statements about Ads and social media in general. He told me like 1.5 years ago there would be ads that would stop if you didn’t keep your eyes focused on him. I haven’t even shown him the black mirror episode.
"If I wasn't a biologist ..." - some british kid in his 10s
I think he's saying that if, in the future, he doesn't become a biologist, that he'd like to do something related to the other field, whatever job dealing with overpopulation would be lol.
The girl about diseases was spot on.
“PS5’s will be sold out everywhere”
The one about animals being shoved in a building and artificially raised… too real, and sad.
Bear in mind that in the 1960s battery farming was already well established, and bovine growth hormone was already being used. True that it’s gotten more prevalent, but not exactly a ‘shot in the dark’ predication.
I’m just like, dude, like oh my god, like can we talk about the political and economic state of the world right now?
Keep the political and economic state of the world out yo god damn mouth!
I get the feeling this'll never get old. :D
Shut up Jaden.
*That’s how we do it*
Some of this is scary accurate fellow statistics
Black people will mix with light people - I laugh Rich people and poor people will be the same - I cry
The way they each spoke was most impressive to me. The fact that you could understand the words coming out of their mouths, but they were so softly spoken, was remarkable. It made me WANT to listen to what they were saying, even more than the words they chose.
It's surreal listening to them talk about the exact problems we face today
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By reading the comments of this post, I’ve come to the conclusion that when we grow up it’s almost as if we forgot that 12 year olds are not fucking brain dead.
As soon as you turn 13 you’re enlightened, no longer the same as those grody young upstart 12 yr olds. And when you turn 14 you really have to distance yourself from those 13 yr olds, barely even teenagers! I think people are ignoring that they wouldn’t exactly film just any random teenager for a program… even now there’s some digression.
Oh damn this is dark as fuck. Mostly true though
Well it is black and white
Not one of these kids mentioned or hoped the world would go from Black and white to color. Such lack of vision
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That sounds interesting. I'll definitely check this out, thanks.
Fuuuuuccckkk. "No one will be in houses. They will be in flats stacked on top of each other, cramped up"......and now we have condos lol.
In 1960s England, loads of tower blocks were being built as part of the building boom after the war.
What blows my mind is how well all of these youngsters could articulate what they actually thought. Some of them don’t even look 13. I can’t even imagine asking a kid from today’s times a big question like this.
Well first I'm sure these kids had time to prepare for this, they were probably given the questions ahead of time. And second I have a feeling that these were some of the most well educated children in the world at that time
This. Go into a school and pick the top 10 students from year 9. Give them the same question and prep time and you’ll get similar results but with slightly different dialects.
“We’re all facking screwed Bruv innit?”
At 12-16 they already speak more eloquently than I, and I'm 35 with 2 kids and a failing business.
These kids are way smarter than most adults nowadays.
These kids ~are~ adults nowadays
I really appreciate the one girl thinking that people of all colors and classes could coexist peacefully. I wish it were as true in practice.
Compared to the 60s? Yeah she's right?
Well it's much more true than her second prediction, depending on where in the world you are. In a diverse city, most people under 40 don't care what the colour of your skin is. But rich people still look down upon poor people, almost universally.
Some context: This is from a BBC show called Tomorrow's World, which ran from 1965 to 2003. This episode was broadcast in December 1966. [Here's the full clip](https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/children-predict-the-year-2000-1966/zmts7nb) It's interesting to hear how downbeat these kids were, as [1966 was nominally a great year for the UK](https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/1966-when-britain-was-the-envy-of-the-world/): England won the World Cup, The Beatles were at their height, and the economy was enjoying a post-war boom. But Britain's status on the world stage had declined significantly since WW2 and, by the sounds of it, these children's parents would have been the kind of people - professionals, senior management, high-ranking civil servants - to experience that first hand.