You’re walking down the hallway (you’re on the right side), a group of students walk by you and one bumps into you, knocking something out of your hands. Rather than apologizing to you, they laugh at and scrutinize you… Yet, you weren’t in the wrong … They were.

Simple etiquette, such as “Please”, “Thank you”, or “I’m sorry” has slipped into the abyss of our past as a society. As newer generations disperse into the community, the likelihood that basic manners will persist seems lower and lower. 

Having proper manners is not just knowing when to excuse yourself or having proper posture. It is more about being cognizant of your attitude and treating people respectfully. Being unaware and unwilling to change your behaviors is where the problem lies.

Call it natural adolescent behavior, or call it the death of manners, there is one thing you cannot deny; the absence of manners in our society is dangerous. Younger generations growing up and accepting that a lack of politeness is a societal norm, cannot possibly have any positive implications in the future. 

There are two things to blame: lack of parenting and over-consumption of electronics. 

When it comes to electronics, it is clear that, although constant access to media and technology has undeniable benefits, it dually has consequences that will be felt intensely throughout the future. 

Because technology gives a person the power to communicate with others without actually having to be face-to-face with someone, today’s youth feel a sense of empowerment and invincibility when it comes to the comments they are able to make online. As a result, this sense of indestructibility and overwhelming superiority online spills over into physical life. 

The number of times I have been bumped into and not apologized to, or asked for something and not heard the phrases “please” or “thank you” at school is nothing short of concerning; these are teenagers who should know better by now. 

The sad truth is, manners have been forgotten, and we as a society may be helpless. Our American culture is teeming with disrespectful youth who have not been properly taught manners or basic respect principles. 

Of course, not every young person has a shoddy foundation of manners, it is the ones who do, the ones who have an extreme sense of entitlement and supremacy, that give the majority a bad reputation. 

From my own observations, educationally and recreationally, the number of children that have this haughty sense of self-importance and superiority stems directly from the source: bad parenting. A massive amount of parents do not tell their children “no”, allowing the child to get their way all of the time. It is this enablement of bad behavior that ultimately carries on into adolescence and young adulthood, creating the problem of poor etiquette. 

The absence of discipline in parenting has created a selfish society, wherein people are more focused on their own lives rather than a humanitarian approach to life. Being raised to have a solipsistic attitude towards life and society ultimately provides a platform for one to forget their manners, for ultimately it’s their world, everyone else is just living in it.

This perspective creates a never-ending cycle of inadequate manners, from one generation to the next. We have seen this from Millennials to Gen Alpha, and an end may not be in sight if we do not tackle this issue soon. 

While I do not deny the challenge that parenting is, and I applaud all parents for the work they put in, if one cannot properly raise a child to show basic respect for others, maybe they have an underlying problem that they were not taught these manners themselves. Hence, the never-ending cycle and the need for change. 

Truth be told, nobody is perfect. Yet, it doesn’t take a perfectionist to treat people with basic courtesy and respect. Nonetheless, it is not too late to reverse the quickly spiraling demise of manners in our society. By simply gaining a scope of self-awareness and understanding basic human nature and interaction, there is no doubt that the youth of society can make an upward turn toward respect and etiquette.