Asma Khurshid
Every generation seems to discover a new reason to worry about the decline of the next. Today, the criticism often centres on screens, social media, shortened attention spans, and the pursuit of digital validation. Young people are accused of replacing meaningful relationships with virtual connections, confusing visibility with significance, and measuring their worth through the approval of strangers. Some of these concerns are justified. A life constantly interrupted by notifications can leave little room for reflection, while the endless comparison encouraged by social media can make even genuine achievements feel inadequate. Yet an equally important question deserves attention: were earlier generations necessarily better equipped to find meaning, or were their struggles simply different?
Earlier generations faced poverty, limited educational opportunities, rigid social hierarchies, economic insecurity, and the pressure to fulfil expectations they had little freedom to question. For many, life was organised around survival and duty. A person could spend decades providing for a family while sacrificing personal ambitions, intellectual curiosity, or emotional fulfilment. Others lived within social arrangements that prescribed their choices according to gender, class, or family background. The absence of digital distractions did not necessarily mean the presence of inner peace. A life can be consumed by a screen, but it can also be consumed by an obligation. One person may lose themselves in the pursuit of online recognition; another may spend a lifetime seeking approval by fulfilling expectations they never chose. One generation may struggle under the pressure to remain constantly visible, while another may have suffered under the expectation that its desires must remain invisible. The circumstances differ, but both raise a fundamental question: how much control do people have over the lives they lead?
This comparison does not make every modern difficulty equivalent to the hardships of the past, nor does it diminish the sacrifices of earlier generations. Their resilience deserves recognition, but resilience should not require us to romanticise the conditions that made it necessary. The forces that obstruct a meaningful life change with time. One generation may struggle against deprivation and social restriction, while another confronts distraction, isolation, and the pressure to construct a publicly acceptable identity. The underlying question, however, remains: how does a person build a life that feels genuinely their own?
This is where generations misunderstand each other most profoundly. Older people see the visible distractions of the young and conclude that they have forgotten how to live meaningfully. Younger people see the sacrifices of their elders and may struggle to understand why so many endured lives they would not willingly choose. Both risk judging circumstances they have never fully experienced. The absence of a particular struggle does not guarantee fulfilment, just as the presence of hardship does not automatically give life meaning. The problem is not simply that one generation has lost its way. It is that each becomes so preoccupied with identifying what the next has lost that it fails to understand what the next is struggling to find.
Today, individuals encounter competing definitions of success: financial security, professional achievement, personal fulfilment, and social recognition. These ideals do not always coexist comfortably. A person may be encouraged to pursue a passion while confronting economic insecurity, or urged to remain authentic while navigating platforms that reward carefully constructed appearances. The pressure to succeed is accompanied by the pressure to demonstrate success, often before a person has had the time to understand what success means to them. Under these conditions, freedom can become another source of anxiety. When individuals are told that their futures depend entirely on their own choices, they may begin to interpret every disappointment as a personal failure, overlooking the influence of unequal opportunities, economic circumstances, and social barriers. Personal responsibility remains important, but it cannot be separated from the conditions in which choices are made. Nor should responsibility be confused with unquestioning obedience to inherited expectations. An arrangement may have provided stability for some while denying opportunities to others; its endurance does not make it equally beneficial to everyone. Tradition, therefore, deserves neither automatic rejection nor unquestioning acceptance. Its value must be assessed by the lives it sustains, the freedoms it protects, and the exclusions it perpetuates.
The disagreement between generations is ultimately not a simple contest between responsibility and freedom, but a question of how the two can coexist. Older generations may fear that individual choice will weaken commitment, while younger generations may fear that inherited obligations will leave too little room for individuality. Both concerns deserve consideration. Freedom without responsibility can disregard the consequences of personal choices, while responsibility without freedom can turn conformity into a moral ideal. A generation does not establish that it has found a better way of living merely by rejecting the practices of its predecessors. It must also build something more thoughtful, humane, and meaningful in the space that refusal creates.
Understanding generational conflict requires more than comparing lifestyles and ambitions. It requires us to examine how each generation interprets its past, inherits the assumptions of its predecessors, and decides which of those assumptions deserve to survive. The past rarely reaches us as a neutral account of what happened; it is shaped by memory, prevailing social values, and the perspectives of those who possess the authority to interpret it. Nostalgia has a remarkable ability to edit history. It can transform hardship into evidence of character, restrictions into symbols of discipline, and the uncertainties of youth into memories of a supposedly simpler world. This does not mean that the past lacked virtues or that everything inherited from it deserves rejection. It means that remembering an experience fondly is not the same as understanding it critically. When earlier generations turn their experiences into universal standards for how others should live, they risk mistaking what was familiar to them for what was right for everyone.
Consider the restrictions historically placed on women’s education and professional opportunities. Such restrictions were often defended through appeals to family honour, social stability, or established gender roles. Within these arrangements, conformity could be interpreted as evidence that society was functioning properly. Yet the apparent stability of a social order tells us little about its fairness if its costs are disproportionately borne by those with the least power to challenge it. To understand the past, therefore, we must ask not only why certain practices endured, but also whose interests they served, whose opportunities they restricted, and whose experiences were excluded from the dominant narrative. What one generation accepts as normal may be precisely what another must question before meaningful change becomes possible.
The same principle applies to political history, where the judgements accepted by one generation may be challenged by those who come after it. Nelson Mandela spent decades imprisoned under South Africa’s apartheid system, which upheld racial segregation and denied the majority of the population equal political rights. His struggle challenged an established political order that its defenders presented as legitimate. In 1993, Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with F. W. de Klerk for their efforts to bring apartheid to an end and lay the foundations for a democratic South Africa. His life illustrates how principles once defended by those in power can eventually be judged against a broader understanding of justice and human dignity.
A similar question arises in the historical memory of Bhagat Singh, who was executed by British colonial authorities in 1931. Remembered in India as a revolutionary in the struggle for independence, Singh’s legacy demonstrates why historical figures cannot be understood solely through the descriptions assigned to them by the authorities they opposed. The language of power often reflects the interests of those who wield it; it does not necessarily settle the moral or historical significance of the people it condemns.
These examples demonstrate something more fundamental: power can determine which interpretation of an event dominates in its own time, but dominance is not the same as historical truth. This is why younger generations must be permitted to examine inherited accounts rather than merely memorise their conclusions. A society that teaches its children what to remember but discourages them from asking why it matters does not preserve history in its fullest sense. It preserves a version of history insulated from examination.
Every generation fears that the next is lost because it struggles to recognise meaning in a life organised around unfamiliar values. Those who found purpose in duty may struggle to understand those who seek it through individual choice; those who value independence may underestimate the security and belonging that inherited commitments can provide. Neither perspective is sufficient on its own. Experience can offer wisdom, but it can also produce assumptions that remain unexamined. Youth can challenge established beliefs, but the willingness to challenge them does not guarantee that every alternative will be better.
The past deserves neither blind admiration nor automatic rejection, just as the future deserves neither unquestioning celebration nor premature condemnation. Every generation inherits achievements worth preserving and assumptions worth questioning. Its responsibility is to distinguish between the two. The young may be mistaken about what they reject, just as the old may be mistaken about what they defend. But a society makes little progress when its generations spend their time accusing one another of losing their way. Progress begins when they become willing to understand what the other has experienced, what it has overlooked, and what it might still have to teach.
Perhaps the next generation is not always as lost as the previous one fears. It is searching for answers to questions its predecessors were never permitted to ask, or never had the opportunity to consider. The task is not to ensure that every generation lives as the one before it did, but to ensure that the freedom to live differently is accompanied by the wisdom to live thoughtfully.
Asma Khurshid, a published writer contributing to newspapers, magazines, and literary anthologies can be reached at mirasmaasma70@gmail.com
