Kids’ sense of humor today is troubling
Among the many remarks Gov. Ned Lamont made in his State of the State Address earlier this month, this one hit hardest: “Our culture is unleashing more extreme behavior, be it expressions of racism and hate speech, increased domestic abuse and fentanyl overdoses, with a sad surge in mental health calls starting younger and younger.”
Gov. Lamont noted how many people feel “deeply alone,” thanks in large measure to social media, which has kids “tuning out each other, tuning out learning, and tuning into unfiltered images which can be fun or disturbing.”
As a high school English teacher in his 33rd year, I can personally attest to the harmful effects of social media and cellphones on students. I’m no Luddite; I understand the benefits of digital tools. But in the Faustian bargain that comes with every new technology, evil is winning in this case.
I’ve seen this phenomenon play out in multiple ways – distraction, bullying, addiction – but there’s one more effect on teenagers that slips under the radar: humor. That is, kids today have a very different sense of humor, which I find curious – and troubling.
In class, I often use humorous videos to supplement lessons. One recent media-literacy lesson featured a clip from a 1987 Saturday Night Live quiz-show skit in which contestants were rewarded for wrong answers – an unwitting prediction of our current “post-factual world.” Nobody in class laughed.
As one student explained, teens today look for humor in “out-of-pocket” content such as short Tiktok videos. Dictionary. com defines out-of-pocket as “a person acting out of character or acting in a way that is wildly inappropriate” such as “a birthday clown who is being mean to children and using offensive language.”
Apparently, parody is passé. Even as Saturday Night Live enjoys a 49th consecutive season, the satire on which it thrives is harder to distinguish from the reality of 2024. Indeed, does James Austin Johnson’s mocking impersonation of Donald Trump truly differ that much from the way Trump presents himself every day?
Chalk it up to “Poe’s Law,” the dictum explaining how “satirical expressions of extremism online are hard to distinguish from genuine ones without indicating intent.”
Kids, therefore, have little interest in satirical humor that reminds them of the broken adult world. They would rather escape into momentary, out-of-pocket comedy. I don’t blame them. But I think it signals a bigger problem.
The recent passing of two iconic humorists – Tommy Smothers and Normal Lear – reminds us of comedy’s vital role as a form of social commentary. People of a certain age might remember the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the late ’60s addressing the Vietnam War or civil rights. I was a bit young to fully understand the Smothers Brothers’ humor, but a few years later, I did understand Normal Lear’s television comedies, particularly “All in the Family” with Archie Bunker, a parody of a working-class bigot. Lear, a former Hartford resident, followed “All in the Family” with a litany of additional shows that used humor to broach difficult issues.
“What most of the shows shared was a bare-bones, staged-play look and a desire to mine comedy out of tough, real-world issues,” explains TV critic Robert Bianco. “The Bunkers fought over race, dress, politics and everything else. Maude had an abortion. Archie hated Black people; George Jefferson hated white people. And Florida’s family [of ‘Good Times’] lived in a Chicago housing project, one of the few times a TV comedy has ever tried to address the problems of the urban poor.”
Some of today’s shows address these issues, of course, but the message is now fragmented as the confined platform of three TV networks has transformed into an expansive one of streaming and social media. Consequently, humor is losing its bite, and many of society’s issues have morphed into antagonistic shouting matches online. Indeed, a former president now uses social media to chastise anyone who makes fun of him. By contrast, a former president from a different era – Lyndon Baines Johnson – once sent this unpretentious message to the Smothers Brothers:
“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”
I fear today we’re steering kids in that very direction.