Besides social media ruining kids’ childhoods and crucial development skills, millennials and their parenting skills is another thing that makes Gen-Alpha teens depressed. 

1. Mom-Hacks: are when people make 5-minute crafts like videos and TikToks for the purpose of making parenting easier, which on paper doesn’t sound bad, but the way some of these moms execute these actions is questionable at the least. For example, on one TikTok, a mother shows a hack for when their child is bored in the car, she puts a phone in a Ziploc bag and puts it in the back of the passenger’s chair in case they get bored. Parents could just let their kids be bored in the car because that’s not going to hurt them. In fact, being bored teaching them to not have to be engaged by a piece of technology every single moment of their day, will actually benefit them in the long run, because as a kid I grew up without an iPhone or an iPad in the car and I turned out just fine and so did the rest of humanity. So stop feeding into their addiction so early on in their lives, and again like I said, just let them look out the window!
2. Beige Aesthetic: There’s this woman on TikTok who had her husband build a swing set for her kids in her backyard because she doesn’t like the colored swing sets that you buy in-bulk stores or online. She is happy that there’s absolutely no color, no green slides or yellow swings, just plain beige-colored, the way that she likes it. And I find it amusing how in the caption of this video she says, “It blends in with my aesthetic and this makes me happy.” Oh, I wasn’t aware that you were the child. You built this swing set for yourself, despite the fact that you aren’t going to be using it anywhere near as much as the kids are, even though the swing set was built for them, they were still the second thought because the aesthetic came first. People discussed this at length, but color is incredibly important for a child’s cognitive development and their overall emotional well-being as they grow up. It’s just not stimulating enough for their growing brains to constantly be surrounded by these neutral beige tones. You just have to remove the color, one toy at a time.
3. Content Creators: I’m also tired of millennial mothers posting their children online in order to make money, because this 7-year-old apparently said, “When someone tells me I’m going to age fast because I have a skincare routine at 7 years old!” What disturbs me the most is how this child is using an audio that is said by Sarah Lynn from BoJack Horseman, who in case you haven’t watched the show, was a child actress that eventually grew into a reckless troubled pop star as an adult, that eventually passes away because of an accidental heroin overdose. Why would you as a mother pick that audio out for your child? A child should NOT be using audio like that. And the reason that disturbed me was because of the video that was posted as a follow up that said, “Me tryna convince my kid to be a content creator so i can retire @ 30.” You shouldn’t be using your literal child as a way to earn money so that you don’t have to work and so that you can sit back and relax while your kid earns the money for you. Why is the world normalizing this?
4. iPads to Parent Children: On one TikTok that stated, “When people judge you for having an iPad kid but they don’t see what happens if you don’t bring the iPad along.” Which is? Genuinely what happens? What’s going on, because to me, it looks like she’s just sitting there calmly, playing with gloves, using her imagination to entertain herself like kids do, and having quiet-fun that isn’t causing any damage. I say she’s fine without the iPad. I think many parents just WANT to give her the iPad over the smallest inconvenience imaginable because that’s just what you’re used to doing. Stop letting the iPads parent your children. You are the parent, so you parent the children. And if she was being annoying, use your words and don’t just immediately throw an iPad at her.
5. Playing Favorites: On one TikTok, a mother talks about how one of her sons doesn’t like sourdough and the other son loves sourdough. And then she said, “I know you can’t favorite your kids but…” How does your child not wanting sourdough bread knock them off of “The Golden Child pedestal” that you created? He can’t control that he doesn’t particularly enjoy sourdough! When my mom makes rice on Sundays for dinner, she would ask me if I wanted sauce with my meal, and I sometimes don’t like sauce on my food because I have preferences. But my siblings love their food covered in a river of sauce. Does that mean my mom hates me and thinks that my siblings are better than me and then creates a hierarchy in the household based on what kids like sauce or not? Absolutely not! She literally never cared in the slightest because you can’t control what food people are going to enjoy or not!
6. Not Parenting: I remember when I watched an Inside Edition video where a kid screamed for 8 hours on a plane and it seemed like the parent didn’t do anything about it. Yes, screaming kids are a normal part of life, but does that mean that you just get to sit there with the most smug look on your face and continue to let your kid cry without trying to do anything about it?  NO! Do mothers deserve to travel? Absolutely, they do!  But there are also several other people on that plane who paid for a ticket to be there just like they did, and they didn’t sign up to listen to a crying screaming kid the entire journey just because they didn’t want to take care of it. Don’t expect the world to accommodate you when you’re not even attempting to try and accommodate anybody else, hypocrites! Another example of a lack of parenting from many millennials shared online was a mother giving her kids Starbucks for breakfast. This has been happening for 34 days! But they’re clearly old enough to make their own breakfast in the morning. That is not society’s standards. I don’t know what society you live in, but that is solely on you for raising them to expect this every single morning. Trust me, they’re going to be just fine without their daily unicorn frappe at 7:30 in the morning. 
7. Fake Holidays: There’s a woman who cut a cake in half, brought a bucket that says “Happy Birthday” on the front that includes several cookies that also say “Happy Birthday” on the individual packets, then she puts an assorted bouquet on the table and three candles to have her daughter blow the candles with the title saying “POV: It’s your daughter half-birthday.” What on Earth is a half birthday? Has anybody heard of that holiday? Is it celebrating the day before their actual birthday or is it celebrating exactly halfway through the year when it’s just six months away? The latter seems to be the most commonly accepted. I’m extremely confused about this. Stop introducing new holidays that are not only highly unnecessary but make absolutely no sense in the slightest just because you are bored!

Anyways in conclusion, I’m not even a parent, I should not be telling these parents how to parent or not do gentle parenting which is just as worse than original millennial parenting. Millennial parenting comes with new territory that previous generations never had to experience before but some trends need to go.