I swear . . .
The Sacramento Bee has a story about teens and swearing, Watch Your Mouth. Studies show that teens actually do swear more today, so I don’t feel like such a grumpy old guy who walked uphill to school both ways. My impression is that the biggest difference is that more teens are willing to swear in front of adults (and vice versa) than in the past. I also think that more adults are not willing to say something to teens when they swear. My experience is that teens will watch their language when appropriate boundaries are set.
I think it’s not only teens, but a general decline in social graces and acceptability of inappropriate language across the board, and I don’t like it. Back in the day, your friends would never think of using bad language in front of someone older than them, a possible parent, and now they could care less if it’s an older person, female, child, whatever. And that’s a shame.