I agree on this part. In comparison to Ma'am Leslie's generation, people now are more impatient and have a greater tendency to submit to instant gratification.

I absolutely agree and cannot add anything to your words.

These first paragraph struck a chord in me. I recently just reflected on a report a teacher of mine made me read, which was about the role of technology in education and how there is such a thing as passive use of technology and sadly that's the way how most people (even kids) use it nowadays.

I agree, even young parents tend to just give their kids a phone or tablet, or just turn on the TV for them to watch and not engage with them personally. I know this is sometimes necessary for them in order to wash some clothes or cook dinner, but its abused much more than that with the excuse for them to "have time for themselves". Perhaps they should've though about that before having kids.

And it's true. I agree that it does seem that way that our entire lives right now have been spent making money. In a developing country like the Philippines, most especially, and I can't fully blame people here why we choose to prioritize money over anything else the way we do. (We because my parents used to be dirt poor and grew up barely making ends meet and it was through their efforts my family got lifted out of poverty)

Poverty is pretty rampant here and most are considered "isang tayhop lang" (only needing one blow)-- a figure of speech referring to their financial vulnerability needing only one blow to send them to the streets.

I even have had students recently who couldn't catch up with the rest of the class because they were the sole breadwinners for their family/siblings and if they have to choose, they'd prioritize bringing food to the table over catching up with their lessons.

The mistake in misunderstanding is in me, I'm sorry I didn't express myself clearer. I meant that people tend to focus only on money. My opinion is that you only need enough money to meet your basic needs - food, rent, bills, credits, and if you're lucky enough a few bucks to spare for a vacation. Anything beyond that and accumulating tons of cash in the bank is just pure greed.

I can relate to the developing country and rampant poverty. Bulgaria is a very poor country, mainly due to the fact that for many years politicians tend to, I would say "take" instead of "steal", the money meant for the development of the country, thus leaving us at the same-ish state for many years. But those are factors way beyond of me and you and sadly no one single person can change that.

At times of election there are many stories told that people sell their votes for 20 or 50 levs (the currency heres, which equates to 10/25 euros). But there are difeerent factors that come into play for this. There is a large portion of the population of uneducated people (called gypsies) who separate and live in ghettos. Their main purpose in life is to have kids and make the country pay them for this. They have complete lack of interest in looking for work. Their main source of income is the money they get from the government for the kids they have, which they dont really look after,raise and educate, but even more than that they tend to teach them to steal anything they can get.
Which leaves us with alot of people who don't care what happens in the country as long as they get the money for their kids. This leads to a raising number of uneducated people who dont care what happens in the country, who runs the country, who comes into office. Which is really sad in my hones opinion, but until the herd of sheep wakes up and sees how things really are and starts thinking for themselves instead of just watching what is written on facebook as you said and shown on TV we would stay in the same state forever.