I detest the type of person who is my age – mid-50s – and forever sneering at young folk. They forget we were once young – albeit in the last century, a phrase which makes me feel like the Biblical Methuselah – and they also mistake age (their own) for wisdom and grace.

It’s often the young, to their credit, with the audacity – admittedly, borne from naivety – to point and say the emperor has no clothes. I do, though, increasingly find myself cocking an eyebrow at the lack of hinterland among GenZ in particular. I don’t put this down to any lack of collective intellect. Rather, GenZ has been hobbled by the society we, their elders, created. Somewhere along the line we gave up valuing books and debate – and even intelligent conversation – and decided that the smartphone was our god.

GenZ isn’t stupid. It’s a very clever generation, given the limited world it inhabits. The great irony of the modern age is that in an era where all information is available, very little real information – knowledge, facts, analysis – is consumed. Evidently, if you put me in a sweetshop and ask me to eat avocados, you’ll be disappointed – and my teeth will rot. Why should our children be any different when it comes to consuming information?

This may explain a troubling moment in a conversation I had last week with the left-wing writer and Labour thinker Pauline Bryan. She was discussing the challenges facing Andy Burnham as he becomes Prime Minister. Burnham has promised to address the failings of 40 years of neoliberalism – in other words, Thatcherism.

Bryan told me she’s often shocked when she hears “younger people say ‘why do you keep talking about........

© Herald Scotland