In a rare moment of unanimous agreement, all five of the ladies on ABC’s “The View” agreed Tuesday that participation trophies cause problems.
Whoopi Goldberg began the segment by talking about suicide rates among millennials and even the younger generation, addressing the impact that social media has had on self-esteem and depression rates.
“This is different because we’ve also given millennials a bad beginning because we told them they never had to worry about winning, that everything they did was perfect,” she said. “And now when you grow up and you discover that maybe you do have to work a little harder than we sort of told you —”
“That everybody doesn’t get a trophy,” Sunny Hostin cut in.
“That everybody doesn’t get a trophy. I think it’s traumatic for people who have been told, no, no, everybody gets — it’s all — you are the center of the universe, and then you wake up and there’s a whole bunch of centers,” Goldberg added. “Everybody’s a center, you know, so I think that’s — I think that has a lot to do with it because if you set children up with unrealistic expectations, how are they supposed to survive this?”
“Three generations ago stormed the beaches of Normandy and it’s really weird to go from that to, like, social media is impacting your life to such a degree,” Meghan McCain added. “I agree that we’re just setting people up to fail, setting kids up to fail in every way and this is a culture war conversation that we’re having right now and I think it’s very interesting that all of us seem to be in agreement.” (RELATED: ‘I Hate Him’: Meghan McCain Unloads On Rand Paul Over Whistleblower)
Joy Behar argued that part of the problem was that everything was “too much about looks,” saying that each kid had something different to add to the conversation. “I was the funny kid,” she explained.
“I caught a lot of flack, even on this show, with my kids because I didn’t believe that everybody should get a trophy,” Sunny Hostin weighed in. “If you lose, you lose, so I tend to be kind of competitive and I would tell my kids, like, you know, you lost, like, you didn’t get a trophy, but a lot of parents do believe that everybody should get a trophy and I don’t believe it — if you lose, you lose.”