Plus the percentage of perverts on the streets and on the net seems to have increased. There have always been weirdo's, whatever the generation, but with less morals being taught to their children, because half of these parents are children themselves, Kids seem to be more at risk than they ever were, because half of them to seem to lack something very basic....common sense.

Now the cutting edge of technology when I was young was a Speak & Spell and the first Nintendo didn’t arrive in the shops until I was about 13. So we didn't have the luxury of console gaming, mobile phones that connect to the web and MP3 players.

Our source of entertainment was Kids TV, BMX bikes, rollerboots and Majorettes. The only people who owned mobile phones were rich people and we had VHS and Cassette tapes to record our favourite music and TV shows. We were fortunate enough to use PC's in IT class at senior school, but there was no internet connection.

When we interacted with our friends after school, we'd go and make dens in a tree in the nearest field (go back the next day to find the boys had trashed it - naturally that meant we retaliated by trashing theirs), go down the hills on sledges and ride our bikes round the cul de sac we lived in (in fact up until the age of 13 I got into trouble if I left the grove).

The only sex education we had at school was watching the intro to Look Who's Talking, yet most of us had the sense not to go out and have sex too early. (In fact watching the whole film put most of us off having kids)

It wasn’t "illegal" back then to discipline your kids. In fact, I believe that this is the root of today’s teenage problems. If a parent smacks their child now, Social Services are on their doorstep in the blink of an eye.

As a child who was disciplined with the belt and the slipper, I can honestly say it has never done me any harm (except for my nervous twitch....lol). I have always disagreed with the severity of my Mothers punishments as I didn’t feel they fitted the crimes, but never with her giving me a bloody good slap if I was being a little madam. I was taught right from wrong and to have respect for my elders. And it's made me all the stronger and the independent, confident and respectful person that I am today.

However, it seems youth culture has changed somewhat as I have got older. The kids are ruder, with very little respect for anyone, particularly themselves.

I'm not obviously saying that all kids are bad, far from it. But kids just aren't what they used to be. I know things change, the world evolves but whilst it seems technology is moving forwards, social etiquette it seems is moving backwards.

All too often I find myself saying things like "We never did things like that when we were kids" and it makes me feel old......or maybe I just am old....