The Offspring: Kids Aren't Alright Meaning

Kids Aren't Alright Lyrics

When we were young the future was so bright (whoa)
The old neighborhood was so alive (whoa)
And every kid on the whole damn street (whoa)
was gonna make it big and not be beat.

Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn (whoa)
The kids are...

1. 1TOP RATED

   #1 top rated interpretation:
   PFVera

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   May 24th 2008 !⃝

   To me this song is about promises and innocence of childhood in our society, and in the end when we grow up it turns out to be decayed and a false hope, and it gets the worst of people. And in this case it turned out to be people Dexter knew. or even in general it gets to people so bad that they result in the corruption of our worlds society. Or how their plans didn't go the way they planned and how they had were vein promises
2. anonymous

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   Sep 27th 2016 !⃝

   this song is about not the much of hope in these kids lives. they were told as children that everything was gonna be great, just like many of our parents tell us. this was not true these kids grew up in a bad hood and lived bad lives, with triggered rebilen, death, sucide, drugs and ect.... every thing was bad and ended up hurting the kids living in that life. then this comes back to the newer gen an we are worse and we grow up in a fallen apart socity
3. anonymous

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   Sep 15th 2014 !⃝

   The kids aren't alright; they all grew up to live in distraught, despite their hope that they'd end up in better conditions... A whole neighborhood, torn apart... Depressing, right? Well, it didn't actually happen -- I'm sad to say there's no secret special meaning.
4. anonymous

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   Aug 30th 2011 !⃝

   When you are young, the whole world appears as if it's your personal entertainment medium. You live for the moment, you have no plans, you seem invincible. Everything is great. Sure school is tough, relationships are difficult but the world it truly yours for the taking.
   You grow up, move away, lose touch and move on with your life. As you begin to reconnect with your old life you realize that not everyone had made it out "alive." Sometime quite literally. Peoples lives went South, people died, some have been divorced or their kids have already had children.
   What happened, where did the time go, where are those care-free kids from the block that ran wild late into those warm summer night?
   'the cruelest dream, reality...'
5. anonymous

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   Mar 27th 2011 !⃝

   To me the meaning of this song is about how we grow up with expectations of greatness and how we believe that everything we are told is true but then reality hits us and when we realize what life is like we go downhill.
6. anonymous

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   May 8th 2010 !⃝

   It's about some kids in a neighborhood street that were promised a great life and future but when they're all grown up, they're faced with reality, and they're so overtaken with depression and grief they go to the bad life with drugs and suicide.

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