Last week, my seventeen-year-old daughter insisted I watch Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series, The Politician. She wanted to educate me about the tribulations of being a high school senior in the era of Instagram, mass shootings, and college admissions scandals. The first two opening scenes of the pilot exposed a yawning chasm between the analogue emotional world of my Generation X and the strategic, digital deployment of feelings demanded of today’s teenagers.

In the first scene, an older Harvard alumnus questions the aspiring matriculant, Payton (Ben Platt). The interviewer asks when Payton last cried. Flustered, Payton responds that he last cried at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. The interviewer dismisses his answer: “Everyone cries at the end of that movie. Did you cry because you were moved or because you felt like you were supposed to?”

Payton replies, “Does it matter?”