12 ms·

Why are today's teens putting off driving, dating and drinking?

• alexnewman 9y ago
  America has fallen!
• vparikh 9y ago
  Because todays kids are coddled and have a 'safety net' of being able to stay home and not join 'adulthood'. I mean when I was a teen ager - my parents couldn't afford to support me. I had no way of staying home and riding it out. If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself. This allowed us to be a lot more free - we knew at worst we would be like our parents. Make ends meet and eck out a basic living. It wasn't too bad as everyone else was the same. So knowing that doing nothing - would result in being where we were - the only way out was to do something. Take a risk, go out and see what the world offers. Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all. The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids.
  • secfirstmd 9y ago
    I really dislike the whole "kids are coddled," "young people are soft" posts. I work and volunteer with young people all the time and most of them are awesome, wonderful people who are better, kinder and more intelligent people at their age than I was. Their pressures are totally different, there is no way I would swap my youth for theirs. -I grew up fairly free to roam around as a child, even as a teenager. Leave in the morning, come back when hungry or dark. Good luck being a parent doing that these days. -We spent most of our evenings all watching BBC and talking about what was on the news. We had no choice but to talk to adults and other kids about the world and they had no choice either (in a positive way). How many times do you meet parents these days who are present but not really present with their kids because they are on their phones? -Parents are cash rich but time poor. For many, even when they are home they are home they are working. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid but no way would I have preferred an ipad to spending an evening kicking a cheap soccer ball with my Dad. -When I grew up, if you did something stupid like puke when getting drunk as a teenager, only your classmates would know about it. Now, your whole life is like some kind of advert - your open to social media bullying and pressures 24/7 - that's absolutely horrible. -Parents and schools have replaced educated with homework. Literally kids are more screwed than ever with the amount of learning they are expected to do. -Sex education, especially in most parts of US and Ireland is a joke. I got part of mine in the UK at the age of 8 and it was a massive difference - contraception, STDs sex, etc etc, all you need to know. There are still schools I know these days who think sex education is a video of a nun talking bullshit about marriage. Kids are overwhelemed by online adverts, porn etc but society in many places still isn't willing to give them the tools they need to deal with it. -Casual first jobs that used to be easy to get as kids/teenagers have now become much harder to get. My first was working in a local shop. My next was the MIT Media Lab Europe when I was 15 - purely because I rang up and asked did they need a web master. They said yeah, why not? Do you know how much paperwork they would need to do to be able to do that these days?
  • SandersAK 9y ago
    Every 10 years someone posts this. The message it sends is this "I don't actually take time to understand the unique situation of being a kid in today's economy and culture. I do not acknowledge that the experience is rapidly changing. I am uncomfortable with this new world and would rather put the blame on kids being 'coddled' without any data to suggest this than confront my own lack of understanding."
    • eighthnate 9y ago
      Every previous generation thinks the current generation is coddled. When I was a kid, I had to walk through 10 miles of snow to get to school. "Snow day"? Schools are creating sissies I tell ya.
      • secfirstmd 9y ago
        Back in my day, my Mum used to listen to the internet on our house phone!
        • MarkPNeyer 9y ago
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
      • hackinthebochs 9y ago
        That doesn't make it not true. It's very possible (and seems likely to me) that each generation has been more coddled than the previous in recent memory.
        • slededit 9y ago
          In fact it's the default expectation with the rising standards of living. However that has started to stagnate for all but the upper middle class so the next decade should be quite interesting.
      • spookyuser 9y ago
  • bredren 9y ago
    > The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids. I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people? It wasn't just your situation with your parents. A lot of adults today grew up with Joe Camel and cartoon ads like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM There was no anti-bullying education. Actually, bullying was basically okay when I was in high school. No concept of diversity training for staff and administrators. I mean if things aren't as rough on teens as they used to be, why force them to suddenly grow up anyway? Don't they deal with a whole set of separate, new challenges adults never had? Baby boomers get to live much longer as adults thanks to recent medical advances. Why can't young people live their lives young for longer as well? If ycombinator is right about the coming future of basic income, then not only do these folks not have to become adults very early, they don't have to "eck" out a living either. Earning income isn't necessarily a sign of adulthood. I'm not saying people don't become adults ever, because this is already a problem. We all know adults that act like children. I'm saying why force them to deal with some of the primitive experiences you and many other folks have dealt with?
    • Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
      > The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids. And which kids? My children have classmates who are homeless, who can't afford field trip money, who actually do rely on the free school meals.
      • ams6110 9y ago
        Those kids have always been there. Had them in my school 40 years ago.
    • smileysteve 9y ago
      > I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people? Yes. The result of rubber playgrounds is surprisingly more serious injuries.
      • 9y ago
  • monknomo 9y ago
    When you were a kid, there were plenty of kids with the totems of success and comfortable lives. It's likely you didn't see them, because we sort by class. Presumably, you are doing better than when you were a teen, since you're on hn. That means the kids you see probably have pretty well off parents, with the cool new toys and stable homes. You can still find kids with marginal existences and few to no cool toys. I mean, what's the difference between a pair of Jordans circa '88 and an ipod circa now?
  • sp332 9y ago
    You know a lot of the current generation is going to end up worse off than their parents right? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-growing-up-poorer-than-their-parents-a-new-study-explains-why https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-...
    • usrusr 9y ago
      And the economic situation of our parents is the yardstick we all use for assessing our own capability of providing for an adequate upbringing. A mailman's son will likely feel more at ease starting a family when he is a mailman himself than a lawyers's son when his father was a partner in a successful firm while he himself is only on a lowly salaried career (yet far above that mailman). Sorry for the gender stereotypes, but they share too much with those mechanisms to be cut out. To make things worse, that yardstick is based on us seeing later stages of our parents' careers, while we apply it to. In times of widespread growth this does not make much difference, but in times of stagnation or worse it can be crushing. A part of the puzzle the article is marveling at might be current teens not feeling very much in a pipeline towards house and kids.
  • yorwba 9y ago
    Your explanation for fewer teens (but still the majority) learning to drive, dating, having sex or drinking is that they can easily afford everything on their parent's money? That strikes me as strangely backwards. If your parents provided you with a car, wouldn't you be more likely to learn to drive? If your parents gave you a generous allowance, wouldn't you have more dates, buy more drinks and as a result be more likely to have sex, rather than less? Personally, the reason I didn't have those classic "growing up" experiences is that I mostly don't think they will or should be part of my adult life. I don't expect to need to drive, I don't want to get drunk and I'm not interested in meaningless hookups. How most adults today grew up has little bearing on the way I want to live.
  • analog31 9y ago
    Oddly enough, the most successful people have always provided their kids with an extensive safety net, but for kids in the middle class and below, I suspect that the safety net is withering. Student debt might be one measure to look at -- there might be others.
  • heurist 9y ago
    Don't worry, kids today are still suffering. Children in America today have a 1 in 5 rate of living in poverty, roughly the same 40 years ago.
    • robocat 9y ago
      Probably because the definition of poverty always shifts to make the lowest x% in “poverty”...?
      • Retra 9y ago
        The definition of poverty shifts because the wealth required to survive shifts.
  • detaro 9y ago
    > If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself. What makes you think that's not the case for many kids today? Are you sure you are where the kids that don't have > iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. are, and that you notice the absence of this when you see them?
  • TuringNYC 9y ago
    >> Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all. I see the same thing happenning, but IMHO nothing has actually changed -- I have just been lucky, educated, and hard-working enough to have gone up several socio-economic tiers. What i'm seeing was likely the case even back when I was young, except on the other side of the tracks. Now i'm living on that other side.
  • nlknz88 9y ago
    Now you're thinking like the classist that the elites expect! It was only that way for most people because of economic status. The rich have been pandering to and pampering their kids for generations. None of them are kicked to the curb at 18 or told to mine, smelt and chop down the materials for their guitars. It's "adulthood" to you because that's what the adults that reared you apparently told you to do. Because that was THEIR experience too. Not because it is some requirement to join "adulthood". If the outcome is the same, the sense of being more free is an illusion, isn't it? You're just on the same old path, even though the buildings and faces look different.
  • watwut 9y ago
    Kids today also take less drugs and commit less violent crimes. Less drinking is nothing wrong either (plus schools treat drinking as grave offense instead of minor infraction it should be ). Responsible attitude towards sex (wait for partner you trust, do it only if you have proction) means less of it untill you have stable partner. With exception of driving, we have bundle of starts about kids being better behaved then previous generation. Meanwhile, previous generation complains, cause if you are not like them you are weak. There were always rich kids and poor kids. Rich kids always got gifts from parents and poor kids still don't get them.
• goodroot 9y ago
  It's disturbing that, at least in Chicago, there appears to systemic conditioning that's convinced people sex is dangerous and scary. > Among teenagers now, "there is a feeling you're getting of, 'Wow, the world is pretty serious, so why would I rush to immerse myself. . .Why don't I stay with my friends and away from anything that has heavy consequences, like pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases?'" Sex is joyful. If you have sex safely, there is a very low risk of consequences, let alone heavy or lasting ones. I felt that interconnectivity and 'bar-lowering' by applications like Tinder would increase the level of frivolous sexual activity, not decrease it. My inner hedonism-bot is disappointed.
  • cpr 9y ago
    Yes, sex can be joyful. But sex is not a play toy, even if you're an atheist. The physiology of sex creates very strong bonding, and arbitrarily creating and then breaking those bonds is usually quite damaging to the human psyche.
    • hkmurakami 9y ago
      I recently read Welcome to Your Brain, and the authors describe the neurochemical basis of those bond formations well, for those who might be interested.
      • ship_it 9y ago
        Whos the publisher? Seems like an interesting read.
  • sp332 9y ago
    According to https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-cu... Tinder is probably decreasing people's interpersonal skills which makes relationships less appealing.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• redleggedfrog 9y ago
  Good parenting? As a parent, I was proud that my sons waited to date, took public transportation or rode their bikes, don't drink cause they're not 21 yet, and decided to have sex at the perfectly reasonable age of 19. I did like how the end of the article mentioned how scary the world is today. They should try living through the Cold War, and the time of Crips and Bloods, and gas lines, and the housing crash. Now those were scary.
  • rconti 9y ago
    I liked how at the end of the article the mom classified behaviors as "all kinds of risky stuff that I can imagine would be age appropriate." Right. As if she was never that age :) Climate change seems like an odd thing to pick as a scary reason not to have sex or drink. Endless hysterical news stories about kids being abducted, maybe. It's hard to get too excited about kids delaying driving if they're ALSO not being allowed to go out on their own on transit or bicycles or whatever.
    • ehnto 9y ago
      I don't think it's the direct relationship of the news stories, but rather the general atmosphere of fear and dread. Where I remember being care free and adventurous as a teen, which translates into a less inhibited and more adventurous social life. I also didn't have hours of endless entertainment at my fingertips, just lame country town TV.
      • Cthulhu_ 9y ago
        But that atmosphere was also here during and after WW2 up to the late 80's (the cold war and impending global thermonuclear war), the 60's / 70's (Vietnam war and being drafted). And yet there was the sexual revolution during that era. I don't think it's global fear because I think that used to be worse.
        • ehnto 9y ago
          That is true, perhaps it's not much of a contributing factor. I also assumed teens were worried by the news but thinking about it more I wonder if they even watch it or if the same kind of news is in the newer media distribution.
• to_bpr 9y ago
  When one adds these markers of significantly decreased development or preparedness for adulthood with the increase in social isolation being reported, the levels of psychiatric issues such as ADHD and depression being observed, the relentless rate of youth suicides, the obesity epidemic and more... at what point can it be deemed a crisis?
  • QAPereo 9y ago
    The day that a profit can be turned, or political power gained as a result.
  • heurist 9y ago
    Took how many years for opioids to be considered a crisis? And that had immediately demonstrable, measurable impacts on society. America has a lot of resistance to improvement when it requires giving up any kind of freedom.
• Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
  Maybe the anomaly was the phase in the US when they did do these things so young?
  • protomyth 9y ago
    If you look at history, the anomaly is today. As one example, not working some job during your teenage years is a recent phenomena (at least the last 20 years maybe 30 years).
• pixl97 9y ago
  There are a pile of different answers to these questions (not question), ones that should be asked separately. For example, excluding factors that affect all the questions, putting off drinking is likely a combination of consumer education and the difficulty in getting alcohol pre-21. Fewer adults want to provide their younger peers alcohol because of legal risks. Driving is the combination of increasing expense to drive a car you own, mandatory insurance, services like uber, and the need not to travel that modern technology presents. Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant. But some of the largest ones are teens aren't getting out in the workforce at younger ages. This means less money to spend on sex, drugs, and rock and roll, along with different social implications for the people you do meet.
  • vowelless 9y ago
    My prior is like yours: There are likely different answers to the various points listed above. Regarding this one: > Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant. It's possible that the easy availability of porn has a lot more to do with this than just fear of pregnancy, which is probably why this is seen across the board (urban, rural, ethnicities, etc) and despite apps like Tinder.
    • pizzetta 9y ago
      I'd also lean towards your hypothesis since there are many, many contraceptive and anti-STD choices -more than used to be available to other gens.
      • ams6110 9y ago
        What? Condoms have been around for a long time. Nothing else is really very effective for STDs.
• reader5000 9y ago
  Internet and digital stimulation has displaced 'real life'.
  • protomyth 9y ago
    It will be interesting to see what VR does for this. I am kinda excited about AR because you need some reality to make it work, and Pokemon Go was probably a net positive. VR probably will win though for a net negative.
• eric_h 9y ago
  Slightly offtopic but that website jumped to 4.5GB of RAM by the time i was on the third paragraph (Safari on macOS). Perfectly legible (and memory friendly) in lynx, though!
  • rconti 9y ago
    Yup, one of the few sites that really gave my 6 year old macbook air troubles. Adblock counter was running up like crazy.
• tunesmith 9y ago
  In 1976, a great many seniors in high school could drink alcohol legally. Doesn't really detract from the article's point, but that bugged me.
• jsemrau 9y ago
  My take on it is the absence of role-models. In the 60's LSD and the Stones, the Doors, the Hippies In the 70's Hash and David Bowie, Disco, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Pink FLoyd In the 80's it was Coke and New Wave, Duran Duran, Punk In the 90's it was Alcohol and Metal, Ecstasy and Raves, Madonna's experimental phase encouraging women to test their limits. In the 00's there was Marilyn Manson, Nu Metal? But it's already getting fuzzy. What it is now ? Where are the big stars, i.e. drivers of youth culture. It's the Justin Bieber's and Taylor Swifts 'of this world that have a major impact on youth culture right now.
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    Nah, the late '00s and '10s was about EDM and the resurgence of raves, as well as Ecstasy and so forth. Mega-DJs like Skrillex, David Guetta, deadmau5, Avicii, etc.
    • jsemrau 9y ago
      But are these Mega DJ's cultural icons ? I like Skrillex's and deadmau5's music, but can they compare in cultural impact to a Freddy Mercury or John Lennon? Why am I not seeing the skillex t-shirts ?
      • Apocryphon 9y ago
        They were pretty massive in the late '00s, though perhaps more in the college set than younger kids. EDM is still big but not as culturally shifting as your Biebers, T-Swifts, Kanyes, or Lady Gagas, sure.
      • CalRobert 9y ago
        Maybe we're just less likely to have musical affinities when it's so easy to access a zillion different artists instead of what happens to be on the radio/in the record store. Could it be that the shirts you see around are for groups you don't know, and you don't recognize them? It was quite a while (somewhat embarrassed by this) until I realized that abstract mountainous shirt I see around is for Joy Division. Similarly, if I had City of Caterpillar shirt on I'd be surprised if anyone recognized it. More generally, there's a school of thought that the use of clothing as a signal of membership in a given group is becoming less necessary. One can discover who at their school likes punk through online means whereas before you might need to rely on who's wearing punk stuff.
• Jill_the_Pill 9y ago
  They're not smoking either. Those things are no longer cool badges of maturity, independence, or rebellion. Instead, they're getting piercings and tattoos, identifying as alternative genders, sexting, and claiming more flexible sexual orientations. Alarms the old folks just as effectively.
  • itbeho 9y ago
    Those kids and their damn rock and roll :)
  • otimepad222 9y ago
    :) "identifying as alternative gender" Given how many interesting, relevant, revealing studies made it onto the frontpage of HN, wondering why did the ongoing silent chemical and psychological war against most of humanity didn't made it into the list. Nobody is mentioning the "medification" of our food supply as one of the (possible) causes for that part. That evolving mixture of chemical weapons being purposely introduced into every part of our environment, its effects on pre-natal development in humans, havoc that some of the same chemicals are causing in nature. Do you think it's an accident that you won't find anything in your bathroom that does not contain SLS? (what was it, 5 days halflife? not bad for an endocrine disruptor used daily, absorbed through the skin, don't worry, they even add it into children's toothpaste, gotta love the FDA). How many mutilated children are being born because their mothers were exposed to those weapons? Have you seen the numbers? How would you explain those? Not to mention the targeted destruction of families, values, the fabric of human nature. Don't hipster folk watch TED videos anymore? Why are you not capable of making connections that would at least have a chance to make the world a better place? Is it some kind of mental block, a fallacy by association electrical wire knotted around your intellect with a buzzer held by some sociopath in an expensive suit? Modern-era mental slavery disguised behind "political correctness"? Humanity is being transformed. Books have been written about this for decades, even popular ones(Huxley & co). Lectures were given, well-meaning, manipulated idiots with doctorate degrees are publicly advocating a new human species. Hipster with a PhD, the perfect slave, the right soup of ideology and ego stimulation and he'd kill 100 million people for whatever "higher purpose" we convince him he is fighting for. Power never had it easier.
  • 9y ago
• tanilama 9y ago
  And what is wrong with that? Is this another blame piece article that teens or young people in general are less masculine and animalistic, and not as ambitious as their parental generations and need to toughen up? So fed up with this narrative, like they know what is good for the teens, what they experienced when they were young should be shrined as norm while the young people are the ones that screwed up by turning it down. No. The teens and young people are living in a world, the adults CREATED, and if someone to be blamed, it should be the adults. However that should not be the point, the world had moved on, people are living in very different time and space now, they ought to have different ways to live it, it is the adults like the author, who can't really take the fact, and blindly shouting the remains of good days.
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    That sort of "the kids aren't alright" sentiment of this piece is especially rich: "On the one hand, I know she's safe, she's not out getting pregnant or smoking pot or drinking or doing all kinds of risky stuff that I can imagine would be age appropriate,"she said. But Haskew wonders whether her daughter is missing out on life lessons those behaviors can teach. "Is that stuff necessary for human development, do you have to be risk-taking as a teenager in order to succeed as an adult?" So these articles and parents, after years if not decades of after school specials and anti-drug classroom crusades and rubber playgrounds and helicopter parenting and initiatives to make everything about childhood as safe and as convenient as possible, are now suddenly regretting their kids not experiencing teen pregnancies or youth drug abuse? After making the world a safer place- and a more scary place through relentless hysteria and moral panics- they now think their kids are too soft and coddled? Sponsor scouting organizations or summer camps or apprenticeship programs or study abroad if you think your kids aren't experiencing the real world enough. Don't romanticize the same risky behaviors that you lobbied to abolish in the first place.
• hashmap 9y ago
  Reduced exposure to lead probably has something to do with it. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/childhood-lead-exposure-causes-lot-more-just-rise-violent-crime/ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/childhood-lead... "This means that lead exposure is likely to be associated not just with violent crime, but with juvenile misbehavior, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other risky behaviors."
  • simplexion 9y ago
    Wow... that would have to be almost as good correlation as vaccines cause autism. I have a feeling it is more likely due to easier access to knowledge.
    • astura 9y ago
      Except it's well known that lead exposure during childhood can cause irreversible brain damage.
      • lawlessone 9y ago
        Probably a correlation of lead exposure to anti-vaccines views then. I noticed it's mostly a slightly older generation to my own that are anti-vaccine. People even older than that remember what its like to not have them.
• Uhhrrr 9y ago
  No one mentions video games? It seems like they really cut into both the desire and the time to do those things.
  • replicatorblog 9y ago
    Would suggest easily-available adult content might play a large role. Its existence blunts the hormonal challenges faced by young men. Cars used to be a way for young couples to find privacy away from parents/guardians a la "Animal House," but in a world with substitute goods that's no longer as strong a requirement. Lack of cars also makes it harder for large groups of teens to congregate, a la "Dazed and Confused" and reduces the peer pressure effects that lead many to drink and smoke.
  • analog31 9y ago
    Likewise homework. Anecdote: My kids have vastly more homework than I ever had.
    • ams6110 9y ago
      Mine seem to have far less.
  • D_Alex 9y ago
    I am SURE video games and, ahem, online activities are largely responsible for these trends. The amount of time spent on the computers/tablets/smartphones is staggering, and it has to come from somewhere.
  • sealthedeal 9y ago
    Video games have been around for far longer than these teens.
• c517402 9y ago
  This generation was raised eating and drinking from plastic and has a higher level of BPA in their blood than any previous generation. But, maybe that is just a non-causal correlation.
  • basicplus2 9y ago
    ..and the number of pirates..
  • sealthedeal 9y ago
    Hahahahaha
• Apocryphon 9y ago
  But America is shifting more toward the slower model, and the change is apparent across the socioeconomic spectrum, Twenge said. "Even in families whose parents didn't have a college education...families are smaller, and the idea that children need to be carefully nurtured has really sunk in." One wonders if there are extant societies that are worth comparing. Maybe American family structures are becoming more like those in East Asian or Western/Northern European societies. The greater emphasis on education for credentialism, leading to longer hours spent on schoolwork or college-app burnishing extracurriculars, sounds like it. Of course, the study claims the opposite ("noting that teens today spend fewer hours on homework and the same amount of time on extracurriculars as they did in the 1990s"), which seems at odds with the popular perception of high schoolers being slammed with AP courses.
• basicplus2 9y ago
  "Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious" Perhaps Not drinking and having less sex could be rebelling against your parents who drink too much and screw around... i am being Half serious
• laretluval 9y ago
  I suspect we're going in the direction of Japan, where half the population under 30 has never had sex and doesn't plan to.
• plandis 9y ago
  > "I haven't heard of anyone who goes out and specifically drinks with their friends," he said. "It's not something you set out to do, like, 'Oh yeah, I'm going to go out and get drunk.'" I think it's fascinating that the teenager interviewed equated drinking with binge drinking.
  • Zircom 9y ago
    What about that quote implies binge drinking? As far as I'm aware you can get drunk without "binging", and teenagers don't drink alcohol because they like good whiskey or appreciate fine wines, they drink to get drunk.
  • ams6110 9y ago
    I don't know about high schoolers but the college kids are still definitely getting black-out drunk with regularity.
• spectrum1234 9y ago
  I thought the article was great and am surprised by the comments here. This theory is obviously true and quite fascinating: According to an evolutionary psychology theory that a person's "life strategy" slows down or speeds up depending on his or her surroundings, exposure to a "harsh and unpredictable" environment leads to faster development, while a more resource-rich and secure environment has the opposite effect, the study said. For those who say this is no different than other generations you are wrong because of one variable: Work. Many middle class kids use to have to work and now they don't. This is HUGE and effects EVERYTHING.
  • pjc50 9y ago
    Can we distinguish between "have to work" versus "can't find work" at this distance?
    • thatfunkymunki 9y ago
      Agree 100%. I graduated high school a little while ago (2008) but was absolutely unable to find anywhere that would hire me as a high school student, even though I would have loved to have a job and have some spending money of my own.
  • soared 9y ago
    Another comment mentioned kids have to work more, you mentioned they work less. I couldn't find a good source either way, but still interesting.
• whipoodle 9y ago
  All of those things cost money.
• santaclaus 9y ago
  I'd be curious to hear how this trend compares across countries. Are teens in, say, England drinking less and having less sex than their American counterparts, or this an entirely American phenomenon?
  • aedron 9y ago
    Here in Scandinavia kids are definitely a lot more sheltered today than 30 years ago. We used to roam the streets in our free time when I was a kid, being out all day (without even mobile phones). I don't know of any parents today that would allow this. Drinking and smoking doesn't seem to have changed much though, only following the general trends of way less smoking and a little bit of stigma associated with alcohol. Actually weed might have become more common today than back then, cocaine definitely so, come to think of it. As far as sex is concerned, things are a bit less 'liberal' these days for lack of a better word, again following the general societal trend. The free-wheeling spirit of the 70s and 80s died down gradually, with AIDS and probably other factors.
• joezydeco 9y ago
  My cousin's son explained to me that they avoid risky behaviors because there's always someone with a smartphone ready to broadcast them on social media. And they're highly aware that there's no erasing it once it's out.
• spodek 9y ago
  I wonder what it's like to grow up in a world you know was trashed -- likely to have more plastic in the ocean than fish, wars over resources, hundreds of millions of people displaced from their homes, population decreases, etc... all consequences of past generations' carelessness. Maybe not all those things will happen, but some will. That has to factor into your world view and behavior.
  • Sophistifunk 9y ago
    Do you not remember the cold war? Shitty weather and floods of refugees sounds pretty sweet compared to nuclear armageddon.
  • andai 9y ago
    I thought you were talking about the present. It's only a mild exaggeration.
    • CalRobert 9y ago
      I think they were indeed talking about the present. Is it any exaggeration at all?
  • guyt00 9y ago
    The world is more prosperous and peaceful now than any time in human history. To be born now in a developed country (of which there are far more of than even ten or twenty years ago) is an incredible advantage compared to what the vast majority of humans ever experienced.
    • andai 9y ago
      I heard an interview with Warren Buffet yesterday where he said that the average person today has a better life than J.D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), who was in his time the richest man in the world. He also says that "the luckiest person in the world is the baby born today in this country [USA]." He's a tremendously optimistic fellow, still working as far as I can tell, and reading 5-6 hours a day at age 87. Highly recommend his interviews on talks.
• pacaro 9y ago
  I can't help wondering if teens working less is because so many of the jobs traditionally held by high school kids are now critical income for low income adults. As others have observed, not working has a knock on effect on other activities
• sealthedeal 9y ago
  Sounds like these kids are just a bunch of punannies
• grogenaut 9y ago
  Anecdotal but my son is afraid he'll hurt someone while he learns to drive. He's pretty empathetic. That and he doesn't have that much need to leave the house since he can talk to most of his friends more easily on the nets.
• smashingfiasco 9y ago
  Oh god, not Jean Twenge. People, please, please read the Strauss and Howe book (Generations), not Jean Twenge. She makes overly-cranky observations about generations (especially younger ones, like Millennials and Homelanders) without the context of the rest of generational theory. The things I have read from her before seem to show a very basic understanding of the topic of generations compared to others who came before her. I mean, Strauss and Howe wrote about (predicted, you might say) that the youth would clean itself up as this current cycle progressed by way of exacting Boomer expectations (in hypocritical contrast of the Boomer's own behavior during the late 60's and 70's). To anyone who has read the book, this is news article is probably coming as no surprise.
• Animats 9y ago
  "Teens spend a 'mind-boggling' 9 hours a day using media, report says."[1] That cuts into driving, dating, and drinking. Kids just aren't leaving the house as much, for any reason. They don't need to. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-screen-use-report/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-scre...
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• perpetualcrayon 9y ago
  When I was growing up, generally speaking, the total # of people you ever came into contact with were the people you physically came in contact with. With the internet, social media, etc. today's kids, socially, are probably equipped with the tools (if used properly) to become my generation's equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• addHocker 9y ago
  The values we usually selected for in sexual partners are becoming worthless Strength? Machines are stronger, manual labour is looked down upon. Endurance? ^ Agression? Drones and defense machinery make soldiers unnecessary. Intelligence, as it is in demand - aka is quite counterproductive when it comes to finding a partner.
• leke 9y ago
  Yeah, the internet will do that to you.
• Chiba-City 9y ago
  Driving and drinking in common forms are wastes of time or dangerous. Commutes specifically are now the #6 cause of full blown clinical depression. The easiest form of "helicopter parenting" was turning off TV's. Now YouTube lets parents turn of ads. Novelty status seeking, post-war PTSD and novel TV 1-way broadcast made drinking or driving seem attractive. I know parents who forbid gaming, TV fictions and even cheap factory franchise food wholesale. Their kids have time to do everything else live and in person. Not dating is a demographic phenomenon. I was born in '66 and none of us feared incurable diseases. The divorce rates are so high and peer-available literacy and even maximum attention spans so low many kids have no interest in family formation. Demographer predict 25% of unmarried Americans will never even marry. During WW2 26% of Italian women were nuns. Global TFR's are falling and Japan has been depopulating faster than their deflation for net wins. Japan and Britain are net importers of water (via foodstuffs). The instincts for not breeding are smart. Various Amish populations have been booming. People seeking larger families should consider organic farming careers.
• enord 9y ago
  Teens are living in an isolated socitety from us that can seem like a strange stasi-germany enforced through guilt. Expectations are set for them to perform in measures that are unrelated to personal growth and developement, and from a young age. Different parties observe them and intervene on almost any deviation from expectation. The path is narrowing. Underperform on a standardized school test, intervention. Spend too much time alone, intervention. Spend too much time online, intervention, admonishment. Test social boundaries and get in a fight, intervention, involve police. Can't spend all day in a poorly ventilated room, learning topics you never chose at a pace you can't control, without acting out; now you have to take pills. Skip class to try cigarettes, intervention and maybe CPS. Have you applied for college yet? You know you can't get a job without a degree. Apply yourself. Why are you falling behind? Apply yourself harder. Feel bad. You don't want to be flipping burgers do you? 4 more years without responsibilities, you'll remember them fondly. Unless you excel academically or possibly athletically you are given nothing to be proud of. Anything else is a concession given in pity and children are made to know it. We make them feel bad for everything they don't master, but we make them keep doing it and we push them along so they're always behind. The only way to get off the merry-go-round is to drop out and flip burgers, but lately that has become a failure. A failure of talent, ambition, skill and - worst of all - character. It's no wonder that tey are risk-averse.
  • brad0 9y ago
    I enjoyed reading this. Have you experienced this directly or noticed this as a third party?
    • enord 9y ago
      Some of it are my own frustrations from first or second hand experience. I'm just young enough that I was a teenager during the later years of the statistic (allthough I probably weighed against the trend except for the driving part). Yet I've had time to teach since I came of age, and talk to people. Most of it though is just empathic (pathetic maybe?) outrage towards what I perceive-- no, feel is a steady devaluation of diversity in people, children in particular. Diversity of experience, of interest, of priorities and values. Diversity of stories. The collective narrative we impose on children is that we're going to give them this great education, they're gonna have such great opportunities ('yuuge opportunities), and we're gonna make extra double sure that that it's the greatest education bestowed on any generation. We'll know it's the greatest education because we're going to test them relentlessly. And they will be grateful. They had better be grateful, and make something from this invaluable opportunity. I'm exaggerating (and sprinkled a little Trump in there) to make it more obviously self-serving, because we are not helping them grow, were growing them. And we're weeding the meadow of anyone and anything that doesn't fit the mold. And I need to get off my soapbox, because I'm rambling.
• amelius 9y ago
  The reason could be supernormal stimuli. If you can get a very good dopamine fix from video games, online pr0n and social apps, suddenly the real world isn't all that interesting anymore. These kids are basically addicts. And addicts are generally known to not behave as responsible adults. So that would explain why these kids don't "grow up".
  • UK-AL 9y ago
    The "Adults" are addicts to. They just relied on different things. Like alcohol instead.
• gadders 9y ago
  I have friends in my age group (mid-40s) that have never learnt to drive because "They don't need a car because they live in London." I don't live in the sea but I learnt to swim. Driving is a useful skill to have.
• albertTJames 9y ago
  So is it because the word is more treacherous or because the world is safer ? The logic is really poor, the author gives the impression he knows why the phenomenon is happening, but he keeps changing his arguments.
• lawlessone 9y ago
  I put off driving until i had money. Pretty simple.
• ohdrat 9y ago
  'Cuz they'd have to move out.
• Multicomp 9y ago
  I'm sorry, just downvote me but "I'm scare to be an adult because climate change"? Really??