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Did this trend start with social media? We are doing lots of stuff to teenagers these days that we didnt do before. They are beholden to expectations far narrow

• throwaway613834 9y ago
  > We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age Really? I feel like even in college students don't always feel like they are responsible for their own performance & grades (and an honest one at that). Look at all the cheating and grade inflation and grading complaints (even by parents!!) that have gone towards becoming the norm over the last decade or two in college. In the adult world it's not like your mom can call your boss and complain about the fact that you got a bad review or something (at least not successfully...). It's not like it always used to be like this in school either. Kids are honestly just not maturing into adults as they used to, whether it their own fault, or their parents', or social media's, or the government's, or anyone else's.
  • std_throwaway 9y ago
    > In the adult world it's not like your mom can call your boss and complain about the fact that you got a bad review or something (at least not successfully...). Don't be so sure about that. Parents are starting to talk to university professors on behalf of their adult children.
    • jghn 9y ago
      That was the point they were making
      • chongli 9y ago
        Yeah. At universities the parents are the customers so of course they're going to be the ones complaining. There's no risk of this happening at work because nobody is paying to be there. If your parent calls your boss they can threaten to fire you and there's nothing mom or dad can do about it.
        • jghn 9y ago
          I've heard a few stories of parents taking the same behavior to the workplace, but so far I've chosen to believe they're urban legend as I don't want to live in a world where those stories are true.
  • heymijo 9y ago
    Julie Lythcott-Haims was a former Stanford Dean responsible for incoming freshmen students. From that position she likely collected many more data points than any of us on this topic, which led her to write a book called How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success [0]. I have not read the book but heard her on a podcast a few years back. This article has some key points in it that address the comments in this thread [1]. Excerpt: "Working with the quote-unquote best and brightest, I was seeing more and more [students] who seemed less and less capable of doing the stuff of life. They were incredibly accomplished in the transcript and GPA sense but less with their own selves, evidenced by how frequently they communicated with a parent, texting multiple times a day, needing a parent to tell them what to do." [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OO2LJS2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00OO2LJS2&linkCode=as2&tag=inatiofwa-20&linkId=SDRCLBPFHNBICTUX https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OO2LJS2/ref=as_li_tl?ie... [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-murphy-jr/want-to-raise-successful_b_9431380.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-murphy-jr/want-to-raise-...?
    • agumonkey 9y ago
      I'll have to read this too, but I often think that the trend for society to push all kids into long studies delayed some internal adulthood passage. We're somehow kids up until 23 now, where as our parents were ready to roll around 16. And I think it has consequences for your development, your friendships, your potential family and also your actual one (people had kids a bit younger, meaning grand parents would be younger to take care of grand kids, a different family tissue)
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • MarsPoet 9y ago
    You forgot the part of the quote that agrees with what you're talking about: > yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties The problem pointed by GP is that kids are expected to behave responsibly at school (as if it were work), but parents are not giving them enough autonomy in life. Most of them never "become responsible", because they're taught from early age that they shouldn't (and that feeling is reinforced later, when parents call colleges, and the things you talk about). There's a lot of cognitive dissonance there.
• ifdefdebug 9y ago
  I think more dangerous than social media is the omnipresence of image recording devices. When I made a mistake as a teenager, people might laugh at me for a day or two, sooner or later it was forgotten. Today's teenager make a mistake and if they are unlucky, their shame gets immediately exposed to the whole world, forever. I think this has to contribute a lot to today's anxiousness of teenagers - who hasn't been caught yet, should feel in constant danger. I would be anxious about this if i was a teenager today. My kid is one and a half right now, in a few years I will have to explain him how important it is not to get taped doing stupid things...
  • filoeleven 9y ago
    Social media is part of the equation for exposing the recordings though. If someone posts an embarrassing video of you, it won’t really affect you unless/until it goes viral to the point that the people in your social group, in real life or online, are aware of it. Without image recording devices it would still be possible to share embarrassing text conversations and stories, but they don’t have the same shaming power as video. And without social media, embarrassing videos would mostly languish on some GeoCities backwater. It is the confluence of the two that creates the current situation.
  • nostromo95 9y ago
    Hopefully “don’t take pictures/videos of your peers/friends without their (implied) permission” becomes a more widely distributed social more for the next generation. Can’t believe it isn’t already.
    • YaxelPerez 9y ago
      Why would any teenager pass up the opportunity to post a video that will garner lots of attention?
      • sannee 9y ago
        Maybe because he/she isn't a dick? :)
  • 9y ago
• wslh 9y ago
  > Did this trend start with social media I don't think so. I think it started when there are more free stuff to consume than the time we have to cobsume it. In a way it is connected con consumerism but when the products are free.
• menacingly 9y ago
  This is a tough problem. I'm a parent, and the "do I meddle in this?" issue is probably what I think about most. With most tricky parenting issues, the answer is probably that you're on the right track if you're even thinking about it and asking the question
  • analog31 9y ago
    I'm a parent too. We get a lot of contradictory messages thrown at us. We're repeatedly told that we shouldn't over-parent, but is that just a middle class myth? Rich parents meddle extensively, not just in school, but in their kids' personal lives and careers, well into adulthood. We can't afford to follow middle class myths any more, because the middle class is vanishing.
    • leetcrew 9y ago
      i think it depends on what you mean by "meddle". you can find helicopter parents in all walks of life (although near the bottom end you may find that some parents simply dont have the time to be this overbearing), but there are good and bad ways to be involved. bad: johnny complains that he got a 'C' on his freshman writing seminar term paper, so you go to the professor to argue his case for him. johnny is stressed out because he is finding it hard to concentrate on school and find an apartment for next semester at the same time, so you take over the apartment hunt for him. good: johnny needs to find a job, so you capitalize on your extensive network of successful friends and colleagues to put him in contact with people who might give him an interview. once he gets the interview, it's on him to prove his worth. or, johnny just transferred to a new school and his transfer credits are not immediately accepted so he cant register for any useful classes that semester. the counseling people tell him it will take a few weeks to evaluate his transcript and registration will be closed by then, so he may as well give up and start planning for next semester. luckily you happen to know the dean, and the process is expedited so johnny can actually make some progress that semester. the key is to distinguish between important challenges that the kid can figure out themselves (with some work) and structural obstacles that are simply insurmountable without the application parent's resources/experience. helping excessively with the first will result in you raising a manchild. helping with the second can actually give your kid a time advantage over their peers that doesn't hamstring their development.
• qball 9y ago
  >We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age, yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties. It's inflation, pure and simple. (Alternately, any forced work without reward is called "slavery", and since it's [biologically speaking] totally fine to make slaves of the disenfranchised, that's why we're OK with doing it to children and low-status adults.) You can't afford autonomy until you're in your mid-twenties even if you actually want it; good jobs for high school students stopped being a thing coincident with the decline of North American manufacturing (both the US and Canada have this problem; Europe's solution is to make everything free but this doesn't solve the motivation problem). So one of two things have to happen. Either the education bubble gets popped by some external force (maybe you have to justify spending on a degree to get a loan, or we just ban employers from asking about certifications other than 'has completed Grade 10' unless the job actually requires specialized training, or we start training individuals for trade work much earlier than we do now), or the economy undergoes a rapid expansion (typically a war). Either of those things will go a long way to fixing society's social media problem: once you have a shortage of manpower, the power of society/employers shrinks and stupid videos captured of you have much less an effect when you are less replaceable. Social authoritarianism always coincides with economic decline- you don't get to infantilize an adult and assume it'll have no effect on their children.
  • enord 9y ago
    More trade work, war, education crash, hiring reform... All good means, but what is the end? Lower unemployment? I'll take it, but I'm talking about something slightly different: Happy children (and people in general). If people are thriving they will be more productive, more receptive and more motivated. This is not controversial and by now well established in business practice, but it's pretty far down the list of what we endow our children and students. Of course the dean will say all these things, but they're platitudes and the money says otherwise. It's just not a priority.