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What surprises me is how politicised American teenagers have become nowadays. I'm a (European) Millenial, and when I was 14 neither I nor my peers had any faith

What surprises me is how politicised American teenagers have become nowadays. I'm a (European) Millenial, and when I was 14 neither I nor my peers had any faith or interest in politics. Have a look on Reddit, where most of the population is US-based teenagers: in that place politics has infected every single discussion. /r/The_Donald was a bunch of angry teenagers. Meh, I must have become a cynical grumpy old person: to me politics has always been a game for rich, old people.

bradlys 6y ago
It could be you were just checked out. I certainly paid quite a bit of attention during the Bush years. (When I was a teenager) I wouldn’t say many of my peers paid as much attention but I grew up in a very conservative and rural area.
- 1_player 6y ago
  I did pay attention during the Bush era as well, I remember buying my first newspaper when US invaded Afghanistan. The point is none of us had any faith in those old farts. We wanted change and none of the parties represented change, they actually were the status quo to fight against. Now it's like hope for a better, radically different world has just disappeared. It's with us or against us. There's no third choice.
- Karrot_Kream 6y ago
  I think it depends on how threatened you felt growing up. I grew up quite poor, and politics was a big part of my teenage years, because there weren't very many legitimate paths to stability or success where I grew up in the US. Friends I made as an adult who grew up in the more traditional upper-middle class milleu that make up Silicon Valley tech company rank-and-file were much more apolitical at that age.
csnover 6y ago
I mean, at least on the surface, things seemed pretty optimistic in the late 1980s through the 1990s, from what I remember. It wasn’t a utopia, but it’s easy to see how there would be less pressure for young people to be involved in politics. The Cold War ended and the USSR peacefully dissolved, democracy was ascendant, the Good Friday Agreement ended The Troubles, East and West Germany reunified, the Schengen Area and the Eurozone were established, the International Space Station opened an era of international cooperation in peaceful space exploration, life expectancy was up, disposable income was up, new and amazing technologies were developed at record pace, substantially improved treatments for fatal conditions like HIV and cancer were entering the market, we’d nearly cracked the human genome, we’d made great progress in eradicating infectious diseases, people around the world were being lifted out of poverty, crime was down, the Western economy was strong. The world seemed less divided and closer together than ever. Today, tensions between superpowers are up. Russia and North Korea have renewed the threat of nuclear armed conflict. The UK exited the EU. There’s an obesity crisis. Many of our amazing technologies have turned out to be terribly unhealthy and destabilising. Authoritarianism is on the rise, along with domestic and sectarian terrorism. The Western economy was shattered in 2008 and now there’s a global pandemic. Immigrants fleeing instability in other countries have led to political upheaval and conflict. The US became an unreliable ally. And, above all, the existential threat of climate change looms over their entire future.
- heartbeats 6y ago
  Maybe people just got bored? Maybe they don't like peace after all? > Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. > Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. -Orwell

bradlys 6y ago

It could be you were just checked out. I certainly paid quite a bit of attention during the Bush years. (When I was a teenager) I wouldn’t say many of my peers paid as much attention but I grew up in a very conservative and rural area.

1_player 6y ago
I did pay attention during the Bush era as well, I remember buying my first newspaper when US invaded Afghanistan. The point is none of us had any faith in those old farts. We wanted change and none of the parties represented change, they actually were the status quo to fight against. Now it's like hope for a better, radically different world has just disappeared. It's with us or against us. There's no third choice.
Karrot_Kream 6y ago
I think it depends on how threatened you felt growing up. I grew up quite poor, and politics was a big part of my teenage years, because there weren't very many legitimate paths to stability or success where I grew up in the US. Friends I made as an adult who grew up in the more traditional upper-middle class milleu that make up Silicon Valley tech company rank-and-file were much more apolitical at that age.

csnover 6y ago

I mean, at least on the surface, things seemed pretty optimistic in the late 1980s through the 1990s, from what I remember. It wasn’t a utopia, but it’s easy to see how there would be less pressure for young people to be involved in politics. The Cold War ended and the USSR peacefully dissolved, democracy was ascendant, the Good Friday Agreement ended The Troubles, East and West Germany reunified, the Schengen Area and the Eurozone were established, the International Space Station opened an era of international cooperation in peaceful space exploration, life expectancy was up, disposable income was up, new and amazing technologies were developed at record pace, substantially improved treatments for fatal conditions like HIV and cancer were entering the market, we’d nearly cracked the human genome, we’d made great progress in eradicating infectious diseases, people around the world were being lifted out of poverty, crime was down, the Western economy was strong. The world seemed less divided and closer together than ever. Today, tensions between superpowers are up. Russia and North Korea have renewed the threat of nuclear armed conflict. The UK exited the EU. There’s an obesity crisis. Many of our amazing technologies have turned out to be terribly unhealthy and destabilising. Authoritarianism is on the rise, along with domestic and sectarian terrorism. The Western economy was shattered in 2008 and now there’s a global pandemic. Immigrants fleeing instability in other countries have led to political upheaval and conflict. The US became an unreliable ally. And, above all, the existential threat of climate change looms over their entire future.

heartbeats 6y ago
Maybe people just got bored? Maybe they don't like peace after all? > Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all ‘progressive’ thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. > Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation ‘Greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is a good slogan, but at this moment ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ is a winner. -Orwell