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The comment you replied to was an attempt (IMO a fairly successful one) to go one "why?" deeper on the question. It takes as a given the article's point that t

The comment you replied to was an attempt (IMO a fairly successful one) to go one "why?" deeper on the question. It takes as a given the article's point that the proximate cause of the issue is phone / social media centrism (IMO this is also right), but then it asks why? Why is youth culture so centered on devices and social media? It wasn't phones or the contemporary version of social media for me (missed that by just under five years), but I already felt this when I was an adolescent. For me it was the late-90s wave of internet-connected video games, and the forums about the ones I played - absolutely a form of social media. And I very much relate to, "well what else would I be doing?". Everything else I could do required a parent to do it with me, and while they spent a huge amount of their time on involvement in fruitful things for me to do, in the form of things like sports and organized group activities (boy scouts, etc.), they also very reasonably had their own lives and couldn't just chaperone their kids all night every night and all day every weekend day. And then, what in the world else was I going to do? Where could I go to just hang out with friends, when I was 13, and what could we do on our own? Nowhere and nothing. My impression is that this has only gotten worse. The respite from this was college, and I'm convinced this is why pretty much everyone fortunate enough to go to a residential college looks back on it very fondly. Colleges have everything their students need, within short walks, and like an infinite number of places for young people to just independently hang out with each other, without having to pay for anything. It's such a revelation! But you do that for just a few years, and then you discover that it only worked because it was absurdly subsidized, either by someone else - parents, taxpayers, wealthy scholarship / grant funders - or by your own future earnings. And out in the real world, all the gathering spaces - bars, coffee shops, restaurants - suddenly become impractically expensive, and all the distances between people become impractically large.

mixdup 3y ago
>It takes as a given the article's point that the proximate cause of the issue is phone / social media centrism (IMO this is also right), but then it asks why? Why is youth culture so centered on devices and social media? Do places in the US and other countries with good public transit or are walkable like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc somehow not have any of the problems the article is referring to? I kind of doubt it There's plenty wrong with how car dependent we are in most of the US but it's both not new to the latest generation and not uniform across the entire country yet there IS something that is uniform across the entire country AND new for this generation. Spoiler alert: it's not suburban sprawl.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  For what it's worth, I'd love to know the answer to this. But I'm not as doubtful as you are, based on the (few) kids I know who do live in more walkable areas where they can see their friends in person without requiring an adult. But your last paragraph seems to be once again missing the "takes as a given ... that the proximate cause of the issue is phone / social media centrism" part. Nobody in this thread has argued against that problem.
nradov 3y ago
Well I don't know about that. I was very fortunate to be able to attend a residential college paid for through a mix of parents, scholarships, loans, and part-time jobs. Even at the time I was never under any illusions about how the funding model worked. I didn't have to "discover" anything. Having a bunch of friends within walking distance was nice, but I certainly wouldn't want to return to that lifestyle even if it was free. It was ultimately very limiting and insular.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Well, I think single family home suburb-style neighborhoods are even more insular, but I do think this is a good criticism of the residential campus model. I guess I think the common immediately post-college model of moving to a small apartment in a dense city with a mix of people smushed together is a better way to get out of a bubble. But I wish it was more common to go back to more like the campus model for family-raising, with kids of all ages around each other with lots of common spaces they can walk and bike to, with shared lighter touch supervision by all the adults. But I recognize that this is largely just utopian wishful thinking :)

mixdup 3y ago

>It takes as a given the article's point that the proximate cause of the issue is phone / social media centrism (IMO this is also right), but then it asks why? Why is youth culture so centered on devices and social media? Do places in the US and other countries with good public transit or are walkable like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc somehow not have any of the problems the article is referring to? I kind of doubt it There's plenty wrong with how car dependent we are in most of the US but it's both not new to the latest generation and not uniform across the entire country yet there IS something that is uniform across the entire country AND new for this generation. Spoiler alert: it's not suburban sprawl.

sanderjd 3y ago
For what it's worth, I'd love to know the answer to this. But I'm not as doubtful as you are, based on the (few) kids I know who do live in more walkable areas where they can see their friends in person without requiring an adult. But your last paragraph seems to be once again missing the "takes as a given ... that the proximate cause of the issue is phone / social media centrism" part. Nobody in this thread has argued against that problem.

nradov 3y ago

Well I don't know about that. I was very fortunate to be able to attend a residential college paid for through a mix of parents, scholarships, loans, and part-time jobs. Even at the time I was never under any illusions about how the funding model worked. I didn't have to "discover" anything. Having a bunch of friends within walking distance was nice, but I certainly wouldn't want to return to that lifestyle even if it was free. It was ultimately very limiting and insular.

sanderjd 3y ago
Well, I think single family home suburb-style neighborhoods are even more insular, but I do think this is a good criticism of the residential campus model. I guess I think the common immediately post-college model of moving to a small apartment in a dense city with a mix of people smushed together is a better way to get out of a bubble. But I wish it was more common to go back to more like the campus model for family-raising, with kids of all ages around each other with lots of common spaces they can walk and bike to, with shared lighter touch supervision by all the adults. But I recognize that this is largely just utopian wishful thinking :)