11 ms·

This is not a new trend: https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-declining/ https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-d...

This is not a new trend: https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-declining/ https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-d... Alcohol and other drug use, teen pregnancy, and sex in general have been declining in teens in the West for more than a decade.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
[flagged]
- standardUser 2y ago
  > I'd rather deal with a teen pregnancy epidemic than the current situation of rising authoritarianism, isolationism, and reactionary turn that we are seeing from the youth of today. You mean the male youth of today.
  - NemoNobody 2y ago
    Ok, I understand your point but let's be real for a minute and just acknowledge that the worse situation that you can get. I'd rather hear about how what is happening with young men today was happening with young women than men - not that that would be better but it would be less dangerous. Young men that are disenfranchised from their society and have little to live for are a primary metric political scientists use to measure the stability of country. Historically speaking, once a society gets too many men like that, the society ends. This isn't a battle of the sexes and women do not win bc of what has happened with men.
    - standardUser 2y ago
      Historically speaking, we have never seen a society where women have more education, wealth and status than men. This is uncharted territory. Not that I don't fear the repercussions of having the bottom 50% of men desperate and disenfranchised. But those bottom 50% of men don't guarantee societal collapse because they're not then ones propping it up, women are. The question might be, what will women and higher status men do about the problems caused by the bottom half men?
      - kwere 2y ago
        record amount of women are set to be single and childless past the fertility window, the most reasonable cause is a "lack of eligible bachelors"[0] in similar or better socioeconomic conditions. Record amounts of people will never reproduce creating a deep demographic imbalance, bankrupting most social programs. [0]https://www.medicaldaily.com/egg-freezing-rises-among-graduate-women-lack-eligible-bachelors-blame-not-419896 https://www.medicaldaily.com/egg-freezing-rises-among-gradua...
        standardUser 2y ago
        Sure, and that's not ideal for women, but it's also not stopping their dramatic rise in education, wealth and status. As for bankrupting the social safety net, that's a real concern, but it's not unavoidable. We've already seen into the future in places like East Asia and Western Europe. We've got a ways to go in the US before our fertility rates match theirs, and they're still holding the line. Plus, it's a problem that America is uniquely prepared to handle as a nation of immigrants. Once the hardcore nativist movement has finishing blowing its wad.
      - consteval 2y ago
        From my perspective as an outsider looking in (that meaning, I have no horse in heterosexual dynamics), the problem is we've had no progressive movements for men. At best, men have gotten whatever crumbs have fallen through the proverbial car seat crack of the vehicle of feminism. Largely there's only a few different ways to be a successful man. Even small deviations from the norm are met with ruler whips - and I don't just mean from other men. Modern women are incredibly cruel in the way they view non-conforming men. These limitations used to be superpowers. If you could perform an adequate display of masculinity, you were granted the world. This is no longer the case, which is a good thing. But the expectation still exists and is still enforced with an iron-fist, just without the riches. I mean, most heterosexual men I've met wouldn't even dare of so much as painting their nails. Let alone opening up their mind. How can we expect these people to follow along with the train of progressivism when none of it is for them? How can we expect them to leave gender roles behind when they know, and understand, there is only failure and heartache for them if they leave theirs's behind?
  - kwere 2y ago
    Authoritarianism is present in a lot of postmodern "leftist" movements that captivate younger women votes. it's justified with "fig leaves" reasons like curtailing free speech to contain hate speech, limiting liberties in the name of safety, Coercing personal behavior for greater causes like climate change, giving privileges to certain groups in the name of "penitence to ancestral sins", etc.... Isolationism is an issue that is hurting women too, way less than males as women tend to have stronger social networks While at scale there isnt a trend of Reactionism, it looks that there is a greater political polarization and advocacy that compared to past generations hinders relations between ideologically different/incompatible groups
    - standardUser 2y ago
      Ignoring the more irritating leftists for a moment, most of the left is grappling with finding solutions to real problems. It's not "fuck you, change your life to stop global warming". It's "oh shit, we need to stop global warming and dramatic actions are needed. What do we do?". They are questions in need of answers, and no one is going to like all of the answers. No one ever does. Some answers may be authoritarian, but it's not a desire for authoritarianism driving these ideologies, it's a desire for solutions and too many people have a blind eye to the consequences of their proposed solutions. Maybe that's too forgiving of a take, but I think you're take is too accusatory. The right just openly supports authoritarianism for authoritarianism's sake.
- tpm 2y ago
  It would be wrong to ascribe this to the politics, it's the change in the physical and social reality that enabled this situation, off which some politicians are feeding their movements. Young men might not be as socially adept, which matters more now than it did before. And that creates a lot of undesirable side effects. But politics didn't create this situation.
  - DrPimienta 2y ago
    Politics had a large part in creating this situation. Women have made up the majority of college graduates for about half a century now. And yet we still hear that we need more women in college, and in fact there are far more times as many college scholarships for women as for men. Not to mention that women make up the majority of government benefit recipients, and piles of other examples. This entire time, politicians have made lots of gains from supporting women. Where is the support for men?
    - tpm 2y ago
      You are talking about American politics, meanwhile this is happenning all over the world, in some countries much sooner and faster than in the US.
      - DrPimienta 2y ago
        Yes, the same cancerous ideologies are spreading quickly to the rest of the world.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      >Where is the support for men? Where are the men willing to put in the hard work it takes to build man-positive spaces that talk about difficult subjects with men, and guide them through growing up into caring people? Instead, it seems like men just want the world to go back to the way it was, and they would rather women suffer than they have to put in the leg work required to build a fair and just society. That's what this horseshit is about. Millions of men are facing a small amount of pain adjusting to a world where you aren't default accepted based on having a penis, and their first response is "No, time to oppress women again". Women faced all sorts of pushback for decades for wanting to be more than baby making machines. They literally still are, with one presidential candidate and his friends openly hostile to independent and self-sufficient women. They (most of them) still fight for their rights and still fight for the betterment of women in general. It's going to be difficult, social change always is. It's going to take decades, social change always does. It won't be perfect. But I'd still rather a future society where men can be how they want even if it doesn't match some absurd and self destructive ideal of "masculinity" that doesn't let you be a human being, rather than going back to the 50s in terms of letting women be independent. My mother did not work her ass off for 60 years for people like in this damn comment section to claim that they should go back to the kitchen, that they don't have bodily autonomy, that they don't have fiscal autonomy. I will fight for her. Men will get a lot more support when they stop insisting the lack of male spaces and positive male role models is somehow women's fault, when they've worked their asses off for decades. It's not a fucking zero sum game!
pixelpoet 2y ago
> Alcohol and other drug use Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like. Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? Yeah, nevermind any of that I guess. Meanwhile, Singapore will gladly imprison or execute you for possession of cannabis[0], but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity. From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc, and while I'm not saying those issues aren't important, I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs. Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.
  - pixelpoet 2y ago
    The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category. This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]: > The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)
123yawaworht456 2y ago
not just the West, really in my very non-Western country, it's been years since I saw an adolescent with a cigarette. 20 years ago, non-smoking 13-year boys were a minority - I shit you not.
- dylan604 2y ago
  how many of them now vape though? in the US, if you look at vaping in adolescents, I would not be surprised to see an increase in nicotine users just in a different form.
  - Viliam1234 2y ago
    Vaping was advertised as a healthier alternative to smoking, but it's actually a comeback of smoking.
    - dleink 2y ago
      Probably, but it is healthier.
      - gitaarik 2y ago
        I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too fast. We don't know yet what consequences years of vaping unregulated vape can do.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

[flagged]

standardUser 2y ago
> I'd rather deal with a teen pregnancy epidemic than the current situation of rising authoritarianism, isolationism, and reactionary turn that we are seeing from the youth of today. You mean the male youth of today.
- NemoNobody 2y ago
  Ok, I understand your point but let's be real for a minute and just acknowledge that the worse situation that you can get. I'd rather hear about how what is happening with young men today was happening with young women than men - not that that would be better but it would be less dangerous. Young men that are disenfranchised from their society and have little to live for are a primary metric political scientists use to measure the stability of country. Historically speaking, once a society gets too many men like that, the society ends. This isn't a battle of the sexes and women do not win bc of what has happened with men.
  - standardUser 2y ago
    Historically speaking, we have never seen a society where women have more education, wealth and status than men. This is uncharted territory. Not that I don't fear the repercussions of having the bottom 50% of men desperate and disenfranchised. But those bottom 50% of men don't guarantee societal collapse because they're not then ones propping it up, women are. The question might be, what will women and higher status men do about the problems caused by the bottom half men?
    - kwere 2y ago
      record amount of women are set to be single and childless past the fertility window, the most reasonable cause is a "lack of eligible bachelors"[0] in similar or better socioeconomic conditions. Record amounts of people will never reproduce creating a deep demographic imbalance, bankrupting most social programs. [0]https://www.medicaldaily.com/egg-freezing-rises-among-graduate-women-lack-eligible-bachelors-blame-not-419896 https://www.medicaldaily.com/egg-freezing-rises-among-gradua...
      - standardUser 2y ago
        Sure, and that's not ideal for women, but it's also not stopping their dramatic rise in education, wealth and status. As for bankrupting the social safety net, that's a real concern, but it's not unavoidable. We've already seen into the future in places like East Asia and Western Europe. We've got a ways to go in the US before our fertility rates match theirs, and they're still holding the line. Plus, it's a problem that America is uniquely prepared to handle as a nation of immigrants. Once the hardcore nativist movement has finishing blowing its wad.
    - consteval 2y ago
      From my perspective as an outsider looking in (that meaning, I have no horse in heterosexual dynamics), the problem is we've had no progressive movements for men. At best, men have gotten whatever crumbs have fallen through the proverbial car seat crack of the vehicle of feminism. Largely there's only a few different ways to be a successful man. Even small deviations from the norm are met with ruler whips - and I don't just mean from other men. Modern women are incredibly cruel in the way they view non-conforming men. These limitations used to be superpowers. If you could perform an adequate display of masculinity, you were granted the world. This is no longer the case, which is a good thing. But the expectation still exists and is still enforced with an iron-fist, just without the riches. I mean, most heterosexual men I've met wouldn't even dare of so much as painting their nails. Let alone opening up their mind. How can we expect these people to follow along with the train of progressivism when none of it is for them? How can we expect them to leave gender roles behind when they know, and understand, there is only failure and heartache for them if they leave theirs's behind?
- kwere 2y ago
  Authoritarianism is present in a lot of postmodern "leftist" movements that captivate younger women votes. it's justified with "fig leaves" reasons like curtailing free speech to contain hate speech, limiting liberties in the name of safety, Coercing personal behavior for greater causes like climate change, giving privileges to certain groups in the name of "penitence to ancestral sins", etc.... Isolationism is an issue that is hurting women too, way less than males as women tend to have stronger social networks While at scale there isnt a trend of Reactionism, it looks that there is a greater political polarization and advocacy that compared to past generations hinders relations between ideologically different/incompatible groups
  - standardUser 2y ago
    Ignoring the more irritating leftists for a moment, most of the left is grappling with finding solutions to real problems. It's not "fuck you, change your life to stop global warming". It's "oh shit, we need to stop global warming and dramatic actions are needed. What do we do?". They are questions in need of answers, and no one is going to like all of the answers. No one ever does. Some answers may be authoritarian, but it's not a desire for authoritarianism driving these ideologies, it's a desire for solutions and too many people have a blind eye to the consequences of their proposed solutions. Maybe that's too forgiving of a take, but I think you're take is too accusatory. The right just openly supports authoritarianism for authoritarianism's sake.
tpm 2y ago
It would be wrong to ascribe this to the politics, it's the change in the physical and social reality that enabled this situation, off which some politicians are feeding their movements. Young men might not be as socially adept, which matters more now than it did before. And that creates a lot of undesirable side effects. But politics didn't create this situation.
- DrPimienta 2y ago
  Politics had a large part in creating this situation. Women have made up the majority of college graduates for about half a century now. And yet we still hear that we need more women in college, and in fact there are far more times as many college scholarships for women as for men. Not to mention that women make up the majority of government benefit recipients, and piles of other examples. This entire time, politicians have made lots of gains from supporting women. Where is the support for men?
  - tpm 2y ago
    You are talking about American politics, meanwhile this is happenning all over the world, in some countries much sooner and faster than in the US.
    - DrPimienta 2y ago
      Yes, the same cancerous ideologies are spreading quickly to the rest of the world.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    >Where is the support for men? Where are the men willing to put in the hard work it takes to build man-positive spaces that talk about difficult subjects with men, and guide them through growing up into caring people? Instead, it seems like men just want the world to go back to the way it was, and they would rather women suffer than they have to put in the leg work required to build a fair and just society. That's what this horseshit is about. Millions of men are facing a small amount of pain adjusting to a world where you aren't default accepted based on having a penis, and their first response is "No, time to oppress women again". Women faced all sorts of pushback for decades for wanting to be more than baby making machines. They literally still are, with one presidential candidate and his friends openly hostile to independent and self-sufficient women. They (most of them) still fight for their rights and still fight for the betterment of women in general. It's going to be difficult, social change always is. It's going to take decades, social change always does. It won't be perfect. But I'd still rather a future society where men can be how they want even if it doesn't match some absurd and self destructive ideal of "masculinity" that doesn't let you be a human being, rather than going back to the 50s in terms of letting women be independent. My mother did not work her ass off for 60 years for people like in this damn comment section to claim that they should go back to the kitchen, that they don't have bodily autonomy, that they don't have fiscal autonomy. I will fight for her. Men will get a lot more support when they stop insisting the lack of male spaces and positive male role models is somehow women's fault, when they've worked their asses off for decades. It's not a fucking zero sum game!

pixelpoet 2y ago

> Alcohol and other drug use Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like. Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? Yeah, nevermind any of that I guess. Meanwhile, Singapore will gladly imprison or execute you for possession of cannabis[0], but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity. From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc, and while I'm not saying those issues aren't important, I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o

s1artibartfast 2y ago
One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs. Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.
- pixelpoet 2y ago
  The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category. This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]: > The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)

123yawaworht456 2y ago

not just the West, really in my very non-Western country, it's been years since I saw an adolescent with a cigarette. 20 years ago, non-smoking 13-year boys were a minority - I shit you not.

dylan604 2y ago
how many of them now vape though? in the US, if you look at vaping in adolescents, I would not be surprised to see an increase in nicotine users just in a different form.
- Viliam1234 2y ago
  Vaping was advertised as a healthier alternative to smoking, but it's actually a comeback of smoking.
  - dleink 2y ago
    Probably, but it is healthier.
    - gitaarik 2y ago
      I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too fast. We don't know yet what consequences years of vaping unregulated vape can do.