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

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

#171

Post by jorgemf »

ma2rten wrote: post #130
jorgemf wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add Tinder as another reason for less sex. You have thousands of posible candidates on your finger prints, why wouldn't you get the perfect one? So people skip most people and only small percent succeed. Before you were in the bar with few less options, darker and with more alcohol, so you were more likely to match someone more real and normal.

I sounds unlikely to me that an app for casual encounters is the reason people have less sex...

The numbers show that 80% of the girls only date the top 20% of the guys. They rate 80% of the guys below average. So an average boy find hard to find a date there. Think this way, before you could have a few opportunities to get a date in a bar, now you have thousands of them before even getting out of the toilet. You think your value is higher than it really is and decide to wait for something that has he same value of you. As this is not possible you end up waiting more for sex. In small towns pre-internet there were more relationships than in cities as they know the pool of candidates is small and fixed. If they waited for the perfect one they would have wait forever.

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

#172

Post by aedron »

santaclaus wrote: post #79

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?

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.

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

#173

Post by sigi45 »

Mz wrote: post #145
mercer wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's not a bad thing necessarily, but I think the increase in mental health issues and loneliness (which often go together) might in part be caused by this ability to get some of our needs met in ways that at best provide a surrogate for other or perhaps deeper needs. Looking at myself, for example, I can safely say that I'm a bit of a loner. But the truth is that I get a fairly decent amount of social i…

I was much lonelier in my marriage than I have been since my divorce. This has been very eye opening. Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing and not necessarily even related. Loneliness is an unmet emotional hunger that is not automatically met by being around other people. Being lonely while not alone is a kind of hell that simply being alone does not begin to match. While married, I really thought I co…

Why? Did she/him held you back from something you are doing now you didn't do before?

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

#174

Post by spamizbad »

goodroot wrote: post #4

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 joyf…

> It's disturbing that, at least in Chicago, there appears to systemic conditioning that's convinced people sex is dangerous and scary.

Where are you getting that idea? It's just a WaPo article referencing a study just hosted on Chicago Tribune (Which itself caters more to a suburban rather than city audience)

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

#175

Post by wvh »

Mz wrote: post #145
mercer wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's not a bad thing necessarily, but I think the increase in mental health issues and loneliness (which often go together) might in part be caused by this ability to get some of our needs met in ways that at best provide a surrogate for other or perhaps deeper needs. Looking at myself, for example, I can safely say that I'm a bit of a loner. But the truth is that I get a fairly decent amount of social i…

I was much lonelier in my marriage than I have been since my divorce. This has been very eye opening. Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing and not necessarily even related. Loneliness is an unmet emotional hunger that is not automatically met by being around other people. Being lonely while not alone is a kind of hell that simply being alone does not begin to match. While married, I really thought I co…

So your ex preferred sex over social contact with you, as the poster above mentions the use of pornography over social contact; and between the lines, you prefer a free social life over the dominance of sex (apart from other issues your marriage might have had).

Sounds like a familiar source of contention...

Without wanting to generalise individual needs, I wonder if men and women are having trouble bridging their differences now there is less pressure of being a married couple. I imagine that's a large factor in young people trying to stay independent for longer.

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

#176

Post by hanoz »

smileysteve wrote: post #25
bredren wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There was no anti-bullying education. Actually, bullying was basically okay when I was i…

> 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.

Never mind the secondary effects, the idea of a rubber playground strikes me as inherently dangerous, as you can't skid to a halt like you can on concrete or grass.

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

#177

Post by FussyZeus »

mercer wrote: post #144
Mz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. I knew a guy older than me who came of age in the hippie era. He had slept with a lot more people than me. He once said "TV channels stopped broadcasting at 9pm. There wasn't anything else to do after 9 o'clock at night besides sex and drugs." You can now get TV and internet 24/7 and even in small towns you can sometimes find stores and eateries open at all ho…

I agree that it's not a bad thing necessarily, but I think the increase in mental health issues and loneliness (which often go together) might in part be caused by this ability to get some of our needs met in ways that at best provide a surrogate for other or perhaps deeper needs. Looking at myself, for example, I can safely say that I'm a bit of a loner. But the truth is that I get a fairly decent amount of social i…

> But in other ways it's become very clear to me, usually when I am forced to get out and be around people and suddenly realize how much I needed that kind of interaction, that my online communities are lacking in fundamental ways.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's realized this. I may not particularly like getting out at the time I decide I should, but I never regret it. I've been attempting to do it a little more often.

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

#178

Post by ehnto »

rconti wrote: post #84
redleggedfrog wrote: post #9

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 th…

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…

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.

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

#179

Post by otimepad222 »

krapp wrote: post #166
otimepad222 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since someone got so offended as to flag my previous post(poor you), here a more censored version [..] many interesting, relevant, revealing studies made it onto the frontpage of HN, [redacted] @"medification" of our food supply @evolving mixture of chemicals 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 causi…

You were likely flagged for spouting gibberish from a troll account, and you will likely be flagged again for regurgitating it. Please try to find something more productive to do with your time.

Why gibberish? Slightly out of context, terribly worded, troll-account, no linked sources(laziness/sloppiness on my part), ad-hoc out of context pieces of seemingly unrelated not universally agreed-upon information stitched together - OK I see your point. Anyway, most importantly, you are right about the last part, to rewrite that post in a correct way would take hours with limited to no desired effect(the focus is moving fast on HN), sorry for this unfortunate compromise

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

#180

Post by guyt00 »

spodek wrote: post #91

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.

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.
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