Why are today's teens putting off driving, dating and drinking? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:24 PM UTC

Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #43

They're not smoking either. Those things are no longer cool badges of maturity, independence, or rebellion. Instead, they're getting piercings and tattoos, identifying as alternative genders, sexting, and claiming more flexible sexual orientations. Alarms the old folks just as effectively.

It's just this generation's search for identity and being different from the generation preceding it. For one generation it's edgy outfits, for another it's long hair and rock music, and I'm sure there will be a future one that will shock 'our' generation (idk what your generation is) even more, especially if it's our own kids who a few years ago were still just like us.

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

#192

Post by usrusr » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:26 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #18

vparikh wrote: post #3

Because todays kids are coddled and have a 'safety net' of being able to stay home and not join 'adulthood'. I mean when I was a teen ager - my parents couldn't afford to support me. I had no way of staying home and riding it out. If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a…

You know a lot of the current generation is going to end up worse off than their parents right? https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-...

And the economic situation of our parents is the yardstick we all use for assessing our own capability of providing for an adequate upbringing. A mailman's son will likely feel more at ease starting a family when he is a mailman himself than a lawyers's son when his father was a partner in a successful firm while he himself is only on a lowly salaried career (yet far above that mailman). Sorry for the gender stereotypes, but they share too much with those mechanisms to be cut out.

To make things worse, that yardstick is based on us seeing later stages of our parents' careers, while we apply it to. In times of widespread growth this does not make much difference, but in times of stagnation or worse it can be crushing. A part of the puzzle the article is marveling at might be current teens not feeling very much in a pipeline towards house and kids.

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

#193

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

arkh wrote: post #141

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…

> don't drink cause they're not 21 yet That's how you get drunk people once they're free to buy alcohol. Parents should help their children discover alcohol safely at home so it is not some mystical drink you can't wait to get your hands on. A glass of good wine here and there during family reunions, one or two beers with the barbecue, maybe some whiskey and vodka to learn what the good stuff tastes like. Suddenly it…

Alternatively, drink too much right away, get really sick for a day and vow "never again!"

Then do it again anyway because you forgot the hangovers.

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

#194

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #178

rconti wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that atmosphere was also here during and after WW2 up to the late 80's (the cold war and impending global thermonuclear war), the 60's / 70's (Vietnam war and being drafted). And yet there was the sexual revolution during that era. I don't think it's global fear because I think that used to be worse.

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

#195

Post by brad0 » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

enord wrote: post #151

Teens are living in an isolated socitety from us that can seem like a strange stasi-germany enforced through guilt. Expectations are set for them to perform in measures that are unrelated to personal growth and developement, and from a young age. Different parties observe them and intervene on almost any deviation from expectation. The path is narrowing. Underperform on a standardized school test, intervention. Spend…

I enjoyed reading this.

Have you experienced this directly or noticed this as a third party?

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

#196

Post by jorgemf » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

TheBeardKing wrote: post #182

jorgemf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 valu…

Sounds like an interesting study, have the source?

If you search in Google you would see people getting those results on tinder, but here I put the study done by okcupid, which probably is more accurate:

https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0...

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

#197

Post by jimmaswell » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 3:05 PM UTC

crush-n-spread wrote: post #135

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 see what you're saying about how they're being responsible by holding off on sex, cars, and drinking, but there is an opportunity cost in holding off on those three things - They miss out on the enormous compounding effects of having their own relationships, vehicles, and high-impact social gatherings happen 2-3 years earlier. Maybe an anecdote will be useful. I started dating, drinking, and driving at 15-16 y.o. A…

The baby boomers are the ones who were born after WW2. "Hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times" is something I recently heard in regard to the ww2 and boomer generations, the implication being the boomers were the "weak men."

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

#198

Post by rando444 » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #15

There are a pile of different answers to these questions (not question), ones that should be asked separately. For example, excluding factors that affect all the questions, putting off drinking is likely a combination of consumer education and the difficulty in getting alcohol pre-21. Fewer adults want to provide their younger peers alcohol because of legal risks. Driving is the combination of increasing expense to d…

>putting off drinking is likely a combination of consumer education and the difficulty in getting alcohol pre-21

Not quite.. the US is one of the few countries with the highest drinking age in the world. The majority of countries allow teenagers to drink, and you still see the same patterns.

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

#199

Post by Mz » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 4:03 PM UTC

da02 wrote: post #156

Mz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Looking back with hindsight, were there any signs he would not have been a good husband before getting married? Did any of your friends tried to warn you against getting married to him?

Looking back, I made the best choice available to me in an imperfect world. He wasn't a bad husband, though I would have been happier if he had been more attentive.

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

#200

Post by Mz » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

wvh wrote: post #175

Mz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

So your ex preferred sex over social contact with you...you prefer a free social life over the dominance of sex

No. And your inaccurate inference is obnoxious.

I wonder if men and women are having trouble bridging their differences now there is less pressure of being a married couple.

This is heteronormative. I see no reason to believe that it is only heterosexuals who are putting off sex.

It wasn't all that long ago that people who were not heterosexual felt enormous social pressure to appear to be heterosexual. As one example: A friend of the family dated women for some years before embracing the fact that he was gay and establishing a committed long term relationship with another man.

These days, people have more latitude for arranging their lives where they don't have to put on such appearances while figuring themselves out. Being able to meet potential dates online goes a long way towards reducing or eliminating certain social elements from the process that can be insidious if you can't avoid them.