Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#121

Post by rcacho » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #50

jcranberry wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heritable doesn't necessarily imply genetic. Culture is heritable. Traits can propagate through generations memetically.

"Heritable" definitely means genetic when used in a technical rather than a casual sense, though. Studies control for environment by looking at, for example, identical twins adopted by different families.

Heritability refers to trait variation due to genetic variation within a population.

This is different than the amount genetics actually contributes to a trait.

While you are controlling for environmental factors in heritability studies you are still referring to a specific population. It can be the case that two identical genotypes across two different populations show two different phenotypes.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#122

Post by Clubber » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #114

Clubber wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as evidenced by the fact that "giant parties" are a relatively recent phenomenon, historically speaking. That is nowhere near true.

Teenage boys and girls partying together without adults is something many kind of societies frowned upon. They used to be scared of unwanted pregnancy a lot . It did happened occasionally, but it was seen as something bad and stigma (especially toward such girls) could be quite high.

>Teenage boys and girls partying together without adults

I was assuming you were suggesting large parties regardless of age is a new historical phenomenon.

Although, fraternities and sororities have been around for hundreds of years and they're 17-21 or so. I'm sure they've had parties most of that time. It's probably how they started. Not sure if that counts with teen-only criteria. The concept of adult age has changed over time as well.

Humans party. Always have, always will. They of course were called "feasts" in historical times. Lack of partying is probably more of an anomaly (assuming the article is true). Of course, I would venture that even having a large online gaming or chat session would constitute a party. I mean its a group of people socializing, and I'm sure some of them are having beverages or botany of their choice, plus some hot pockets.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#123

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #109

Analemma_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that if the OP is 21, then "when s/he was very young" would've been circa 2000. That was before smartphones or even Wi-Fi, where you pretty much had to be seated at a desk to use a computer, which is very different from the situation now. This is an epidemic that snuck up on us.

We had a laptop with windows 95 on it. Just because you weren't on the internet, didn't mean you couldn't use a computer...there were actually lots of things that you would do without a connection then.

That's not really what I meant. Of course there were computers then. What I mean is that "ubiquitous screens and connectivity" wasn't yet a thing, and it's a phenomenon that crept up on us, so it's a little unfair to blame parents of a kid born ~1997 for not locking down screen time. We didn't know that was really a problem (at least, a problem distinct from "too much TV") until just a few years ago.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#124

Post by mattbuilds » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

kthejoker2 wrote: post #68

Nothing new under the sun ... ___________________________________________ Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce and difficult to reproduce. The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books…

I'm not sure I would agree with this statement. I think there needs to be a balance of both solitude and human interaction, and that balances differs from person to person. I’m definitely more introverted but it doesn’t mean I don’t need human interaction. An example is that I play a ton of video games, one reason is for the solitude, but I also enjoy board games for the social component. At the core of games, I love the strategy and competition, but different types of games can scratch different itches. I think things like that can apply to a lot of parts of life.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#125

Post by conductr » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:08 PM UTC

snowwindwaves wrote: post #112

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m reminded of the under-25-set reacting to the Stranger Things children just sort of running around unsupervised as “unrealistic.” Nope, that was how we rolled.

My parents are baby boomers and they said there were just kids everywhere when they grew up. Every house on the street had at least two. Kids went outside to play. Parents had real perspective on the dangers and risks in life after living through ww2 and a kid falling out of a tree was not a concern.

In the 80s/90s, I rarely had that many kids on my block but I was always outside. I had a bike and roamed ~10 mile radius around my house. So my friends and I would just meet up some place and decide where to go.

I wouldn't say the war impacted the parental decision(s), historically kids always played outside so they were just continuing what they knew, but we kids did have safety in numbers and that's why I'd say this is a perpetuating issue.

If a parent today told their kid to go outside and play, that kid would be alone and less safe. So parents just don't allow it.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#126

Post by vorotato » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

cutler wrote: post #87

Society is sick, let's face it, and technology is largely to blame. We just can't see the danger in technology so long as we're blinded by everything shiny. Human beings are primarily social beings and no, that does not mean peering at each other through the alienating window of a mobile phone screen. In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sens…

This argument has been made every single decade. Socrates even voiced concerns about writing and how it creates an illusion of understanding. It's been wrong every decade since and is wrong today.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#127

Post by mrfusion » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:09 PM UTC

snowwindwaves wrote: post #112

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m reminded of the under-25-set reacting to the Stranger Things children just sort of running around unsupervised as “unrealistic.” Nope, that was how we rolled.

My parents are baby boomers and they said there were just kids everywhere when they grew up. Every house on the street had at least two. Kids went outside to play. Parents had real perspective on the dangers and risks in life after living through ww2 and a kid falling out of a tree was not a concern.

Makes me wonder how much of helicopter parenting is caused by emergency rooms becoming probibitevly expensive?

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#128

Post by megaman22 » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #118

murph-almighty wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>extraordinary scrutiny into campus parties I was involved in Greek life in college and can testify. Not only did we need to register our parties with the university but we still had to worry about police presence and legal liability. This isn't to say that these policies should be repealed- dumb people did dumb things, and thus these came into place, but it doesn't remove the fact that it's getting harder to hold a…

What would be the reas on for citing? I mean, you need to break some law for the cop to do so. I am pretty sure it is possible to have drinking party without dping something illegal (harder with marihuanna and that should be lagalized imo).

It's almost a given that any college party is going to have underage drinking, and providing alcohol to minors. When we used to have registered parties, there were wristbands for the few juniors and seniors that were over 21, and everybody else knew to set their cups down when Safety and Security did their walk-throughs.

Not to mention any other drugs that might get into the mix.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#129

Post by ashark » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

aaroninsf wrote: post #115

ashark wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your parents had eliminated screens when you were very young (including theirs) save maybe one publicly-placed crappy terminal for wikipedia or looking up business hours or maps or learning you some programming or whatever, but loosened the reigns on hang-outs and travel, do you think you'd have still felt isolated because all your friends were still online most of the time? Asking as a parent with three young kid…

Kids approaching 7 and 10 watch some movies/vetted series online, only recently got Kindle tablets which they are literally only allowed to use on long (3 hr+) transits, never at home. No TV or analog in house. I am now torn as the older kid is at a prime age to introduce programming... ...but the benefits we see daily from no-screen childhood are to our biased eyes overwhelming. Our kids spend all their free time en…

Maybe offline or rarely-online screens would work? An RPi2 (no wifi) stuck in some corner, running Linux? That kind of thing.

I think the Web's far and away the most dangerous part of screens. I grew up mostly with OTA TV, an NES, and an offline DOS computer as my only screens until age 10 or 11 so when we got dial-up, which could only be used sparingly (one phone line) and sitting at a desk. All were kinda fun, but also boring enough that you'd wanna go outside and ride bikes or something after an hour or two. The modern Web is like having a cable subscription with 100 channels of only stuff you love (and most of it the crappy low-value stuff that you, nonetheless, love). It's hard to moderate use as an adult, let alone for kids.

[EDIT] yes of course you can and should just tell them no, as with other decisions they're bad at making, and I have no problem doing that, but what I'm unsure about is whether the benefit of Web-anwhere-in-the-house and Netflix and Youtube and so on are worth even having to enforce rules to begin with—maybe it's better to not have them at all, because they're so low-value compared with less distracting and addictive alternatives.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#130

Post by Analemma_ » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #117

AmVess wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents let me walk to the corner store alone when I was 5. By the time I was 8, I'd be gone all day doing who knows what; the big rule was to be home for dinner. Allowing your kids to roam around like that these days will get CPS called on you.

That’s the thing: I’m very tempted to let my kids roam the neighborhood, like I did in Italy in the 80s. Where we live now, streets are pretty tight and have speed bumps, so it’s fairly safe. But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge. Yet another bit of the world ruined by Sun and Daily Mail.

> But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge.

I think this is a really overblown fear. Yeah, everyone "totally heard about someone" who had CPS called on them because they let their kid roam around, but I think this is mostly an urban legend about as likely as a terrorist attack. CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues, I don't think they give a damn about free-range children.