Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 466 posts

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#31

Post by blfr »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

All that building your brand and trying to convince people of your identity in place of actually having one is not exhibitionism but narcissism. There used to be a very good blog about this being the root of cultural and social rot we see around us.

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#33

Post by _5yps »

Reelin wrote: post #12
_630w wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give some perspective on that. Ignoring the increase in academic pressure and hungry sharks in education (those shady coaching institutes everywhere making you grind 5 hours after school for a single exam). Parents haven't caught up with how their kids interact with the world. Social media is huge for teens and internet which only now some parents are catching up to but they are on Facebook and Facebook is canc…

> Twitter is not healthy for a teenager. Twitter isn't healthy for _anyone_. Neither is the vast majority of social media. The way in which most sites currently structure interactions lends itself quite naturally to misinformation, extreme polarization, and resulting anxiety. I've personally witnessed the effect on reasonably well educated adults in my life; I can only imagine how much worse it must be for those with…

I've seen a lot of kids my age become Communists or Nazis due to internet-induced radicalization; I was rather close to becoming a radical leftist myself. Personally, I think it's harmless; they tend not to hold these views for a long time when tempered with the saner views of their peers and broader society. It's like the chicken pox - you get it once, become a bit nasty for a while, and then you're immune to further insanity.

It's when the person in question is mentally ill or socially isolated (i.e a NEET living in their mother's basement) that radicalization becomes harmful, because there's nothing to bring them back to the baseline. Marginal identities attract marginal people.

(I have a theory that online transgender-ism is spreading in exactly the same way - note the massive amount of trans people online who are also NEETs, weebs, and/or communists. But that's a story for another day.)

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#34

Post by saagarjha »

a_bonobo wrote: post #23
saagarjha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone not on Twitter, I do see an awful lot of good content on the platform. By not engaging with it directly I can usually skip out on or ignore the worst parts of it.

I'm a researcher and Twitter has been an enormous boon for my work; within my field, most 'big' researchers are active on Twitter, they know me now, I know them, I'm always up-to-date with the research (way easier than following 500 RSS feeds) and the 'trends' within my field. It's also the best avenue for discussing anything work-related, at least 3 international collaborations of mine have started this way. I have…

One of the best parts of Twitter is that it can give random people a voice and connect then with people who are often hard to get to otherwise. One of the worst parts of Twitter is that can give random people a voice and connect then with people who are often hard to get to otherwise.

As someone without a Twitter account, I miss out on a huge amount of conversation that IMHO can add productive and interesting insights to, even though I’m not well-known like the participants might be. With time, they might come to know me as well, something which is basically impossible outside of the platform. I have heard that it is also a great place to find jobs or the right people through “the Twitter network” where people are known for what they tend to be good at and people can point you around to where you need to be.

On the other hand, having the ability to get random people to interact with you is basically inviting harassment and polarization. The very benefit I just mentioned of having a “personality” in Twitter which people see you as means that you’ll always be dragged into any conflict along those lines, and anything you say has the potential to blow up in a bad way.

I, from outside the platform, have a much harder time getting any of those benefits I mentioned: fewer people read or look at my stuff, I think, since I publish it elsewhere; I have hundreds of things I leave unsaid because I can’t interact with the platform besides observe it; getting in contact with people who share my interests is much more difficult because I’m often cold emailing them or collaborating with them on something before they know me. I don’t get to know about interesting work opportunities very often. But on the flip side, I don’t get dragged into pointless arguments, at least on that platform, so I guess I’ve just been making that tradeoff ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#35

Post by stareatgoats »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party

And the stuff about sexual intercourse - really? Such a far cry from my own high school years (in the seventies), I can hardly believe it. Sounds more like the stuff I would try to convince my mother, with mixed success.

Otherwise, kudos for such mastery of language at 16.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#36

Post by nosianu »

dataduck wrote: post #16
TausAmmer wrote: post #8

Everyone wants a child to be a responsible grown up adult. Stolen childhood.

For almost the entirety of human history, 12 was old enough to get a job and look after a family. It's modernity that's the aberration here. Our obsession with keeping children immature has nothing to do with their well-being, and everything to do with adults deriving a sick emotional satisfaction from it. I think history will judge our obsession with keeping children from growing up in the same way we judge foot bin…

I grew up in East Germany and we were given lots of opportunity - no pressure, don't claim "child work evil communism" - to work early, for example during holidays. It was a great time every time I could work in actual factories. The bottling part of a brewery, sausage factory, a chemical fiber plant, assembling stuff, various jobs. One of my grandmothers had a SERO collection shop, which was were all kinds of reusable materials from paper to all kinds of bottles (all standardized across the country) were collected for a small reward. Some of the best times I had was when my grandmother gave me some real responsibilities in her shop, including managing the money. I was just above ten. At home my grandfather was a craftsman and I started helping with painting early on too, not at work, just around the home. Helping with real adult work, as in "jobs kind of stuff" and not just chores, especially when I could do it in a real work environment and even get paid, was just the best. I think children like getting adult responsibilities at least as much if not more so than even the best play time. It's a different part of your self that is addressed, if its missing I think one will be less complete. It's conjecture, but I think less shelter and more real responsibilities, including actual "command" over others on a small scale helps tremendously with personal growth. Maybe the opposite tends to create more drones that fit in very well and are easy to work with from a top-down loving boss point of view (more conjecture)?

Now, much older, getting more command and responsibilities does nothing for my ego, I pass unless I think it's actually necessary for the company (of which I own a share). But as a child every bit of "adult level" responsibility, especially in a work environment, was bliss.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#37

Post by phs318u »

blfr wrote: post #31
_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

All that building your brand and trying to convince people of your identity in place of actually having one is not exhibitionism but narcissism. There used to be a very good blog about this being the root of cultural and social rot we see around us. https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

Dude, you're responding to a 16 year old. At that age, they are literally inventing their identity. As for the "building your brand", everyone is doing that even when they don't know it (consciously or unconsciously). Doing it consciously is because teens are by and large shit scared that they aren't or won't be "good enough", and often they're steered into "standing out" in some way (for nerds, often through academic excellence "with a twist"). They are exhibiting standard behaviour for an envioronment in which there's much more (perceived) demand for "good careers" than (perceived) supply.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#38

Post by saagarjha »

stareatgoats wrote: post #35
_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party And the stuff about sexual intercourse - really? Such a far cry from my own high school years (in the seventies), I can hardly believe it. Sounds more like the stuff I would try to convince my mother, with mixed success. Otherwise, kudos for such mastery of language at 16.

This depends extremely strongly on the high school, I have found. Mine was fairly boring in that sense (the description given above would apply fairly well to it) and I had an interesting time listening to other people’s high school experiences when I came to college. (Though, it’s not like I spiced things up when I was there, either. I just heard about more stuff from people I actually knew who were involved in that kind of stuff, whereas in high school I couldn’t point to anyone I knew personally who might have gone to a party.)

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#39

Post by mdiesel »

twomoretime wrote: post #2

After decades of increasingly rebellious movements, it seems like the last few have been rebellion for the sake of rebellion - progress for the sake of progress. Perhaps this is the pendulum swinging back.

From looking at history, it seems to me that every generation brings about social change, and it starts off being criticised by the previous generation as rebellion without cause, or that its gone too far. So far looking back we've yet to go too far.

That's not to say that some friction isn't required for stability.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#40

Post by _5yps »

stareatgoats wrote: post #35
_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party And the stuff about sexual intercourse - really? Such a far cry from my own high school years (in the seventies), I can hardly believe it. Sounds more like the stuff I would try to convince my mother, with mixed success. Otherwise, kudos for such mastery of language at 16.

It's not true that nobody's fucking. The LGBT kids fuck to an extent, as do some of the lower achievers, but even then it's nowhere near as much as I expected.

I'm surprised to hear you compliment my writing style. I always thought it was subpar - too many clauses, a slew of unnecessary qualifiers and weasel words, no shortage of kludges for things I can't express very well. I tend to be better at it after I've been reading a book for a while and have "effective rhetoric" somewhere in my brain's cache line.

Post reply on HN