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Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

economist.com

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

#71

Post by Reelin »

LocalH wrote: post #67
Reelin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Twitter isn't healthy or unhealthy. It's about how the platform is used . For discussion of political or social issues, it's garbage, certainly. But there's a lot of other content on Twitter as well.

When the majority of people are using a platform in an unhealthy manner, I think it's reasonable to conclude that the design of the platform itself is at fault. The occurrence of a few successful interactions doesn't change the fact that the majority of social media platforms today exhibit glaring systemic flaws when their interaction models intersect basic human psychology.

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

#72

Post by graphpapa »

_5yps wrote: post #40
stareatgoats wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your very articulate derision - of your own ability to articulate yourself - gave me a good laugh.

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

#73

Post by graphpapa »

new2628 wrote: post #25
anotheryou wrote: post #11

The most adult teenagers I know all have seen shit and just skipped being teenagers. It sadly catches up with them.

Do you mean "they have seen nothing" or "they have seen things", as in bad (or meaningful or powerful) things?

Guessing the latter. It’s a common expression in uk english, not sure about elsewhere.

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

#74

Post by itronitron »

michaelt wrote: post #50
nil-sec wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building your identity should not be tied to building your brand when you are 16. I’ve grown up in Europe but lived in the US for some time. What I noticed is a distinct lack of subculture in young people (college), everyone seems to be very homogenized and this is in stark contrast to what I perceived in Europe. Of course this is anecdotal but I wonder if this is a result of this crazy system that doesn’t allow miss…

Isn't "building your personal brand" just a synonym for "building your resume" or "building your reputation"? At least, unless you're planning to become an Instagram influencer with their own line of cosmetics? I can assure you, kids have been doing extracurriculars that look good on college applications for longer than most of us have been alive.

True, but a lot of people on this thread have not been alive that long. The difference now is that extracurriculars are done in order to look good on applications.

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

#76

Post by _5yps »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #47
_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…

Do you have your own blog? I am impressed with the prose and content (and perspective! seems incredibly self-aware) of this comment, _especially_ considering your age. Since you say you too are playing the exhibition game, do you have a personal website? If not, I'm sure people would read what you have to write. It's interesting.

No, I don't have a blog. There aren't many things I'd like to write about, and pretty much all of the things I would like to write about have been written about more eloquently by others. There's a lot of subpar and garbage information in this world, especially on the internet, and I'd rather not contribute to the pile if I can help it.

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

#77

Post by _5yps »

mnky9800n wrote: post #66
_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…

Ah yes, the second tier of Carnegie Mellon and Cornell. Lol.

Second-tier compared to the world's top universities; that is, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and their ilk. I've seen posts on this website[0] how some big tech companies almost exclusively skim off the top.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15543371

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

#78

Post by dennis_jeeves »

_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 wish I could say I'm above it all, but I've certainly internalized it to some extent

IMO, you are well above it all, or may be you will get there in a couple of years. You are doing fantastic for someone who is 16. Most people do not achieve this level of self-awareness even when they are 60. But there is a dark side to this precociousness. You are not ignorant, and that will often drive you to despair when you observe the simians around you. Like they say ignorance is bliss.

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

#79

Post by Waterluvian »

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.

High school can be many things. And it's not just binned into stereotypes.

For me high school was full of sex and parties. And by far the most sex and partying was via robotics club, believe it or not. Which is also where I learned the most about engineering and really developed a hunger to go to university.

For my kids I want high school to be a whole experience. Equal measures social, sports, and academics. Maybe less sex.

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

#80

Post by tonyarkles »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #29
paypalcust83 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a pointless outrage, virtue signaling, approval-seeking, and social climbing sewer-drain of cyberinhibitionism. Taking the proverbial shit with the sugar would run out of toilet paper, and my supplies are low and it's not in-stock anywhere. No one needs that stuff that just won't flush unless they're hopelessly co-dependent on others to move forward.

Contradicts what the parent said. Seeing no value in anything, are you part of the problem you're describing, perhaps?

I’m chuckling here. A tech podcast I listen to completely changed my perspective on Twitter a few years ago for the better: she described it as a cocktail party. You come, pop your head in for a bit, maybe participate in a conversation for a bit, and then go back to life. The corollary is, to get the most out of it, you need to pick which parties you go to! In the weeks and months following that, I significantly changed the set of people I follow, and now my feed is primarily a bunch of happy tech people sharing the cool stuff they’re working on. Occasionally a bit of political drama or other bullshit leaks through, but it’s pretty rare. If it consistently leaks through due to one person, that “unfollow” button is easy to get at!

Edit: oh, I do sometimes search for some kind of current event on there and am generally horrified by the conversations. Yikes! So I close the stream and go back to my happy curated bubble garden.

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