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

Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 624 posts

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#281

Post by tirant »

lazystar wrote: post #251
Mistletoe wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the parasocial way my girlfriend's niece and friends experience life. No relationships of their own, it is all celebrities and their lives, ingested on their phones. I don't have the heart to tell them that 95% of it is stuff created by PR firms.

playing devils advocate for a minute... isnt that similar to what our parents said in the 80's/90's about our generation? all that "tv and phone" brain rot

And they were right. But we would watch TV usually together and only for around 4-5 hours a day. Do you know how much screen time are people having ? 8 to 10 hours are not uncommon. And alone.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#282

Post by jasonkester »

9rx wrote: post #247
Uehreka wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at that age[0] If you’re going to make a claim this bold and this counter to the prevailing narrative, you’re gonna need to cite a better source than an outbrain-riddled webpage that tells me to “watch our video to find the lede we buried”. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but extraordinary claims require good sourcing and explanation.

> If you’re going to make a claim this bold and this counter to the prevailing narrative What do you see as the prevailing narrative? The one I see is homeownership itself, which suggests that homeownership has been seen as being hotly desirable. I strongly suspect we wouldn't have a homeownership narrative to speak of if ownership was unwanted. When something becomes unusually desirable like homeownership has, it is…

Well said. I remember making a spreadsheet in maybe 1995 laying out the math to compare the real costs and expected gains from buying vs. renting.

It mathed out about even. I decided to go with renting instead of buying, with the logic that the S&P didn’t need me to buy it a new roof every 15 years or to work in its garden every weekend.

It worked nicely too, growing the money that would otherwise have gone into mortgages and property tax, letting me take some of it out recently and buy a house with cash.

I don’t see much of this attitude in my younger friends now. But living cheap and saving does actually work.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#284

Post by znpy »

Gigachad wrote: post #262
01100011 wrote: post #259

A question for older folks: what did drugs do for us? Why did we do them? For me, drugs were: - socialization. I met a lot of friends through alcohol & drugs and they became the social glue for my circle. Alcohol & drugs became a large part of my identity. - a way to cope with boredom. Every day is a party when you're high. - identity. In my generation, drugs were mostly cool and associated with iconoclasts, artists,…

Gen Z here and people are definitely still doing drugs and drinking, but it does seem massively less. Just a personal anecdote, but there’s still a lot of house parties and stuff going on, and most people will have a couple drinks, some will have none, etc. But you are absolutely expected to handle yourself appropriately, getting too drunk or taking drugs you couldn’t handle isn’t tolerated and you’ll find yourself u…

As a millennial this is just great.

The more i read about GenZ’rs and their attitude to work and life the more i like this generation.

Yes, people should be expected to handle themselves appropriately. Getting black-out wasted with alcohol is not cool. It’s just unhealthy. Way to go!

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#285

Post by maccard »

lazystar wrote: post #251
Mistletoe wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the parasocial way my girlfriend's niece and friends experience life. No relationships of their own, it is all celebrities and their lives, ingested on their phones. I don't have the heart to tell them that 95% of it is stuff created by PR firms.

playing devils advocate for a minute... isnt that similar to what our parents said in the 80's/90's about our generation? all that "tv and phone" brain rot

Yes. And what the previous generation said about rock music.

Celebrities and “socialites” have been idolised for years - Paris Hilton certainly isn’t the doing of this generation, neither is Jackie Kennedy.

If you think that what we’re doing with mobile apps and social media is new, take a look at the 20th century a little harder.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#286

Post by aucisson_masque »

It says what but fail to explain the why. Some hypothesis in the comments about technology being the new 'drug' for teenager so they don't seek drugs, some other about how now everything is recorded so they can't go nuts, ... I don't buy it at all

For me it's just a cultural shift, it's no more cool to be that guy that smoke weed or is drunk. That's all.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#287

Post by psyclobe »

cyberpunk wrote: post #248
jaco6 wrote: post #50

Two things: Even the “cool kids” are staying inside and using their phones all day. Cool used to mean you were at the party, now it just means you have a high snapchat score. Other thing is genuine fear of accidental fentanyl consumption. They’re making fake Xans with fentanyl in them, fentanyl is being found in coke powder. Plenty of people aren’t taking the risk with street drugs anymore. Jelly Roll said so in an i…

Why would anyone put fent in cocaine? It’s more expensive and has the opposite effect. Drug selling is all about repeat customers I don’t really believe this happens apart from accidents.

I don't know but a very close friend's x-wife died that way, coke laced with fent.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#288

Post by _yb2s »

card_zero wrote: post #273
_yb2s wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the answer here is a bit subtle and hard to explain, because it contradicts a lot of common assumptions about addiction and drugs. In short, many addictive substances create a chemical dependence that often has awful, even potentially fatal chemical withdrawal symptoms. Behavioral addictions don't cause this, which makes people assume they are entirely something different, and categorically less serious and d…

Explain why MDMA isn't a huge addiction problem like meth (or all that popular any more).

MDMA has little addiction potential- for one it isn’t really just an unhealthy escape from negative feelings, but helps people process traumatic experiences and negative emotions by temporarily lowering anxiety and fear, and may be close to being FDA approved for that therapeutic purpose.

I have only tried it once, and it permanently eliminated my crippling social anxiety, by temporarily eliminating it, and allowing me to experience and remember what that was like. I felt no desire to use it again, because the (life changing positive) effect was permanent.

Second, it seems to have rapidly diminishing effects that make it self limiting- if sometime takes MDMA too much or too frequently, it stops having the desired effect.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#289

Post by lakomen »

What's surprising about it? Teens are attracted by things that are forbidden to them. When you legalize drugs that falls off. Also enough information is available nowadays that doesn't come from some finger waving "you you you" morality zealot, but actual real life examples.

For me at least the pull of cannabis and other drugs, never did real hard and addictive drugs like heroin, was that they were illegal and the effects weren't as bad as the lectures said they were. So I thought what's true about cannabis is also true about cocaine, lsd, psilocybin, xtc etc, but I've seen enough movies about heroin addicts going to waste. I was wrong about lsd and psilocybin and coke had no positive effect on me, except once I became Mr super cool monopoly player ans the other time I was full of energy, but I believe it was mixed with something other than coke. LSD was very uncontrollable, the 1st time was great, simple laugh and dance, the next time was awful and I suffered from it for many years. Psilocybin then, with friends cleared my mind and I was able to articulate myself and think clearly like never before. Amphetamine, I'll never forget the sour smell, but essentially a useless drug, except to stay awake. MDMA varying degrees of happiness and community. But the worst drug was nicotine. Useless, super addictive and really bad for your health. So hard to quit and it's everywhere and it's even worse now with all the e-cigarettes / vapes. Nicotine is an epidemic that needs to be eradicated. It's pure evil.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#290

Post by cj »

kasey_junk wrote: post #206
Uehreka wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at that age[0] If you’re going to make a claim this bold and this counter to the prevailing narrative, you’re gonna need to cite a better source than an outbrain-riddled webpage that tells me to “watch our video to find the lede we buried”. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but extraordinary claims require good sourcing and explanation.

Here is the underlying dataset https://www.ipums.org/projects/ipums-cps/d030.V11.0 Redfin did the analysis quoted https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...

> The homeownership rate for 26-year-old Gen Zers is 30%, below 31% for millennials at 26, 32.5% of Gen Xers at 26, and 35.6% of boomers at 26.

Unless you're specifically 26 years old, I suppose? This analysis seems far from scientific and cherry picks data in strange ways.

Post reply on HN