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

361–370 of 624 posts

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#361

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #111
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get technical, doesn’t it? When some particular variety of thing is popular across all human cultures, doesn’t this point to it addressing some deep desire we might put on mazlow’s? What distinguishes a deep, innate human desire from a need?

One way to distinguish them is the retrospective analysis of the outcome. What happens when someone obtains or goes without each category? To go deeper, I think one needs to more fully defined "need”. Need for what? Are we talking about needs.. to sustain biological life? Are we talking about needs... To sustain happy and productive lives? If we take the second definition, there is a pretty clear difference between a…

I would just argue that “happy and productive“ is vastly too reductive. This seems like a very difficult definition to nail down, but those needs which are not required for survival would probably be defined as something like “those things which increase the flourishing of, maximize the potential of, and/or contribute to a valid and lasting feeling of deep satisfaction in the individual.”

From this definition, it seems like some drugs and some uses of drugs are most certainly not necessary while others seem to be contributing to a real psychological need. Some drugs can give people insight into the nature of their own mind or of their experience, or reshape their worldview for the better. They can allow us to experiment with our own consciousness, which seems to be something that we derive a lot of satisfaction and even utility from. In these cases, drugs may be fulfilling a need. Simultaneously we can recognize that drug use intended more just to anesthetize or produce blind pleasure is most likely not contributing to a need, as it was defined above.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#362

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

cluckindan wrote: post #357
Spooky23 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not technology as a thing people are hooked to - it’s taken over social life. My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period. In person stuff is mostly organized. That is helped by school policy that got rid of the idea of a neighborhood school. Additionally, the social activities that coalesced around things like alcohol are out of reach of many teens. I live in a city that had a very active co…

”My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period.” Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like that 30 something years ago.

It's a different beast, these days, though.

Back then, only "nerds" socialized online. Nowadays, everyone does it.

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, I'm really glad that kids aren't screwing up their formative years. Drug use during growing/development years can wreck someone's life.

The issue is that, if you are an addict (which is different from physical addiction. Many addicts never get physically addicted to anything), then you'll eventually have problems with drugs; even if they are "socially acceptable" ones, like pot or alcohol (pot being "socially acceptable" is kinda new, around here, but Things Have Changed).

It'll still destroy your life, but, at least, you'll hopefully have something like an education, and living skills, by then, which can help Recovery (and also hinder it).

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#363

Post by ThinkBeat »

This is not accurate in what I see around me. Alcohol far less common among young people than it used to be. Cocaine and MDMA is flourishing.

Ritalin like drugs is out there as well but I dont have much inside inot how common it is.

That is a tiny tiny sample compared to the study so it does not in any way say that the study is wrong. It is just what I myself see and hear around me. (and what the police see a lot of )

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#364

Post by germinalphrase »

sznio wrote: post #254
smogcutter wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that Covid was disillusioning for young people, but uniquely so? The 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, and the GWoT would all like a word. The only generation I can think of without a similar formative crisis (in the US at least) is Gen X. Does the death of Kurt Cobain count?

the financial crisis was just financial. 9/11 or war on terror was just behind a tv screen. covid was actually something everyone felt personally - not just empathized with through media. I feel like I just started recovering mentally from the lockdowns - all my college years eaten up by them.

I mean, lock down absolutely was a disruption - but I know more than one or two young men that ended up in the desert after 9/11. Maybe we’ve also acclimated so much to the post-9/11 infrastructure of fear and surveillance that we assume this is how it always was?

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#365

Post by vouaobrasil »

cluckindan wrote: post #357
Spooky23 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not technology as a thing people are hooked to - it’s taken over social life. My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period. In person stuff is mostly organized. That is helped by school policy that got rid of the idea of a neighborhood school. Additionally, the social activities that coalesced around things like alcohol are out of reach of many teens. I live in a city that had a very active co…

”My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period.” Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like that 30 something years ago.

> Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like that 30 something years ago.

(1) When I was growing up, nobody had any online presence. I remember life without the internet.

(2) The fact that it is not new does not mean it has not changed in magnitude and addictiveness.

(3) The fact that it is not new does not mean that it is not a problem. It is a growing problem. Especially because societies these days do nothing about their problems except through more technology at them, which rarely solves the underlying issue.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#367

Post by vouaobrasil »

Spooky23 wrote: post #354
vouaobrasil wrote: post #6

I wonder if the new drug of choice is actually technology. In some ways I think that the addiction to technology has some similar mellowing effects as drugs. Some research indicates that smartphone addiction is also related to low self-esteem and avoidant attachment [1] and that smartphones can become an object of attachment [2]. The replacement of drugs by technology is not surprising as it significantly strengthens…

I think it’s not technology as a thing people are hooked to - it’s taken over social life. My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period. In person stuff is mostly organized. That is helped by school policy that got rid of the idea of a neighborhood school. Additionally, the social activities that coalesced around things like alcohol are out of reach of many teens. I live in a city that had a very active co…

> I think it’s not technology as a thing people are hooked to - it’s taken over social life.

One cannot separate the tool from the use. Of course, you are right, though. Technology has done two things: it has eradicated communities by making communities less economically valuable, and it provides a superficial alternative.

But the end result is that people become effectively hooked on using the device. The device is nothing without what is happening on it, but it cannot be deconstructed and separated either into a social component and the technology itself because it is more than the sum of its parts.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#368

Post by hex3 »

Unearned5161 wrote: post #350
cpcallen wrote: post #345

Technology (e.g. highly addictive short-form video apps) seems like a likely explanation; fear of fentanyl is less plausible (it would not deter drinking or vaping). Surely the biggest factor, however, is just the interruption of social contagion? I strongly suspect that physically separating highschool students from their older peers for a couple of years meant that most of the older kids who were in to drugs etc. g…

I like this thought process your brought up here! I hadn't put much time into thinking about the physical separation of generations in organizations like schools. A certain absence of physical heritage if you will... A mini extinction event Makes you think of other, perhaps smaller, things that may have gotten a gap in physical hand offs. Perhaps I'm generalizing too strongly here, but certainly someone that was a mi…

[dead]

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#369

Post by hylaride »

_yb2s wrote: post #288
card_zero wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

MDMA can be addictive, though usually on people who are dealing various issues that, like alcohol, can mask or suppress "bad" feelings. It pumps up the serotonin levels and people can definitely get addicted to that (the same way shopaholics are addicted to the temporary dopamine hits they get when they buy something new).

MDMA (and other drugs that fall under the psychedelic umbrella like magic mushrooms or LSD) has has shown some clinical success in dealing with trauma and other mental health issues, but only supervised and combined with professional help. Most people I know that have used MDMA/Ecstasy usually only stopped because the crash sucks as they didn't want to deal with it after. That's the main reason it was used for social gatherings like raves; it really helps eliminate social anxiety.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#370

Post by BeFlatXIII »

Henchman21 wrote: post #182
mmooss wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teens aren't ... having sex. Nor are people in their 20s (that is, both groups are having much less sex). That is the most worrying thing to me. People are not even engaging in the most fundamental, unavoidable, pleasurable human drive. They seem very much like traumatized people, on a massive scale, just trying to survive.

I think we all realize deep down there are too many humans on this planet.

Quorum-sensing ain't just for bacteria.
Post reply on HN