Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts • Hacker News Board

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#391

Post by speakfreely » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

_qbxi wrote: post #53

oortoo wrote: post #18

Another aspect here I think is the generalized fear and anxiety present in young people. Having spoken to some family members in the 15-18 age bracket, the message they seem to be receiving is that they are without a future... they won't be buying homes, they won't be getting high paying jobs, and that the system is not going to work in their favor. I think people of this age are uniquely feeling mortal and vulnerabl…

First-time home owners have increased in age[0], the middle class is shrinking[1], education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have medical costs[3]. Perhaps the generalized fear is not so much about "coddling", but concrete realities. I do not envy them. [0] https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/american-housing-market-old... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-a... [2] https://www.usn…

First-time home buyers are getting squeezed by a combination of peaking market forces, but those forces are peaking and we're probably seeing the worst of it at this moment [1]. It will get better.

[1] https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-i-dont-inv...

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#392

Post by throwameme » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:46 PM UTC

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 am just old enough to have experienced 9/11 when i was in elementary school. it was a similar change to society to how covid screwed everything

when i was a child, there was no security in airports. like literally NONE. you could walk in and buy a flight with physical cash. if you wanted an international flight, there was a metal detector like you might find in a night club

government ID and drivers licence did not have your photograph on it, and some state drivers licenses were printed on non-laminated card. there was also no functional internet surveillance (there were no good search algorithms or tools in the early internet, so the government couldnt search either).

but the real big change, which is kind of what everyone felt i think, is the whole world was celebrating the end of the cold war and so vehemently protested going into the middle east, and the government just did it anyway. the largest protests in the history of the west were against that war and it was all totally ignored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

then we got the PATRIOT act, NSA/CIA spying on the population, heavily armed police. btw, in the 1990s you would NEVER see police with assault rifles and armoured trucks etc except for swat teams in major cities and the ATF. The idea of your local police department having a heap of military equipment was crazy. a great example of this is the LA riots in '92 - they had to call in the army and the national guard because the police simply werent equipped for it

and they would run these polls on tv, like gallup polls, falsely claiming that 20%+ of people publicly supported the war

even though it didnt affect anyone as much personally, it was the turning point where the gov just started brazenly ignoring people and introducing the heavy duty surveillance state, which was especially painfully felt in aus, canada, new zealand, the us, and the uk. and covid19 tyranny was only possible because of what bush did in response to 9/11 - it physically could not have happened in the 1990s as there were no government agencies that could have done it

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#393

Post by bbarn » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:49 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #162

conductr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had is persisting thought that, we as a society have been delaying adulthood, thus extending childhood, with each decade for a while. And we've now pushed it so far that the current cohort of teens simply are effectively young children on a social/emotion perspective making them unprepared to handle the stresses their age is exposing them to.

> have been delaying adulthood If you have kids, do you see them as less mature than how you perceived yourself at their age ? TBH I feel the opposite: current kids have a lot more to deal with, and are expected to be much much more down to earth than a few decades ago. The most basic things: a single post on an SNS can stick with them for the rest of their life, yet we moved half of our social life online.

By 17 I was on my own and joining the military. My daughter is 25 and just got her first real job out of college. By her age I had a 6 year old child (her). I'm not saying I took the right path (I didn't) but the level of maturity I had at her age was vastly different. Her peers are all similar, and when I was young many of mine were similar to me. I do thing generationally / culturally there's a difference.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#394

Post by meiraleal » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:50 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #162

conductr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had is persisting thought that, we as a society have been delaying adulthood, thus extending childhood, with each decade for a while. And we've now pushed it so far that the current cohort of teens simply are effectively young children on a social/emotion perspective making them unprepared to handle the stresses their age is exposing them to.

> have been delaying adulthood If you have kids, do you see them as less mature than how you perceived yourself at their age ? TBH I feel the opposite: current kids have a lot more to deal with, and are expected to be much much more down to earth than a few decades ago. The most basic things: a single post on an SNS can stick with them for the rest of their life, yet we moved half of our social life online.

> current kids have a lot more to deal with, and are expected to be much much more down to earth than a few decades ago

For sure not. They are pushed to play in a stage and fake drama. Decades ago, many 13 years old kids worked for 10-16 hours a day.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#395

Post by dartos » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

cassianoleal wrote: post #86

achairapart wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suddenly I remember this movie from the 90s where people drugged themself with some kind of minidisc. “Strange Days”, maybe? Anyhow, I always found the plot weird, but maybe they actually were onto something…

Or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Game [0]. Every time I watch that I get this eerie sensation that we're essentially giving our free will up to the masters of the games and social platforms we're addicted to. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28Star_Trek:_The_Nex...

Wow! The game in this episode has been living in my head since I was a child and I could never find where it was from!

I need to watch this episode again

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#396

Post by astura » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

vouaobrasil wrote: post #316

card_zero wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a massively overstated, trendy, technically incorrect thing to say.

Even if technological "addiction" is not like real drug addiction, it is something strange. People constantly checking, scrolling without any real purpose. There's some sort of conditioned behaviour in it that has some facets of addiction.

How do you know they don't have a purpose? Seems like you're projecting your insecurities on strangers.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#397

Post by speakfreely » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #208

_qbxi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First-time home owners have increased in age[0], the middle class is shrinking[1], education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have medical costs[3]. Perhaps the generalized fear is not so much about "coddling", but concrete realities. I do not envy them. [0] https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/american-housing-market-old... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-a... [2] https://www.usn…

Society hasn’t setup future society to be better. It’s a grab and go everywhere you look and it’s tiring. This is coming from a millennial with a good tech job. I cannot imagine how younger generations feel.

This is the inevitable result of higher connectivity in society. More spoils flow to top performers due to the reduced friction. I don't see any way to undo this trend short of undoing the connectivity, i.e. forcibly rolling back technological progress. Kind of a non-starter.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#398

Post by bbarn » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

throwup238 wrote: post #23

belval wrote: post #14

> Monitoring the Future Study, which annually surveys eighth, 10th and 12th grade students across the United States. I wonder if there is correlation to the opioid crisis, where the "downsides" (if you want to call it that) of drug abuse are so visible to teenagers that they are staying away from it. Doing drugs when it's associated with being "cool"/interesting like rappers is one thing, but when you associate it to…

I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve completely stopped doing any drugs that I can’t make myself or purchase from a liquor store or dispensary (or shroom store). The risk of fentanyl making it into the product even for unrelated party drugs is just insane now and I don’t trust myself to use fentanyl strips properly while already high or tripping. I wonder if that impacts teen drug use too, because for the first tim…

I was a big fan of cocaine back in the 90s. I never got to the "problem" level with it but if it was there I was the first to raise my hand.

My personality has changed a little, but I'd still probably jump at it today, if it weren't for the fear of fentanyl. I'm not worried about addiction, I'm worried about death.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#399

Post by jppope » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #237

nemo44x wrote: post #129

Isn’t this good? We’ve literally told teenagers to not use drugs or have sex for decades and it’s obviously working. The consequences are far higher today or at least more well understood and the messaging is getting through. We’ve trained younger generations to be extremely risk adverse and they’ve listened. I line they’re probably dangerously exposed to other risks that we don’t have generational knowledge of yet.

Yeah I think it’s just this. We learnt that alcohol is actually really bad for you in many ways, and we taught our children, and they listened. I think it’s pretty funny that our instinct is somehow to be slightly horrified that they stopped drinking or using drugs. I guess they can’t do anything right

I think the issue here is more about the unintended second order effects. Yay! Drug and alcohol use is down... annnnnnddddd now theres a mental health crisis, increase in suicide rate, and the fertility rate is dropping like well drug and alcohol use.

I'm personally not saying the isolated health aspect of reduced drug and alcohol use is a bad thing. In a vacuum it is obviously positive. When you consider how they function in a broader social system it may turn out that its not a positive change.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#400

Post by kasey_junk » Sat, Dec 21, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

abduhl wrote: post #387

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 20% down mortgage is a 5x levered bet. Plus you can roll capital gains into new real estate. The S&P 500 cannot offer these advantages.

With the proper mix of retirement accounts, options, and futures contracts it can. It can offer even more leverage if you want.

The bigger win is the government subsidies and tax breaks.

You need very little on hand cash to get a very low interest rate. Much lower than asset loans at equivalent levels of wealth.