Why are today's teens putting off driving, dating and drinking?

Why are today's teens putting off driving, dating and drinking?
chicagotribune.com

If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself.

This allowed us to be a lot more free - we knew at worst we would be like our parents. Make ends meet and eck out a basic living. It wasn't too bad as everyone else was the same. So knowing that doing nothing - would result in being where we were - the only way out was to do something. Take a risk, go out and see what the world offers.

Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all.

The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids.

Their pressures are totally different, there is no way I would swap my youth for theirs.

-I grew up fairly free to roam around as a child, even as a teenager. Leave in the morning, come back when hungry or dark. Good luck being a parent doing that these days.

-We spent most of our evenings all watching BBC and talking about what was on the news. We had no choice but to talk to adults and other kids about the world and they had no choice either (in a positive way). How many times do you meet parents these days who are present but not really present with their kids because they are on their phones?

-Parents are cash rich but time poor. For many, even when they are home they are home they are working. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid but no way would I have preferred an ipad to spending an evening kicking a cheap soccer ball with my Dad.

-When I grew up, if you did something stupid like puke when getting drunk as a teenager, only your classmates would know about it. Now, your whole life is like some kind of advert - your open to social media bullying and pressures 24/7 - that's absolutely horrible.

-Parents and schools have replaced educated with homework. Literally kids are more screwed than ever with the amount of learning they are expected to do.

-Sex education, especially in most parts of US and Ireland is a joke. I got part of mine in the UK at the age of 8 and it was a massive difference - contraception, STDs sex, etc etc, all you need to know. There are still schools I know these days who think sex education is a video of a nun talking bullshit about marriage. Kids are overwhelemed by online adverts, porn etc but society in many places still isn't willing to give them the tools they need to deal with it.

-Casual first jobs that used to be easy to get as kids/teenagers have now become much harder to get. My first was working in a local shop. My next was the MIT Media Lab Europe when I was 15 - purely because I rang up and asked did they need a web master. They said yeah, why not? Do you know how much paperwork they would need to do to be able to do that these days?

I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people?

It wasn't just your situation with your parents. A lot of adults today grew up with Joe Camel and cartoon ads like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM

There was no anti-bullying education. Actually, bullying was basically okay when I was in high school. No concept of diversity training for staff and administrators.

I mean if things aren't as rough on teens as they used to be, why force them to suddenly grow up anyway? Don't they deal with a whole set of separate, new challenges adults never had?

Baby boomers get to live much longer as adults thanks to recent medical advances. Why can't young people live their lives young for longer as well?

If ycombinator is right about the coming future of basic income, then not only do these folks not have to become adults very early, they don't have to "eck" out a living either. Earning income isn't necessarily a sign of adulthood.

I'm not saying people don't become adults ever, because this is already a problem. We all know adults that act like children. I'm saying why force them to deal with some of the primitive experiences you and many other folks have dealt with?

I did like how the end of the article mentioned how scary the world is today. They should try living through the Cold War, and the time of Crips and Bloods, and gas lines, and the housing crash. Now those were scary.