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How getting richer made teenagers less free

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Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#111

Post by throawayonthe »

Aeglaecia wrote: post #90
squigz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something ironic about posting this on HN, where likely a large percentage of us practically grew up on the Internet.

while intelligence does tend to result in overfitting from my observations of smart people , nobody here grew up glued to short form content that has the same crash as cocaine

how old are you? the avg ~20 year old has indeed already grown up with addictive social media

youtube came out 20 years ago, the iphone 19 years ago, instagram 15 years ago, musical.ly 11 years ago and merged with tiktok 7 years ago...

we are so cooked frfr

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#112

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway732255 wrote: post #103
TrackerFF wrote: post #15

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty and at best working class people. We'd be outside all day long - being inside was considered a privilege. Weekdays and weekends. Decades later, most of my peers have middle-class jobs. Their kids are barely outside. Their parents are involved with them from morning to evening, or chauffeuring them between sports and other extracurr…

> Interestingly, I've heard from parents that many feel like they're both suffocating and feeling inadequate When my spouse and I were dating, we made fun of those “overly involved parents” who tried to live vicariously through their kids and over-scheduled them. Since having kids, my spouse has (over a one year period) put our 5 year old in: T-ball, swimming, dance, theater, Sunday school, church, soccer, gymnastics…

[deleted]

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#113

Post by pbmonster »

elif wrote: post #72
CalRobert wrote: post #43

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards. Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked…

In your analogy, swimmers may have gone down 90% but kids are still being submerged in water as much as ever if not more. The vast majority of traffic deaths are people INSIDE cars.

Pedestrian deaths in the US are up 78% since 2009. [0]

[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-so-many-pedes...

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#114

Post by sekai »

throwaway732255 wrote: post #103
TrackerFF wrote: post #15

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty and at best working class people. We'd be outside all day long - being inside was considered a privilege. Weekdays and weekends. Decades later, most of my peers have middle-class jobs. Their kids are barely outside. Their parents are involved with them from morning to evening, or chauffeuring them between sports and other extracurr…

> Interestingly, I've heard from parents that many feel like they're both suffocating and feeling inadequate When my spouse and I were dating, we made fun of those “overly involved parents” who tried to live vicariously through their kids and over-scheduled them. Since having kids, my spouse has (over a one year period) put our 5 year old in: T-ball, swimming, dance, theater, Sunday school, church, soccer, gymnastics…

> When my spouse and I were dating, we made fun of those “overly involved parents” who tried to live vicariously through their kids and over-scheduled them.

> Since having kids, my spouse has (over a one year period) put our 5 year old in: T-ball, swimming, dance, theater, Sunday school, church, soccer, gymnastics, library group sessions, and to my absolute bewilderment and dismay—beauty pageants. On any given week, there are 5+ activities outside of school. My spouse stays up until 2 AM “helping” our daughter on her kindergarten school projects. Never mind all the activities our 2 year old is ramping up into.

> I don’t think this is healthy at all for children, and it’s really created a rift in our marriage. It’s been so bizarre to me to see this change in behavior from what we discussed prior to marriage compared to now. I worry the kids are going to burn out. I certainly didn’t grow up this way, and my personality as a kid would not have handled this well.

Parents appear increasingly terrified of childhood boredom, and thus meticulously cram their children's schedules with activities they feel are "crucial" for "development".

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#115

Post by Loughla »

exitb wrote: post #35
kakacik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not kids, parents are scared, kids have no say unless they are already addicted to gaming, tv or whatever their latest addiction is, and then they themselves don't want to go and just sit and consume. Even if the chance something actually happens is terribly low it became unacceptable. Death of any type became unacceptable, so got injuries, bullying is end of the world. Maybe due to having 1-2 kids instead of 10 and…

I think a lot of parenting decisions like this are just made in line with the rest of the society. If you let your 9 year old roam the park by themselves, you run a rather small risk of injuries, death, kidnapping etc. But you run a pretty big risk of them being the only lone 9 year old at the park.

That. Our oldest was out by himself all the time when he was smaller. Then it got to be less and less.

Because it was just him. His friends couldn't go anywhere unless a parent went with them.

There's no unsupervised time, and then we're all confused when 18 year olds can't cope with life.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#116

Post by phito »

dlisboa wrote: post #102
smallnix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the risk What is the risk really? I mean put in numbers.

Do you have children? Would you point them a loaded gun that's only, say, 0.5% likely to go off and shoot them? 1 in 100k cancers also disappear spontaneously, should I wait and see for my kid and not treat them? When it comes to your own children the only number that matters is 1. The 1 time it happens their lives, your life, is over.

That sounds like maladaptive anxiety.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#117

Post by lm28469 »

squigz wrote: post #85
Aeglaecia wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wonder whats gonna happen in a decade or two when our youngest and brightest minds have all been penned by a culture disconnected from reality

There's something ironic about posting this on HN, where likely a large percentage of us practically grew up on the Internet.

You can't compare late 90s/early 2000s internet with what kids have access to today. It wasn't a weapon aimed at your attention back then, and certainly not as easily accessible. There isn't much in common between the two, neither quantitatively nor qualitatively

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#118

Post by throawayonthe »

CalRobert wrote: post #43

For a counterexample, come visit Houten, NL (I live here and it's great) where you literally see kids around 10 years old biking independently, sometimes with a football (soccerball) or fishing rod in tow. And this is a pretty wealthy area by most standards. Here's a good livestream from my town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXqogC2zk4 (I share the livestream because that makes it harder to say it's cherrypicked…

houten is infamous in some circles as the antithesis of american living :))

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#119

Post by a3w »

lm28469 wrote: post #28

And it also creates permanent adulescents, scared of responsibilities, scared of commitment, scared of exploring. I've seen it countless times with teenagers in my family, they're overgrown babies.

I read the article. And see zero evidence given that letting kids survive is a bad thing if you trade in nothing important.

Then again, this seems US centric.

But this comment just seems cruel, making people think it is their fault if they have bad feelings.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#120

Post by dlisboa »

cpursley wrote: post #105
dlisboa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cultural shift. Your peers are now way more aware of child abuse, kidnappings, murders, than your parents were. Not that yours were necessarily bad parents for that time but there is way more information today of the issues with the world. I certainly wouldn't let my kid walk home alone in the woods at night: are we really sure this degree of freedom is so developmentally important to be worth the risk? I'd al…

This idea that parents who let their kids play without 3 layers of bubble wrap and parental hovercraft mode don’t also talk with their kids and aren’t present is not just insulting, it’s far from true. Over coddling causes more problems than it prevents, it’s especially obvious when you compare the maturity levels, mental health situation and general early adulthood outcomes for non-Anglo kids in other developed nati…

There's just no discussion that modern parents are more personally involved in their kids development than parents in the 70s/80s. That's just a fact, not an insult.

I never said you can't raise kids without all the overprotection and also be present.

The issue of over parenting seems to be a developed nation issue, I agree. I'm not in one and here kids don't do mountains of activities, but violence rates are very significant. There's just no point exposing my son to it in the hopes he comes out the other side unscathed, when even I don't want to be out alone at night. That's "vibe parenting", not an intelligent way of raising children.

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