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How getting richer made teenagers less free

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Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#151

Post by leetrout »

antonymoose wrote: post #143
fallinditch wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend is one of those 'overly involved' parents with his daughter: tennis lessons and competitions, sailing lessons and competitions, skiing lessons and competitions. He sacrificed a huge amount of time to give his daughter every opportunity. I asked him one time "do you think she might end up hating you for making her do all these activities?" He thought it would be ok. He said "it will open doors for her. She's…

Isn’t that a bit like raising your kid with the intent of playing in the NBA though? I understand that it worked well for your friend and I am not knocking athletics, my own daughter is doing gymnastics, but that seems like either a post-hoc justification on the part of your friend or a strategy with a low rate of success such that it seems a bit odd to go for as a parent. Personally, I’ve seen far more of my helicop…

> Two have sadly taken their own lives despite seemingly good FAANG careers

Sorry to hear that.

Unfortunately I think we have way over indexed on "success" being tied to money and seeking these careers at companies that drive people to exhaustion and let the competitive environment drive everyone harder and harder with a ratchet effect.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#152

Post by HexPhantom »

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.

What looks like fear of responsibility can also be fear of doing something wrong in a world where mistakes are heavily punished and rarely forgiven

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#153

Post by squigz »

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

Then complain about short form video (which, I should add, is probably more culturally relevant than whatever we were consuming on the Internet growing up)

Complaining about the Internet in general and how kids are "disconnected from reality" isn't going to solve anything, and will just result in more crazy ID laws that won't actually solve anything.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#154

Post by D13Fd »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #47
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sidewalk ended apparently. i am imagining some super hostile urban planning. like did a cyclist cheat with the planner's spouse? is there not another route?

Streetview almost any US suburb. There often is not a way to safely cross a 60ft+ wide road with a 40mph speed limit (which means large vehicles with distracted drivers are driving 50mph+. Almost all businesses are located on these wide roads, and neighborhoods basically become islands for the kids. It’s especially bad in the winter, because it gets dark quicker, and crossing that 60ft+ wide 40mph+ road gets dicey ev…

I wish we had a neighborhood island. The road we live on is a quarter mile long (so, short) with few houses. It ends in a road where cars go 40+ mph. That road is awful - not only are there no sidewalks, but it twists and turns, and the road is cut into a hill with steep unwalkable slopes on either side. At any point a car could be coming downhill around the bend and your options as a pedestrian are to hope they see you or to just get run over.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#156

Post by delichon »

D13Fd wrote: post #144
reedf1 wrote: post #10

> Around 35% of American families have been investigated by CPS What?? > Fully 50% of Black voters in our poll agreed that allowing a 10-year-old to play unsupervised at a park for a few hours was grounds for a CPS call. 33% of white voters and 37% of Hispanic voters said the same. I am speechless. Has so much changed in the 20 odd years since I was a kid? I was playing outside unsupervised from maybe age 9. What hon…

I have six young kids. This attitude is absolutely prevalent (and it's insane). I've been chewed out by a cashier for sending an 8 year old into a store alone. I've had a person run out of a restaurant, panicking, and grab my 2 year old because she was walking too far ahead of me. I've had people tell me it's unsafe to let me 10, 8, and 5-year olds bike together in the park ahead of me while I walk. Just giving my ki…

I was 10 in '72, in a big metropolis. I'd take off on my Stingray bike on all day jaunts all over. The only comments I got were from my mom who made sure I had change to phone home in case I got a flat. I started a 4am paper route on that bike two years later, nobody batted an eye. It was the best of times.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#157

Post by casey2 »

富不过三代 Wealth does not last three generations.

Most of America (at least west and east coast) is at this stage now. Look no further than startup culture were people have convinced themselves that repeated embarrassing failure is actually a sound investment strategy. This is the environment children are growing up in, of course they will all grow up to be embarrassing failures.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#158

Post by MattGaiser »

nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #29
squeefers wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan. because the sidewalk was next to a busy road? sounds like a bit of a reach

sidewalk ended apparently. i am imagining some super hostile urban planning. like did a cyclist cheat with the planner's spouse? is there not another route?

I stayed at a hotel in Dallas that has a free shuttle for crossing the road.

As there isn’t a way to walk to the strip mall across the road.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#159

Post by HexPhantom »

zkmon wrote: post #107

As children (not even teens), we were allowed to roam the farms around the village and swim in any farm-well we like entire day in the hot sun. Jump from trees into the well, chase animals, walk barefoot in the in midday of 40 deg C of summer holidays. We used to get random thorns in the feet. The kid would pluck it out by surgical poking with steel pin in his own foot. That's what I call as rich childhood.

The tragedy is that we responded to the real dangers of the past by trying to eliminate all risk, and in doing so stripped away most of the texture that made childhood feel real

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#160

Post by mgraf1 »

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.

Your analogy is missing something. Not letting a child explore the world has an opportunity cost. They miss out on opportunities to develop independence and psychological resilience. The book "The Anxious Generation" covers this in detail.
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