Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 294 posts

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#181

Post by proy24 »

arcticfox wrote: post #93
RobLach wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 years from now teens will have a subscription to curated experiences for them to get together in-person for while their typical interpersonal interactions will happen over the Internet where it’s nice with a relatively null marginal cost.

> 50 years from now This sounds like 5 years from now to me, if not today in large part

Shit I was a teenager only 8 years ago but cannot relate to todays teenagers at all..In contrast I could very easily relate to people in their 20s when I was a teenager.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#182

Post by Theodores »

paulsutter wrote: post #67
Zenst wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true, in essence driving them into online friend interactions. Makes you wonder what life will be like for children 50 years from now, and how that would compare with today. After there was a time when making explosives was a childhood right of passage along with chemistry sets, making fires, even having a pocket knife. Today, such common activities would not end well at all, however innocent the intention. These…

Surely kids still try to make gunpowder, what are you talking about? And for who but kids are pocket knives and chenistry sets made? > there was a time when making explosives was a childhood right of passage along with chemistry sets, making fires, even having a pocket knife.

The irony of the pocket knife (Swiss Army Knife) for me is the amount of times that mine came in handy for the tweezers.

I saved countless people from the agony of a splinter with those little tweezers.

I worked in retail at the time - Saturday job, something kids don't do any more - and many fixtures were made of wood. Splinters happened. I saved the day every time someone was in agony from a splinter. I didn't keep records but at least every fortnight there would be an incident of getting the tweezers out.

In those days leaving the house without my pocket knife would have felt like leaving the house without my keys now. The funny thing was that I didn't have keys, the lock on the door at home was only used once or twice a year when on holidays or visiting distant relatives.

Fires were also another large part of my upbringing. Nowadays we have recycling but there was a time when adults would be okay with kids lighting fires, either in a fireplace, out in the back yard or for amusement with friends and flammable explosives. You wouldn't let a child anywhere near petrol nowadays but back in the day that was something on hand and used to get damp things started. The only punishment would be for using it ineffectively.

My pen knife was mostly used for opening boxes, it was sharpened a few times by adults as a favour. Imagine that today, sharpening a kid's knife for them and that being okay.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#183

Post by tikkabhuna »

darkpuma wrote: post #113
Zak wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK law is that a folding knife under 3" is generally legal to carry in public. Anything else requires a "good reason", which can be problematic if the cop/judge doesn't see things your way. A court ruling some time ago decided that a folding knife with a locking mechanism is actually a fixed blade and therefore not generally legal to carry. Traditional Swiss Army Knives are non-locking and most of them are under 3".…

Sounds like the leatherman I had as a teenager would be illegal then; that's pretty nuts. The most dangerous thing I ever did with it was take apart a microwave oven, and that didn't even involve the blade.

I have a leatherman in London with a locking blade. It was a Christmas present from my dad and I emailed the local police about the legality of it.

Ultimately, if you're walking round with it in the bottom of your bag and you have a use for it, you'll be fine. They're looking to stop people from having it in their pocket as they're walking round town. Same with the kitchen knives, got it down the back of your trousers 11pm loitering around, they're gonna get you.

They're legal to have at home as well, and can be bought on Amazon.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#184

Post by ddeokbokki »

nodemaker wrote: post #56
_qwfv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> few of them drive. WTF?! Rad? I didn't need to drive in High School, and I still found plenty to do back in the 90s. Kids today have even more options. > there's a frigging movieplex down the street with a bunch of restaurants and TWO parks on opposite sides of the main E/W street... and they just ... go home. WTF. First, movie theaters are awful. Second, there's so much cool stuff to do once you get home! I can go…

Is being so boring and antisocial a norm these days ? :D (Just busting your balls haha) I think a lot of us deeply care about the future society that will cater to the people that are currently young. And it seems remarkably boring, superficial and for the lack of a better word, just devoid of anything fun. In the end noone cares if this is a subculture (there were enough subcultures when I was in school i.e goths, m…

You can be interesting and social indoors, online.

In my teenage years I played online games and had a group of online friends for years, some of which I am still in touch with regularly.

I don't understand how you get the boring bit though, partaking in outside activities does not make you interesting.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#185

Post by hrktb »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #116

Idk if this is specific to my generation, but us young people suck at hanging out. People never confirm whether or not they're going to an event. They flake all the time, often without warning. If they're not flaking, they're perpetually late, often absurdly (nothing like getting to a place and getting a text about just leaving). It drives me nuts. But it's so ubiquitous, it's hard to take a stand against it. It's li…

When I was a kid we had relatives who were always late by half an hour or more. I remember my parents planning event with sometimes hours of buffer to account for people being late with no mean to check if they'll even be there in the end.

I think we are more sensitive to these issues because there's less excuses (even 'traffic was bad' is less and less an excuse as we get ETAs, it needs to be something really bad happening to get sympathy).

We are more used to things being in sync (pre-checking shop opening hours or having average wait times for instance) and moving generally fast.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#186

Post by brightball »

philpem wrote: post #179
brightball wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, Cub Scouts / Boy Scouts are a pretty great place to get those same skills and experiences. Great opportunity to get a well rounded childhood.

They're great if you fit in with the group. If the group decides you're "different" in some way, you're going to get shunned, and shunned hard. Speaking from experience here. It works great for "normal" kids but for any kid even the slightest bit non-neurotypical, it's going to be absolute hell.

I didn't really fit into the group when I was a kid, but in hindsight I still gained a lot from them (including experience learning to better fit into groups).

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#187

Post by rygxqpbsngav »

> the drop accelerated after 2010 – just as smartphones use started to grow.

Does anyone think not giving them access to phones till they go to college and encourage them instead to play sports with neighboring kids help? (assuming both neighbor parent agree to this!) Is that any practical anymore?

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#188

Post by AmazingAtalanta »

I wonder if one of the biggest drivers of loneliness isn't necessarily that kids are spending more time on their phones or even that they have less face time with their friends, but that their social media can tell them more about what their friends are doing when they aren't together. First, everyone knows people curate their social media presence so that they look cool and that they are doing fun things. Second, if two of my friends in my group of friends hung out, I wouldn't necessarily know about it until after the fact. I wouldn't be able to see fun images of my friends or even people who were like the "cool kids" hanging out. Essentially, that limited the amount of FOMO you could experience because you just didn't have that ability.

I definitely think some of it also has to do with the level of control and protection we try to place on kids as well. It's just probably discouraging to kids or, worse, they sense their parent's fear that something will happen to them so they become afraid and ultimately pull themselves back from social interactions.

I wonder if kids also tend to feel more lonely because parents have also increased their smartphone usage. When I go out to restaurants, I feel like I am more likely to see entire families on their phones sitting around the table instead of talking with one another. That can't help either.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#189

Post by skummetmaelk »

nodemaker wrote: post #56
_qwfv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> few of them drive. WTF?! Rad? I didn't need to drive in High School, and I still found plenty to do back in the 90s. Kids today have even more options. > there's a frigging movieplex down the street with a bunch of restaurants and TWO parks on opposite sides of the main E/W street... and they just ... go home. WTF. First, movie theaters are awful. Second, there's so much cool stuff to do once you get home! I can go…

Is being so boring and antisocial a norm these days ? :D (Just busting your balls haha) I think a lot of us deeply care about the future society that will cater to the people that are currently young. And it seems remarkably boring, superficial and for the lack of a better word, just devoid of anything fun. In the end noone cares if this is a subculture (there were enough subcultures when I was in school i.e goths, m…

Fun for you != fun for everyone else.

Re: U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in person

#190

Post by xNyC »

Symbiote wrote: post #157
chillingeffect wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, so if I, say buy a cooking knife and get "caught" carrying it home from the store, "A court will decide if you’ve got a good reason to carry a knife if you’re charged with carrying it illegally." Or if I take a chef's knife to a friend's house to cook dinner with them, the same court will intervene? Presumably following an arrest? That second link is just so creepy to me (pacifist American). I can see how it use…

Back to reality, there's no problem with all reasonable purposes to carry a knife, like after purchase or for cooking. There's no problem carrying a Swiss Army knife. The police aren't looking for knives like this, and if they do find one for some reason, they are very unlikely to arrest you. If you've gone to a bar after your dinner party, and you're carrying the "cooking" knife somewhere accessible (like your pocke…

Perhaps you want to increase survival chances against people with legal weapons (aka dogs):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_dog_attacks_in_England_a...

This whole thing is just nonsense and another form of humiliation of the oppressed by "the" "state".

Post reply on HN