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Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

economist.com

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Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#191

Post by Mirioron »

101404 wrote: post #111
nabla9 wrote: post #104

Finland has mandatory military service for males. So every year you most of the young men (mostly age 18 to 20) into a controlled environment and go through standardized testing and observation. - Physical fitness has gone down, overweight goes up. - Intelligence peaked among those who were born in 70's and has been in slight decline last 18 years. Similar results can be seen in other developed countries. - Anxiety d…

> Finland has mandatory military service for males. How is that kind of institutionalized sexism still legal?

This is the norm almost everywhere that has conscription. There's a map of countries with conscription on Wikipedia (blue, red, and yellow): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#192

Post by daptaq »

oblio wrote: post #147
daptaq wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even dating at all. That's easy to explain: You don't have to talk about these things anymore, because of IM & co.. It's all still happening, but it's easier to hide it from the "dweebs". I've seen both sides, and it's really surprising how well this unwritten system works. At best you realize a few year…

> I've seen both sides, and it's really surprising how well this unwritten system works. Mind giving more details for someone who was last a teen more than a decade ago? :-)

Don't talk about it to outsiders, it's really nothing new, just easier to not accidentally slip that you were at a party someone else wasn't invited to.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#193

Post by _bxg1 »

_5yps wrote: post #27

16-year-old here. My experience is probably markedly different from most teenagers in the US (I'm an immigrant who goes to a competitive school full of other immigrants) but I find that, for the most part, this article hits the nail on the head. High School is nothing like the usual media portrayal - I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even…

I graduated HS 10 years ago and it was pretty similar in my experience, maybe a bit less extreme. There were some "stereotypical teens" at my school but they were a minority. Everyone I was surrounded by was trying to squeeze in as many AP courses as they could, as many officer positions in different extracurricular organizations (NHS, band/choir/orchestra, yearbook, athletics, etc) as they could. Our valedictorian actually managed to hack the system to take an extra class period each semester just to jack up her GPA. I remember when I told my parents, children of the 70s and 80s, that the "popular kids" at school were the overachievers, not the jocks (though there was overlap). They were bewildered by the concept.

We didn't all have websites or talk about buzzwords or "branding" ourselves, but we definitely were branding ourselves for colleges even if we didn't call it that. It was incredibly stressful, TBH. More than college itself. Sounds like it's only gotten even more intense.

It's funny: the tech gold-rush didn't start until a couple years later, so our computer science class was actually a small, tight-knit group mostly free of people who were just trying to boost their college credentials. Everybody who was there wanted to be there, and we'd do extracurricular projects and even road-tripped to a programming competition once. It was really great.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#195

Post by daptaq »

Taek wrote: post #172
daptaq wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never heard anyone even talk about a party, nobody's doing anything stronger than weed, nobody's fucking or even dating at all. That's easy to explain: You don't have to talk about these things anymore, because of IM & co.. It's all still happening, but it's easier to hide it from the "dweebs". I've seen both sides, and it's really surprising how well this unwritten system works. At best you realize a few year…

Recent studies have been consistent with the result that teenagers are having less sex today than they used to.

Ok, there's been more education on STDs and teen pregnancy, but even still, because of WhatsApp/Facebook messenger, a lot of what used to happen in the hallways (or at least how Hollywood depicts it) can how be "virtually" hidden.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#196

Post by allannienhuis »

jandrese wrote: post #169
101404 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finland has mandatory military service for males. How is that kind of institutionalized sexism still legal?

Finland has a history of needing to fight off a much larger expansionist neighbor. One who has recently (a few years ago) annexed more territory while the rest of the world sat around and did nothing. Or are you asking why they don't extend the mandatory service to women? The reasons for that are somewhat historic and very _biotruth_. A country that fights a devastating war that wipes out 90% of the men but keeps the…

But those aren't the two options. If loss of life were equal due to equal participation, you'd get 45% loss of each sex (using your 90% of men figure as the potential loss), which (while still devastating) isn't the same argument for losing the breeding capacity of the country.

The reality is that those sorts of rules are very much based on culture tradition ('historic'). It takes a long time for parts of our culture to change. Only a few countries have mandatory service for women (Finland's neighbors Norway and Sweden among them). Israel does as well, but has a large exception on religious grounds.

Also, mandatory service doesn't necessarily mean mandatory combat service, although I don't know how those countries just mentioned manage that.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#197

Post by kick »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #164
kick wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of an Ivy is the prestige that comes with it. CMU is only prestigious in computing. Academically Duke is better than most Ivies, and it's got some pretty nice name recognition because of its outreach programs, but it doesn't really have the prestige of most Ivies. I'm mostly just entertained that in a discussion like this, MIT is completely absent. For obvious reasons, granted, but it's still funny.

It makes sense that MIT is absent as large donations can’t guarantee your kid gets into MIT.

I don't think that's exactly fair. There are plenty of other great ways to look good to MIT that are primarily available to people in higher income brackets; it's not controversial that MIT caters more to the middle-class than most universities, but the middle class is small now, and the upper class has learned to emulate it over the years.

It still has many of the same flaws the rest of them do.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#198

Post by rubidium »

foldr wrote: post #10

This generation has fully internalized consumer capitalism. Music is about success, not dropping out. Edit : See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22985678 in this thread.

This. Capitalism and consumerism reign. Nobody is interested in “fighting the machine” or even aware of what it is.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#199

Post by pier25 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #161
namelosw wrote: post #119

Kids are so less adventurous nowadays. I'm not sure about teenagers, but for college students, it's more obvious. I believe it's because society is less forgiving - young people spent a ton of money or taking loans, work hard at school, cannot find jobs that are not stressful and underpaid. Or couldn't even find jobs at all. One step wrong and they would be screwed.

As a parent, I've noticed the biggest problem that prevents "free range" kids is other adults without kids. Those of us WITH kids relish getting the kids outside and out of our hair. But those without kids frequently are calling the parents to complain our children are roaming the neighborhood, perhaps on their property. Or they fear these kids will create problems. Usually, however, they're just kids being kids. Goi…

I don't know.

In Spain kids are indeed less adventurous than my generation, specially in the cities, but I've never heard about someone complaining about kids roaming.

I think the number of alone activities kids can do these days to keep themselves entertained (videogames, internet, netflix, etc) is a much more influential factor.

Re: Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic (2018)

#200

Post by cle »

deagle50 wrote: post #132
jshaqaw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly this doesn’t sound that different from my own competitive high school experiences almost 30 years ago. The fact that you and your peers bin Duke and Cornell into the second tier bargain bin suggests that your subset of peers may not be a representative sample of the student universe.

My HS was competitive but in the 90s you didn't have to build your global brand on social media or maintain a blog. The things we were measured by were largely private, like your grades, SAT scores, and application essays. Now you have to become a mini-celebrity and survive the onslaught of millions trying to knock you down. Every HS kid in the US is only a couple steps removed on social media.

Do you really need to do that? What evidence is there? (Serious question)
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