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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)

#21

Post by sysbin »

The fact is competition has been increasing every generation at a ridiculous rate. I like to think society would desire to remove competition as a requirement for everyone and allow basic needs being supplied for a somewhat enjoyable life.

Sadly, I think it will take two generations of travesty before anything substantial happens if at all. I predict a lot of suicide & homelessness if not for some disaster and that wipes out a good portion of the population. Kids aren't dumb nowadays with social media showing them how much of an advantage being born into good genetics or financial privilege happens to be.

I assume a lot of progress will happen regardless. The newest generation has everything at their fingertips. They get to read past experiences and how to approach things while the information is criticized more so than previous decades.

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

#22

Post by _630w »

I am also curious about the effect of "private" communication channels for kids.

They can be hidden to parents and friends irl but still remain public online. I have seen many groups of depressed teens online without adults or someone with experience in them. They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life. The only perspective that gets shared is that life sucks and it isn't getting better.

I think before the digital age, it must have been hard to do it irl or not?

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

#23

Post by a_bonobo »

saagarjha wrote: post #13
Reelin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is not healthy for a teenager. Twitter isn't healthy for _anyone_. Neither is the vast majority of social media. The way in which most sites currently structure interactions lends itself quite naturally to misinformation, extreme polarization, and resulting anxiety. I've personally witnessed the effect on reasonably well educated adults in my life; I can only imagine how much worse it must be for those with…

As someone not on Twitter, I do see an awful lot of good content on the platform. By not engaging with it directly I can usually skip out on or ignore the worst parts of it.

I'm a researcher and Twitter has been an enormous boon for my work; within my field, most 'big' researchers are active on Twitter, they know me now, I know them, I'm always up-to-date with the research (way easier than following 500 RSS feeds) and the 'trends' within my field. It's also the best avenue for discussing anything work-related, at least 3 international collaborations of mine have started this way. I have a few thousand followers and I follow a few thousand people across different time-zones. Again, an enormous boon if you know how to use it and put in time up-front, people know who I am even though I'm only an early-career researcher. I follow mostly scientists across all career-stages and politicians with power over work-related fields.

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

#24

Post by notRobot »

_630w wrote: post #22

I am also curious about the effect of "private" communication channels for kids. They can be hidden to parents and friends irl but still remain public online. I have seen many groups of depressed teens online without adults or someone with experience in them. They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life. The only perspective that gets shared is that life sucks and it i…

> They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life.

Huh. Not saying this isn't true, but just sharing my experience:

I have never seen this. Instead, I've seen groups of teenagers trying to support and uplift each other.

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

#26

Post by burntoutfire »

dataduck wrote: post #16
TausAmmer wrote: post #8

Everyone wants a child to be a responsible grown up adult. Stolen childhood.

For almost the entirety of human history, 12 was old enough to get a job and look after a family. It's modernity that's the aberration here. Our obsession with keeping children immature has nothing to do with their well-being, and everything to do with adults deriving a sick emotional satisfaction from it. I think history will judge our obsession with keeping children from growing up in the same way we judge foot bin…

Can confirm. My life has really dramatically changed for the better once I finished schooling and got a job. While in school (and uni) I felt a lot of ennui - it went away after I got tasked with doing real things that actually matter. Of course, not long after that I learned how imperfect the "grownup" world actually is, and some of the bad feelings came back - but it was still better than being in the infantilised state.

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

#27

Post by _5yps »

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 dating at all.

Smartphone use definitely has a negative effect. I'm in some APs, some Honors, and some regular classes and the #1 difference I've observed between the kids in each cohort is how often they're on their phones. The CP kids leave their phones on their desks and are making out with the damn things whenever they can, sometimes even when the teacher is trying to lecture them. The Honors kids have them under their desks and only use them when they have nothing more pressing to do. The AP kids have them on mute in their backpacks. (I leave mine in my locker, and only use it to listen to music.)

Most of the anxiety is over college admissions - not necessarily to the Ivy League (everyone knows that's just luck of the draw), but the "second-tier" schools (Carnegie-Mellon, Rensselaer, Duke, Cornell, etc.) where over-achieving can still net you a good chance of admission. There's a lot of focus on "building your brand" and trying to "stand out" (make your life more "interesting" in the narrow ways that look good on a college application). The more technically-oriented kids are balls-deep in resume-driven development; they follow the tutorial for every trendy tech buzzword possible (mostly data-science and ML stuff) so that they can blog about it on their Squarespace-generated portfolios. I'm a member of the FIRST Robotics Team and, like everyone else there, I do absolutely nothing, because the team has 5 times more people than it actually needs. I once witnessed the entire programming subteam (about 20 people) spend 3 hours trying to flash an SD card.

The main thing I notice among my peers is an obsessive (borderline autistic) focus on "getting in" and having good credentials. Enjoying your life and doing things that you take pride in are secondary to the all-encompassing drive to impress people who know nothing about you. I wish I could say I'm above it all, but I've certainly internalized it to some extent - I feel a nagging sense of guilt when playing video games, or reading books that don't imply intellectual clout, or anything else that's internally rewarding but "non-bloggable". If I had to characterize my generation with a pathology, it would be exhibitionism.

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

notRobot wrote: post #24
_630w wrote: post #22

I am also curious about the effect of "private" communication channels for kids. They can be hidden to parents and friends irl but still remain public online. I have seen many groups of depressed teens online without adults or someone with experience in them. They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life. The only perspective that gets shared is that life sucks and it i…

> They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life. Huh. Not saying this isn't true, but just sharing my experience: I have never seen this. Instead, I've seen groups of teenagers trying to support and uplift each other.

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

paypalcust83 wrote: post #19
saagarjha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone not on Twitter, I do see an awful lot of good content on the platform. By not engaging with it directly I can usually skip out on or ignore the worst parts of it.

It's mostly a pointless outrage, virtue signaling, approval-seeking, and social climbing sewer-drain of cyberinhibitionism. Taking the proverbial shit with the sugar would run out of toilet paper, and my supplies are low and it's not in-stock anywhere. No one needs that stuff that just won't flush unless they're hopelessly co-dependent on others to move forward.

Contradicts what the parent said. Seeing no value in anything, are you part of the problem you're describing, perhaps?

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

#30

Post by searchableguy »

notRobot wrote: post #24
_630w wrote: post #22

I am also curious about the effect of "private" communication channels for kids. They can be hidden to parents and friends irl but still remain public online. I have seen many groups of depressed teens online without adults or someone with experience in them. They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life. The only perspective that gets shared is that life sucks and it i…

> They all encourage each other to be more depressed because they all have a similarly sad life. Huh. Not saying this isn't true, but just sharing my experience: I have never seen this. Instead, I've seen groups of teenagers trying to support and uplift each other.

I would like to know about the group. I think it depends on the community you are in or the platform you use.

Also, by encouragement. I don't mean direct encouragement but subtle topics that may negatively affect your mental health being brought up often.

r/teenagers is similar to what you describe, last time I checked.

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