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As with younger children, parents are less likely now than in past decades to allow their teenage children to travel alone or hang out in groups without adults present.This is byproduct of the "stranger danger", everything is trying to harm you/kill you mentality.
>Legal restrictions compound the issue, with curfew laws being increasingly common, as well as increased driving ages and graduated licenses.
Curfews are always the double-edged reasoning sword used: It's to prevent crime and/or keep kids safe. This is, more or less, the byproduct of adults acquiescing to the government's mandates, yeah?
>Finally, businesses that used to be popular hangouts for teenagers, such as shopping malls have become less welcoming, often having limits on when teenagers are allowed on the premises without a parent.
Well, this is only partially true. For one, you're not considering that malls, in the classical sense as we remember them, have been pretty much replaced by strip malls (unless you're in Europe). For two, this entirely negates swathes of teens who live "in the sticks", as it were, where the nearest town (much less, city) is 10km or more away.
I'd like to see a breakdown of these stats in an urban versus rural environment context and by social classes context.
I'd suspect that those whom are far more disadvantaged are quite more likely to meet-up in person than their more affluent counterparts. I'd also suspect that there's correlation between the urban and rural teenagers, as well, in terms of classes, which might lend directly back to whether or not they're more or less likely to meet-up in person (given the disadvantaged, who are more apt to live in rural areas, will probably have far few incidences of access to mobile phones).