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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)

#241

Post by mikeg8 »

kradroy wrote: post #189
_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…

Dear trend-following worrier, For all the effort you're making know this: you'll eventually be evaluated by a Gen-X or Millennial hiring manager. We largely don't care where you went to college. We've learned that name recognition means very little. It'll get you a job, but if you're one of those kids who "does nothing" on an extracurricular team, it'll show through on the job. You won't get promoted. We fucking hate…

I think your comment has good intentions by trying to let parent comment know their hiring prospects may not being as daunting as it currently seems, but the immediate social and parental pressures are going to make it hard to see the forest through the trees... I feel for these kids.

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

#242

Post by alexhutcheson »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #182
_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 wish adults understood the realities of being young in 2020. Even when I graduated HS in 2007 I could tell my experience and the academic expectations I needed to live up to were much higher than it was for my mom. After I graduated I saw younger friends take more AP classes than I did and do more leadership activities than I did. Expectations are always ramping up. It is no party. Our laws and bureaucracies haven’…

FWIW, this isn't so much a story of "being young in 2020" as it is "being young in 2020 in the hyper-competitive culture of major coastal metro areas of the US". This phenomenon is actually pretty unique to a handful of metro areas, which happen to be over-represented on HN. In most of the country, bright high school students are focused on getting into their state's flagship public university, and exceptionally successful ones might be focused on getting into the honors programs at those universities. Those students might buff their resume by participating in the "National Honor Society", but they're not doing anywhere near the amount of credential-buffing described above.

Unfortunately, if you live somewhere where this is the culture, it's very difficult to opt-out. Parents don't have full control, because students absorb expectations from their peers and their peers' parents as well. Everyone agrees that the situation is out of control, but no one can "unilaterally disarm".

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

#243

Post by a_bonobo »

saagarjha wrote: post #34
a_bonobo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the best parts of Twitter is that it can give random people a voice and connect then with people who are often hard to get to otherwise. One of the worst parts of Twitter is that can give random people a voice and connect then with people who are often hard to get to otherwise. As someone without a Twitter account, I miss out on a huge amount of conversation that IMHO can add productive and interesting insight…

In the points of fairness, in 10 years of Twitter I haven't gotten into any fights on Twitter? I keep fairly close to the 'science twitter' group, never get any fringe weirdos 'walk in' and start fights, but I myself never start fights, Twitter is not the place nor the tool for that.

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

#244

Post by LanceH »

magicsmoke wrote: post #202
allannienhuis wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Scenario A: 100 women, 100 men. 100 men go off to war, 10 men return. But with polygamy, 100 women have 100 children for the next generation. Scenario B: 100 women, 100 men. 50 women and 50 men go off to war, 5 men and 5 women return. You have 55 women left in the population and 55 children for the next generation. The limiting factor in human population growth is the number of women that can have children. The cold…

You do have another 45 men who aren't dead. They appreciate that a lot. You left that out...like it's always left out.

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

#245

Post by [deleted] »

daptaq wrote: post #121
_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'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…

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by jopsen »

_jal wrote: post #109

Another vote for the Lead Hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead–crime_hypothesis

There are many more factors.

Steven Pinkers "Better Angels of our Nature" attempts yo highlight many of the reasons we are less violent today.

I think poor behavior is often mitigated by the same factors.

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

#247

Post by _5yps »

aerovistae wrote: post #143
_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…

Geez, your writing voice does not sound 16.

Most of my exposure to the written word has been through the internet, and most of my time on the Internet has been spent on sites full of people who are much older than I am. You are what you eat, I guess.

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

#248

Post by topkai22 »

A while back (like 2012) I saw a paper making the claim that video games reduce violence. The idea was that video games are so popular amongst the teenage and young men that they end up not getting into trouble on the street. It seems like smartphones are an extension of this observed trend.

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

#249

Post by take_a_breath »

LanceH wrote: post #244
magicsmoke wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scenario A: 100 women, 100 men. 100 men go off to war, 10 men return. But with polygamy, 100 women have 100 children for the next generation. Scenario B: 100 women, 100 men. 50 women and 50 men go off to war, 5 men and 5 women return. You have 55 women left in the population and 55 children for the next generation. The limiting factor in human population growth is the number of women that can have children. The cold…

You do have another 45 men who aren't dead. They appreciate that a lot. You left that out...like it's always left out.

Poor men, always being left out. Maybe 2020 is the year we finally get a male President in the US. We can dream.

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

#250

Post by askafriend »

kazinator wrote: post #215

Teens typically look up to pop culture produced by people who are about ten years their senior. For current teens, that consists of vapid millennials. No music, no cool behavior, no new anything. The only cool stuff teens can find is from their grandparents' generation or older. So then all they can do is go to YouTube and post a comment under some 80's video "Sigh, I was born at the wrong time" and then go back to b…

> For current teens, that consists of vapid millennials. No music, no cool behavior, no new anything. The only cool stuff teens can find is from their grandparents' generation or older.

I think you're just out of touch.

I'm sorry, but no one thinks about their grandparents' generation or stuff from their generation. Literally nobody cares. Odd that you think that people do.

"Vapid millenials"? Seriously? Sounds a bit like those NYT opinion pieces about Millennials written by confused boomers.

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