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How getting richer made teenagers less free

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Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#61

Post by walthamstow »

Hendrikto wrote: post #52
walthamstow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accurate. Oddly enough on this side of the pond most people who would not want to raise their kids in the US would mention school shootings. The real, ubiquitous, daily danger is massive cars and lazy drivers.

Just because you have even bigger problems in the US, that does not mean that is isn’t cause for concern to be the school shooting capital of the world by an enormous margin. The US have more school shootings than the rest of the world combined. It is not unfounded or irrational to be concerned.

I live in Britain. If you read back you'll see I am talking about the opinions of Britons and Europeans of raising children in the US.

My point is it still a very rare thing even in the most common place in the world. The weight of school shootings in people's minds is more emotional than statistical. Careless drivers kill way more people in the US and they do it every day.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#62

Post by smeeger »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #6

The constrain isn’t merely financial, it’s broader than that. Teenagers are less free because adults and society have bulldozed the adversity out of teen lives. This sheltering is creating generations that are more - not less - fragile. Generations that know nothing but comfort. They are prisoners of unrealistic expectations of what real life is like.

teens experience more adversity now than before. social and existential adversity.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#63

Post by integralid »

gherkinnn wrote: post #57
wongarsu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the other half, which is often only implied: soft men make bad times, hard men make good times. It's supposed to be cyclical: good times -> soft people -> bad times -> hard people -> good times. Usually directly followed by "back in my days things were tough, but kids these days are just weak" I'm not sure how it's supposed to work out. The US is arguably currently under the control of the baby boomers, who w…

If there was any truth do this then Russia (arguably a "hard place" for most of its history) would be brimming with strong men (it is always "men" in these discussions) who then create which good times exactly?

>it is always "men" in these discussions

This obviously means "human" in this context.

But of course this saying is just a meme at best, it doesn't work like that in reality. In fact, good times make strong men just like good childhood makes strong adults.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#64

Post by rightbyte »

komali2 wrote: post #3

> When teenagers aren’t trusted to walk over to a friend’s house or play in the park, when they almost never have a part-time job where they can earn a paycheck and meet expectations that aren’t purely artificial, then I think it’s much harder for them to have a realistic, non-algorithm-driven worldview and concrete life goals they can work toward. This, and the car-centric design of the American suburb, I think are…

Glad to hear you figured it out. I somewhat identify eventhough I didn't go as deep.

> if I did my homework before they got home they wouldn't believe me and would make me do some kind of schoolwork so they could see it happening, so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan.

Oh I hate this. Busywork. Also I think you and I got incentivized to play as much computer games as possible due to the arbitrary limitations of it and constant fear of being pulled off to some busywork. It was like a never ending battle ...

I think many parents don't realize that "doing the laundry" on command is like 10x the work of doing it when you please. You can't relax after school.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#66

Post by cons0le »

nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #29
squeefers wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so basically for 4 years the majority of my free time was spent playing WoW and posting on 4chan. because the sidewalk was next to a busy road? sounds like a bit of a reach

sidewalk ended apparently. i am imagining some super hostile urban planning. like did a cyclist cheat with the planner's spouse? is there not another route?

It's impossible for people to get how bad it is until they see it. My old house had a grocery store 1.2 miles away. To walk there, you have to cross a 6 lane highway. Entire neighborhoods here have no sidewalks. And the roads are so torn up they're unusable. My friend had to get rid of his road bike and get a fat tire suspension bike. None of the intersections have any lights or visibility. And you can't run off the road because the ditches have broken glass and garbage in them!. Trash that hasn't been cleaned up in years. Add to that there's a general culture of hostility towards bicycles.

A pedestrian got hit by a pickup truck and the trucks made a "caravan" to roll coal at the memorial spot where they hit her.

There's no consistency in america. I moved 15 minutes away to "the good" part of town, and every street is new and perfectly smooth. There are marked bike lanes everywhere and they're all connected. I didn't understand at the time, but moving to where the bike lanes are completely changed my life and opened up the entire city for exploring in a way that I didn't expect.

Aside from getting my adorable cats on craigslist, no other 1 decision has changed my life for the better so drastically. I sold my car. I bike to new food places on my lunch break. I met tons of amazing new friends. My fitness is way up.

People aren't good at visualizing what being in a car all the time is taking from them. In terms of happiness, I honestly feel like I got a 50k raise at my job or something. Car centric design is robbing people of the chance to disscover thier own cities

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#67

Post by Aromasin »

CalRobert wrote: post #48
dirkc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a trip to NL and was very surprised to see jobs for children being advertised there!

Hah, was it Dirk by any chance? (Give your username) There's a lot of kids stocking shelves in the stores here. It's a great way for them to be responsible and earn a few extra euro. I think it's great that the Dutch don't treat their 15 and 16 year olds like babies, like American parents do. I just wish this were available to more families.

It's common in the UK to work from the age of 13 or 14, depending where you live. I worked in the Post Office across my road at 13, every Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon, in 2009. Most of my friends had part time jobs working in retail while at school. I was behind the pub bar at 16 slinging pints.

The (possibly completely incorrect) impression I get from speaking with Americans I know who have moved here, or I work with, is that nobody really works until they get to college unless it's a paper round or it's at your parents business. It almost goes without saying then that most people would be pretty infantile if they don't start work until they're almost mid-20s.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#68

Post by arethuza »

louthy wrote: post #17
komali2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good times make soft men, bad times make hard men. I never quite understood what the implication was and I always questioned the historical accuracy because no part of history is so easily defined as "good time" or "bad time."

It isn't about a particular time in history, it's about the individual. An individual who suffers hardships often has to endure to overcome said hardships. That makes the individual more resilient and more able to deal with future hardships. I think the phrasing can come across as a bit macho, which I don't think is the point. It's about resilience.

Overcoming hardships may leave people more resilient, but it may also leave them physical and/or psychological wrecks.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#69

Post by suslik »

squeefers wrote: post #22
TrackerFF wrote: post #15

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty and at best working class people. We'd be outside all day long - being inside was considered a privilege. Weekdays and weekends. Decades later, most of my peers have middle-class jobs. Their kids are barely outside. Their parents are involved with them from morning to evening, or chauffeuring them between sports and other extracurr…

> and came from a rural place with a lot of poverty > We'd be outside all day long > most of my peers have middle-class jobs. >Their kids are barely outside. wonder what the link is there then?

The link is: the first part was 'then', the second is 'now'.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#70

Post by [deleted] »

Aromasin wrote: post #67
CalRobert wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, was it Dirk by any chance? (Give your username) There's a lot of kids stocking shelves in the stores here. It's a great way for them to be responsible and earn a few extra euro. I think it's great that the Dutch don't treat their 15 and 16 year olds like babies, like American parents do. I just wish this were available to more families.

It's common in the UK to work from the age of 13 or 14, depending where you live. I worked in the Post Office across my road at 13, every Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon, in 2009. Most of my friends had part time jobs working in retail while at school. I was behind the pub bar at 16 slinging pints. The (possibly completely incorrect) impression I get from speaking with Americans I know who have moved here, or…

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