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Kids These Days

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Re: Kids These Days

#61

Post by warkdarrior »

BeetleB wrote: post #23
matchbok3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shortchanging? Do you have any idea what a "typical" middle class lifestyle was like in the 1960s? (Not the romanticized one). Do you think they were eating organic avocados? Life and technology and healthcare and many other things are objectively better in many, many ways.

> Do you have any idea what a "typical" middle class lifestyle was like in the 1960s? You mean the one where they could have 3 kids, send them to college, and graduate with no debt? One of my professors went to UC Berkeley in the 60's. Inflation adjusted, his cost was $700 (I forget if this was per semester or per year).

And those classrooms had no AC (probably), no WiFi, no projectors, no access to (almost unlimited) online resources, no fancy gym, etc etc.

Re: Kids These Days

#62

Post by II2II »

When people talk about how much better off kids were in the past, I remember stories from my father (who went to school in the 1960's). They involved drugs, knives, and bombs. I had it pretty good in the 1980's.

Re: Kids These Days

#63

Post by SoftTalker »

recursive wrote: post #30
ks2048 wrote: post #28

> Teenagers drink less, smoke less, and are less likely to die in car accidents. Why would he put "drink less" is reasons why teens should be happier?

Don't know about the research, but I've always assumed that drinking has some correlation with psychological pathology. I drink myself, and would self-diagnose myself as being happy. However, drinking, particularly heavy drinking seems correlated to problems.

Drinking is often (not always) an escape. So if a kid is drinking more than experimentally or e.g. occasional weekend gatherings with friends, it's a good sign they are having trouble coping with something. Same would go for smoking weed, etc. A normal well-adjusted person is not driven to get intoxicated frequently.

Re: Kids These Days

#64

Post by graemep »

xg15 wrote: post #54
EA-3167 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the respiratory symptom you’re talking about is lung cancer then the rate of that has dropped by hundreds of thousands. Not smoking works, but maybe people need more freedom to hurt themselves. I’d support that if society didn’t have to pay their bills later on.

True, but I imagine in an environment in which the vast majority of people smoke, the ones who don't will probably still passively inhale a lot more toxins than if no one smoked at all - making the effect size in direct comparison with smokers seem weaker than we know today it really is. I believe social media and phone use could have a similar dynamic - like the kids said themselves, it's more a "collective action"…

One of the effects of heavy social media and phone use is parents (and other carers) paying less attention to kids.

Re: Kids These Days

#65

Post by Arodex »

cjs_ac wrote: post #43

One observation I made when I was a teacher was that the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became. My theory is that teenagers are experimenting with different identities, so when you give them a seminar on anxiety and depression, some of them try those on for size. Moral of the story: trying to pre-emptively solve a problem can cause the problem or cause a different pr…

It is a well established fact now that suicide is contagious. Just the mention of it is enough to cause a spike in suicide attempts.

Then how do you tell people that they can be helped about it without triggering the very thing?

Re: Kids These Days

#66

Post by saghm »

DangitBobby wrote: post #14
bluGill wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same happens in the USA all the time. Don't let media impressions fill you.

Walking or riding my bike to school was certainly not an option. I know very few people (no one?) for which those were options. It was difficult to visit my friends as well so I spent a lot of time alone.

I'm in my early 30s, and I walked to and from school fairly often growing up in a suburb. My wife is the same age and living in one of the largest cities in the country used to ride the subway to and from school, but basically had the same experience of being able to do it unsupervised for at least some portion of her school years. It's hard for me to imagine what circumstances would lead you to not know anybody who had that option at all.

Re: Kids These Days

#67

Post by graemep »

undeveloper wrote: post #59

a lot of attention given to phones, somewhat rightly so, but little to the rest of society. class -- can we think of any current events might lead to children being despondent about their future? anything at all going on in the world?

Compared to world wars, the threat of nuclear annihilation, widespread racism, etc.? No.

Re: Kids These Days

#68

Post by bluGill »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #50
DangitBobby wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking or riding my bike to school was certainly not an option. I know very few people (no one?) for which those were options. It was difficult to visit my friends as well so I spent a lot of time alone.

It is viable in pre-war developments where cars weren't assumed, such that housing and services needed to be denser.

It happens all the time in newer suburbs. Schools, particularly elementary schools, are almost always built inside of neighborhoods where all the local kids will be walking to school. Now, there are still buses, probably somewhere between a third and a fourth of the kids live close enough to walk to school. However, those who do are generally expected to walk to school in every city I've lived in.

Re: Kids These Days

#70

Post by BeetleB »

warkdarrior wrote: post #61
BeetleB wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have any idea what a "typical" middle class lifestyle was like in the 1960s? You mean the one where they could have 3 kids, send them to college, and graduate with no debt? One of my professors went to UC Berkeley in the 60's. Inflation adjusted, his cost was $700 (I forget if this was per semester or per year).

And those classrooms had no AC (probably), no WiFi, no projectors, no access to (almost unlimited) online resources, no fancy gym, etc etc.

The projectors are not worth the extra cost (not even close!). When I think of all the classes I took in over a decade at universities, very few benefited from projectors. They existed mostly for lazy professors who wanted to write a slide deck once and keep using it, without doing interactive work on the whiteboard.

Wherever I studied (admittedly in the north), we did not need ACs. Heating was important, and many of the buildings were old and used the same heating they had in the 60's.

WiFi: Mostly not in my time either. I certainly don't see it as important in education. I personally didn't even own a WiFi capable device until 2012.

Online resources: I'll grant you that, but I'll point out where I went in the early 00's, our low ranked university had excellent Internet access (ranked amongst the top in the country), and the annual cost was $2600. Never found a journal, etc that I didn't have access to.

Gym? Seriously? For the extra cost in education, you can go to any good gym! Are you going to tell kids these days "Sorry you can't afford a degree that will help you get a job - we wanted a fancy gym!"

Other than the Internet, none of the other items is valuable for most degrees. Personally, in a hotter climate, I'd really want the AC - but I wouldn't pay that much just for an AC.

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