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Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

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81–90 of 371 posts

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#81

It's worth digging one level deeper. Screen time has increased, and it may be at the expense of parties, but screen time is also an unsupervised place where the parties have an expectation of privacy and control. The stereotypical party the article laments is a complex affair that requires transportation, supplies, a venue, and desirable participants, and doesn't spring into place organically. Social circles at colle…

>extraordinary scrutiny into campus parties

I was involved in Greek life in college and can testify. Not only did we need to register our parties with the university but we still had to worry about police presence and legal liability.

This isn't to say that these policies should be repealed- dumb people did dumb things, and thus these came into place, but it doesn't remove the fact that it's getting harder to hold a social gathering without a cop busting down your door and citing everyone in the room.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#82
post #73
post #9

I know, I know this is anecdotal 'evidence'. I happen to be 21 which fits me right in this generation and the main reason this occurs is due to parenting. My parents wouldn't let me go _anywhere_ by myself until I was at least 17. By that time I was completely and utterly addicted to computing to just let go and 'hang out'. As a matter in fact most of my friends are online rather than 4 real friends in real life. It…

If your parents had eliminated screens when you were very young (including theirs) save maybe one publicly-placed crappy terminal for wikipedia or looking up business hours or maps or learning you some programming or whatever, but loosened the reigns on hang-outs and travel, do you think you'd have still felt isolated because all your friends were still online most of the time? Asking as a parent with three young kid…

Some research suggests excessive restriction on screen use may be worse, and it's not abnormal for boys to use devices more than girls

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-12-14-children%E2%80%99s-scree...

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you have a 'counterdote' : I am 43. After the first year of high school ( I was 13 ), we were allowed to travel to the other side of the country by train, sleep in a youth hostel and return at the end of the next day. This is NL, the other side of the country is only 350km. When we tell younger friends, they refuse to believe.

America is a wholly different place. I was born in the mid-80s in Moscow, Russia, and moved to America when I was ten. Before I moved, I was regularly taking the subway, with transfers, to school - by myself. Here in America, I had a coworker a few years ago who literally would not let his double-digit-aged children cross the street to school by themselves. It's a weird fuckin' place.

yes its really odd I regularly see young kids traveling t and from school on the underground in London. I also see kids under 10 walking themselves to the bus stop in my village.

And I walked to and from school in the village (in the 60s) from age 5

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you have a 'counterdote' : I am 43. After the first year of high school ( I was 13 ), we were allowed to travel to the other side of the country by train, sleep in a youth hostel and return at the end of the next day. This is NL, the other side of the country is only 350km. When we tell younger friends, they refuse to believe.

ok, but NL has like zero crime, so it doesn't seem like a big deal

why am I getting all these downvotes? clearly, it's much safer for a teenager to ride the train in the Netherlands from one end to the other, than to do a similar thing in Chicago, let's say. So, yeah, it's not that impressive.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was born in '71. When I was 11 or 12 my friends and I could ride our bikes basically wherever we wanted to go. Our only rule was be home before the street lights turned on. The 80's happened which brought a few highly publicized child abductions/murders. Notably the Walsh child. His father scared every parent into becoming a helicopter parent. (Not judging, just saying). People really haven't loosened up much since…

Strangely enough, the movie E.T. comes to my mind. It is a movie of my 'era' and it depicted a loose (normal) parenting style. Of course it was fiction, but still.

Born in 1977. When in elementary school I would leave in morning, come home for lunch, come back for dinner, come back when getting dark. I would ride my bike all over the neighborhood, play in the creek, play in the woods, etc. Just like the kids in Stranger Things.

If I let my elementary age children do that today the police would be called. My sister has had neighbors call because her kids were playing in their front yard.

It's a 100% sad and ridiculous situation. We're raising an imprisoned generation who can't handle anything. How is staring at a glowing screen all day a childhood?

EDIT: I suppose I should tone down my rhetoric but this really worries me.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#86

If I were a teenager today, I don't know that I'd be going out to the gravel pits or up to camp and raging like we used to, and that was not so long ago. Social media is wildly more omnipresent than it was then; when we were sitting around bonfires and drinking bud lights, most people didn't even have cameras in their cell phones. When you've got that kind of evidence spread all over Instagram and SnapChat and Facebo…

Smart homes and smart phones would have definitely put a damper on many of my extracurricular activities as a teenager ... house parties, sneaking out, saying I was in one place while actually in another, etc.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#87
Society is sick, let's face it, and technology is largely to blame. We just can't see the danger in technology so long as we're blinded by everything shiny. Human beings are primarily social beings and no, that does not mean peering at each other through the alienating window of a mobile phone screen.

In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sense of danger. Days were occupied with spports or just hanging out then reading and TV in the evening. There was balance because we had less technology. The ageing mill towns of East Lancashire, UK, still enjoyed a culture of trust and respect for your neighbours such that you could leave your front door open without fear of theft. Parents stressd "playing out" and being "out of the house" but it didn't stop kids from achieving academically.

The thought of hiding in my room and hardly ever seeing my friends face-to-face would have been soul-destroying. Chess, games, cricket and football was life itself in my teens up to about 15 when the music scene and girls became the main fascination. These were all social activities and I can't imagine those glorious teenage years spent hidden in my room staring at a phone screen as a substitute for real human contact. It's unthinkable.

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#88
post #9

I know, I know this is anecdotal 'evidence'. I happen to be 21 which fits me right in this generation and the main reason this occurs is due to parenting. My parents wouldn't let me go _anywhere_ by myself until I was at least 17. By that time I was completely and utterly addicted to computing to just let go and 'hang out'. As a matter in fact most of my friends are online rather than 4 real friends in real life. It…

My parents wouldn't let me go _anywhere_ by myself until I was at least 17.

My father used to range all around Seoul as a grade school aged kid. I used to wander 2 miles out in the woods with my friends and my sister at that age in the middle of winter. A coworker of mine used to range even farther at that age. We had lots of time practicing looking after ourselves and being independent.

I remember facilitating a class with grade school aged kids, where the kids were given stations of a "starship." What would you expect a boy to do if given the weapons station of a starship? Blow something up? At least press some buttons? No, this boy just sat there meekly awaiting instruction.

Something is deeply wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TnwC29_oyI

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#89
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it could be that child abduction is falling because the media warns parents and they all keep better watch of their children.

It could be, though it was falling for a couple decades before the media attention started driving the widespread belief that it was increasing, and the behavior changed that resulted from that belief.

There's also the fact that children are typically hurt by people they know, not strangers

Re: Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

#90

I have a theory that introversion and extraversion don't really exist as personality traits, and that we build up preferences out of existing culture about how much social interaction we want in our daily lives. If the culture changes, then so will our preferences. I can easily imagine a world in which I'm gregarious and fun all the time. Making that world happen on the other hand...

I think we are incredibly adaptable and applying a label to ourselves can easily be self-fulfilling. New environment, new you.

I don't believe that, I'm a Skeptic.
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