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How getting richer made teenagers less free

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Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#91
post #28

And it also creates permanent adulescents, scared of responsibilities, scared of commitment, scared of exploring. I've seen it countless times with teenagers in my family, they're overgrown babies.

The irony is that parents feel like their kids are safer and more sheltered when they restrict their movement, while the opposite is true.

There was never a time in history where kids would be targeted and manipulated by corporations as today. The digital phone is a marketing gadget that brainwashes us to constantly interact with it. In extreme cases, every aspect of our lives is being scored, monetized and compared. Everything has become a hyper individualized hustle.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#92

It's 10pm; do you know where your kids are? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJeBbhPYBs

10pm is a different animal. Out that late and I dont know where they are? 18+ (Probably some culutral reference I am missing in this video?)

As already said it was a PSA ran on TV in the US up until at least the 90s I think. It's not really a different animal when you think about it; at the height of summer the sun doesn't set until around 9 (at least in the northern half of the US), so the PSA is running probably half an hour to an hour after its gotten dark. Which was a pretty typical time for kids to be told to be home. Ie "be home when the street lights turn on." So the ads basically saying "your kid was supposed to be home over 30 minutes ago, are they back yet?

Edit: adjusted the times because I actually bothered to check when sunset is.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#93

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…

Similar generations and i've noticed the same thing, but living in an urban place, in a large complex of socialist apartment buildings, in a country that fell apart from a larger socialist one to a smaller capitalist one.

Two of the biggest differences were extracurricular activities and technology... back in my day, you maybe had one or two 'after school' things per week, usually immediately after school, for an hour (so you'd end at two oclock instead an hour earlier) and you then went home, where you had one tv per family. When your parents came home, the tv was gone, dads football, moms series, evening drama movies... and what were you supposed to do then? Read? Well.. you went out. ...same as most of your friends. We sat on benches, played football, basketball, girls wanted attention, got attention, from young-kids age to the age of neighbors caling police due to 'loud teenagers' outside.

And now? Every parent with kids has their kids in one additional language course, some music classes, sports, and not like once a week for an hour or two, but two, three times per week each, at different locations (=driving them around, even though there are a lot of busses). The kids are physically tired from all that, and then they get home, don't even have time to get bored, and even if they did, they now have a tv, phone, computer and a gaming console right in their room. Their friends aren't outside either, since they're being chauffered around for their activities. No proper socialization with peers, no time to do stupid stuff, no time to be bored... nothing.

And it's not even worth it... none of those kids will be a professional sportis/musician, it's just wasted time... yes, excercise, but we exercised too, by being outside, walking, biking, playing footbal with stones, etc.

tldr: blame parents

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#94

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.

> It is not unfounded or irrational to be concerned.

I ran the numbers upon having kids. It is irrational.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#95

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…

It's a cultural shift. Your peers are now way more aware of child abuse, kidnappings, murders, than your parents were. Not that yours were necessarily bad parents for that time but there is way more information today of the issues with the world. I certainly wouldn't let my kid walk home alone in the woods at night: are we really sure this degree of freedom is so developmentally important to be worth the risk?

I'd also say it's more likely that your peers are more personally present than parents of the 80s/90s, when parents would often just leave children alone and don't really talk to them. That in itself has been shown to provide good outcomes for children. So it's not all bad.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#96

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…

> Interestingly, I've heard from parents that many feel like they're both suffocating and feeling inadequate, at the same time. While many kids, both teens and younger, reporting that they're not getting enough space. Is that surprising? All of that sounds fully consistent to me when parents suffocate their kids with expectations and activities instead of meeting their actual needs. They feel like they're suffocating…

nono the parents are feeling that they're suffocating, lol

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#97

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…

Yeah, I think I started working in Restaurants aged 14 and really didn't stop. I still get a slight burst of nostalgia whenever I go to the countryside and see the pubs etc staffed by young'uns(it doesn't seem to happen much in London, don't know about other cities).

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#98
post #95

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…

It's a cultural shift. Your peers are now way more aware of child abuse, kidnappings, murders, than your parents were. Not that yours were necessarily bad parents for that time but there is way more information today of the issues with the world. I certainly wouldn't let my kid walk home alone in the woods at night: are we really sure this degree of freedom is so developmentally important to be worth the risk? I'd al…

> the risk

What is the risk really? I mean put in numbers.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#99
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…

I am somewhat doubtful about the importance of American car centric suburbs because its happening in a lot of other countries too. its happened in the last few decades in British cities that have become a lot less car oriented.

I think it is linked to things such as pressure on kids to do school work, less trust of both kids and people in general. A lot more control. A lot more metrics replacing judgement.

Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free

#100
"No one in America today lives under the cloud of desperation that these children did."

Is this true? Certainly many fewer people do.

However, there have been high profile child labor busts recently: - 13yo child in a car factory: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/hyundai-child-la... - 54 migrant children in meat packing plants: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/settlement-child-labor-dol-depa...

And further, some forms of child labor are still the norm here: America has unrestricted child labor after age 16, and in fact many children do drop out of school at that age to support their families

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