How getting richer made teenagers less free
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How getting richer made teenagers less free
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Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#2This remind me of that saying - no original version but it was like: tough times makes tough people, soft times makes soft people.
And I hope it’s not true.
But indeed the more choices you have in life, the harder it gets to chose the right thing to do.
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#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 leading to an increasingly alienated generation of kids. I grew up in suburbs and I couldn't even safely bike to my friend's house because the sidewalk would randomly end before arriving at his neighborhood, and the stroad next to it was at 45mph speed limit (thus in Texas: 60mph) and mostly filled with massive pickup trucks that probably couldn't even see me. So, my options before my parents got home were to play WoW and browse 4chan or do my homework, and 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.
Imo this resulted in me developing an "internet personality" aka "being a piece of shit." I was into manosphere stuff, mildly zenophobic, incredibly transphobic, and insufferably cynical. Getting to college and seeing the disgust on people's faces when I'd drop a 4chan joke was a complete culture shock to me. Took me a good 2 years to adjust to "normal society," by then I also had to overcome a reputation as an asshole.
I can't even imagine what it's like for kids like me these days now that there's full on weaponized Discords trying to convince them to shoot up schools for the lulz. At least on 4chan that kind of stuff got banned or mocked.
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#4This remind me of that saying - no original version but it was like: tough times makes tough people, soft times makes soft people. And I hope it’s not true. But indeed the more choices you have in life, the harder it gets to chose the right thing to do.
In aggregate, tough times make people malnourished, alcoholic, traumatized, lower IQ, apathetic, aggressive. In no particular order or combination.
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#5This remind me of that saying - no original version but it was like: tough times makes tough people, soft times makes soft people. And I hope it’s not true. But indeed the more choices you have in life, the harder it gets to chose the right thing to do.
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."
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#6The 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.
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#7> 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…
Probably you won't be the freak anymore in today's online society as most of the others do the same
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#8It's 10pm; do you know where your kids are? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJeBbhPYBs
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#9[flagged]
Re: How getting richer made teenagers less free
#10> Around 35% of American families have been investigated by CPS
What??
> Fully 50% of Black voters in our poll agreed that allowing a 10-year-old to play unsupervised at a park for a few hours was grounds for a CPS call. 33% of white voters and 37% of Hispanic voters said the same.
I am speechless. Has so much changed in the 20 odd years since I was a kid? I was playing outside unsupervised from maybe age 9. What honestly are the kids supposed to be scared of?