> Chentsova Dutton said America has an international reputation for prizing autonomy, but her study opened her eyes to a more complicated picture. American parents tend to be overprotective when children are young, acting as if kids are going to live at home for a long time, like parents do in Italy. Yet they also expect children to live away from home fairly early for college, like families do in Germany. The result is that American kids end up with drastically fewer years navigating real life than they do in other countries that start much earlier.
The stereotypical American helicopter-parent/soccer-mom can be viewed as a direct result of poor zoning practices & the resulting suburban sprawl. A typical child is completely incapable of going anywhere without the guidance of a car-driving parent. It is unlikely, either on foot or bike, that they are able to get to school, get to/from sports practice, meet with friends, shop at local stores, run errands, have a part-time job, etc etc. No wonder they're too sheltered & unable to navigate independence: they've never even had the option of independence.
Sprawl is just a scapegoat, the real reason is in the mindset.
In my corner of the world the idea that 12 year old teenagers should be, by law, supervised would be laughed at.
And mind you, I live in a country where 36% of the population doesn't have access to public transport due to how it was dismantled over the years in favour of cars and sprawl.
I don’t know if you’ve experienced American stroads. Theoretically you can walk from point A to point B but often times that involves crossing a stroad. Doing so is extremely unpleasant and dangerous. American car drivers just don’t expect pedestrians and are often times hostile to pedestrians. The idea of walking somewhere is an alien thought to many people.
Yeah: I grew up in suburban sprawl, such that it was theoretically possible for me to get somewhere by bike but like... no, not really, and yet my parents just let me wander around the residential suburban community as much as I wanted, alone, until it got dark.
I agree mindset is the bigger problem. Zoning and roads in a lot of the US suburbia are bad, and even now I wouldn't want to bike or walk around most of the roads myself, but it's the mindset that every stranger is someone trying to steal their child that is holding parents back.
There is no motivation to improve freedom of movement for children if parents don't even think children should have that freedom.
Independence requires free time. Kids, at least those with parent who expect them to go on to higher education, dont have free time. They dont just play baseball on the school team a couple days a week. They play on literally ALL the teams. Then there are non-school karate lessons. And thier language tutor. And thier doctor visits. And thier therapists for whatever learning disbaility they are told they have. Middle class kids are cogs in a factory. Their greatest free time is chatting with friends via smartphones while being shuttled between appointments.
Sure, some experiences require a car. But there are tons of things that don't, even in more isolated areas. When I lived in a fairly rural neighborhood, there weren't tons of kids, but one or two families typically. You learned how to get along with them and become friends. You could go anywhere in the neighborhood if you told your parents. You could even ride your bike on trails to the local college a few miles away (once you got older 12+ or so). You could shoot off model rockets in the local open space (not exactly a park, just an open field). Go fishing, build a fort in the woods at your friend's (yes, using sharp tools), play some sort of unorganized sport, etc. You couldn't have a real job without a car, but I certainly made money other ways such as babysitting, selling bird houses, etc.
I later lived in a rural town. Even though there was more stuff to do there, I went out less. More of the things cost money there and there was less open space. But you could walk to stores and stuff.
So the option is there, particularly if they aren't already biased to only participate in preconceived ideas of what activities should be.
Rural areas are not typical in terms of where most kids live and grow up. Explaining how things are in rural parts of the country is not a valid counter point. In large parts of the country walking has more or less become criminalized and discouraged. I’m talking about areas where a large percentage of people live. We have also criminalized giving kids autonomy.
I'm not talking about truly rural areas. I'm talking about suburbs and developments where a significant number of children live. Living in town is in fact suburban or even urban depending on the density.
Honestly the walking thing is BS. CA was the last hold out. I believe all states now take the reasonable approach of it only being a crime if you impede traffic, or if you choose to walk in the stret when there is a sidewalk available.
Yes, there are parenting laws that are overbearing. This is not an urban vs rural thing given that those laws cover both areas (varies by state).
The biggest factor is mindset. Kids can have varying levels of autonomy depending on a number of factors. Not having a car only prevents autonomy for those who lack imagination.
The walking “thing” as you put it was clearly not read by you. I think the author of the paper knows more about it than you. If you think walking isn’t criminalized in America then go out for a walk in an affluent white neighborhood with 4 black teenage boys and experience it for yourself.
We can believe the children of the nation lack imagination or that society has evolved in such a way that discourages walking and free roaming. One of these two seems to me to be a more reasonable explanation for the dearth of children walking in America’s populated areas.
Next time it’s best not to use rural when you don’t mean rural. I go by what people write.
I did read. It has outdated information. Appeal to authority? Any real argument behind that? You comment about black teenagers is not a cogent argument.
Walking is not a crime. Show me otherwise.
The one that's more reasonable to believe is the one where kids have their noses in phones and aren't independent enough to go out on their own.
"Fairly rural neighborhood" and "rural town". Rural, but in the context of a neighborhood or a town. There are varying levels of development, and the larger surrounding area can add context.
It sounds like you're trolling if you can't make a good argument and are simply attacking me. Bye
Appeal to authority is not an argumentative fallacy. Appealing to a false authority is. For instance, appealing to the authority of a Ph.D. in quantum physics is perfectly fine to do when the topic is quantum physics. Appealing to that same authority about the law is not.
It appears your understanding of what “trolling” is mirrors your understanding of argumentative fallacies.
Appealing to authority is not a weak basis for an argument. It’s as if you don’t understand the role of expertise. Almost everything you know comes from knowledge discovered by experts. I suppose when you read a paper you don’t like sources being cited.
I didn’t uncharitably read what you wrote. You asked if I had a real argument to give because, apparently, you think getting knowledge/facts from an expert and citing said facts is not a real argument. The only reasonable interpretation of what you wrote is that you think citing an expert in their area of expertise is not a valid (“real”) arguement.
> If you think walking isn’t criminalized in America then go out for a walk in an affluent white neighborhood with 4 black teenage boys and experience it for yourself.
I feel like you answered it yourself in the opposite way. Walking isn't criminalized, the problem is the systemic racism in the US.
Walking is not criminalized as in there is a law specifically stating its criminalization. Clearly I’m talking about effects of laws designed to discourage walking. I cited a source from a law professor that goes into this in some detail.
There’s something to be said here for neighborhood interactions among children of varying ages. I used to enjoy playing around building forts in the suburbs with some other young guys in friend’s neighborhoods that had lots on kids in the same age ball-park.
It’s not life-changing autonomy, but it was definitely free from any sort of helicopter parents for afternoons at a time.
I grew up in the suburbs. Nothing but houses and maybe a strip mall 2 miles away.
By the time I was 12 I was allowed to bike wherever. We rode all day long, to the strip mall, the even bigger mall (3 miles away), to each other’s houses, to hiking trails, etc.
It was a great childhood. Lots of autonomy and a safe environement.
Agreed. OP’s comment makes no sense in the suburb I live in now (built around 2000), and the suburb in which I grew up (built early 1970s). Both have nearby schools, supermarkets and plazas with retail businesses, working teenagers, playgrounds, parks, etc.
Even I have anxiety crossing 5 lane roads with 40mph speed limits. There is usually a huge pickup truck or SUV going at least 50mph, who may likely be distracted by their phone. This was not as much of an issue a few decades ago.
And that is just the 40mph ~30ft to 40ft wide crossings.
The 7 to 9 lane wide, 80ft crossings on 40mph roads are incredibly scary to cross, and that is in daylight.
Just the other day, at night, an old homeless woman was crossing it with her luggage, and we were stopped at the left turn lanes. The walk signal changed before the old woman could finish crossing the road, and she could easily have gotten hit by an inattentive or fast driver after she popped out as she passed the stopped cars.
I would limit my kids crossing the 7+ lane roads until teenage years, and the 4+ lane roads until 9 or 10. And night time might even be more restrictive.
You have 7-9 lane roads in a suburb? That’s called a highway. Where I live, people cross highways on overpasses dedicated to pedestrians. Sorry you have to cross 9 lanes regularly. Sounds like you live next to a highway!
Lots of US suburbs have roads with 3 lanes in each direction.
Then you add one or two left turn lanes at the intersection and a shoulder/bike lane, and you get to an 80ft+ crossing easily. All the infrastructure is built for cars and cars only. All the businesses and places for kids to go will be along these huge roads.
That crosswalk/sidewalk is purely built for plausible deniability. You would have to be crazy to regularly walk across that to get to the grocery store/restaurants at that intersection.
i feel like must be where part of the disconnect lies because despite my personal antipathy towards suburban living, pretty much every one i've visited has had superb infrastructure for walking and biking.
It's not the reason. You see the same things in neighborhoods where you can walk places. And suburban sprawl was just as much a thing 30 years ago. It's an excuse that suburban parents use for their helicopter parenting, which is entirely anxiety driven.
it is highly specious reasoning at best especially when you consider that the advent of helicopter parenting and the boom of suburban development/white flight/etc are separated by decades.
i would say the stranger danger panic of the 80s, 90s crime wave and columbine all served as cumulative frog boiling for children's autonomy.
The type suburb we build today are one of reasons. At least it enforces that behavior in parents.
Then there is also “no screen time” so the kid will not learn how to behave online, not able to detect scammers, understand things like privacy and trust, etc.
And there are also laws: you might get in trouble if you leave your 15 year old alone overnight. And when 17 not more than 2 nights. But they can join army at 18.
A deviation from this that I've seen are apartment complexes near town centers, where kids rarely have to travel via car to visit friends, go to a park, go to a store, go to school, etc.
Not that it _should_ be this way, but me and my friends would scooter/bike to school all the time in elementary/junior high (~2002-2008) and it was easily a few miles each way in Western Washington (not rural).
I don't plan on having kids but I wonder if I'd let them do that today.
Now that I think of it, I'm not sure I ever told my parents I did that.
Biking a few miles took 15-20 minutes I imagine. Why would you not let your 11+ year old kids bike that route? Sounds okay if there's not too much traffic.
Yep. It would probably be fine and I'd let my hypothetical kid do it anyway, but the fact remains that the biggest risk along the way is.. car traffic. Parents stressed about getting their kid to school and then to work on time. Of course there's winter and that commute becomes even more insane by bike or car.
Intersections are where many pedestrian injuries and fatalities happen, due to "inattentive" motorists. The reality is the motorists are probably attentive to other vehicular traffic, which poses a much greater risk to them but poses a huge risk to pedestrians.
Then there are the agressive motorists. I have seen motorists intentionally[1] accelerate towards school crossing guards. People seem to get impatient when being held up in traffic, even when it is a product of their own decisions (like driving past a school on a residential side street when school is starting for the day).
[1] Of course, I don't know their actual intentions. Yet I have difficulty interpreting a vehicle that is creeping slowly into an intersection then suddenly accelerating towards a safety vested person as anything other than a deliberate act.
I could bike (or even easily walk) to a drugstore and grocery store in the neighborhood where I grew up. A "five and dime" store was within biking distance as well.
Where I live now? Nope. Some kind of generic suburbia park is about all a kid could ride to in this neighborhood. And although I have been here less than a year, I do not recall many kids on bikes. It's sad.
This is a super big point. A lot of autonomy is realizing that you can do things and having experienced various ways of transportation makes a huge difference.
If you never rode the bus or subway growing up they’re very intimidating to get used to.
There is public transit, bikes and skateboards in the suburbs. That is not the case in rural areas. There was a time when more people lived in rural areas, and kids roamed about. I’d say living in the city, where there is more crime, would be a reason kids were sheltered.
No amount of zoning reform can fix the fact that it's not safe for kids in America, because it's crawling with predators. Even if you have school, shop, friends, and all that, within four blocks of each other.
By uncritically repeating the nonsense that sensationalist mass media spews, OP does illustrate two of the main dynamics ultimately causing this. Parents are gobbling up this malevolent nonsense and then hovering over their kids to protect them from their own delusions, and the kids themselves are also being blasted with the apocalyptic media fire hose.
I've not watched television since around 1990. I don't read papers. I don't visit news sites. Never had a Twitter account though I'm on Mastodon now. Never had a Facebook account. I mostly use the Internet in connection with some very specific interests of mine.
I do observe that your opinion that the mass media is all garbage and wrong isn't very original. You just repeating that from somebody. I suspect it's a common sentiment in far right circles. This is because the media in fact often reports the truth, and it's quite balanced and responsible, which upsets some people.
The news does naturally like bad news. The observation that a crime didn't happen in such and such a district over the past week will not make the news. That's just the way it is. It's the nature of the game.
For almost exactly the same basic reason you will only find bugs in a bug database. Nobody opens a ticket to tell you that your code works amazingly well.
Please list any statistic to support your previous assertion that "America ... is crawling with predators"
Perhaps you were trying to make a sarcastic point that people are reacting to a mistaken belief, which seems inline with some of what you just said. If that was the case, you didn't succeed, which is why I made the comment I did.
And I've no idea why you're trying to invoke "far right" except as some weird shoehorned ad hominem. For reference I'm a libertarian that has recently come around to voting conservative (which in 2022 means Democrat), because I would rather suffer bureaucratic totalitarianism than autocratic totalitarianism.
We just need to get kids away from their parents and everyone else they know. Then they'll finally be safe! Maybe those nice Mongolians will take care of them...
> Yet they also expect children to live away from home fairly early for college
Except American children away from home 'for college' are still exactly 'children', home with different parents. The culture of halls and canteens and the way it's funded is much more 'provided for you' than 'you're providing for yourself now'. I don't get the sense (from NA undergrads I've known, film, etc.) that much learning to cook goes on, for example. Certainly anyone living 'off-campus' and having bills to pay is in a minority.
Didn't want to comment on the quality of the education I'm sure it's top quality most private schools are.
My comment was more that seeing how this system works is the real education. Get a locked in population to purchase housing which is owned by the founder gets around rules. This would be similiar to a judge owning a prison and sending everyone there for profit.
At least at the public university in my town, this is because they’ve built only 3 new dorms in the past 40 years or so while enrollment has essentially doubled.
As a European, US colleges/universities seem more like boarding schools. Here, no university would think that they have any business interfering with students' personal lives or anything they do outside a lecture hall, because they are considered adults.
More broadly speaking, there seems to be a tendency in current US culture of infantilising young adults. I have repeatedly seen people in their early 20s referred to as "kids" and treated as such. The interesting question is where this comes from, because I don't think this has always been the case, even in the US.
>As a European, US colleges/universities seem more like boarding schools. Here, no university would think that they have any business interfering with students' personal lives or anything they do outside a lecture hall, because they are considered adults.
Seconding this. It was quite a stark difference in university culture and expectations to me between US and NL.
From my sample of also N=1 (me, a 22 year old college student) I agree.
I don't fight with my parents because I'm conflict avoidant. Plus, I'm financially dependent on my parents. I'm not going to risk my food and shelter for abstract ideas like "agency" or "maturing."
I think it’s really important that parents make their kids financially independent. And if it’s just sending them a fixed amount of money every month as long as they are in college, without any other requirements („it’s not important what and how you do it, as long as you do an education you have xxx$ every month to spend. If you need more, get a job.“)
And they should pay all their expenses on their own. So they see how much they need, and that they may not be able to buy food, if they spend it all for gaming or partying.
I agree. When I was that age, I thought of people who would use conflict to achieve “independence” as being full of hippie ideals for idiots. Enjoy what you can and work behind people’s backs rather than spark conflict.
I find this pretty interesting - does it go hand in hand with younger generations seeing no hope for their future, whether it be climate change, being financially stable, having a fulfilling life, finding a partner?
I mean, housing markets have ensured that they will live at home for longer periods of time and may never be able to own, or even rent a place by themselves.
Same thing goes for starting families, the costs are insane and even if you have kids, you will barely see them in order to just pay for their childcare itself. Good luck if you can't afford health insurance and care, either.
The opportunities to do "adult things" are pricing out pretty much everyone except the adult children of high earners or the wealthy.
> I mean, housing markets have ensured that they will live at home for longer periods of time and may never be able to own, or even rent a place by themselves.
That’s not an inevitability; it’s a policy choice. If zoning was less restrictive more housing could be built. The people are getting what they want, good and hard.
I agree, but many of the people who are negatively affected by zoning restrictions were either children and not born yet when those restrictions were implemented. I wouldn't say they're getting what they want.
Older generations had the incentives of getting to own a house, having a car, having a family, and having enough free time after work to enjoy these perks. Exploitative land lords, congested traffic or long commute times, and working late being a requirement for progression have extracted all the reward. Why do you think the stock market has bubbles so well recently? Boomers have gotten much better at extracting our wealth.
My sample of 1: I’m (45) dating a younger person (25). In some ways he’s much more mature than my friend group was at his age, but in many ways not. It’s been fascinating to see what his expectations are. His other friends are slightly older (late 20s/early 30s) and all of them still party and do shit me and my friend groups stopped by our junior/senior university years. They just seem to have different expectations of what life is supposed to be like.
I also see this very widespread! Young adults today seem to hold desperately onto parts of their youth. Entertainment, experiences, lifestyles, even food and clothing.
When I was a kid, it was a scramble to get your driver's license as soon as you were legally old enough. Today I know so many 22 year olds without a license and zero interest in getting it. Where has the ambition gone?
To be honest, I made my driving license pretty much as soon as I could, but now I don't understand what for. I have never really used it. I don't think I have driven a car for the last 10 years at all in fact, and if I wanted to get a car and start driving now I'm pretty sure I would have to take lessons again, so not being "ambitious" in this regard seems like a perfectly sensible choice to me. My partner had pretty much the exact same experience with their driving license as I did.
(as is probably easy to guess, I don't live in the US)
It's not like I stopped playing the games I played in school age, or stopped liking the foods I liked when I was a kid, or stopped being a lazy one in lifestyle and clothing. This is different.
I wouldn't take that line of reasoning too far. Most kids in the US don't go to college and many that do never live in a dorm. And for most schools with dorms, dorm living is only the first year or two for most students.
Maybe it's different at expensive private schools in the US, but the vast majority of Americans never attend those schools.
Many students will have graduated by the time they are 24, so it is possible that both statements 1. the majority of American children go to college and 2. 40 percent of 18-24 year olds are enrolled are simultaneously true
Assuming (1) all college students enter at 18 exactly, and (2) all college students are enrolled for exactly the nominal time of their degree program, and (3) the number of students in each year of age is equal and enrollment rates are constant year to year, 63% of students attending college, and 40% enrollment of 18-24 year olds implies 37.8% attend 2 year programs and 25.2% attend 4 year programs. Now, the actual numbers are different than that because the assumptions are all three false, but the point is, that there is nothing inconsistent with the 63% immediate enrollment rate and 40% of students in the 18-24 year age band being currently enrolled.
63% is the statistic for high-school grads, whereas the person you're replying to is talking about all "18-24 kids", so "all kids graduate high school" is an appendix to assumption 1) you would need to add.
I can't think of any times my university cared about anything I did outside of the lecture hall (besides maybe my professors caring about me having done the work?) in the US. What are you referring to?
You're right, but all the industrialized countries are similar. Too many laws, nanny states.
Children have to explore their environment and learn from their experiences to grow up. If you leash them, you steel of them their childhood and adulthood, and because the cage is build of laws that mostly count for all, you steel of the few that could grow up normal their adulthood, too.
I think that point is overstated. The EU universities provide housing to students too and it is not that massively different, except Greek life. And I swear overwhelming majority of these comics comes from frats who are in power play against university. Every time I dug into specific issues, it turns out being just a bunch of manipulative claims.
But is it not common to force students, as a condition of attending lectures, to live in university housing, and to eat university provided meals?
And it is not the case that university housing comes with "advisers" who ensure you are living in an approved way? (And for some bizarre reason you cannot have your own bedroom, you have to share - a last ditch effort to obstruct pre-marital sex?)
In the EU anything not associated with studying for a degree is option, and if housing is provided it is just housing without any a special measures to supervise the tenants.
At least in Germany, housing, catering and sports facilities are usually in the hands of a seperate body so there is no incentive for the university to try to use their power over students to force their use.
Inability to have own bedroom is quite normal, single bedrooms are expensive.
Afaik, mandatory dorm living is rare, but again that is rare in America too. Most American students attend local state schools. Students eating meals made by school incredibly normal and incredibly traditional - it is not some kind of new development. Both in EU and America.
There are employees responsible for dorms in Europe too. The rules wary between place to place, so you would need to be more concrete regarding what "rules about how to live" you have in mind. I have seen rules about visitors, noise, time when visitors come etc. In America you have additional rules about alcohol, cause their legal underage is 21, compared with Germany 16. And this is largely legal requirement.
There is no equivalence of Greek life where you pledge to live by fraternity or sorority rules, which tend to be quite expansive ... but oddly these are not framed this way .
> At least in Germany, housing, catering and sports facilities are usually in the hands of a seperate body so there is no incentive for the university to try to use their power over students to force their use.
Afaik, with exception of PE which does exists in EU too, students are not forced to use school sport facilities. They do use them cause they are available and free or cheap.
American schools have that bundled together and the prominent expensive ones are basically mini self sufficient cities. So yes, they are under one banner.
> More broadly speaking, there seems to be a tendency in current US culture of infantilising young adults.
There are obvious incentives for infantilising your population, from capitalism to governance. I find it unsurprising that the US would be exceptionally awful in this regard, when it's so good for business to convince your adults they're helpless children dependent on almighty corporate products/services.
But if we look at the global history of religious indoctrination, arguably the epitome and oldest form of infantilising at-scale, there's certainly not a US monopoly on the practice.
>There are obvious incentives for infantilising your population, from capitalism to governance. I find it unsurprising that the US would be exceptionally awful in this regard, when it's so good for business to convince your adults they're helpless children dependent on almighty corporate products/services.
This is not how CEOs make decisions. Nor college administrators. Your hypothetical cabal of wealthy elites steepling their fingertips and discussing how best to infantilize the population doesn't exist. Those elites have kids too and they want their kids to be productive members of society. For this theory to have even baseline plausibility, there'd have to be a trend where the kids of the elites went through some sort of non-infantilizing process so they'd be better equipped to rule, but in fact the kids of the elites at places like Yale are even more infantilized.
Sounds ideal however such a tranisiton is never really encouraged or enforced. I would argue that dependency is encouraged, probably because its hugely profitable.
I would say the most common message is much like"think of the children" , "think about your education" plently of time to learn real life skills after you graduate with huge amounts of dorm debt.
What era is this? Certainly it's not the last 20-25 years. I don't remember being able to afford anything until after I graduated and was fortunate enough to have parents that let me live in the basement while I got on my feet. My college jobs were barely enough to feed me, pay the interest on my loans, and pay my parents a pittance for my chunk of the power bill. Maybe it's easier for these kids to get a programming gig paying 70k+ while they're in school but when I was a kid companies wouldn't even look at you until you could guarantee 40 hours plus overtime.
That was doable when I was attending in the the early 2010s. I did exactly that, except I also lived off campus my sophomore year.
But that was only doable then because it was an in-state public college in a LCOL city. I was paying $300/mo for my share of rent and utilities. That cost alone is at least doubled now. My $9/hr job for 15-20 hours a week covered everything to live, and need based pell grants covered most of tuition to with a few small loans through the govt that didn't require payments before graduation (abt 2k pet semester). When I found a new part-time gig my junior year that paid $27/hr, I was set up to be in a very be good place compared to most college students.
Again, cost of living alone has made that path very difficult today. But it was a thing not that long ago.
The housing transition seems to be the same for the four years but parents are heavily supplanting the budget.
Colleges typically force all freshmen with out a local address to be in the dorms and have a full meal plan but there's typically a tuition saving if you can get the friends you've made in the first couple years to all go in with you on an apartment. Even more if you bothered to learn how to cook and can lower your meal plan.
But I do not think it's typical for any of those students to be getting an apartment without a parental guarantor, even if they have a needs based schedule and are packing their non school hours with work.
I moved into an apartment before my freshman year was done. Worked two jobs and had loans, scholarships, etc. That was a bit more than 25 years ago though.
We used to joke that living in certain dorms was like going to sleepaway summer camp, down to the camp leaders, activities, responsibilities, living arrangements, expectations, systems etc.
I never lived in a dorm where one was fed in the cafeteria, but rather did two years at home and two in an on-campus apartment with a kitchen. On the whole, I now think that I really didn't go to college to practice cooking.
> It’s such a strange blend of wanting to let your kids roam while being more aware of dangers that exist, both online and off.
Unaccompanied roaming is, by it's nature, offline-centric.
The primary, actual risks to children who are roaming are those that involve law enforcement and intolerant adults.
What does not present a meaningful risk to unaccompanied children is strangers.
> For my son, Scouts have been wonderful for his independence. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
I was in scouting leadership for 15 years. Units that function in a way that remove adults from the picture are as good as you say. It doesn't come close to replacing what we've taken from kids but it's better than the nothing they have now.
Unaccompanied roaming is, by it's nature, offline-centric.
Sorta? I think it is fair to say that independent access to the internet is a form of roaming, as well. Used to, it also involved dial-up management and maybe a known profile on Prodigy/AOL/Compuserve. Nowadays, it probably just means a device on the network.
I agree with where you're coming from, but would point out that the commercial-surveillance Web is more of a managed experience than the free range one we experienced on the early Internet. So Internet time is likely more akin to dropping your kids off at the mall rather than letting them roam in the woods.
If they've got the interest and aptitude to actually dig into computers and how they work (not just programming, but programming is a large part of it), and/or self-actualize in free form building games, that feels like it qualifies as undirected play. But not everyone is going to be so interested in deep computing.
I think that same argument can be made for a lot of the commercial-surveillance that happens in stores and such now. The idea that you can hang out behind the store without being seen is... probably not entirely accurate nowadays.
Sure, things have changed across the board to pervasive surveillance. But if you're hanging out behind a store, it's not like the security guard will come and try to convince you to go shopping in the store instead. Whereas online there is an ever-present siren song to skip doing your own thing and play with the dopamine-hole entertainment options instead.
> The primary, actual risks to children who are roaming are those that involve law enforcement and intolerant adults.
Any statistics on that ?
I grew up in 90s and in a family with 5 younger siblings my mother couldn't keep up. I got hit by a car running across the street at 6 (I think I was that age). I would roam local forest and street - visiting there recently I remembered how I went to pick up my ball once and nearly pulled through grabbing on a small tree. I kind of remember local people running up to the fence and yelling me back. I had no perception of how dangerous it was back then - looking at it now it was ~ 10 m drop on sharp rocks - if I slid through I was probably dead. I remember a similar experience roaming a nearby forest next to a highway tunel exit.
Looking back I'm lucky to be alive. I have only one son and will probably get to have one more child, no 6 kids strategy for me.
The thought of my son having a similar childhood terrifies me.
I wonder about this a lot. I have a handful of similar stories about nearly dying as a child too, as do most of my friends. But none of us have any stories about knowing someone who accidentally died as a result of doing something dangerous as a kid, even though I'd expect a few of those given how dangerous we all think our childhoods were. Of course, with the reach of the Internet, I'm sure at least somebody reading this does have a more unfortunate story.
Anyway, it makes me wonder if maybe we were more aware of how to avoid danger as kids then we give ourselves credit for. Maybe only at the last minute, when instinct takes over and you cling tightly to a branch when you notice your balance shifting, or clutch your oversized stuffed dolphin to your chest when you trip on the newly de-carpeted stairs directly onto a large exposed nail that pierces through the dolphin instead of your lung.
It's hard to know how protective to be, and I guess I'd rather err on the safer side, where the consequence of being wrong is that my child is just developmentally stunted instead of dead. But either way, making the wrong choice kinda sucks.
Seeing how I was the odd one out in my generation (poor/large family in the neighborhood) comparing myself to peers I don't see the value of my undirected roaming.
For example I remember having a huge leap in physical abilities when I started takng taekwondo classes around that age. After school activities let me thinker with stuff.
Roaming around was just lack of better things to do. Not really seeing what my peers without those near death experiences missed out on.
We had 3x per week IIRC. My kid is too young still but in the next year I think I'll start taking him to judo. Add swimming classes and his week is full of activities.
We call that trauma an anecdote, that's orthogonal to whether modern American culture is conducive to children roaming. Anecdotally I also grew up in the 90s and I wonder how playing cops n robbers feeling 100% safe before curfew shaped me, my kid never will. We had cars as well but I don't have the equivalent to your story re: fast traffic;save that we had it nearby as well and roamed far with parents telling us to avoid it.
Anyway, sorry for the injury and the carelessness.
My perspective is that we went from trains being novel and a radio unheard of to handing toddlers iPads in a few centuries. Biology doesn't evolve that fast. It makes me wonder what an alien looking in would consider closer to child abuse given your comment. Unfettered iPad access or teaching a kid fast cars and roads are dangerous so going outside is bad.
6 year olds shouldn't be left alone to play on the street but if your kid is in middle school they should be allowed to bike however far their legs can take them.
But that is the thing - in Germany or Switzerland 6 years old go to and from school unsupervised. The expectation is that they can in fact play alone on the street.
Do you have 6 year old in Germany today or are you talking about your own childhood? My 6 year old went to school on his own a few times and he was the only kid in his class to do so. He now no longer does as the teacher scared my wife into thinking it's dangerous to have him cross the street on his own (it's a small street and the entire way is 5 minutes walk).
I talked with my wife and we do want him to start going alone again when he is a bit older, maybe 7 or 8. But no other kid in the lower grades does (I went to school on my own from ± the very beginning as far as I can recall).
I have friends and relatives in Germany and in Switzerland. This was standard and recommended by school in Germany.
In Switzerland, going alone started even sooner - at 5. But, the school was assigned in such a way that kid did not had to cross bigger road, kids had reflexive vests and there is regular back to school campaign targetted at drivers with "inexperienced kids on road" message.
Educate them in the perils and pitfalls of life. Tell them not to fear them, but be aware of them, then let them know you expect them to take it from there. Kids are far more capable then we give them credit for. Not long ago they were forced to work in factories to help provide for the family.
This is a nice sound bite, but is completely lacking a key element. At what age, precisely, is this reasonable? When are they old enough to be safe around traffic, mystery dogs, and foul weather?
I can’t know if I agree or disagree without hearing whether you prescribe this approach for fifteen year olds or five year olds.
TBH? It depends on the kid. This article itself points out not all kids are the same. Sometimes it's best to let a kid try and observe. If they handle it well then look to what a next milestone might look like.
I'm confused. They're too broke to move away from home, but their mental health is bad because they were coddled while they were at home and now they're no longer at home and struggling, but also more of them live at home later in life than in generations past?
Is it possible maybe the problem is they are just a bit too entitled on average, and when things don't go perfectly they can't cope? That's been my experience, albeit anecdotal. I know this comes off as old man yelling at the clouds, but damn if 20-somethings aren't emotionally fragile at a level the world has never seen before. And they're also all in therapy too and super in touch with their feelings and emotions which is supposed to help, but is actually likely to be a large part of the problem.
To be fair, I don't blame them. I think the blame lies firmly on social media and their need to be "always on". But there actually is such a thing as too much empathy, and we're seeing what happens with it.
Harmful parenting styles lead to children that grow up to be debilitated and somehow it gets turned around to be called 'entitlement'. It's just shifting the blame from the bad parents to the child, like victim blaming.
Because in the real world, the only transactional relationships you ought to have are ones that explicitly involve money. It's difficult to learn to start to relate to people in a non-transactional manner, but it's necessary to develop genuine relationships.
> People who participate in and contribute to society are entitled to things. They should have a sufficient wage, safe housing, food and clean water.
This is the /antiwork crowd we're talking about? The ones too emotionally stunted to even crawl out of bed and do anything productive because they've self-diagnosed as depressed/anxiety ridden/whatever?
No they're not entitled to anything. The ones that actually contribute to society are, but a huge chunk of them aren't. Which is fine, but then can't bitch about it and shouldn't expect anything in return. They can go live in the mountains or under a bridge.
Someone has to make you your nuggies at McDonald's homie. It's going to be someone, it might even be you. Half the workers at any McDonald's I've ever been to are elders who should be retired.
The level of isolation you are suffering from is profound and I hope you find a way out of it.
By the next time I bother to go to McDonalds, I'm sure the robots will at least not fuck my order up like the stoners always do. Not sure what the Marxist burger flippers will do now, but since they don't care, I guess I won't either.
> but damn if 20-somethings aren't emotionally fragile at a level the world has never seen before.
38 year old here.
I do wonder if the sense of "emotionally fragile" has something to do with how we (America? Canada?) had been accustomed to only having ppl speaking about emotions once they'd sorted it out. Maybe ppl talking more about their emotions earlier looks a lot like ppl talking about things they don't understand yet.
But maybe they're more likely to turn out as better ppl than you or I if they're communicating more and earlier and working things out, albeit with a whole lot of untenable conclusions while younger :)
> Is it possible maybe the problem is they are just a bit too entitled on average, and when things don't go perfectly they can't cope?
Maybe it's that things today are generally just worse than they used to be. It is generally harder to "cope" as a younger person than it was 20-40 years ago.
In the late seventies/early eighties we grew up believing we were going to die in a nuclear holocaust. Have you watched “The Day After” and “Threads”? Way worse on a child’s psyche than “Don’t Look Up” because doesn’t depict survival in an irradiated apocalypse of pain, wounds, death, and deprivation: everyone just gathers for a nice dinner and instant obliteration.
We Gen-X coped with the grim possibility of nuclear death, and then coped with death by AIDS, and then coped with the ever-increasing reality of global environmental failure, from ozone holes to acid rain to the heat death of the planet, and then coped with being kicked in the teeth by massive financial failures again and again and again.
Things have been worsening ever more rapidly my entire damn life and there’s no sign of it ever letting up. Yet somehow, still coping. I don’t think young people have it any worse than Gen-X has had it.
They don’t, but Gen X had Boomer or Silent generation parents who mostly refused to relate emotionally. So punk, angst, grunge made its way into public communication instead.
Gen Z is lucky in a sense to have mostly Gen X or younger parents, who are like, yeah, it sucks, I feel you.
This is validating for Gen Z is a wonderful way and I hope that everyone complaining about emotional entitlement can come to understand that while it may be uncomfortable for them because they don’t speak the language, it is not a weakness, it is a strength.
They haven't solved anything, and it appears there is no desire to solve because then they would stop being victims. It's just too comforting to be able to blame any shortcomings on something other than your own effort. Don't believe me? Find one that takes full accountability for themselves rather than blame society/parents/Elon/Chad from school etc. Nothing is ever their fault, have a conversation with them if you don't believe me. I talk to them everyday and it's an almost universal mass psychosis.
That's a cop out, and only reinforces their internalized belief that literally nothing is their own fault.
Find a Gen Z person who is fully accountable for their own actions and you will have located a unicorn. It's uncanny how in-sync that entire generation is with the idea that they are not only owed the world, but have no fault. They are crippled by the actions of "others" (whoever the others are doesn't matter - boomers, the rich, Trump, old people on scooters in Walmart...the who doesn't matter as long as they can point to someone else at fault for everything that hurts their feelings.
I don't know how you grow out of a collective psychosis like that. It's cult-like.
That's the same tired stuff people said about Millennials and Gen Xers before them. The younger generations are vastly more open, honest, kind and generous than older generations. They just have significantly less tolerance for hateful people and "punching down". That rubs older generations the wrong way because they tend to hate (or fear) a lot of things and think it's funny/acceptable to punch down.
Boomers are a generation of narcissists. That’s just a fact that any non-narcissist that talks to one can instantly pick up on. My personal favorite boomer quote is “how can you be so selfish, think about me!” And of course if you make the mistake of telling a boomer narcissist about any challenge you face they’ll immediately go off about how they picked themselves up by their bootstraps and worked their way through college. Note that getting disowned used to be a real threat, but now it’s not because boomer parents aren’t planning to leave their kids or grandkids anything other than a reverse mortgage they’ll never be able to pay off anyhow.
I've always considered the "generations" thing to be more of a state of mind than strictly age-based. Plenty of younger people have a similar fear-based, tradition-bound outlook as actual Boomers.
Also, punching up/down is about status and older people do not automatically receive a higher status, so it's really not an example of "punching up".
Do you have citations that genz are less functional than millennials at the same age? Genz don’t strike me as more emotionally delicate than I’d expect the average young adult. The millennials did the whole occupy Wall Street during the Great Recession, after all. Genz can have their moment too.
Imagine thinking parents being responsible for how their children turn out is a cop out
You think 15 years old are capable of being responsible for the level of responsibility they developed? Guess they should have made better decisions for their development when they were 10
The age-old shitting on new generations is also an age-old acknowledgement of one's own failures
I work with mostly gen Z. They are great but the definitely don't like working like grandpa. Ie stupid suits and ties, memos, pointless meetings, butts in chairs. If you let them be results driven, they fuckin show up.
Why do you insist on missing the point? I never said they have no agency to solve their problems, only that they did not create the lion’s share of the problems.
The problems are mostly self-inflicted. Nobody is forcing them to all move to the same 5 cities and then wonder why houses are so expensive there. Nobody is forcing them to spend their lives on social media despite every study showing the negative impact it has on their mental health. Nobody is forcing them to self-isolate into echo chambers and remove key support from friends/family etc. due to misaligned beliefs or whatever excuse.
These are solved problems, so not fixing it is their own fault. But if you talk to them you'll see they don't want to solve problems, they want to be victims so they can do nothing and blame others for their own shortcomings.
I feel bad for the young people in that generation who aren't wired this way because their own peers are driving them to embrace negativity and toxicity and wear it as a badge. We used to tell people like that to fuck off, now they're embraced - it's creepy.
Fair points, especially on the “same five cities”. That’s what sorting job markets by raw salary combined with wanting “culture” gets. Compare relative salary to CoL instead. That and restrictive zoning to keep property values up so the geriatrics don’t retire in poverty.
> Is it possible maybe the problem is they are just a bit too entitled on average, and when things don't go perfectly they can't cope?
Precisely. The world has never been safer or as rich, and it seems like my generation is extremely lacking in independence.
Everyone has to be told to do things, it's like they have no concept of what to do without being commanded. I feel like many simply can't come up with answers on their own. No one can answer the question of how a person should their life. It's subjective. But like a muscle, it's completely atrophied. When you're never given independence, you don't recognize how to listen to your own desires or judgement.
For me this explains perfectly the underlying situation behind the overbearing paternalism (from society & government) that so many apparently desire now.
The younger generation was growing into worst economy that their parents generation did. Unemployment was higher. Their education is also massively more expensive. The Healthcare detto.
It is just not true that they would be better off.
> And they're also all in therapy too and super in touch with their feelings and emotions which is supposed to help, but is actually likely to be a large part of the problem.
Can you elaborate on how going to therapy is “a large part of the problem.”
If you think you think you need therapy for every little thing, how exactly would you function as an adult? Adults develop coping skills. If you can't cope with anything, you can't function as an adult.
>> but damn if 20-somethings aren't emotionally fragile at a level the world has never seen before. And they're also all in therapy too and super in touch with their feelings and emotions which is supposed to help
They’ve probably seen enough older people drink themselves to literal death, along with other types of deaths of despair, & make a conscious choice to not want to end up that way. Whether or not it will work out in the long term, nobody can tell for certain - but at least they’re trying.
Fewer people are "drinking themselves to death" now than in previous generations, so that can't be it.
Maybe the issue is that they literally have had it too good, and were too coddled, and now they can't handle regular life. If that's the case, what is the solution? Treat kids worse, make them face more adversity like previous generations did?
I really hope you’re being sarcastic but I genuinely cannot tell so I guess I’ll reply.
>>Fewer people are "drinking themselves to death" now than in previous generations, so that can't be it.
Do you believe that we do not live in an age (with social media) in which it is much easier for anybody growing up to see exponentially a more examples of things I’ve mentioned? Just because things may be trending down, there is near infinitely more exposure.
Kids used to see a town drunk they were told to stay away from & generally that they deserved their fate. Now they can go on any social media & find people who had full ride scholarships that had to drop out of a STEM PhD & now can’t even get their most basic of human needs met because of a long untreated disability or other medical issues. This may come as a surprise to you - but many younger people find that to be depressing as fuck & don’t see a point when they can easily meet the same fate.
Just personal data: everybody I know who was treated as you suggest at the end now no longer speaks with or interacts their parents, whom regularly post things on Facebook like “I don’t know why none of my kids talk to me I was so good to them you all know I was waaah”
I personally find this to be funny, but it’s probably not best for society at large. We should probably attempt to fix the underlying issue - which all too often seems to be, don’t treat your kids like shit - especially in the 21st century where it’s not hard to see there’s greener pastures to be experienced, even when estranged from family.
Your entire post goes against the data which shows this generation was coddled (probably too much) and that they statistically have it better than any generation in the history of mankind.
If anything, it appears the problem is that they have had it too easy. They are in need of nothing, which leaves them to create their own problems, in need of solving of course.
The people with nearly no pathway to home ownership, a bachelors degree required for the most basic of jobs, & the least social mobility in over a century are “in need of nothing”
You clearly aren’t to be reasoned with. I also think you would benefit from therapy, but I digress.
No pathway to homeownership? Only if you insist on buying your dream home in your dream city where everyone of your peers also wants to live. Meanwhile right now I can link you to search results on Zillow showing thousands of starter homes (yes, still very much a thing) for under $100k in most metropolitan areas.
Is the problem that much of this generation thinks they're too good to live in a $100k house in a suburb of KC, St Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Little Rock, Dallas, etc. etc.? Or do they honestly believe this nonsense that there are literally no jobs outside of SF/Boston/NYC/LA/Seattle?
Because what it appears to be from all the evidence is just a lazy excuse to not try.
Homie, the things your parents did to you was abuse. The things you did to your kids, because your parents did them, was abuse. Your parents were probably self medicating with alcohol. What ever fault you have with the younger generation is on you and your generations behaviors.
You need to get out and actually listen to some people younger than you. It's clear you've never had an emotionally present conversation with a young person.
This sounds like something a high school kid would write. I interact with them daily, they literally "can't even". The entire generation is emotionally crippled, depressed, self-medicating (and diagnosing), and honestly appears incapable of functioning in society as an adult.
Have you stopped to consider how weird it is that you find that entire generation completely without fault? The first faultless generation? How convenient...
Yes, and a lot of those previous deaths was self medication due to mental health problems.
And the same goes for minor violent crimes committed by young people. And teenage pregnancies. Many of those were result of kids having issues and acting out. They are down now.
Also, my generation had it easier then current one. Economy was better, education cheaper, housing cheaper.
Independent thinking/critical thinking is valued in education, but punished in the workplace. The workplace is all about authority and dogma.
Each management decision establishes an authoritative truth which diverges from "the truth", and cannot be questioned because it is enforced by the company hierarchy.
If you grew up believing in the scientific method you will be frustrated as fuck having to deal with axioms created by people that are not necessarily intellectually inclined and are not up to discussion.
Having to spend time inside a castle of lies (i.e.: a company) is a miserable form of living, and much of the workplace burnout affecting people is due to learned helplessness.
You are hired to solve problems but then find yourself in a position where you cannot do much about many of them because of bullshit reasons beyond your control, and that the root cause of many problems are the organization itself.
Companies are a shitty version of the movie Die Welle with the only difference being that the uniform are not white shirts but a t-shirt with a startup logo. And that's also why many people do not want to return to the office.
German and Italian youths have a lot of problems as well. Young Italians are facing crushing unemployment and Germans are facing increasing pressure from cheaper EU labor undermining their earning potential. From what I have been told by friends, being told “shut up and do your job or I’ll replace you with a cheaper foreigner” is a common experience. In addition the modern US campus experience is ‘in loco parentis‘ and even back when I experienced it there was a great deal of coddling and from what I’ve seen it’s gotten worse.
Germany has a substantial labor shortage in practically all departments except low/unskilled labor. Unemployment hovers around 5% and falling.
There are regional differences, but all in all, the threat of “I’ll replace you with a cheaper immigration” is bogus, because there’s not even enough qualified immigrants to fill the open positions, let alone replace anyone with.
The Germans I met were in America so likely a biased sample, but it was more than one and they didn’t know each other.
In addition I got the threat of being replace with a cheaper immigrant in the US even though I was the immigrant, but I worked in research which is generally paid much more than other programmers so more likely to encounter the whole why are we paying you so much sentiment.
We've lived in Germany for 9 years (and Austria before that, which is culturally and economically very similar) and I've not encountered that supposed widespread threat of being replaced with cheap foreign labor.
The spector of the cheap immigrant is always raised everywhere that is successful. And most economic study on the topic shows that is far less an isse them is immagined in popular imagination.
> American parents tend to be overprotective when children are young, acting as if kids are going to live at home for a long time, like parents do in Italy.
Anecdotal data point. I grew up in south italy in the early 90ies.
At ~11-12 years old I was independent enough to go to the countryside near home (we lived in a small town) with my dad's axe to cut down small pieces of wood, go back home and work them with table knives. It was fun.
Needless to say, my parent's hadn't realized i was taking out my dad's axe (they found out later...) and my mum definitely wasn't glad i had destroyed most table knives (using them for cutting olive tree wood -- and olive tree wood is hard).
To add some context: my dad was a clerk and was out most of the day, and my mum had to care about my younger sister and my older brother besides me... and I was the one making a new mess every day.
How about we just be more like the US was before about the 90s? As a kid who grew up in the 70s there's really a lot of truth to the "70's mom" memes/jokes. I could go with my buddies night fishing down on a pier on the bay about a mile away when I was 10 - we just had to be back by 10PM. That wouldn't happen now.
Your mom would get arrested now. Even if she wanted to let you.
I've a 12 year old... Last year I was reading at a table in the library, and he was less than 20 feet away from me in the children's section reading quietly on a couch. A security guard came up to me and told me I had to have him always in my sight.
When I do groceries I typically give my kids one half of the list and a cart, and they go off. I can't count how many times they've been asked where their parent is. I've trained them to ask the asker "Where is your parent?"
Something went wrong in the US after 911. I don’t think it’s just the government. The entire capitalist machine realised just how profitable fear can be, and that’s been one of the big marketing angles in the 2000s. Especially in media, but elsewhere like supplements and drugs too.
But the society wide impact of that has been a much more fearful people, obviously making parents more protective too.
The seeds were planted long before 9/11. I was born in the 80s, and even I saw something wasn't right. The Nancy Reagan War on Drugs and Stranger Danger were there already.
Yeah, the culture around stranger danger and satanic panic really had a lot to do with it. Part of the freedom my generation had also came from the lack of tech to keep track of us, but the culture itself really changed. My parents occasionally decided we'd spent too much time indoors and kicked us out of the house until dark and had little idea where we were a lot of the time. I was a latchkey kid too and I'm pretty sure today leaving a kid unattended at home for hours would be considered illegal now (or at least risk a visit from CPS)
I see three comments saying it was there before 9/11, but really, the fear dial was amped to 11 then. It was a milestone in that sense. Furthermore, journalism changed dramatically. Instead of more open ended questions, especially TV interviews started treating guests like enemies for example “Why didn’t you do X?” to a guest, instead of saying “Can you tell us what you did?”
Also more subtle changes in how media reports things in general. I haven’t seen a study on this, but it would be an interesting subject.
> I see three comments saying it was there before 9/11, but really, the fear dial was amped to 11 then.
If you look for security reasons, you'll find security reasons, for everything. It's like like applying a caricature of scientific method to gaslight someone.
To be fair, the media landscape changed pretty drastically since the 80s or so. First, cable (and talk radio?) let us start forming bubbles. Then ubiquitous Internet made more bubbles and pushed people apart more.
And what's great for forming bubbles and, coincidentally, marketing demographics? Nothing new: fear.
The thing is . . . the media landscape hadn't been so mainstream, pine-scented, and vanilla-flavored until really recently: probably traceable to the rise of radio in the early 20th century. Before that, every big city had many newspapers, most of whom claiming some of the others were lying. "Yellow journalism" dates to the last century.
Radio and broadcast television were highly regulated. The idea was that use of those things should be for the public good. And people who voted D and people who voted R both had reasons to want that enforced. And their politicians found something to agree about beyond scrabbling for donor money.
In these days of corporate capture of politics, regulating anything for the public good is only going to happen if it profits the biggest gorilla in the room.
Well before then. I got one of the last chemistry sets around 1970, when they were all emasculated.
> The entire capitalist machine realised just how profitable fear can be
Oh come on. A huge driver of this problem is the legal system which encourages jackpot lawsuits, along with our culture of it's always someone else's fault (usually the party with money that becomes worthwhile to sue).
What I see is mutually interlocking and supporting drivers:
1. Profiteering media based on a 24/7/365 fixation on fear and violence: "if it bleeds it leads", and encouraging our worst tendencies toward moral panic (e.g. the 80s satanic ritual abuse panic, which recapitulated in some ways the Salem witch trials)
2. A people who easily go along with the media-driven culture of fear, and learn e.g. that their kids can't go anywhere without falling into pedophile clutches
3. The hyper-punitive systems of US law and child protective services
The book Where is my Flying Car traces a lot of different developments back to the late 60s/early 70s explosion in number of pages of federal regulations and lawyers per capita. The massive cultural obsession with danger and liability is relatively young and can essentially be blamed on Richard Nixon.
I think American history tinges its culture, as this has almost always been a state driven by fear of boogeymen, whether those boogeymen were witches, sin, foreigners, minorities, communists, satanists, terrorists, etc.
I agree with your premise that it certainly was recognized and capitalized upon at that time again that fear, hysteria, crises, etc were good ways to get what you want out of people.
Yeah, but they tend to get outraged over ridiculous stuff periodically. I stopped caring about that group for this reason.
I mean, there were articles and think pieces about complete nothing burgers. Like someone seen a mom put blanket on grass and cut cucumber and give it to kid. There was whole think piece about overprotection and fear and fatness, all of those purely projected on woman that just ... cut cucumber.
I would love to do this but I live in a major city. Our neighborhood is relatively quiet but there is the random stranger and speeding car to think about. For me it’s delaying and limiting how much range my children get in their youth
Speeding cars aren't too much of an issue you've taught your kids how to cross the street safely and they're older than toddlers. Random strangers aren't much of a threat either unless you're in an area with lots of crime/gangs. These days kids have cell phones in their pockets and can dial 911, give location updates to friends and parents, or even start recording suspicious behavior before it escalates which weren't options kids had in the past.
Crime and homelessness spill into my neighborhood. Cars drive down my 25mph street at 45+. I have stopped neighbors kids several times from runnning out after an errant ball. A neighbor’s child had an abduction attempt against her just two days ago.
Every city is different, it’s not a one size fits all approach. I’ll accept the downvotes for protecting my 5 year old. In two years this entire story will be different
I'm wondering how true this is in the United States if you don't restrict yourself to big cities when considering parenting behavior.
I grew up in a mid-sized midwestern city (millennial) and we were definitely very free to do whatever we wanted (within reason) as kids, and we were actually expected to come home every change we got from college. Might be the right balance (assuming that kids have to go to college, which isn't true).
That is an interesting point. Couple that with things like cost of living, cost of education, poor training and mentorship in jobs, etc.
Although I’m slightly confused by the quote. How do kids in Italy get started navigating real life earlier if they live at home longer? I’m guessing the point there is that they have help in early adulthood while still living at home, but the quote, as written, is a little confusing.
The idea seems to be that overprotective parenting of children isn't harmful if those children continue to live with their parents as they enter adulthood, since their parents will be able to help them as they adjust. (Supposedly this happens in Italy.)
Likewise, having children move out when they become adults isn't harmful if those children have grown up with the ability to live independently. (Supposedly this happens in Germany.)
The problem comes when you combine overprotective parenting with the norm that children should move out at a relatively young age. This leaves young adults both unprepared and on their own when they leave. (Supposedly this happens in the US.)
> if those children continue to live with their parents as they enter adulthood, since their parents will be able to help them as they adjust. (Supposedly this happens in Italy.)
I lived in Italy for a while and yes this does happen. Kids often continue to live with their parents well into their 30s. But this is mostly due to a shortage of new housing.
> Kids often continue to live with their parents well into their 30s. But this is mostly due to a shortage of new housing.
That just seems really awkward. By their 30s people are often having kids of their own! Does italy have something like love hotels for teens and young adults who don't want to make out with their parents in the next room?
Living in Europe this concept always seemed strange to me. I'm Polish and here it's normal to have couples living together while the parents are in the same house and even having sex together while parents are in the same house. There's no need to "hide" from the parents, you just ask them not to be disturbed for the next hour or two.
Well, Italian’s are not currently known for being independent adults very early either. Unemployment is insanely high for young adults too, and has been for a long time. Somewhere around 25-30% depending on how you slice ages. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1097938/unemployment-rat...
It's common in most of the world for families to have multi-generation households.
The article probably refers to Italy as one country where it's commonplace, meaning the progress into adulthood includes gaining your independence while staying in the familial house.
Living at home is different from being babysat all the time, or from the quote "American parents are more overprotective". You can live in the same house and have way more independence growing up depending on parenting styles. I'm not sure how true or not any of this is, but depends if for example kids are more likely to play in the street without an adult supervising, going to the beach also without adult supervising, etc.
It fits well with the general American mythos of self development by staking out alone into the unknown to seek your fortune (not necessarily a literal one) - whether that be out west, into the factories of the city, the natural resource rich boom towns, or overseas in foreign war. It is as if you're not really "doing it right" if you come into it too prepared.
Many young women feel like they’re failures because they can’t meet the unrealistic expectations society has of them to be successful, beautiful and nurturing.
Many young men feel like they’re failures because they can’t meet society’s expectations success, attractiveness and fatherhood.
Society has always had winners and losers, the global nature of things makes people more aware of higher standards and the threat to their security that lies out there in the real world. No more local echo chambers.
Adding fuel to the fire, it’s easy to lie about how smart, happy and successful you are online, reap the status benefits of it and not get caught. Thus the wheel turns further and faster.
Adolescence and young adulthood is a fragile part of life when you don’t know what you’re capable of yet and have to constantly prove your genetic worth. This is why the young are far more affected than adults who have a realistic sense of what their abilities are and proof that they can survive.
The only solution I see to this is to show the young the importance of sticking to principles, how to suspend disbelief and embrace optimism, how to really take care of your biology and offer them multiple avenues of support they feel comfortable taking advantage of.
The ones who make it through to adulthood with courage will change the world for the better. This I’m sure of
What you said is all true. The part that is controversial to me about what you said is that these expectations didn't exist even moreso in times past.
My reading of the past, certainly the modern past where we have literature of the time, TV shows of the era, advertising and so on, is that roles-based expectations were even MORE extreme decades and centuries ago.
As I write this I begin to think, maybe one problem is the opposite: the lack of strict guidance and those guardrails have lead to more existential angst. Who am I, what am I to do, is more salient in these times perhaps.
Rigid expectations may have been more prevalent but they most certainly were also more attainable because the competitive group was smaller.
Rigid expectations might actually be better for humans. Having multiple potential paths and failing at all of them due to unconcentrated effort is worse
If there is one thing I’m ever more sure of as I get older, is that too much choice really is bad most of the time. And it doesn’t take much to count as “too much” here either.
Boomers had a "work hard and you'll get there eventually" combined with a period of economic growth resulting in better reality than the expectations.
Gen Y (and gen Z) aspire to that growth (note that the economics haven't been there) and have been told that they are special and to "pursue your dreams". Consider the "fulfilling career" vs "secure career" ideals for the young adults of the past decade.
This results in the idea that you'll make $150k as a software developer out of college or that you'll be able to find a job as an itinerant marine biologist studying whales in tropical locations. Those expectations falter when they hit reality.
The rise of the influencer and idealized life has contributed to the perception that everyone else is doing great (meanwhile that person isn't) and the "I'm not an itinerant marine biologist while my friends are posting about their destination weddings... their perfect kids and their spouse's perfect job."
And you've got a rather disappointing situation to be in that can negatively impact mental health.
It's because there's nothing for them to look forward to.
People keep asking why is X group struggling? And there's been enough articles about different groups that X is basically nearly everyone. Things are not getting better for anyone except the extremely wealthy.
The kids I know these days are fantastic. They’re empathetic, smart, polite, and all-around much better people than my friends and I were at their age. They’re so good and they give me so much hope. But they’re also troubled. They struggle with anxiety and depression (and younger) more deeply than anyone I knew growing up. My theory is that we’ve simply handed them a more difficult world to grow up in. They’re handling it admirably, but we really did them dirty.
I teach outdoor ed for a program where kids come for a week at a time, so I get to see thousands of kids per semester. I would very much agree with this statement. Overall, Ive experienced that today's youth is largely very empathetic and kind, much moreso than I was as a kid, but anxiety absolutely plagues them.
A very notable exception to this is the rich/well off kids Ive been with. They very much do not show the same empathy as even the middle class type kids (or upper middle class) that I work with. There is definitely a massive divide there.
The location of the school also has a significant impact on this too.
This is mostly a mixed bag. Less kids with obvious outwards anxiety, but quite a few that share things that definitely lead you to believe they will have anxiety if they dont already.
I would say generally the big differentiator is that the kids who are meaner/less empathetic are the ones with less anxiety, regardless of wealth status.
Overall though, anxiety is definitely just a massive problem among youth.
I said something similar to my son a little while ago. He said "That's because you taught me to be polite to my elders. We're not that well behaved on our own."
Despite what we may think about our children (or "the youth of today"), they are basically the same as they've always been, behaving well for adults--mainly I suspect to keep the adults attention away from them.
I think that, as long as we keep the above in mind when we deal with the younger generation we'll be able to help to them rise above our mistakes.
Outside the people on HN etc, aren’t people objectively worse off payment wise than in the 80s? Cannot buy houses and having to live with their parents? Sure we live longer and healthier (well, this is also mostly the well off people) and we have tremendous tech advancements, but isn’t everything owned by a few people? I have to pay monthly for my car seat warmer. Movies and music that I bought are removed without me having anything to say about it. Everything is becoming rented and can be remotely terminated.
Even our mental space is occupied by a handful of billion$ companies (and their billion$ owners).
Then AI is changing the outlook for 100s of millions ‘knowledge workers’ and artists as they see what they were educated for or educated themselves with, rapidly become obsolete. Of course many here say that it will make more jobs as it always did; are those better? Will they pay more and have a better work/life balance, or, more likely when looking at the past, will they pay, generally far less and will the companies rich enough to run the AI be the only ones that benefit from that particular revolution, as they do now?
You can deny climate change and pollution as many do, but that is a problem as well which the coming generations can look forward to reap the pain from through disasters and famine. Not you or your kids or friends, but the masses ‘elsewhere’ who are already suffering now from these things.
So when you are young you look forward to having no possessions (everything shall be rented), a burning planet and no or crappy jobs. Throw in a war here and there and the bleak future arrived already for many. Except for a few, like now and many of those are in the HN echo chamber.
And all of this and more is causing a clearly visible mental health crisis all around the globe.
I’d argue distortion isn’t the ideal word. We are in a tough situation and strong narrative framing is needed to get through it. One narrative is different than another. It’s not so useful to call one distorted and the other not. Rather, which is more productive?
Single earners with no post-secondary education used to be able to be a sole earner and afford a stay at home spouse, car, home and kids.
You can't say "oh that's false" whilst giving no examples when it's extremely well known that life is getting extremely expensive, all the iPhones in the world don't actually make it better.
> Chentsova Dutton and her team interviewed students from Turkey, Russia, Canada and the United States, asking them to describe a risky or dangerous experience they had in the _last month_. Both Turkish and Russian students described witnessing events that involved actual risk: violent fights on public transportation; hazardous driving conditions caused by drunk drivers; women being aggressively followed on the street.
> But American students were far more likely to cite as dangerous things that most adults do every day, like being alone outside or riding alone in an Uber.
The examples they listed about "violent fights" and similar are not common in the environment I'm living in. I probably have seen once in the last 10 years. I don't think it's a good question to ask especially about _last month_. For example, the most dangerous stuff I did last month was running on wet grass in the park and almost fell.
P.S: I'm not saying the result is wrong. I have concern about the research methodology. It feels cherry picked, and it makes me doubt the data.
I personally think that American students not being engaged or treated by violent fights in public transport says something good about USA. The Russians being engaged in them says something about Russian society breaking.
The "last month" thing is fairly standard through. They are looking for statistics of recent events, lifestyle "now". Not lifestyle 5 years ago.
To continue on this, it is saying that the US is not dangerous but people do not realize that. That is the implication, for the study to validate it there would need to be a question of how in-danger you've felt in that time. That way we could judge if taking an uber alone is considered similarly to being near a violent altercation.
I worry about generalizations in this regard, but consistently my daughter's peers in college who had helicopter parents were less functional. May simply be correlation of course so drawing conclusions would be bad.
That said, it's super hard to experiment on kids without getting in trouble :-). As a parent unfortunately you have to pick a path. My eldest had the tendency to only learn through experiencing the negative side effects of choices directly, called "natural consequences" in parenting books from the turn of the century. That led my wife and I to help get those experiences in early before they could do real harm and to try to give experience with things not going well, and then going back and taking a different route and experiencing things going better. Was that what helped them become functional adults in college? Or was it my wife insisting they did their own laundry once they turned 10? Three times a week one of them was asked to prepare dinner for the family once they were old enough to reach all of the appliances and use kitchen utensils with proper care.
You don't get multiple universes to try out different techniques to find the best one. Talking with other parents of similarly aged kids helps and is reasonably cathartic. Exposure to lots of different choices helps surface things that are similar and things that are different.
Conflict management is something else entirely. Both my and my wife's family of origin were "conflict avoiders," which really had a hard time growing beyond their specific complexes. When we found ourselves doing that with each other we recognized it and got some help with working through it. Our kids benefited by our modeling and all of them have remarked at one time or another that their friends have said something positive about their ability to negotiate touchy subjects. I count that as a win.
Bottom line is that parenting is a tough job and its good to seek out advice.
I suspect it is different for different people. In our case it really helped to sit down with a third party (a counselor) while we "conflicted." That gave the counselor an opportunity to stop us in the middle of a sentence and explore where our head was and what we were thinking. It took doing this once a week for a bit more than a year to both unravel the core knot and to develop and practice the skills of listening and reflecting and not assuming.
Again, in our case it seems like it wasn't "one" conflict, but dozens that colored everything we said to or heard from, each other. In hindsight it is easy to recognize this is where you get to after years of "go along to get along" kind of thinking. And resolving one doesn't resolve the others. So we had to practice getting to the bottom of things and that takes trust and understanding.
Bottom line was we needed someone to teach us the tools for dealing with conflict so that we could teach them to our kids. Neither of our parents had taught them to us so no help there. We also recognized that the third party really helped us because there is a level of sharing and exposure during our sessions that we didn't want to share with our friends.
And no, I don't have a magic bullet for finding a good counselor. You'll know it when they are good, and with some honest evaluation will also know when they are not working out for you. We went through the family health center at Stanford, but there seems to be resources like this in the US at least and possibly elsewhere.
Practice empathy and active listening. Really listen to what someone is saying, repeat back to them what they are saying and then ask clarifying questions (as appropriate).
This will deescalate conflicts and allow them to resolve.
I‘m 42. Here‘s my advice to someone half my age. Have conflicts. Put your heart into it. If you loose, you receive some truth. If you win you give some truth. The outcome does not matter if it means you grow.
The prerequisite for this is a healthy foundation of self belief. Young adults out there are getting hammered by messages that imply that they are fundamentally flawed and will never stack up.
The messages need to be questioned. Questioning authority, your peers and the society as a whole is an important step to develop a sense of self. It means you might be perceived as a rebel or immature at times. Sometimes you can't give a shit what other people think about you: I do not see that message being reinforced. I see vicious conformity among American youth.
> Sometimes you can't give a shit what other people think about you
That worked when gossip didn't travel farther than the next town.
Just when young people are given more viable ways to live than ever to pick from, they're given fewer chances than ever to start over if they choose unwisely. Are many narrow choices better than a few broad ones?
And "it's" instead of "its", "you're" and "they're" instead of "your" and "their", "weary" instead of "wary". Lots more people seem to be making these same mistakes.
i think it’s because choose and chose are pronounced different from loose and lose- but autocorrect has no idea the difference or context of use and so people throw whatever out there
For me as a non-native English speaker it might be a case of English having confusing pronunciations. Pronunciation of loose and lose is very similar if not the same (I probably couldn't tell them apart). One might expect lose to be pronounced similarly to words like hose, rose or pose.
Spellcheck without autocorrect taught me to spell. I would retry the word with a squiggly red line under it til it was good. Autocorrect doesn't allow this self-remediation and learning. Disable it :)
The government doesn't allow more independence. For example, letting kids walk to school by themselves. When I was a kid (around 10 years old) I would stay out by myself until way past dark, sometimes outside for 8+ hours without supervision.
> Clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz, a professor at Long Island University-Post, began noticing a few years ago that some of his young patients, mostly children being treated for anxiety, would “fold very quickly” at the first sign of adversity
This is a perfect description of someone I met recently on a road trip with friends. From our first encounter he came off as feeling miserable and sorry for himself. He didn’t drink so he was the DD for our group, but he was a nervous driver and when we hit the freeway he got so nervous he was afraid to take his eyes off the road in front and wouldn’t shoulder check. Instead of confronting him and hurting his feelings we let him keep driving and we would shoulder check for him. Very dangerous and we knew it.
When we had the accident, it was minor and happened because he froze up at the wheel during a turn and continued on to hit a tree. Saddest, slowest accident I’ve ever seen or will be a part of and no one was really hurt. My immediate reaction from military and first aid training was to get all the other passengers to safety and make sure they weren’t injured. Meanwhile, he got out of the car, burst out sobbing, and literally ran away crying.
Anecdotal, but I think the lack of mental resilience and emotional resilience were strongly connected in his case.
> Instead of confronting him and hurting his feelings we let him keep driving and we would shoulder check for him. Very dangerous and we knew it.
Sounds like you guys also folded. The mentally and emotionally resilient thing to do would have been to not endanger multiple lives for the sake of this anxious person’s pride.
I agree, I think my friends and I were suffering from the same fear of confrontation that the article attributed to the younger generations. Learned a lot from this experience too.
Relative to being driven by a person who cannot drive? Obviously, not in the driving lanes, but pulling over on a shoulder and changing drivers is not dangerous enough to make me prefer continuing with a bad driver.
He might be going through something currently and you aren’t getting a good read on his baseline personality. That whole running away crying thing might be a clue.
There were always people unable to drive. The odd thing is that this guy either pretended to be able to drive or was pressured into driving despite lack of skills.
He absolutely should have say no to request to drive in that state. Inability to admit limitation is an issue when it comes to driving.
Parents, educators, clergy, everyone lines up to tell children that they need to study hard, go to university, get an economically worthwhile degree, get a good job, get married, get a mortgage.
Questions over whether children have the independence to ride the subway on their own, these questions are red herrings. How do you expect children to make their own decisions when all the messaging tells them that if they don't make the decisions that their parents are making, that they'll be failures, disgraces, shamed, poor?
Nobody's is telling these kids that it's OK to make mistakes, and it's OK for other people to make mistakes. Of course kids are anxious if they're not allowed to make mistakes. How couldn't you be, if you were led to believe that you were going to screw up your whole life otherwise?
The screws started to tighten after the No Child Left Behind Act. The academic path is NOT correct for all children, and children should not be forced onto that path if it's not right for them. The result, apart from declining mental health, is an enormous waste of human capital, enormous waste in higher education (supporting the educations of people who do not want or benefit from them), and enormous levels of student debt to prop up the lie.
I had a very smothering mother. Someone a bit too much into parenting for her own emotional needs, rather than her children’s. So you can imagine independence was subtly discouraged.
At the same time my Father came from a traditionally wealthy family. While we were not wealthy, his family consisted of successful lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs. So there was a lot of pressure to choose a somewhat preordained path to success.
A therapist encouraged me to focus on my own independence in young adulthood, including standing up and being more assertive with my parents. So I really blossomed much more in college choosing my own path away from my parents.
All to say a lot of what happens is parents have kids for their own needs, and end up neglecting who their kids are and want to be. How much here is American cultural issue? How much is a problem in all cultures? Certainly you see other notably workaholic cultures really put this pressure on kids to succeed and focus on serving the older generation.
I think it's universal. And not always in a consciously aware way. It seems natural to try to raise your kids the way you were raised (if that formed a good image in your head), or to try to do the complete opposite (if that left a bad image in your head). And both can go to very extremes.
In my case (I'm from northern-eastern EU), my mom was very overprotective and over caring as well. With the years, I realized that, and was trying to "ignore" it as much as possible. However, she didn't really see my "ungratefulness", and was continuing all the same. Me being a shy kid, and having this level of care, had a big influence on my independence/self-confidence. I stayed at my parents until 28. This was last year. For the past year I was having angrier thoughts, bad thoughts sometimes. I finally mustered the courage and got my own place in another city. My mom was pretty sad with this, and was rather asking me to get a bigger house where we could live together more spaciously (we lived in a smallish flat). I thought she's joking, but she was not, she would even send me house listing ads. Anyways, this decision was the greatest thing so far in my life. I've been on my own for over a year now, learning the ropes of being a self-sustainable adult.
I never miss my parents. I do visit them once a month for a few hours. Recently, I've talked with my mom about how her behavior was only pushing me away all these years. The good thing, I guess, is that she understood. We cried a bit together. Her reasoning was that she didn't have much attention as a kid - her mom was always working. So she tried to recoup that with her kids. I told that it's the opposite of what I needed, and now I feel very little emotions towards her. I guess I could've told that sooner too. But better now than never.
Your mother wasn't smothering for her own needs, she wanted to protect you. Your father didn't demand you go into a profession for his own satisfaction, he wanted to give you a good life.
Therapists and therapy will be the undoing of the West.
I mean, no shit, when it costs $2000/month for a jail cell of a bedroom in the only handful of places that actually have jobs, and your workplace doesn't have an office yet they don't pay for the rent to create a proper home office that isn't your bedroom, AND you don't have much money left over for your medical bills that insurance doesn't pay, and you're expected to work evenings and weekends and put on-call so you can never actually go hiking or get exercise or get vitamin D, you get only a couple weeks of vacation that you have to spend on family so you have none left to travel, dating is another nightmare in this day and age, ...
(Most of this isn't me, but descriptions of many people around me)
We have an exchange student who mentioned to me that in her home country teenagers enjoy a lot more freedom in terms of their independence than kids do here. She's very independent, well-adjusted, and mature. I think there's a lot to childhood independence.
On the other hand, I'm worry about my natural-born kid a lot. And while I'd like to let him explore, I'm not willing to risk custody of my child or government oversight of my parenting just to prove a point. I hope I can find that magical balance point where random strangers will just be impressed with a young kid doing mature things, rather than rush to authorities because no good parent would allow their child to do that...
> Young adults are struggling with their mental health. Is more childhood independence the answer?
Prospects in life is the answer.
The article goes over how independence in adolescence could help reduce people's anxieties, and closes with the following which sums up the article rather nicely
> “When we are controlling a young adult’s experiences, and they go without that full range of emotional experience, we’re actually curbing people’s opportunities to live full lives, and have the full range of human experience.”
Observe then, that absence of prospects means lack of independence. There is no reasonable form of independence when you need to work 9-5 just to cover your most basic living experiences.
> “It’s about being proactive and not feeling like you’re a victim, how you can control some things, but you can’t control everything,”
But as a person, you are living in our society, and you are bound by the rules and the situation you are born into, not everyone has the opportunity to explore and put themselves in relatively difficult situations without significant consequences because that is often very taxing, especially for the destitute. It is not possible to circumvent one's economic background, or remove it from the equation. Getting your clothes dirty, putting yourself in harm's way (even minor) can be very expensive, and thus taxing.
It is absurd to expect people to go out of their comfort zone when doing so has so many tangible negatives for them.
I come from a very poor family, and all of my young adulthood was spent clawing out of poverty through education. Sure, I have overcome the anxiety described in the article, but it wasn't because I had independence.
I didn't have a car to go to university, my family left me there in the morning, I didn't have a job for a non trivial portion of my studies, I just didn't eat until it was time to eat at home and only if we had something. I didn't go to trips because I spent my summers working in internships trying to escape poverty. I didn't explore the area I did my master's in because even taking the metro meant that I'd have to choose between a meal and a trip.
I am by all means fearless and bold because I have marketable skills and a hunger for better. By all means, I was lucky to be born in a time when my skills are useful to the system.
I'm not sure you are really using "independence" in the same way as the article if you saying that you are not "independent" when you are not living with your parents and working 9-5? Maybe you are thinking more about financial independence but that's not really the issue the article is talking about, which is more abut children learning to be independent from their parents.
It seems like the kind of independence being discussed is probably orthogonal from career prospects except in the sense that kids who can't go to college and get jobs that pay enough may not be able to become independent from their parents for longer.
I have updated the comment to better reflect my situation, during university I didn't explore or live like my peers because I didn't have a car nor any form of allowance to go out. I just stayed at the labs and studied. I didn't eat out, but I ate at home when we had something to eat.
I grew up with very few life skills and what the article described, I didn't have any reasonable socialisation until I became 17, when every decision I made was scrutinized, from where I was going to who I was meeting with and so on.
I didn't , nor could I for that matter, do anything like the article described simply because it was too expensive.
What I am trying to get to is that it's a lot easier to make decisions that lean towards independence if the cost of such decisions is actually very small, and with absence of financial safety, one can not simply act in such a manner because the calculus is far more complex.
Thank you for your thorough reply. You've managed to make manifest some thoughts I've been pondering for quite some time now.
> There is no reasonable form of independence when you need to work 9-5 just to cover your most basic living experiences.
If all your life is spent on just making sure you get to survive, how does on manage to make the world better? If all one's mind is spent on making it through the next month, or week, or even day, how can we expect them to make a meaningful change at large?
This world has brought about the availability of an incredible amount of even more incredibly brilliant minds, but for some reason we choose to not actively make use of them. Somehow, actively, we choose to let some of the most productive and knowledgeable of human beings go to waste.
I am not sure this was the exact sentiment you were aiming for, but what you wrote resonated for me and here we are.
I do have to admit that I do not know the "solution" to what I am (or might be) suggesting is the problem here, but if we might just be able to figure this out, there might just be hope for all of us.
Or I might just believe in Interstellar a wee bit too much ;)
“Students talk about conflict like it’s this terrible thing,” Mallon said in an interview. “Is it that they’re afraid of [conflict], or are they lacking in experience?"
It might also be that school and society has conditioned them to be this way. They've been told what feel about this subject.
When I went to school, fights were fairly rare, but they did happen. Usually they were minor without any serious injuries. Your punishment was usually several detentions, saying you're sorry, and your parents punishing you at home. Now, the police get called. One mistake and your life may be ruined.
Of course independence would benefit kids. Imagine being constantly watched, told where to be, told what you can and cannot do, etc. You're like an animal born at the zoo. All you know is your exhibit - a curated world with specially designed limits. You wouldn't last a day in the natural world where risks exist, but would be manageable with the proper knowledge/experience.
The main problem is that there is a lot of risk involved with that - legal risks. Whether that's someone calling the cops on an unattended child, or being responsible for any civil damages cause by a child, etc.
One additional point related to the zoo example... domestic animals are not as smart as their wild counterparts. In theory, they didn't need to problem solve since they were being taken care of. I think it's much the same for people. Take someone's phone. Now what do they actually know how to do without looking at instructions or a video?
>When I went to school, fights were fairly rare, but they did happen. Usually they were minor without any serious injuries. Your punishment was usually several detentions, saying you're sorry, and your parents punishing you at home. Now, the police get called. One mistake and your life may be ruined.
I have the opposite view to this.
Why is it generally OK (not just in the USA, but many other western countries) for any kind of crime at school to be handled in-house, and swept under the carpet, when if you did the same thing on the street/in the workplace you'd get in trouble with the police?
"Calling the cops on an unattended child" is so very HOA-cul-de-sac American that it's hard to even fathom for a non-American.
Over here (in the Nordics) kids walk/bike to school every day. In Finland the limit is 5km IIRC, after that you get a taxi or bus ride. Kids travel alone to their hobbies, again by walking, biking or public transport.
I do use Apple's Find My on my offspring, but only to see how much of a warning I need to give them to get home for dinner (are they next door or at their friend's house farther away).
> Calling the cops on an unattended child" is so very HOA-cul-de-sac American that it's hard to even fathom for a non-American.
It's really not. It's not something that really happens anywhere with frequency, and suburbs are the places you're most likely to see kids roaming around on their own. It's rarer than it was a generation ago, but it's still there.
This refusal, at any cost it seems sometimes, to accept certain conflicts as being a necessary part of social interaction drives me crazy sometimes. Because without adressing the conflict, tensions will only build up until it really gets nasty.
Noticed mostly the same. I still think it's a win, our kid seems much happier and more outgoing than a lot of others that end up over. Further, she tends to find friends with similar minded kids, I guess because they don't have much in common with someone glued to their phones.
I've had to actually ban kids from our house for their shitty attitudes and/or social media addiction, which may or may not be related. I don't care if I'm too strict, if you try to entice a 9 year old into sexy dancing for TikTok, you ain't coming back. Ever.
I can remember two examples. One was wife's friend's kid. That was a very problematic child - cussing, bullying, making nasty tiktok vids, and often verbally abusing her mom in front of us all. That one was a little hairier but that kid would make my blood boil to the point of wanting to smack her mouth, we talked it over, and decided the friend nor the kid would be over again.
The other was a neighborhood kid, we just told ours she could still play with her, but not come over anymore. That one wasn't as bad, I just remember our daughter crying and coming in and telling us her friend didn't want to play anything and was just playing with her phone.
As a youngish adult (27) this is some of what I feel:
- Climate change is slowly creeping up on us and corporations keep on trucking along with an endless growth mindset, not caring about the consequences of what is essentially a cancer
- Somehow I lucked out and ended up turning my favourite hobby into a job that pays really well, but something feels empty. I don't feel like I'm working any harder than people in lower paying jobs. I don't feel like I'm providing more value. It kind of makes me sick how bad income inequality seems to be getting. People around me in tech jobs seem to constantly want more, while I'm perfectly happy with what I have.
- Social media is crippling social interactions. It's taking away a deeper form of connection and replacing it with something more surface level, while also warping people's perceptions of reality.
- Most forms of social media make you feel like crap (with how it's designed to manipulate dopamine levels), but disconnecting can make you feel socially isolated.
- We seem to have a lot less trust in institutions like the government, organized religion, and capitalism having access to information that previous generations didn't have - and because of this we have fewer places to find hope.
- It feels like people on both the left & right are increasingly behaving more like fascists and it's kind of terrifying. I always feel like I have to guard myself from "saying the wrong thing" and that makes me feel like I'm being less myself.
Absolutely. I’m extremely skeptical of the type of analysis in OP when quality of life for young people is objectively decaying.
Life expectancies are going down. Children born today are not likely to be as wealthy as their parents. Two major economic disruptions within a generation have permanently stunted economic outlooks at critical times. Many are stuck renting, many others are stuck with student loans they will never pay off.
Given all of that and more, the real question is what kind of parenting could have prepared kids for this? Letting kids play outside a little more isn’t going to cut it.
I'm not him, but the older I get the worse I see interactions with social media getting, so I don't think anyone is going to outgrow it.
When people start ignoring their children in favour of social media (something I've witnessed many times with people I know) I don't think there's much hope coming back from that point.
> I'm not him, but the older I get the worse I see interactions with social media getting, so I don't think anyone is going to outgrow it.
*her (i wonder if that changes your perception of my comment :P)
> Do you see your peers growing out of social media? Or do you think it will be a permanent fixture in their lives?
Kind of, but not really? I see it more transforming into something else. It definitely seems like a lot of people my age and younger are more cautious about social media compared to most millennials, but that doesn't really seem to stop us from using it. I'm really happy to see more of a shift towards open platforms like Mastodon, I'm just not sure where that's going to head.
My generation (early GenX) may be the last one to grow up in an environment that didn't systematically screw young people at every possible turn.
We didn't have a constant presence of adults and had space to work out issues on our own.
We were able to travel for miles in most directions without being barraged by No Trespassing signs - each of them backed up by disproportionate penalties and an ever present risk of life-changing criminal records.
We didn't have to navigate today's massively complex world that is growing more complex at exponential rates.
In contrast, my sons grew up in a world that is senselessly unforgiving and penalistic, with few breaks from adults and little chance to explore life on their own terms.
We have sabotaged our rising generations and to drown out the consequences of that we noisily protect them from risks that largely exists in our own heads.
We couldn't scarcely have designed a worse outcome if we tried.
> In contrast, my sons grew up in a world that is senselessly unforgiving and penalistic, with few breaks from adults and little chance to explore life on their own terms.
Teenage boys in particular now face an incredibly punitive culture in America. Everything is on video. The online mob will form and demand jail time for the slightest thing. How are teenage boys supposed to learn right from wrong?
Boys fight physically. Fights would happen at my HS once-ish a month. The staff would break it up, detentions would be served, and life would go on.
Now each fight is recorded and saved for life. The short term consequences of that are not trivial - word spreads, video spreads, reputations build and now a dumb mistake is a whole moment.
> We were able to travel for miles in most directions without being barraged by No Trespassing signs - each of them backed up by disproportionate penalties and an ever present risk of life-changing criminal records.
That didn't happen until 9/11, so older millennials had largely the same experience.
Could be because your generation went out, explored the world without boundaries and have found that it's scary? Then, imbued with this fear, tried to protect their children at all costs.
Maybe the coddled generation will raise non-coddled children since they will be unaware of the dangers out there.
Now I'm raging because I can't remember the name of it, but there is a theory claiming that generations are cyclical with 4 different cohorts, from the heros to the lazy, and etc. I'm sure someone here will no what I'm vaguely talking about :)
Every bit of it is because people don’t want to get get sued if something bad happens. We live an insanely litigious country with far too many lawyers and kids suffer the consequences.
older millenial here to say that you weren't the last generation. The world remained pretty offline-centric well into the early 2000's. I grew up exploring and testing boundaries out in the real world. As a parent now, I have to artificially create independent experience for my kids in a way that was just natural to me growing up.
It’s amazing that your generation was the last one where things were done right. I don’t think every other generation in history has said that exact same thing.
I never said my generation did it right. Quite the opposite. The evidence is my generation screwed children out of everything kids have always needed to learn functionality.
One time in a group project at a Danish university, an American exchange student suggested we dedicate a group conflict mediator, because she does not like to approach people directly. Luckily the Danes were more sane and we've rejected that immediately.
When reading an article like this I’m distracted by the overwhelming number of possible causes. Could be life today, life 10 years ago, or expectations for the future. We don’t have sufficient data to really disentangle so many possible variables. As a youngish adult myself I’m not sure my peers know what’s going on either as they experience mental health problems. Everything is shrouded in such complicated stories about azburgers, food intolerances (gut health), economic inequality, wholeness, pandemic, inflation, social media, consumerism, climate anxiety, etc.
It makes me wonder about more general solutions to the more general problems. I’m most persuaded by Adam Curtis’s documentaries that what we’re really experiencing is the failures of individualism being pushed too far.
The story is compelling. Life has always been hard, and the way humanity copes and intervenes is through social institutions ahd the grand stories that bring us together to collectively act and solve them. It’s family, local communities, churches, etc. that provide direct emotional and physical support at scale.
These institutions have messed up in the past, bringing with them a legacy of bad decisions and structured inequality, but I increasingly agree with Adam Curtis that deprioritising them in favor of radical individualism just isn’t working.
As Curtis says - we need a new grand story for what society is all about and social institutions to organise around that story.
And until then my peers and I will wander in the dark wondering why we feel so afraid, alone, and purposeless. We got rid of the leadership hierarchies we hated, and tech in particular helped us do it by creating markets for everything. You can live in your bubble with remote anything and delivery everything. But we failed to create a new reason for living. It’s all just open markets, infinite choice, and no need to depend on others or for them to depend on you.
Among other things, people want to feel like someone needs them.
I agree. In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. Urbanization has also disrupted people’s social lives very much. Raising children is hard when your parents live far away and all your friends are too busy to help, even with state-funded childcare.
Different generations used to live together and help each other. Underpaid nurses and nannies are just a shallow replacement to that.
Then of course there’s the insane pace of change and increasing competition. Only guaranteed sources of income are either very hard to get into, or pay peanuts with bad working conditions. AI might make even some of those disappear, rendering years of education worthless. Life is much more complex than before. There are lots of options, but no obvious answers to which actually make sense. I’m lucky enough to have access to free education and decent social security, but still I feel like my life is way more uncertain than it was for my parents. They just had to get an education and could then work until retirement with same employer, buy a house and just settle down. Without job security pretty much everything else becomes difficult.
>In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before.
I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions.
The narrative is that the covid lockdowns made people more socially isolated, and to some extent I don't disagree, but the narrative goes on to paint an image of "noone to see or talk to, lonely, might die, help" which in this day and age is simply not (or at least shouldn't be) possible.
A video call is literally only a Skype or a Discord away. Talking to someone is literally just a phone call away. Fucking social media swamps you in the presence of others.
I admit that it probably helped that I hate dealing with humans in the flesh anyway, but I felt no lessening in my ability to socialize because my communications and interactions by and large weren't disrupted.
The "we are more disconnected the more connected we become" narrative can go die on a rusty spork.
> I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions.
I think a large number of people are worthlessly incompetent at communicating effectively period. Face-to-face is what most humans are good at, so if you are bad at that, you will usually be even worse at other forms
> A video call is literally only a Skype or a Discord away. Talking to someone is literally just a phone call away.
Literally zero of my Discord contacts would ever respond to a video call let alone a voice call let alone an invite to a common voice chat. Nobody uses Skype anymore. I don’t know what age group you’re in, but it sure sounds like the “happy go lucky, internet has only ever been socially profitable for me” 35-50 yo range.
> Fucking social media swamps you in the presence of others.
Fucking social media swamps you in the “impression” you are in the presence of others while leaving you in a tiny little jail cell where you can’t interact with any of the pretty pictures hurrying across the barred window of your cell.
As someone who was homeschooled, loves being fully remote, and has worked as such for several years (and pined for it long before) I don’t think we can yet equate video chats with real conversation.
Conversation isn’t a data transfer. It’s a joint function of two people. Anything other than the real thing is messing with that function in weird ways.
There is definitely a massive breakdown of old social institutions that have not adapted to the modern world. People don't need to be closely knit to their families and local religion in order to survive anymore, and they are simultaneously discovering how awful these institutions habitually are.
To improve families, I imagine we'd have to wait for a significantly large generation to mature whose parents started a family through informed choice rather than social/cultural/religious pressure.
Alternatively, we could regress by taking away people's freedoms (especially women's) and force everyone to be dependent on traditional power structures just like the "good old days."
Personally, I'd rather move forward, but it's not entirely clear what that looks like.
What is the modern replacement for religion? Growing up I felt like I had this huge tight-knit community via the mormon church. I've since left mormonism and don't think I'll ever find a replacement for the community I had in the church.
There won't be an exact replacement because the circumstances that led to the community cannot (or rather, should not) be replicated. For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap.
Keep in mind that high-demand religions require a huge investment of time and money. Devoting even just a fraction of those resources to hobbies, art classes, and/or other local activities tends to yield much better social results. While this might not perfectly fill the gap, neither did the religion, which is why people are leaving it.
I don't help the poor as a hobby or because I was told to. I help the poor because I have compassion and empathy. Animals also demonstrate these same pro-social behaviors, and I'm pretty sure none of them are Jewish or Hindu.
Empathy is a survival strategy that benefits society as a whole whereas sociopathy is a survival strategy that benefits the individual. Humans are complex and diverse enough to display both sets of behaviors within the population.
I thought it should be fairly obvious that social instincts are "blindly inherited," I can't imagine why you think that any institution, scientific or religious, would need to manufacture them.
Humans have tried "we believe in nothing", throughout history, and yet ... I see no Cathedrals, no beautiful songs, no art, no science, no entire civilizations built to the honor of ... nothing.
>I see no Cathedrals, no beautiful songs, no art, no science, no entire civilizations built to the honor of ... nothing.
Not believing in God isn't equivalent to a belief in nothing. Of course, plenty of songs, art and literally all of science have been created outside of the religious sphere. It seems regressive to the point of being archaic to dismiss the validity of all human effort not explicitly done in "honor" of the divine.
You want a Cathedral built in honor of "nothing?" Have the Hubble Space Telescope. As far as I'm concerned no gargoyle or arch wrought from stone or stained glass or Biblical prose can even compare to the transcendent - and wholly material - beauty of the Hubble Deep Field photo.
Interestingly, a religious person would agree with you! Nature's/God's beauty captured by the telescope's camera lens surpasses any known man made art.
I think it’s interesting to observe that science is a fork of religion both in historical record and in substance, but with the “belief in something” removed. At its base is the same problem: nobody lives long enough to know what’s going on, so we write it down in a literary cannon of truth. Science’s entrance requirement is based on the scientific method (repeatable experimentation). Religions tend to have differing entrance requirements. Perhaps the most common (and useful to this convo) is the opposite of science: things I saw that break the pattern (miracles, disasters, etc….divine interventions) and which cannot be repeated.
If we do live in a simulation this is the only kind of evidence that could point to it… external signs that break the rules of the game. But by definition science cannot discover this kind of information.
Also religions have a knack for solving collective action problems through locally irrational beliefs (like karma). Science has trouble allowing these into a cannon. In the case of karma this is because it’s unscientific. It’s not enough to believe that karma would be good for society scientifically and thus we should believe in it. This doesn’t solve the prisoners dilemma. It’s only by (everyone) literally believing in karma that it can have its effect.
It’s things like this that science structurally struggles to contribute to society. Proving things outside the system (we’re in a simulation), consciousness, collective action, etc.
Not: It’s also worth noting that many of the greatest scientists and artists were religious. Hard to know where to give credit there.
Nit: A photo from Hubble isn’t beautiful because of the telescope, it’s beautiful because of what nature made it to be. Hubble is merely a reflection.
>You want a Cathedral built in honor of "nothing?" Have the Hubble Space Telescope.
Extremely bizarre to think that the Hubble Space Telescope is a Cathedral built in honor of nothing. Nothing? Peaking into the Heavens is ... nothing? Okay.
Why do civilizations need to be built to the honor of something? I see plenty of art and architecture created independent of any mythical deity. I can't remember the last time I listened to a popular or well-renowed song that was religious-themed. Humans create and appreciate art all the time without it.
> Attendance at TLM is increasing, not decreasing.
> Which civilization has been built in honor of nothing?
It turns out, civilizations are built to serve the purpose of human existence, not to venerate mythical deities. You must be confusing them with churches, temples, synagogues, etc.
Relevant quote: "TLM-attending Catholics still make up a very small minority in the Church ... only 4% of parishes offer even one TLM on a regular (although not necessarily weekly) basis"
Not to mention, that is explicitly tagged as an opinion piece from a pro-Catholic publication.
> For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap.
I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not. At any time literally any tribe could have chosen to believe in nothing. It’s almost impossible to think that no tribe tried it. Heck. It’s the default state until you make up a deity!
And yet… the overwhelming majority of societies were based on “magical” thinking.
Inversely, it’s possible there could be a hard scientific truth that we discover and kills us all (“information hazard” by Nick Bostrom is a good survey… think nuclear bombs etc)
It’s a really interesting mental experiment. Is truth best defined by repeatable experimentation (Manhattan project) or by human thriving (including magical thinking).
Aside: Reinforcement Learning theory hardcore leans (implicitly) on the latter.
>I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not.
I disagree. "more effectively than not" is an implicit comparison between "magical believing" societies and "non magical believing" (in other words, scientific) societies. Given the latter allows modern medicine, surgery, sanitation, mass food production and countless other advances, it seems obvious that science affords a much greater degree of survival than does belief in magic. One only needs to look at the increase in the average human lifespan and reduction in infant mortality rates over time to see that.
Science has given many things, and as a professional research scientist, I help it continue to do so. I by no means think science should go away.
However, it also created the ability for humanity to destroy itself: the nuclear bomb, climate change, and plenty of other existential threats.
Also there are plenty of non-tech tribes which display tremendous lifespans. To my knowledge, the common threads among centenarians is not usually tech or globalisation driven. Often they’re religious and they’re very often closely knit with their local communities.
The jury is still out on whether science is net positive. We’re only a few hundreds if years in (12,000 if you want to start with the dawn of technology…being the plow).
It’s made lives better and worse while simultaneously significantly decreasing the amount and depth to which humans believe they have a purpose, a pursuit I feel science has made little to no progress on.
But my stronger point is that magical thinking was naturally selected (as in natural selection) to be almost universally advantageous for the first 99% of human existence. I’m not sure our 1% experiment with a scientific society is as of yet conclusively better. We’ve almost made humans extinct. We might still. I don’t know of a magical belief (karma, etc.) that has put humanity in such a grave threat as the Cold War or climate change, for example.
>However, it also created the ability for humanity to destroy itself: the nuclear bomb, climate change, and plenty of other existential threats
Would it be better to not have any knowledge at all and be at the mercy of nature?
Acquiring power always comes together with the possibility of misuse. Maybe those who never got as far as we got would prefer to eventually get wiped out by nature (and it's gonna happen either way, what with the heat death and all that). I'd still prefer to have lived to know the electron than the alternative
> I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not.
Not true. Majority of progress human civilisation made happened in last 100-200 yrs. in the industrial revolution and Information Age. None of them were based upon “magical” concepts but only science, hard work and facts. Infact it has been the most pragmatic time in human history.
We would soon land on Mars within this century, exponentially increasing the chances of survival of human specie in the very long run. Plans already underway for moon as well.
All of this would be made possible by people who believe in pure facts and science and not in magical things. I think the “magical believing” phase occurred due to 1) extreme fear of adverse events(floods/volcanoes) or the things unknown to humans (how does it rain? We don’t know. Let’s create a rain god and keep them happy so it doesn’t run erratically. Try that now with Climate change on our head, rain or cold wave patterns won’t change even if 7bn people worship a rain god today). But now that humans know a lot of these answers, the era of scientific truths begun and will continue forever. Would be interesting to see where religion goes in next 50 yrs.
You are assuming that magical thinking is the optimal survival strategy as opposed to a lesser-evil byproduct of advanced cognition in a particular environment. This is like assuming that because all humans have appendices, having an appendix is necessarily a better survival strategy. It's not. It may have once served a purpose, but now the best it can do is kill you.
Nukes could wipe out the human race, but so could an asteroid. Coincidentally I'd be much less worried about having nukes if there was a lot less magical thinking in the world.
I don’t think magical thinking is optimal. But I do think strictly non-magical thinking is suboptimal. Despite being a scientist as a profession, I can’t ignore the empirical data across a million years that virtually all civilisations independently have magical thinking.
Your analogy of the appendix is a good one. Some things which were useful no longer are.
I feel religion in particular doesn’t fall into this category as it has known uses. Collective action in particular is something the exclusively scientific worldview seems to repel in practice.
I also think that we don’t yet fully see this because todays secular humanists have a tremendous amount of moral momentum inherited from 10 thousand years of non scientific society. But things are changing.
It is not religion that makes it tight. Coming from Christian country, plenty of non tight churches around.
It is intentional setup of mormonism and its power structure. Tight structure means more power for leaders and makes it harder to leave if you see something wrong.
yeah it seems meaningful community is hard to come by these days, at least in usa. i think economic inequality is the cause of most ills. everyone is so busy chasing scraps of money for themselves, and debt-ridden college grads often have no clear path for a career that pays their current bills, let alone ensures retirement. no affordable quiet space to sleep or think, no time or money for community centers. just a race to the bottom while staring at tik tok 24/7
> i think economic inequality is the cause of most ills.
"Poverty is both a cause of mental health problems and a consequence." If you have even a little bit of money, there is a large mental burden that is relieved. You can breathe easier, you can relax, you can take care of yourself just a little bit more. It’s a huge cognitive load that is suddenly lightened.
There’s also another problem I rarely see addressed, namely that American social norms, work practices, and consumer behavior also lead to crazy-making. We don’t have the social safety net the majority of nations do, and this contributes to the mental health feedback loop.
In my own small community, we have hundreds of untreated mentally ill people living in the streets, some of whom are randomly violent. This is not good for them and it is not good for the rest of us who are lucky enough to have places to live. There needs to be treatment programs for them to go to be helped, when in many cases they refuse help of any kind.
> more general solutions to the more general problems....individualism being pushed too far.
Individualism itself is the child of rationalism. It is rationalism as in "rational choice theory".
Rationalism is a double-edged sword. Think you can undefinedly enjoy its benefits without facing its darker side (mental health, earth’s health…)? think again.
> Among other things, people want to feel like someone needs them.
A simple suggestion but this is where playing a team sport can be really helpful, so here you might find groups of people with less mental health issues.
Happy families and high quality romantic relationships?
We have lots of gadgets, but the simple things like being able to find someone to marry and have a family with are becoming much harder, and much more frequently ends in financial ruin.
More childhood independence, literally doing anything at all about the impending environmental catastrophe previous generations created and then birthed them into... Definitely one of those things.
I think more independence in childhood would be great.
However, my theory is that the rise the mental health issues in young adults these days are the problems or people who've spent too much time with their faces in media and not enough in reality.
The nature of the affliction was something one would commonly see in nerds, and now nearly every kid is a nerd. Too much of their cognitive development was formed while engaged with media, and as such reality can seem hopelessly dismal and depressing.
Young adults are only internalizing the deeply stressful and hopeless times we live in: soaring prices, low wages, typical milestones of adult life - cars and houses, for example - harder to reach, etc.
Life has been hard even for people who have an established career, let alone for the ones who have to start from the beginning. I find it incredible that this is never cited in this kind of article, but then I remember that it was probably written by a boomer and then I'm not surprised anymore.
I was a free range kid. I would wander off 5 km from home on my bike and wander through the bush and back roads, and everything was fine so long as I got home for supper. Hell, as a teenager I would hitchhike the 100km trek from the city out to home in the country on a weekly basis. It saddens me that this is considered unacceptable in modern society based on perceived fear that is out of whack with actual crime statistics.
Going though military training saved me. People need to have a low low point in their life, or they won't appreciate the everyday life stuff we take for granted.
As an early 20-something year old, I don't feel like I can contribute any meaningful solutions or insights. Which ironically the article states as one of the core issues (low autonomy creates a sense of low efficacy.)
Everyone in my friend group is between 20-26, and for the guys it’s mostly been dealing with their self image. Their careers aren’t what they thought it would be, and most struggle with trying to get to some ideal body standard.
For the girls, it’s even worse. Most of them have been diagnosed with an eating disorder, probably due to the constant influence of people they see online.
So in a nutshell, the aspiration to be the same as “everyone else”, which eventually disappoints when they realise that what they want is unobtainable without drugs, surgery, luck or other extraordinary measures.
I don't feel like I'm representative of the mental health challenges of my generation (early Zoomers). I've been having psychiatric help since I was 9yo and it took until early adolescence that I would say I made true progress, it was a very long and challenging road but paid off in the end.
I'd honestly say my peers (i.e. my direct friend group) deal with mental health challenges extremely well and we are extremely open to talking about our struggles. Social media amplifies the loudest voices but I would argue on aggregate Zoomers are better off mentally than a lot of prior generations. Mental health struggles happened in every generation, these young adults are just more willing to talk about it.
I wrote about it above, but clearer job prospects and more reasonable housing option as they are big stresses. I'm lucky enough to be gainfully employed, but many of my friends have been stuck in dead-end jobs with no prospects. Another concerning trend in that vein is all of my friends, including me, have taken extended leaves from the job market at one point in time.
This is mostly about parenting, but the point about conflict struck me. I've found that lots of people out there seemingly can't handle disagreement at all, and attribute a fundamental moral failure to their conversation partner if they don't see eye to eye. And most of these people are incredibly unhappy. I would be too if I couldn't trust anybody other than my perfect clone.
It's an antiquated idea, but explicit classroom instruction about agreeing to disagree might go a long way for some kids, if only to counter a media environment that only tells you exactly what you already want to hear.
--
More controversially, I've found that some young people would really benefit from disengaging with the entire concept of "mental health." Their obsessive focus upon medical labels and the dysfunctional communities it brings them in contact with only serve to warp acute distress into chronic misery.
>I've found that lots of people out there seemingly can't handle disagreement at all...
This is the second time this week I'll have linked this here on HN but I'm exceptionally happy to do so. Jonathan Haidt has a topical discussion[1] about that and hypothesizes it stems from an utter lack of viewpoint diversity as kids grow up. He states that universities have sought to remove all emotional distress, when they're supposed to be the place where you go to have your ideas challenged and feel a little distressed about it.
Even before universities or higher education, a lot of people are growing up in demographic bubbles where everyone around them, their parents, their classmates, the other people in their hobbies (and they are usually specific hobbies delineated along class lines), are from the same socio-economic class, the same political POV, share the same set of cultural values around things like art, religion, history (self created myths more often), etc. They often simply don't face much disagreement at all and so don't really experience "fundamental" disagreements. This is often exacerbated when they go to higher-ed where certain schools often mirror those same demographic differences and bubbles. Those schools market to those demographics and then it becomes an intensifying spiral.
I grew up on the borderline between the liberal urban part and the more conservative leaning rural part of my city, and I credit simply where I grew up with me having friends from diverse backgrounds up and down the class scale and with different POVS. If you weren't able to handle disagreement, you simply didn't have as many friends or had none.
When I moved to a far more homogenous city for university where I met an intensely cosmopolitan set of friends (all of whom are very nice people) it was fascinating to see how they struggled to occupy a different POV from their own, even more weird: they saw in that inability a paradoxical foundation for the certainty of their beliefs that made them double-down more often! They simply assume something was wrong with the person if they disagreed with them. If they couldn't occupy that different POV, then either they are in the wrong, or that different person is thinking wrong in a fundamental way that is irreconcilable. I'll let you guess which position they are more likely to take.
>I've found that lots of people out there seemingly can't handle disagreement at all, and attribute a fundamental moral failure to their conversation partner if they don't see eye to eye.
This is because we don't let kids fight each other on the playground anymore. No, I'm serious. For a lot of young people the first time they encounter real conflict that isn't adjudicated by some superior is when they're experiencing adulthood for the first time. This is a bit of a self serving comment because I got into a lot of fights as a kid, but I consider it a required experience for boys to get punched in the mouth once or twice (and also throw some punches of your own), less so for girls but imo still important. Not doing so warps people's perceptions of what violence is and we end up with really contrived and bewildering phrases like "silence is violence" and so on. Those people end up unable to determine an appropriate escalation (or deescalation) path, and this leads to your second point.
I strongly suspect the inability to independently resolve conflict can and does lead to mental health issues.
Zero tolerance towards violence was a huge mistake. I know there were legitimate concerns about school bullying, but violence will always be a part of the human condition and we need to develop some familiarity with it. Shielding children from that reality does them no favors.
The very point of CBT is not to dwell on how you feel. Instead be active and take control of yourself.
For me that meant running/long cardio sessions.
I worked with a Dr who used CBT, and I explored various techniques for dealing with my thoughts.
The mind is a though machine, thats what it does. You just have to learn how to turn it off sometimes!
People should not be fed ideas around satisfaction, success, happiness and so on. Because so often those emotions are mapped to results of our society's ideal of a perfect human.
Walking and talking in a social group is what humans have evolved to do, but yet we've ironed that experience out of lives.
Drive to work, use a Peloton alone at home, come to an office and dont talk when you should be working. Don't say anything online as it'll be used against you and so on...
Simply "disagreement" implies that there are valid opinions and perspectives to engage about. What we have now is a culture so polarized that you are literally evil to the other side if you disagree. We can't afford to have simple disagreements because if the other tribe destroys you, you need your tribe to support you.
For example, name something of real political consequence that it is acceptable to disagree about. It is a struggle to come up with a single example.
> For example, name something of real political consequence that it is acceptable to disagree about.
"What is the most impactful way to ensure that everyone has sufficient clean water and nutritious food to survive? Would approach X or approach Y or approach Z save more lives? What other alternatives should we be considering? What are the tradeoffs and risks here? How can we hedge our bets to protect against those tradeoffs and risks?"
Reasonable people can and should have interesting conversations about how best to solve problems. Those arguments could even get heated, but at the end of the day, the person you're arguing with is aligned on key values with you, and just disagrees on how best to fulfill those values.
The political talking points are unfortunately not that sophisticated. It’s largely about how twitter is run by a cabal of SJWs silencing the freedom to post Hunter Biden’s dick pics or fantasies about the liberals who will throw a tantrum if you say their pronouns wrong.
This is generally a good tell that someone isn't willing to engage with the other side at all, and instead intentionally reduces a story about powerful organizations communicating strategies with each other (I'm not passing judgement here on if those activities were wise or should be allowed), and instead reduces it to a revenge porn story.
There's a much more interesting story there about how technologists should build systems that inevitably get the Eye of Sauron put upon them. It's not about Hunter's penis unless you want it to be.
I tried reading the twitter files and it seems to be all smoke and mirrors. Twitter has a clear rule about not sharing hacked information, which this falls under. Besides that point, there’s not even really proof this laptop exists. The evidence is mostly claims fabricated by the New York Post. Hunter Biden probably had his iCloud hacked instead of dropping off a sensitive laptop at some random repair shop where the laptop was intercepted by someone close to Tucker Carlson and then magically stolen in transit to Fox HQ.
All of this aside, since when is it a crime for a company to hire someone close to a politically powerful person as a consultant. How can you reasonably write laws against this or prove that this led to Ukraine having any political leverage with Biden. The DNC is also allowed to send requests to have nudes removed from Twitter. They didn’t command Twitter with a gun to their head. They requested just like Trump and friends regularly did for content they didn’t want which was respected as much as the requests by the DNC.
Have you ever been outside? I’ve lived in “woke left” cities for years and worked with a lot of “woke left” individuals. Never in my life have I seen someone get angry about pronouns or call someone out for using the wrong pronouns. It’s a fantasy invented to pit the working class against eachother.
The burden of proof is on the people making these claims that entire cities/cultures are overrun with SJWs screaming about pronouns. If what they claim is true, it’d be pretty unlikely that my personal experience is what it is.
Because “of real political consequence” implies that it’s pretty damn important. You should be able to disagree about political things like tax structures and heath benefits without anyone getting hurt (my friends certainly have such disagreements). But if they get legitimately racist or sexist etc, it’s reasonable to start questioning their sanity and trustworthiness.
> lots of people out there seemingly can't handle disagreement at all, and attribute a fundamental moral failure to their conversation partner if they don't see eye to eye.
Disagree with a few things said, but fully agree with this bit! Feels more general in population, but I think young ppl grew up in this current distorted media environment, and so it perhaps hits them harder in terms of effect on their character.
I associate this with the way algorithms have distorted the social fabric and moved us all closer to agreeing conversation partners, and further from disagreeing ones. We then fail to engage when we encounter disagreeing partner "in the wild"
I was at the beach the other day, beautiful weather, perfect sunset, etc. The number of people staring at their phones was very high. The number of teenagers, especially girls, taking pictures and seemingly staging events was downright depressing. We will soon look back and realize that social media and phone addiction was worse for people’s health than smoking.
I think smartphones are the worst invention of this century. They bring all the addictive services (not just social media but also news, gaming and such) everywhere, with minimum resistence.
Before smartphones every silent moment, every moment of boredom people had to figure out something to do, make do with what was available. Now the phone is always the path of least resistance and instant gratification, which does nothing good to our brains.
Too often I find myself and my partner just staring our phones while our child is playing. I wish I could destroy these cursed devices.
> Too often I find myself and my partner just staring our phones while our child is playing.
My partner and I keep our phones put away when with our child _as a rule_. It's worth trying this out and seeing how your outlook might change. You don't have to use your phone; you're addicted to it. Fix the problem by taking responsibility and do things differently.
But you know that's simply not true.
I was a smoker in my 20s and quit finally in my 40s.
Are you suggesting my f'ed up choices were in some way better than taking a load of selfies in my twenties and growing out of it in their thirties?
In aggregate it would be hard to say. But at the extremes I think you could argue that social media is worse. For example, getting severely depressed and killing yourself as a teenager due in large part to a distorted sense of reality from social media is probably worse than getting esophageal cancer and dying in your 50s. Both are extreme outcomes of a bad habit, but one is way worse in my eyes.
Back when more people smoked you'd see smokers congregate and chat while smoking, often smoke breaks would be coordinated. It still happens, but less often because fewer smoke, especially in professional environments.
That said it's pretty rare I ever see a single smoker off by themselves, unless they've gone out of their way to be alone.
> We will soon look back and realize that social media and phone addiction was worse for people’s health than smoking.
This would be the most optimistic end result of social media and phone addiction. It’s very difficult to even measure someone’s long term social media addiction enough to look back and say “they were better off without it.”
I was about to wade in and call out today's youth as pansey-ass-snowflakes.
Then I read:
"I like to describe it as some kids are growing up developmentally delayed, today’s 18-year-olds are like 12-year-olds from a decade ago. They have very little tolerance for conflict and discomfort, and COVID just exposed it.”
"
and I suddenly realized that I was just being pandered to.
Are you being pandered to or is the author on to something? You don't get good at stuff without practice, conflict resolution, independence, adulting in general, the age at which people are able to start practicing these seems to always be creeping upward to the detriment of everyone except the single-issue do-gooders who get to decry success because there's less teens pregant, smoking or whatever their shtick is.
Could also do something with falling standards of living, social media pushing influencers that flaunt obscene wealth on young people, rising awareness of the coming climate catastrophes etc.
This is multifaceted issue
The infantilization of an entire generation and the extension of adolescence into the 20s is a disaster for mental health. It's hard to find meaning if you remain immature. Without meaning, what's the point in living?
Find meaning? A whole lot of younger people (myself included) don't believe there is such a thing at all. As I enter my 30s I'm more convinced than ever "meaning" is a nonsense concept.
I am sure one could accuse me of being immature because of my view on this, but that simply isn't the case. My adolescence was unfortunately cut short, not extended.
> what's the point in living?
I've been trying to answer this for years now, but I have never found one I find satisfactory.
Life satisfaction comes from devoting yourself to the pursuit of something that you feel is important. Because it's important, you can see and feel the effort that you're putting into it, therefore your effort is important, therefore you are important. Different people consider different things to be important.
Youth is about experiencing many different things so that you can figure out what is important to you. Growing up is making the decision to shut the door on everything that isn't important so that you can focus your time and effort on what is important.
It's not necessary to find meaning if you remain immature. Kids live happily without meaning, and don't even question it.
I think a bigger problem is that humans are, in general, not good at finding meaning above and beyond survival. For most of our history as a species, it simply wasn't necessary, because surviving was hard enough for most of the populace, and religion provided some semblance of meaning for those who had enough free time to ask questions. But now we have a lot more people who have their basic physiological needs consistently satisfied, and OTOH religion got a lot less convincing for a variety of reasons.
Related to the OP and many of the other comments, how much of what has formed your very strong opinions has been from real life, versus online, interactions?
Mental health is a reflection of socioeconomics. Solve concentration of wealth, allow people to feel they have a purpose and there is something to work for. Disband large cities, spread out the population. Fix the rat race, you fix mental health.
False. People can desire things that are non material eg beauty. That’s always been there - what new is the constant feed of information to us that we process and conclude as being inferior.
We're telling them they are doomed with climate change, guilty for past generations sins, they were locked out of school and activities, coerced into a vaccine for something that is harmless to them. I showed my teenage boy chat gp3 and he's like what's the point of school now.
A really interesting point.