Why are today's teens putting off driving, dating and drinking?
chicagotribune.com
chicagotribune.com
For example, excluding factors that affect all the questions, putting off drinking is likely a combination of consumer education and the difficulty in getting alcohol pre-21. Fewer adults want to provide their younger peers alcohol because of legal risks.
Driving is the combination of increasing expense to drive a car you own, mandatory insurance, services like uber, and the need not to travel that modern technology presents.
Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant.
But some of the largest ones are teens aren't getting out in the workforce at younger ages. This means less money to spend on sex, drugs, and rock and roll, along with different social implications for the people you do meet.
Regarding this one:
> Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant.
It's possible that the easy availability of porn has a lot more to do with this than just fear of pregnancy, which is probably why this is seen across the board (urban, rural, ethnicities, etc) and despite apps like Tinder.
I'd guess it's a combination of this and the overweight/obesity rate climbing, the venn diagrams between "people who want to sleep with you" and "people you want to sleep with" are probably diverging for many.
I agree, but for a different reason. Excess fat is an endocrine disruptor: adipose tissue makes Aromatase [1], which converts testosterone -> estrogen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatase
Adipose tissue is the greatest peripheral
source of aromatase in both males and
females,[citation needed] contributing
to the production of estradiol.Normal Testosterone levels -> normal libido.
Excess estrogen causes problems for both male & female bodies.
When I was in high school, I had no idea of what STDs looked like. We learned about it in sex-ed but none of us knew tangibly. There were rumors it was like the flu. Now, google "Genital Warts" and you get an up close view in no time. That alone drives far more caution than what I exercised 25yrs ago.
My takeaway from that wasn't that sex was too scary to do, but that condoms were a really good idea.
I understand tinder has become more of a dating app than a quick hook up one these days anyway. At least that's what friends tell me, I prefer getting drunk in a bar the old fashioned way.
https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0...
This one doesn't need money ;) I would suspect other things being equal, hanging about with little to do would that costs money would encourage socialisation and sex.
Anecdotally, I feel kids are more mature in many ways than my generation (I'm late 30's). They have total access to information and I suspect this helps them learn to see the world faster.
As for less drinking/drugs, I wonder if smartphones have a big impact. In my youth we'd underage drink with friends and get a bit loose. Now days that behaviour would get uploaded fast and probably stop us doing it.
Just that could be a reason young women who have received comprehensive sex ed can't be bothered to try PIV sex.
Of course, contraceptives can still be expensive to individuals in the US because insurance incentives aren't aligned with covering the whole society, but that's a long topic for another day.
Wow! In Europe, at least in my part of it, it's like $3 to $5 per month.
While opinion only here I feel these are the best places to spend time vs the expensive restaurant/bar type deal. For the latter you sit still hoping the converstation is smooth vs doing something that keeps things relaxed and flowing. And the invariable dinner is finishing do we take it further moments vs having more easy access to take a moment when it feels right. So i dont get that dating has to be expensive unless you want it to be.
...I know this is very anecdotale.
Is it just me or do kids in general seem more complacent these days?
If a teen doesn't leave his/her home much at all (reason cited - stuck to their bed staring into smartphone), there doesn't arise much opportunity to -buy alcohol (they're at home) -drive to places (they're at home) -not have sex (they're all at home)
I knew a guy older than me who came of age in the hippie era. He had slept with a lot more people than me. He once said "TV channels stopped broadcasting at 9pm. There wasn't anything else to do after 9 o'clock at night besides sex and drugs."
You can now get TV and internet 24/7 and even in small towns you can sometimes find stores and eateries open at all hours. Also, I think historically people turned to sex to get certain emotional needs met that can now be met a variety of ways.
As one flippant example: These days, you can post selfies to get adoration from many internet strangers telling you how gorgeous you are. You don't necessarily need a sex life to get that kind of feedback. Back in the day, an ordinary person who was not a celebrity could not get something like that any way but from a sexual relationship.
In my marriage, we spent thousands of dollars on furniture because it was one of the few things we agreed on and, outside of sex, furniture shopping was about the only time I had his undivided attention. We could have saved scads of money if he had just been willing to have more of a goddamn relationship with his goddamn wife.
For that and other reasons, I have spent a lot of years thinking long and hard about the myriad different reasons people do things. And we just have a lot more options these days for getting some need met without sex that, at one time, we would have had sex to try to meet.
I don't think that's a bad thing.
Looking at myself, for example, I can safely say that I'm a bit of a loner. But the truth is that I get a fairly decent amount of social interaction through the internet. In some ways this meets my needs better than real life: I can't think of any real-world 'community' quite like this one, for example.
But in other ways it's become very clear to me, usually when I am forced to get out and be around people and suddenly realize how much I needed that kind of interaction, that my online communities are lacking in fundamental ways. I suppose porn is an even more concrete example of this. Another example would be the ridiculous amount of 'quality' shows/movies that offer a surrogate for experiencing relationships and places and events.
The convenience I have of being able to stay at home and 'interact' with others in particular way, on my own terms, has the disadvantage that it requires me to know what is good for me and actively manage that, in the same way that the convenience of porn makes it easy for me to not bother 'grooming my feathers', so to speak, and heading out to meet potential mates.
That's not to say any of these things are inherently bad, of course.
Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing and not necessarily even related. Loneliness is an unmet emotional hunger that is not automatically met by being around other people.
Being lonely while not alone is a kind of hell that simply being alone does not begin to match. While married, I really thought I could never tolerate being single. But it turns out my marriage was emotionally vampiric and actively draining me of any ability to experience contentment.
My post divorce experience has not gone remotely like I expected. It has been wonderfully better than the dystopian nightmare I had envisioned for so very long.
Which is not a rebuttal of your remarks. Just some late night thoughts on the topic that hopefully add something to the conversation.
Sounds like a familiar source of contention...
Without wanting to generalise individual needs, I wonder if men and women are having trouble bridging their differences now there is less pressure of being a married couple. I imagine that's a large factor in young people trying to stay independent for longer.
No. And your inaccurate inference is obnoxious.
I wonder if men and women are having trouble bridging their differences now there is less pressure of being a married couple.
This is heteronormative. I see no reason to believe that it is only heterosexuals who are putting off sex.
It wasn't all that long ago that people who were not heterosexual felt enormous social pressure to appear to be heterosexual. As one example: A friend of the family dated women for some years before embracing the fact that he was gay and establishing a committed long term relationship with another man.
These days, people have more latitude for arranging their lives where they don't have to put on such appearances while figuring themselves out. Being able to meet potential dates online goes a long way towards reducing or eliminating certain social elements from the process that can be insidious if you can't avoid them.
Of course any discussion about popularity of and reasons for marriage over the last century or so is "heteronormative", for obvious reasons. Still I think men and women experience sex differently, even beyond individual needs. I have several gay friends, but I can't really tell whether any differences they have in sexual needs would be amplified if they were a different gender, potentially influenced by different biological needs.
I, for one, think that anything that helps nerds (defined as those who pursue their intellectual interests while neglecting their social lives, often not developing social skills as a result) ease their social pain while they focus on their intellectual interests is a very good thing.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's realized this. I may not particularly like getting out at the time I decide I should, but I never regret it. I've been attempting to do it a little more often.
- no driving b/c no car b/c less income
- no sex b/c porn
- no booze b/c ... well, is that even true?
Another reason is that the car is on decline as a status symbol. Tech gadgets such as iPhones are taking this place now.
Not quite.. the US is one of the few countries with the highest drinking age in the world. The majority of countries allow teenagers to drink, and you still see the same patterns.
Underperform on a standardized school test, intervention. Spend too much time alone, intervention. Spend too much time online, intervention, admonishment. Test social boundaries and get in a fight, intervention, involve police. Can't spend all day in a poorly ventilated room, learning topics you never chose at a pace you can't control, without acting out; now you have to take pills. Skip class to try cigarettes, intervention and maybe CPS. Have you applied for college yet? You know you can't get a job without a degree. Apply yourself. Why are you falling behind? Apply yourself harder. Feel bad. You don't want to be flipping burgers do you? 4 more years without responsibilities, you'll remember them fondly.
Unless you excel academically or possibly athletically you are given nothing to be proud of. Anything else is a concession given in pity and children are made to know it. We make them feel bad for everything they don't master, but we make them keep doing it and we push them along so they're always behind. The only way to get off the merry-go-round is to drop out and flip burgers, but lately that has become a failure. A failure of talent, ambition, skill and - worst of all - character. It's no wonder that tey are risk-averse.
Have you experienced this directly or noticed this as a third party?
Most of it though is just empathic (pathetic maybe?) outrage towards what I perceive-- no, feel is a steady devaluation of diversity in people, children in particular. Diversity of experience, of interest, of priorities and values. Diversity of stories.
The collective narrative we impose on children is that we're going to give them this great education, they're gonna have such great opportunities ('yuuge opportunities), and we're gonna make extra double sure that that it's the greatest education bestowed on any generation. We'll know it's the greatest education because we're going to test them relentlessly. And they will be grateful. They had better be grateful, and make something from this invaluable opportunity.
I'm exaggerating (and sprinkled a little Trump in there) to make it more obviously self-serving, because we are not helping them grow, were growing them. And we're weeding the meadow of anyone and anything that doesn't fit the mold. And I need to get off my soapbox, because I'm rambling.
I think you'll find it interesting. Email me at bcurran421@gmail.com if you want to continue the convo
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/childhood-lead...
"This means that lead exposure is likely to be associated not just with violent crime, but with juvenile misbehavior, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other risky behaviors."
People even older than that remember what its like to not have them.
I did like how the end of the article mentioned how scary the world is today. They should try living through the Cold War, and the time of Crips and Bloods, and gas lines, and the housing crash. Now those were scary.
Climate change seems like an odd thing to pick as a scary reason not to have sex or drink. Endless hysterical news stories about kids being abducted, maybe.
It's hard to get too excited about kids delaying driving if they're ALSO not being allowed to go out on their own on transit or bicycles or whatever.
Also driving is a good skill to learn while still living at the house, it's far more accessible when you don't have to pay for your own car. It's far more expensive to learn when you are in college.
Maybe an anecdote will be useful. I started dating, drinking, and driving at 15-16 y.o. All three of those activities have been formative in building my career as a tech worker. I had a choice to move to a big tech hub, and having a potential partner living in the target city was a key factor in moving. To even consider moving to the city, I needed to already be comfortable with packing up my life in my car and physically driving, which I had already been doing for years. Moving to the city was insanely stressful for 10 consecutive months, and I found that having an excessive amount of beer with a good friend was pivotal in helping me navigate my stressful, heavy emotions.
In conclusion, you cannot grow up slowly and expect to do big things. You need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. There's no sense in keeping your kids away from real learning because you have some notion in your head about "responsible ages to do things". There is no goodness in slapping age requirements on activities and then stopping to think about it.
And one more thing, WW2 produced the greatest generation of all time, the baby boomers - That war gave our nation a widespread sense of purpose and unity that has not been seen since. So while war is bad you must also consider that the stress of war creates great men that make great leaders.
That's how you get drunk people once they're free to buy alcohol. Parents should help their children discover alcohol safely at home so it is not some mystical drink you can't wait to get your hands on. A glass of good wine here and there during family reunions, one or two beers with the barbecue, maybe some whiskey and vodka to learn what the good stuff tastes like. Suddenly it becomes "this drink with a special taste which gives you a light buzz".
For the dating part, I think this is tied up with the insecurity of kids nowadays. There is a lot of competition, the TV/internet is bombarding us with beauty ideals and perfect relationships. It is easy to give up and convince yourself that you'll be "forever alone". There are even communities online, where kids with no relationships hang out. And the longer they wait, the harder it gets for them to start a relationship.
IMHO the kids need to find a way to bite the bullet and be social.
This meme needs to die, it has no basis in reality.
Then do it again anyway because you forgot the hangovers.
This theory is obviously true and quite fascinating: According to an evolutionary psychology theory that a person's "life strategy" slows down or speeds up depending on his or her surroundings, exposure to a "harsh and unpredictable" environment leads to faster development, while a more resource-rich and secure environment has the opposite effect, the study said.
For those who say this is no different than other generations you are wrong because of one variable: Work. Many middle class kids use to have to work and now they don't. This is HUGE and effects EVERYTHING.
If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself.
This allowed us to be a lot more free - we knew at worst we would be like our parents. Make ends meet and eck out a basic living. It wasn't too bad as everyone else was the same. So knowing that doing nothing - would result in being where we were - the only way out was to do something. Take a risk, go out and see what the world offers.
Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all.
The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids.
Their pressures are totally different, there is no way I would swap my youth for theirs.
-I grew up fairly free to roam around as a child, even as a teenager. Leave in the morning, come back when hungry or dark. Good luck being a parent doing that these days.
-We spent most of our evenings all watching BBC and talking about what was on the news. We had no choice but to talk to adults and other kids about the world and they had no choice either (in a positive way). How many times do you meet parents these days who are present but not really present with their kids because they are on their phones?
-Parents are cash rich but time poor. For many, even when they are home they are home they are working. We didn't have a lot of money when I was a kid but no way would I have preferred an ipad to spending an evening kicking a cheap soccer ball with my Dad.
-When I grew up, if you did something stupid like puke when getting drunk as a teenager, only your classmates would know about it. Now, your whole life is like some kind of advert - your open to social media bullying and pressures 24/7 - that's absolutely horrible.
-Parents and schools have replaced educated with homework. Literally kids are more screwed than ever with the amount of learning they are expected to do.
-Sex education, especially in most parts of US and Ireland is a joke. I got part of mine in the UK at the age of 8 and it was a massive difference - contraception, STDs sex, etc etc, all you need to know. There are still schools I know these days who think sex education is a video of a nun talking bullshit about marriage. Kids are overwhelemed by online adverts, porn etc but society in many places still isn't willing to give them the tools they need to deal with it.
-Casual first jobs that used to be easy to get as kids/teenagers have now become much harder to get. My first was working in a local shop. My next was the MIT Media Lab Europe when I was 15 - purely because I rang up and asked did they need a web master. They said yeah, why not? Do you know how much paperwork they would need to do to be able to do that these days?
However that has started to stagnate for all but the upper middle class so the next decade should be quite interesting.
I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I mean, do we want life to be uncomfortable for young people?
It wasn't just your situation with your parents. A lot of adults today grew up with Joe Camel and cartoon ads like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yHsoW6CTjM
There was no anti-bullying education. Actually, bullying was basically okay when I was in high school. No concept of diversity training for staff and administrators.
I mean if things aren't as rough on teens as they used to be, why force them to suddenly grow up anyway? Don't they deal with a whole set of separate, new challenges adults never had?
Baby boomers get to live much longer as adults thanks to recent medical advances. Why can't young people live their lives young for longer as well?
If ycombinator is right about the coming future of basic income, then not only do these folks not have to become adults very early, they don't have to "eck" out a living either. Earning income isn't necessarily a sign of adulthood.
I'm not saying people don't become adults ever, because this is already a problem. We all know adults that act like children. I'm saying why force them to deal with some of the primitive experiences you and many other folks have dealt with?
And which kids? My children have classmates who are homeless, who can't afford field trip money, who actually do rely on the free school meals.
Yes. The result of rubber playgrounds is surprisingly more serious injuries.
> Even rubber surfacing doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference in the real world. David Ball, a professor of risk management at Middlesex University, analyzed U.K. injury statistics and found that as in the U.S., there was no clear trend over time. “The advent of all these special surfaces for playgrounds has contributed very little, if anything at all, to the safety of children,” he told me. Ball has found some evidence that long-bone injuries, which are far more common than head injuries, are actually increasing.
My assumption is that has nothing to do with rubber playgrounds, but the fact more kids are obese than ever. The less you weigh, the less you splat when you fall.
Presumably, you are doing better than when you were a teen, since you're on hn. That means the kids you see probably have pretty well off parents, with the cool new toys and stable homes. You can still find kids with marginal existences and few to no cool toys.
I mean, what's the difference between a pair of Jordans circa '88 and an ipod circa now?
To make things worse, that yardstick is based on us seeing later stages of our parents' careers, while we apply it to. In times of widespread growth this does not make much difference, but in times of stagnation or worse it can be crushing. A part of the puzzle the article is marveling at might be current teens not feeling very much in a pipeline towards house and kids.
If your parents provided you with a car, wouldn't you be more likely to learn to drive? If your parents gave you a generous allowance, wouldn't you have more dates, buy more drinks and as a result be more likely to have sex, rather than less?
Personally, the reason I didn't have those classic "growing up" experiences is that I mostly don't think they will or should be part of my adult life. I don't expect to need to drive, I don't want to get drunk and I'm not interested in meaningless hookups. How most adults today grew up has little bearing on the way I want to live.
What makes you think that's not the case for many kids today? Are you sure you are where the kids that don't have
> iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents.
are, and that you notice the absence of this when you see them?
I see the same thing happenning, but IMHO nothing has actually changed -- I have just been lucky, educated, and hard-working enough to have gone up several socio-economic tiers. What i'm seeing was likely the case even back when I was young, except on the other side of the tracks. Now i'm living on that other side.
With exception of driving, we have bundle of starts about kids being better behaved then previous generation. Meanwhile, previous generation complains, cause if you are not like them you are weak.
There were always rich kids and poor kids. Rich kids always got gifts from parents and poor kids still don't get them.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-scre...
So fed up with this narrative, like they know what is good for the teens, what they experienced when they were young should be shrined as norm while the young people are the ones that screwed up by turning it down. No. The teens and young people are living in a world, the adults CREATED, and if someone to be blamed, it should be the adults. However that should not be the point, the world had moved on, people are living in very different time and space now, they ought to have different ways to live it, it is the adults like the author, who can't really take the fact, and blindly shouting the remains of good days.
"On the one hand, I know she's safe, she's not out getting pregnant or smoking pot or drinking or doing all kinds of risky stuff that I can imagine would be age appropriate,"she said. But Haskew wonders whether her daughter is missing out on life lessons those behaviors can teach. "Is that stuff necessary for human development, do you have to be risk-taking as a teenager in order to succeed as an adult?"
So these articles and parents, after years if not decades of after school specials and anti-drug classroom crusades and rubber playgrounds and helicopter parenting and initiatives to make everything about childhood as safe and as convenient as possible, are now suddenly regretting their kids not experiencing teen pregnancies or youth drug abuse? After making the world a safer place- and a more scary place through relentless hysteria and moral panics- they now think their kids are too soft and coddled? Sponsor scouting organizations or summer camps or apprenticeship programs or study abroad if you think your kids aren't experiencing the real world enough. Don't romanticize the same risky behaviors that you lobbied to abolish in the first place.
> Among teenagers now, "there is a feeling you're getting of, 'Wow, the world is pretty serious, so why would I rush to immerse myself. . .Why don't I stay with my friends and away from anything that has heavy consequences, like pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases?'"
Sex is joyful. If you have sex safely, there is a very low risk of consequences, let alone heavy or lasting ones. I felt that interconnectivity and 'bar-lowering' by applications like Tinder would increase the level of frivolous sexual activity, not decrease it. My inner hedonism-bot is disappointed.
But sex is not a play toy, even if you're an atheist. The physiology of sex creates very strong bonding, and arbitrarily creating and then breaking those bonds is usually quite damaging to the human psyche.
In the age of Tinder, why bother getting invested in anyone? The next is just a swipe away (unless you're male, then good luck).
Sex puts you through a lot of suffering (disappointment, self-doubt, rejection, bad life decisions etc.) and simply is a great waste of resources (time, money, energy etc.) and in modern times even more so cause it isn't usually leading to procreation or long-term bonding.
Yes sex is nice but it has a heavy price.
Absolutely none of these are necessarily a consequence of sex, given a healthy and productive attitude toward physicality and interpersonal relationships.
I am genuinely sympathetic that you seem to associate these feelings with sexual relationships.
My point is rather that describing sex as only joyful (also in a context of modern teenagers) is quite shallow.
You can look no further but to a few pop songs, watch a random movie or read some good poetry to learn that sex as a driving force is leading to confusion, suffering etc. It is also a force beyond our control on some level and as such could lead to serious life consequences - you can make some dumb life decision driven by sex.
Also historically and in many different cultures sex is seen rather as confusing force. People had been choosing lifetime celibacy, chastity etc. for a reason.
Where are you getting that idea? It's just a WaPo article referencing a study just hosted on Chicago Tribune (Which itself caters more to a suburban rather than city audience)
Maybe not all those things will happen, but some will.
That has to factor into your world view and behavior.
He also says that "the luckiest person in the world is the baby born today in this country [USA]."
He's a tremendously optimistic fellow, still working as far as I can tell, and reading 5-6 hours a day at age 87. Highly recommend his interviews on talks.
People today may have more things, and may be more healthy, but that doesn't mean their quality of life is greater unless they're part of the upper middle/upper class, and even then, it's often very stressful.
And they're highly aware that there's no erasing it once it's out.
People, please, please read the Strauss and Howe book (Generations), not Jean Twenge. She makes overly-cranky observations about generations (especially younger ones, like Millennials and Homelanders) without the context of the rest of generational theory. The things I have read from her before seem to show a very basic understanding of the topic of generations compared to others who came before her.
I mean, Strauss and Howe wrote about (predicted, you might say) that the youth would clean itself up as this current cycle progressed by way of exacting Boomer expectations (in hypocritical contrast of the Boomer's own behavior during the late 60's and 70's). To anyone who has read the book, this is news article is probably coming as no surprise.
Perhaps Not drinking and having less sex could be rebelling against your parents who drink too much and screw around... i am being Half serious
These kids are basically addicts. And addicts are generally known to not behave as responsible adults. So that would explain why these kids don't "grow up".
I think it's fascinating that the teenager interviewed equated drinking with binge drinking.
One wonders if there are extant societies that are worth comparing. Maybe American family structures are becoming more like those in East Asian or Western/Northern European societies. The greater emphasis on education for credentialism, leading to longer hours spent on schoolwork or college-app burnishing extracurriculars, sounds like it.
Of course, the study claims the opposite ("noting that teens today spend fewer hours on homework and the same amount of time on extracurriculars as they did in the 1990s"), which seems at odds with the popular perception of high schoolers being slammed with AP courses.
I don't live in the sea but I learnt to swim. Driving is a useful skill to have.
Drinking and smoking doesn't seem to have changed much though, only following the general trends of way less smoking and a little bit of stigma associated with alcohol. Actually weed might have become more common today than back then, cocaine definitely so, come to think of it.
As far as sex is concerned, things are a bit less 'liberal' these days for lack of a better word, again following the general societal trend. The free-wheeling spirit of the 70s and 80s died down gradually, with AIDS and probably other factors.
With the internet, social media, etc. today's kids, socially, are probably equipped with the tools (if used properly) to become my generation's equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In the 60's LSD and the Stones, the Doors, the Hippies
In the 70's Hash and David Bowie, Disco, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Pink FLoyd
In the 80's it was Coke and New Wave, Duran Duran, Punk
In the 90's it was Alcohol and Metal, Ecstasy and Raves, Madonna's experimental phase encouraging women to test their limits.
In the 00's there was Marilyn Manson, Nu Metal? But it's already getting fuzzy.
What it is now ? Where are the big stars, i.e. drivers of youth culture. It's the Justin Bieber's and Taylor Swifts 'of this world that have a major impact on youth culture right now.
It was quite a while (somewhat embarrassed by this) until I realized that abstract mountainous shirt I see around is for Joy Division. Similarly, if I had City of Caterpillar shirt on I'd be surprised if anyone recognized it.
More generally, there's a school of thought that the use of clothing as a signal of membership in a given group is becoming less necessary. One can discover who at their school likes punk through online means whereas before you might need to rely on who's wearing punk stuff.
And a lot of it is more fragmented - you have easy access to a wider variety of music both new and old than you had when the only music sources were radios and music shops, both with limited capacity.
"percocet, molly percocet"
Then check out dubstep and EDM subculture. There is probably a massive rave event happening every weekend in the states. Molly is a massive component of these events.
How much of that is the teens described in this article? The subjects of the article seem to be mostly post-millennial (current high schoolers) who enjoy hanging at home with their parents. The average age of a massive rave goer probably skews a bit more towards the college and early 20s age bracket.
Smaller bands & artists, vloggers and streamers. For this unaware, check out how dedicated fans of a 500k subscriber YouTube vlog channel are.
But there are lots of musicians that were well known for using and abusing drugs. It was practically a badge of honor for people coming out of the Disney meat grinder to make some ridiculous spectacle. Which I think is part of the explanation. Commercial music production got really really polished and artists got less important.