Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore | Hacker News Reader

Teens Aren’t Partying Anymore

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I know, I know this is anecdotal 'evidence'.

I happen to be 21 which fits me right in this generation and the main reason this occurs is due to parenting. My parents wouldn't let me go _anywhere_ by myself until I was at least 17. By that time I was completely and utterly addicted to computing to just let go and 'hang out'. As a matter in fact most of my friends are online rather than 4 real friends in real life. It seems like people in my age group had parents that would rather have their child stare at a screen than experience the world. Just my two cents.

and whats crazy for this generation is thats the age people are supposed to most easily make their friends to bring them into the later stages of life.

https://thewalrus.ca/the-science-of-loneliness/#.WkqJdEldy2w...

I think you have to factor in how much parents mold a kid into who they are. But I also went out to bonfires and snuck out to parties in spite of my parents. Knowing the hammer was going to drop when I got home just made me enjoy it even more. The little bit of social media that eventually showed up was mostly about finding out where the party was, and finding that cute girl you met there afterwards.

Here you have a 'counterdote' : I am 43.

After the first year of high school ( I was 13 ), we were allowed to travel to the other side of the country by train, sleep in a youth hostel and return at the end of the next day.

This is NL, the other side of the country is only 350km.

When we tell younger friends, they refuse to believe.

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

True, we have no police either.

Lao Tzu sees a correlation. I'm 32, and my boundaries gradually increased from "the front yard, ask to go across the street" to "the street, ask to go around the block or park" etc. I lived in urban South Minneapolis, so not rough but not gentle... enough to build habitual awareness. We were a roving pack of 5+ kids at a given time, as many as 12 or so. I addicted myself to computer screens against my parents' wishes (they prefer TV), although if not for screens I'd probably do as my vice principal said and "flip [him] a good burger someday". There were ample police and one possible abduction attempt outside with my cousin while very young, sooo...

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

so why more downvotes? can someone explain to me the logic of what exactly you are disagreeing with?

Don't take it personally. You won't get many warm replies from American city dwellers for pointing out the failures of their communities.

I don't. I just get annoyed when people simply downvote instead of commenting when I point out a fact that in the Netherlands it's safer to let a 13 year old ride the train than where I live.

I think Americans are probably among the first to admit the issues with their communities, hence the increased trend in helicopter parenting.

Well, I was walking to school 3 km (2 miles) one way alone since I was 6 years old (Europe). Pretty sure today my parents would be thrown in jail or something for "child neglect" (or whatever the latest PC buzzword for that is). Times are changing, but I don't think it's for the better.

Right, I guess underlying theme is to delay dealing with real world as much as possible. It seems to be happening everywhere.

Same story with me, starting at age 7, but in Poland. I crossed the biggest street in the 38k population town on my way.

But I think parents were ok with it mostly because it was considered normal at the time and noone spent time pondering what could happen.

America is a wholly different place. I was born in the mid-80s in Moscow, Russia, and moved to America when I was ten. Before I moved, I was regularly taking the subway, with transfers, to school - by myself.

Here in America, I had a coworker a few years ago who literally would not let his double-digit-aged children cross the street to school by themselves.

It's a weird fuckin' place.

I was born in '71. When I was 11 or 12 my friends and I could ride our bikes basically wherever we wanted to go. Our only rule was be home before the street lights turned on.

The 80's happened which brought a few highly publicized child abductions/murders. Notably the Walsh child. His father scared every parent into becoming a helicopter parent. (Not judging, just saying).

People really haven't loosened up much since. Every stranger is dangerous.

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

Of course it was fiction, but still.

Not fiction for me[0]. This was pretty much us. We could go where ever. And yeah, my folks parenting style was a bit... loose. But I was never one to get into trouble really, so there was some trust built up there.

[0] Except the alien thing.

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

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

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

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

Yeah, when I moved to Texas, I was riding my bike ten miles to the next biggest city[1] and back for pizza. Some other kids had the same kind of freedom; some didn't at all.

My understanding of Russia is that serial murderers Did Not Exist by decree; certainly not serial child murderers like Andrei Chikatilo. The city never felt unsafe to me; I think I really felt that ethos of "we're all in this together", especially based on a childhood incident where I got lost at a public event, and a stranger brought me home. (Of course I knew where I lived; I was a child, not an idiot.)

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/jx3Y76UuXN62 - moderately rural most of the way.

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

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

When I was growing up in the 80s in the US, I would

- walk and bike around the block by myself when I was 7

- walk to the stores 1.5 miles away when I was 9, sometimes with my 3 yr older brother

- explore the irrigation ditches behind my house when I was 10

- skate down to the mall when I was 13

My parents warned me that the guy across the street with a VW van was 'weird' and might molest me, but didn't try to restrict me much.

I also played my share of Sega games and learned to program on an Amiga and C64, so I was even a bit of a homebody compared to many kids. I can only imagine how dull my childhood would have been if I was barely allowed to leave the house. It amazes me how little people trust their children and society these days.

I'm an American. At the age of 13 my dad bought me a motorcycle that I used to ride around in the desert while he was at work. By 16 I was basically living alone. My kid, on the other hand, is 13 right now, and while he can code some pretty mean Minecraft mods, he doesn't even know how to do the dishes or get to school on his own. (Coincidentally, his mother is from Moscow, Russia and used to regularly take the subway to school...) I think maybe it has to do with the suburban sprawl we live in now -- it's populated enough that you can't wander in the forest, etc., but it's a mile hike to the nearest library or store. Why do that bullshit when you have fiber?

This is going to sound pretty harsh, but I don't think you can blame Minecraft, suburban sprawl, or broadband for your 13 year old not knowing how to do the dishes.

Not knowing how to get to school? Fair enough, maybe it really is implausible for him to get to school on his own - I don't know your local geography. My wife grew up in Plano, TX; there was a big highway between her and her high school, which was also miles away. At the time, Plano didn't really have a public bus system to speak of, and she didn't have a bike - walking five miles isn't a very good option. She would know how to get there, but there was no reason to do it aside from school bus or her parents driving.

On this note, while driving I find School Zones completely antiquated. Where I live I never see any children of any age outside of the building, on sidewalks, etc. Yet drivers are inconvenienced multiple times on their commutes each day.

Adults are part to blame as socially, parents are frowned upon for even letting their kid take the bus instead of being their private chauffeur. (Granted I live in an area where private schools are more popular than public. But I've seen this same thing play out in the exurbs with mostly public schools.)

I don't disagree, but it's also parents and nanny state mentality for enabling/coddling children. There are exceptions.

I live in USA, and my child started walking to the school bus stop alone at age 7. There's value-add in giving kids more freedom and responsibility. I see it every day that my child treats her freedom as a privilege, and gains more self confidence.

I hope this helicopter/snow plow parenting trend begins to fade in America.

I tend to agree with you. Although I also don't have any hard evidence, it seems to me that growing up in the 80's, there was far less parental supervision of kids then there is now. In the summertime during school break, even as early as elementary school probably 3rd grade, we would take off on our bikes and roam without any supervision. As long as we were home by sundown we wouldn't be in any trouble.

This is definitely true, and driven in part by media-driven hysteria that has led to the decades of the perception that child abduction and similar child targeting crimes are on the rise, while the reverse has been the case.

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

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

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

Again, its hard to separate that phenomenon from potentially confounding effects. Is the fact that children are typically hurt by people they know the result of parents being reluctant to let their kids out on the street by themselves, thereby limiting the opportunities for potential strangers to harm them?

Again, the effect precedes the behavior change, so is unlikely to be a result of it.

I think it’s not just that.

For instance 20 years ago there was public phone booths everywhere. A kid would just need a few coins and the house number to do a call, now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical.

Or I remember shopping at local shops enough to know their faces and names, or ask shop owner if the other kids where nearby. I don’t think my kid knows anyone other than the bakery people, because local shops have nothing for him at this point.

Same with police or church member perception, I think our generation is less OK to just say to a kid “if there’s any problem just trust the police”. It becomes a weird and complex message of what the institution’s goal is, what’s OK and not OK for them to do, what’s the warning signs, what to do in case stuff gets weird etc.

TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before.

> TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before.

When I was kid, I would get on my bike and wander too far. One time I was out and a thunderstorm came along. A nice lady invited me into her house to call home.

Fast forward to university, a professor objected to me closing his office door with just the 2 of us in there (we're both male and I'm 6ft 200lbs). A colleague of his was falsely accused of being inappropriate to a student, so his policy is to keep the door open.

The change in trust levels has changed pretty swiftly.

There’s also a difference between interactions & power dynamics in a neighborhood setting with a young kid and a college with an adult student.

So to be totally fair - not exactly similar situations

> The change in trust levels has changed pretty swiftly.

I'm of two minds about this.

1) This is a bad thing in that we don't give respect to authority that it really deserves. And that's quite often a bad thing--especially when related to children and teaching. Sorry to break it to you, Mommy, but your little angel is actually a spoiled, shitty little brat and, no, his opinions don't count.

2) This is a good thing in that people in positions of authority who abuse their power over others are not uncommon. Having greater scrutiny helps cut down on these situations. Apparently most women have dealt with a couple of these people as teachers throughout high school and college.

I really don't know how to reconcile these two.

You might be surprised by the number of 5-8 year olds with cell phones. And I fully expect smart watches to eventually end up on the wrist of every single kid that spends significant time away from their parents.

smart watches are peripherals, not communications devices, right? you still need a phone to make your smart watch communicate

At this point Apple ships an LTE connected smart watch. Android OEMs have done so for a few years at this point. So I think all that remains is for costs to come down, battery life to improve, and the social acceptance thing to play out. I think smart parents will be giving their kids smartwatches instead of phones in a couple of years (smarter parents will not give their kids either, but I digress...).

> smart watches are peripherals, not communications devices, right?

The most popular ones in the US are, but ones that are fully independent phones with their own SIM have been available for some time.

Just for some examples: https://www.smartgeekwrist.com/standalone-smartwatch-sim-car...

> Same with police or church member perception, I think our generation is less OK to just say to a kid “if there’s any problem just trust the police”.

I'd go further. We need to get back to: "If you have a problem, pick an adult and ask for help." Really. Most threats to children are people they know. Random strangers are almost always helpful in a situation.

There are still shops everywhere, who will let a child use a phone.

Or teach the child to approach a stranger; a random stranger is very unlikely to be a threat. (A less random one even better: a woman with young children.)

Not trusting the police for problems a child is likely to encounter seems paranoid.

> a woman with young children.

because she's already at her quota of kidnapped kids for the day?

> now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical.

I'm not sure about that; there are phones specifically designed for that market (e.g., Firefly), after all.

There are, but it comes with the baggage of contracting an additional phone line, and more importantly having it charged at all times and on the kid.

Even just the risk of breaking, losing or getting it stolen is not negligeable.

It’s a viable option depending on the kid and the environment , I just feel kids phone are still too clunky to be worth it. I’d prefer to go straight for a regular smartphone once the kid is big enough to properly take care of it.

Most 5-8 year olds I personally know have cell phones.

I'm not afraid of roving child snatchers. I'm afraid of all the cars that might accidentally run over a kid.

This is the real reason I do not like kids wandering by themselves. Cars these days are way too fast and drivers are way too distracted texting or taking selfies or whatever and it is very easy to run over a kid who just happens to wander onto the road at exactly the wrong time. Even worse once all cars are silent and electric.

> Cars these days are way too fast

Compared to the Ford Model T, maybe.

No way, plot a graph of average horsepower and top speeds over time and you'll see it going up and to the right.

If your point was that children should not wander along highways and race tracks I agree.

Your average driver drives way, way too fast on your average residential street and especially parking lots. I've noticed an uptick in the amount of times I've been illegally passed on residential streets in the last 10 years. My street is only around five-six small lot houses long and I'm almost impressed with how fast people manage to drive on it.

Of course, I'm not sure that it has much to do with the speed of the car they are driving.

Right, cars just go too fast in residential neighborhoods. And the neighborhoods these days are built to encourage speeding. (wide, long stretches without stop signs, etc)

It wasn't an 80's thing either... I grew up in the 70s/80s and we as kids were free to wander all day long (in the summer), just had to be home by dinner.

Historically, kids were free to roam even more. Remember Sherlock Holmes “irregulars”? Packs of children roaming the streets used to be the norm in urban settings, where families were big but houses were not.

1> The adventures of Sherlock Holmes are works of fiction. 2> I think the Baker Street Irregulars were homeless street urchins and did not have any choice but to roam the streets.

Conan Doyle wrote in this group of kids exactly because, at the time, it was a realistic and familiar sight to urban readers. There are lots of newspaper articles from back then (and if i remember correctly, even lots of Parliamentary tirades) about them. Over a certain size, they had become a matter of public order.

More recently, I remember Dublin city centre in 1988, when Ireland was still pretty poor, being full of kids; and Marrakech or Fes in Morocco just 10 years ago.

My parents let me walk to the corner store alone when I was 5. By the time I was 8, I'd be gone all day doing who knows what; the big rule was to be home for dinner.

Allowing your kids to roam around like that these days will get CPS called on you.

That’s the thing: I’m very tempted to let my kids roam the neighborhood, like I did in Italy in the 80s. Where we live now, streets are pretty tight and have speed bumps, so it’s fairly safe. But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge.

Yet another bit of the world ruined by Sun and Daily Mail.

> But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge.

I think this is a really overblown fear. Yeah, everyone "totally heard about someone" who had CPS called on them because they let their kid roam around, but I think this is mostly an urban legend about as likely as a terrorist attack. CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues, I don't think they give a damn about free-range children.

It happened to a friend of mine - twice even.

However, and I think this is the important thing, CPS totally didn’t care after a quick 15min interview.

The second time they even apologized and said they were mostly showing up because they had to.

It was the same local busy-body calling them both times btw.

> CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues

Except they are required by law to follow-up on all reports. So you will be interviewed and inconvenienced at the very least.

There is a (painful, annoying and unfair) way around this.

Actively socialize a lot with people in your neighborhood. Including the old lady next door, local cops, teachers and shop owners. And once you know 50 persons around by name and they have your phone number, tell them one by one that you intend to let your child going out more and more out by him/herself to learn autonomy. Ask them to not worry, but to keep an eye open: they will feel important, think you are a wonderful parent and your kids will have 50 people to help them in case of a problem.

In my experience, if you befriend on average one person a week, you get there after one year.

Manichean but works wonder. Learned the trick while working in Africa.

It actually works for many other things: finding a job, getting help to do stuff, getting laid... You usually make real friends on the way, not a bad side effect.

Even in those facebook times, one-to-one human relationship are still ruling everything we do, and living in a community is one of the most rewarding skill to sharpen.

But yeah, we are not in a movie, it's a lot of work. The maintenance part is really time and energy consuming, as not everybody is interesting and worth it.

This is a wonderful idea.

You mention Facebook - I think FB could be leveraged here as well.. perhaps a neighborhood group.

That's not going to work. Trust and desire to help cannot being batch processed. Well... It can but you need strong leader qualities that few people have.

But you can mix both approaches;

You can do one-on-one to create / maintain the relationship, and utilize social networks to organize the community.

But if you want your local baker to go out of his way to get your child out of trouble, you need to look him in the eyes when you ask for it. And you need to do that for each person you recruit. There is no way around it.

This is describing normal life before, say, seventy years ago.

Exactly. But you can't tell introvert geeks that. You need to present it like a life hack.

I know, because I used to be an introvert geek because Mali kicked my ass.

You mean, integrating your children into society makes them safe when they spend time out in society?

His story sounds like it's more about integrating society with the idea of children.

That would be easy if this were a mediterranean town, rather than northern suburbia. I do know my immediate neighbours, but going knocking farther away would look extremely weird, and possibly considered unwelcome in this brexit age. There are no shops immediately close (a big and very convenient supermarket made sure of that).

I do appreciate the method, I just find hard to believe that it can be put in practice in realities like mine.

It's harder in your case, so it will take more time. 2 to 3 years maybe.

To find out where to start, ask yourself where your children are more likely to get caught alone and reported to CPS.

It will also require you go to clubs (sport club, book club), events (garage sell, protests, etc) or even to put them in motion.

Eventually, some thing that works very well is talking to people waiting with you. In queues, waiting rooms, at traffic lights or even traffic jams. It's awkward/annoying as hell when you do it wrong, but after a big of practice it's really a great source of networking.

Same, my mom would regularly write a note asking the clerk to sell me cigarettes (for her). It worked.

I can't even imagine how that would play out in current times.

I remember being 10 or so and my dad giving me money to ride my bike to the hardware store to buy him propane. Of course, I didn't even know what propane was so he said "just ask the clerk," who of course, had no problem helping me.

Agreed. My parents I guess just did not have time? I have no idea, I was just always home in front of a computer. Thankfully I was actually learning code, and stuff. I was a console gamer, not a PC gamer. My PC was cheap, and could not hang lol

I think you are right with this too. I several friends and coworkers which are afraid to let the kid ride their bike through a neighborhood, play ball in the field, or roam the mall with a parent present. I'm starting to see this starting to flip though as more and more kids are having cellphones, which seem to give the parents more insight on where their kids are, and give them an avenue of getting hold of them when they need to.

Agreed. Just turned 22 this past October. I had a very similar experience in that I couldn't go somewhere unless my mother had met their parents (which rarely happened) and like yourself I was hooked to my tech. It has payed dividends career wise but I didn't get to be too social growing up.

Basically same deal here.

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

Asking as a parent with three young kids who's seeing practically no benefit to ubiquitous screens at this point, and lots of bad things about them, and trying to figure out how to navigate this brave new world while screwing these kids up as little as possible.

I can say this: you aren't alone! I'm in the exact same boat. Ironically, if we can coordinate those of us who "get it" on this issue, maybe we can organize at least some spaces and communities where kids can interact free of screens and have friends etc.

About the most important org any parent should know about and support: http://commercialfreechildhood.org/

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

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

The article drums that line, but the research cited says that screen time is irrelevant. They also didn't measure screen time, they relied on parents self-reporting which may be very high or low (reflecting parental self-image,not actual screen time). And the research didn't look at long-term effects, only short-term. And it waved off that high screen time may be merely correlated to poverty and unengaged parenting, not literally strictly screen time. The research isn't an endorsement to let little kids stare at tablets all day.

Theres thousands of studies on this kind of thing, and you could find one to support any belief. Here's a list of studies with several different findings: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/is-video-gaming-... Here's another, with some contradictory findings: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/08/08/3388554... One interesting study in that second set actually said that a small amount of gaming per day, less than an hour, was beneficial -- better than not at all.

You will screw up your kids just like your parents screwed you up.... You just don't know how yet. But it isn't really screwed up... It is called parenting.

Then when u become a grandparent it begins to totally make sense....we all screw up our kids...teaching thwm how to recover is the real deal

Yeah, I get that, but there's screwed up and there's screwed up, ya know? Sure you can be in the top 50% of parents by just not actively trying to screw them up, but I'd like to do better than that, within reason, and tech/screens/Web seem to me like pretty big things worthy of a little attention and care, especially as they get older. Finding something like a least-harm/most-benefit way to fit that into our home lives is probably worth spending some thought on.

My kid tells us we did her/him a big disservice by just who were were: an in love couple with a good marriage.

She/he tells us ahe/he was so unprepared for relationships and the knowledge that others' sid not come from our style home (happy marriage filled with love, imo)

Now how does one predict that??? Introduce my kids to broken marriages?

Offtopic: are we now so gender neutral we even cannot address our own kid as he or she? Or did you do this on purpose to hide the gender of your kid as part of your privacy?

No flame intended. Honest question. Never thought about the gender of my kids being a privacy thing.

Ontopic: As a parent I (we) try not to restrain things like screen use. Instead we actively promote all other forms of spending time we prefer more. This means I usually enter the room before my kids get up and put the devices away and put other toys in sight. My wife is a montessori (method) teacher which makes her quite skilled at knowing which kind of toys/lessons our kids like at what time in their life. Meaning each couple of weeks the things we prepare change. Result is they usually first pick a bit of everything in plain sight and only after, at the end of day, ask for a device. We didn’t tell them not to, it is just they really like their puzzles, painting, and what have you. In real life preparing means putting things in sight instead of in a closet and one of us being downstairs before the kids is normal as well. Not much effort there.

Disclaimer: my oldest is only 3 right now. Older kids may be entirely different though I believe promoting better options has a better effect than restraining the negative ones.

Hide gender

Thanks for clarfying. What, if you don’t mind me asking, makes you feel their gender in this context is worth censuring?

You made me think about it and it is quite interesting. From reading your post I was surprised. Thinking about it makes it interesting. I work in the Healthcare sector and gender definitly is part of privacy information (as is age for that matter). However, I would have not thought about it twice sharing it here. Now I’m in between.

I sprinkle all my online posts with random lies and inconsistencies... Gender. Location. Age.. Job.. Not many but enough to make me believe it would be harder to find out who i am

Many people do this as well, but mostly for fun.

Weird. I've been online since I was 12 and I never made stuff up about myself. I'm 39 now.

Why not just use the opposite gender of your child? Or imply this child is one of several, given that you only have one?

What's wrong with gender neutrality?

Nothing is wrong with gender neutrality. However, referring to one’s child in gender neutral form is not (that) common.

Gender neutrality is there to avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another [0]. That is hardly the case when referring to one’s own child. Hence my follow-up assumption in the same comment that it might be for privacy reasons.

The first statement in that comment on gender neutrality was led by the media taking the whole gender neutrality thing a bit too far nowadays. Some sources just follow the hype instead of looking at the argument for using it as stated above. That is my own opinion though and might be a deluded view on media articles i came across that went into the “did you just assume my gender” mode for stories where gender was totally irrelevant.

I do realize the first sentence of my comment was a phrased a bit provoking because of the whole media thing. Sorry if that offended you and provoked you into this question (comment). Hope this answer helps to show I was not here to fight gender neutrality as a whole.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality

That model that you gave them will help them in the future as they figure out how to deal with not ideal people in relationships, and be a good person that attracts the right kind of people.

They just have to learn how to deal with non-ideal people, mostly by dating a bunch, maybe reading a few books so they can better recognize borderline and other personality disorders.

It takes a great deal of self-awareness to recognize how different your relationship/marriage/household/raising is from the norm and how this may affect your children. What messes kids up sometimes is just that their home is different from that of others so they don't know how to cope with others' expectations. Your kid sounds a little too cynical though. I'd say what he/she has is a blessing, because he/she has the opportunity to not only introduce someone to a good relationship, but also with some work, have a good marriage later on.

> My kid tells us we did her/him a big disservice by just who were were: an in love couple with a good marriage.

This is just their perception and proposed solution. Ruining your marriage so they will be comfortable in a bad relationship is crazy.

Parents often fail to teach their kids how they got to this point. I have made a point to make sure I don't just take for granted my kids know everything I know.

What to look for? What not to look for? Where does this action come from? Why do I get a funny feeling about this person? What fear causes this anger response. The fact that everyone is nice at some point. On and on the list goes...

Right and wrong, life, is either taught... or learned the hard way.

<Parents often fail to teach their kids how they got to this point.

What a great statement. So true! It may seem trivial but this is important..

Maybe they are having trouble with their current relationships. It may be an expectation management issue, worthy of discussion with them.

Also if she is young (< 21), this is a phase and it will pass.

Teach them about the monumental complexity and difficulty (but ultimately rewarding nature) of human relationships. Also, why didn't they have enough direct experience with the home lives of their friends to be familiar with marriages that didn't work out? Why had they never spoken with an adult whose marriage failed and been able to ask what happened and why?

We do not seek to teach our children how to form or maintain human relationships, much less intimate relationships. As a result, they do not spontaneously learn these things, especially in a society that isolates young people to an increasingly radical degree from their community, their peers, and society in general.

We used to think it was awful my kid stayed up late and watched Johnny Carson as a very young kid. Too much tv?? HORRORS! ( now her/his family doesn't even own a tv)

Go with the flow.. Man... Your kid will surprise you

That's an extremely fatalistic attitude, and I don't think it is true either. The problem with most parents is that they don't take the time to see the bigger picture, to reflect on their methods and to evaluate their results. Instead, it's mostly a series of ad hoc decisions that are more often than not driven by their own worst impulses. In fact, this is the same way many people handle their own lives, too.

Raising a child should be a seen as sort of project. You need to figure out what they need to learn while they grow, and then you need to figure out ways of teaching it to them. Of course, you will probably have to adjust your plan along the way, and you yourself will have to learn how to do this properly. But if you view things from the end, it is easy to see why "helicopter" parenting is harmful and will likely result adults who are incapable of managing their own lives once the time comes

As someone who was actually, legitimately, very seriously screwed up by my parents... I don't agree. "Screwing up your kids" and "parenting" are not at all synonymous.

Can we please treat this topic with the seriousness it deserves? This dismissal attitude makes me feel physically ill.

You're projecting a bifurcation. "Screwing up your kids" isn't a proposition; it is relative. Every single kid gets "screwed up" in some way (some severe, as you claim you are). The lessons they got taught in life during child and teenage years is their manual for getting themselves fixed afterwards, in order to function in society. If they fail to succeed by themselves, professional help can aid them.

See also Dr. Ingeborg Bosch on Past Reality Integration [1] or this Wikipedia article [2] for an introduction.

> This dismissal attitude makes me feel physically ill

Argumentum ad misericordiam [3].

[1] http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/introduction-psycho...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrative_psychotherapy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_pity

Keep in mind that if the OP is 21, then "when s/he was very young" would've been circa 2000. That was before smartphones or even Wi-Fi, where you pretty much had to be seated at a desk to use a computer, which is very different from the situation now. This is an epidemic that snuck up on us.

We had a laptop with windows 95 on it. Just because you weren't on the internet, didn't mean you couldn't use a computer...there were actually lots of things that you would do without a connection then.

That's not really what I meant. Of course there were computers then. What I mean is that "ubiquitous screens and connectivity" wasn't yet a thing, and it's a phenomenon that crept up on us, so it's a little unfair to blame parents of a kid born ~1997 for not locking down screen time. We didn't know that was really a problem (at least, a problem distinct from "too much TV") until just a few years ago.

I was born in 83. I'd definitely say I had too much screen time as a kid. I was generally either on a computer or watching tv most of the time that I wasn't playing hockey or at school (or doing homework), I could still play gameboy on the way to the rink. I think I actually have less screen time now and I'm a programmer, and do programming at home on the side after work as well. Mostly I cut out the tv watching, since it seems like such a waste of time.

I don't think it's that screentime itself that's such a problem, but the content, and mindlessness of some stuff. I'm happy to let my 5 year old watch Cosmos with me, Paw Patrol on the other hand makes the kid go crazy.

Kids approaching 7 and 10 watch some movies/vetted series online, only recently got Kindle tablets which they are literally only allowed to use on long (3 hr+) transits, never at home.

No TV or analog in house.

I am now torn as the older kid is at a prime age to introduce programming...

...but the benefits we see daily from no-screen childhood are to our biased eyes overwhelming.

Our kids spend all their free time engaged in imaginative play much of it collaborative, and manipulating physical objects, and when we can get out, outside.

Their ability to sit in a room with no screen and make a world seems pretty rare, compared to peers who were given ipads or whatever years ago.

But I also worry, how do we also make sure they are literate and savvy.

I fear that as soon if the programming bug bites it will be the End...

Maybe offline or rarely-online screens would work? An RPi2 (no wifi) stuck in some corner, running Linux? That kind of thing.

I think the Web's far and away the most dangerous part of screens. I grew up mostly with OTA TV, an NES, and an offline DOS computer as my only screens until age 10 or 11 so when we got dial-up, which could only be used sparingly (one phone line) and sitting at a desk. All were kinda fun, but also boring enough that you'd wanna go outside and ride bikes or something after an hour or two. The modern Web is like having a cable subscription with 100 channels of only stuff you love (and most of it the crappy low-value stuff that you, nonetheless, love). It's hard to moderate use as an adult, let alone for kids.

[EDIT] yes of course you can and should just tell them no, as with other decisions they're bad at making, and I have no problem doing that, but what I'm unsure about is whether the benefit of Web-anwhere-in-the-house and Netflix and Youtube and so on are worth even having to enforce rules to begin with—maybe it's better to not have them at all, because they're so low-value compared with less distracting and addictive alternatives.

Out of curiosity, and as someone who has a newborn and will be going through this at some point, how do you determine what effects your policies have on their potential social ostracization especially as they get older. In my youth I witnessed this social outcasting happen to children based on parental restrictions such as these. I still see it as they become adults. The effect seems to compound on itself from being the one not allowed to do something, to having only the few friends in a similar boat, to being an adult that grew up with fewer friends and fewer at-large interactions. Do you take into account these costs? Is the cost of over-exposure to media greater than the cost of having them be different/segregated to satisfy this?

I have two kids (<10 years old) who have little to no restrictions on screen toys. My router disables the internet on their devices (iPads, kindles, 3dses, Roku in bedroom) at 7pm on school nights, and there is a strict no-screens policy after bedtime at 8pm, but other than that we don't really monitor or restrict.

Quite often spontaneously, and on occasions where we take away screens as a punishment, they engage in the same kind of collaborative/imaginitive play with physical objects together. I'm probably equally biased to you, but I don't feel that having access to screen has in any way impaired or diminished their ability or desire to engage in that kind of play together, while at the same time preparing them for a future in which screens and computer/internet literacy is going to be a supremely important skill to have.

I’m planning to set up a separate heavily filtered kids vlan/wireless network. I’ll leave some vulnerabilities in it so if they want unfiltered internet access they have to get it themselves.

You don't even let your kids read a Kindle!?

Also: not every child is going to end up a programmer.

Keep on going! It can be pretty hard to be screenless although when it's a single child. You are their playmate pretty much 24/7 unless you can schedule other kids, which can be a good amount of work unlike siblings because of today's legal structures.

If they’re old enough you can introduce them to reading and find them playmates.

I'm 20 and I have my experience to share too.

My parents didn't really limit me going out. In fact, they encouraged it. But I found the internet to be way more fascinating compared to my friends. I did have friends and a 'normal' life, but I was an introvert by any measure. I had people to hang out with at school and places to hang out with friends after, but I never wanted to go out and goof off. I want to say it isn't so black and white.

That said, I do find kids' exposure to electronics reaching an alarming point these days. Parents I feel just tend to plop an iPad infront of them all day which keeps them entertained to no end. They are extremely hyperactive since those games require them to be but teaching nothing of value. I can't say that's definitely bad, but it is scary. Maybe that's what a generation before me thought about me, so who am I to say?

If I may give advice, I would suggest you limit access to games and especially ads. Ads definitely have an effect on kids and is the very first media they see that is designed to manipulate them.

Next, maybe download some fun but informative videos from YouTube? (Don't ever give them free access to youtube, trust me. Really). YouTube Kids from what I've seen is trash and has nothing better than subpar cartoons. There are interesting things I feel could keep them entertained but also benefit them.

When you take away access to something, make sure they have something to do that they find interesting. Not just you. A big mistake I think parents make. Encyclopedias aren't so fascinating in comparison to the entirety of the internet, and we just feel robbed of fun. Talk to them.

22 here. I agree with everything except the ads part.

Me and my friends are so used to identifying and quickly ignoring ads from a young age, that they have become largely uneffective on us.

Comparatively my not-so-techie friends and family, that haven't grown up so used to ads, tend to be more influenced by them and purchase more stuff (my dad clicks facebook ads more regularly than me and my friends).

This is a common misconception. Advertising does not need to be hidden to "work". Advertising is not just facebook ads (which you admit to clicking, although not as regularly as your dad), but also involves creating positive sentiment for a brand or product over time through techniques like mere exposure.

I Wwnt to preface that I do understand where you are coming from, and spent many years agreeing with the sentiment that you pose, but over time came to realize that I was mistaken and had an oversimplified view of what makes the advertising industry tick.

In the interest of discussion: do you think that most people are too lazy/ignorant to ignore ads like you and your friends do?

I ignore ads on the web completely. I think I got like that thanks to games. I can focus on the thing I came here for and ignore nearly all unassociated often animated crap. Things that get me are disgusting ads. Not sure why but I don't filter them out automatically. Same for overtly sexual ads. Rest is just background. People were praising adblock but I never bothered because it didn't do much for me.

On the other hand my non-gamer gf can't understand how I can read or play a flash game when it's surrounded by few animated banners.

And my mom starts to read each page from top left corner as if it was a letter she got from IRS or sth.

Limiting exposure to ads is mainly advice for young children as they lack the cognitive ability to understand the intent of advertising until, IIRC, around the age of 7 or 8.

Both the sibling comments to me are right. Kids are impressionable, and you being smart doesn't mean everyone else is. Also the people making ads are definitely smarter than you and me.

Someone put it this way regarding the recent machine learning researcher craze. It went something like - PhDs are currently being paid millions to study where to place the pixels on your screen to influence you.

I have a 3 year old. The ads absolutely get to him. And many are inappropriate.

Any game that he likes, I remove the ads. It's usually a dollar or two. I also consider it a tip to the developers for entertaining my kid.

I usually play together when I can. And he also enjoys watching me play. I actually can't wait for the day when he beats me at street fighter.

But I think the key is finding things he enjoys just as much as playing video games or watching tv. It's hard, but they exist. And exercise should be one of them. Solving puzzles another. Going outside on the scooter is another. Cooking is another. They aren't hard to find.

If he loves something too much, I'd limit it with a reward system. That's how the world works anyway.

It's not just that some of ads are inappropriate, but young children are extremely impressionable and I believe those years shape who they are for the rest of their lives. So I'd consider any ads, by design, inappropriate.

>But I think the key is finding things he enjoys just as much as playing video games or watching tv. It's hard, but they exist.

I agree.

I don't know what makes good parenting. I know no one is prepared to be a parent, but you sound like a great one :)

"But I think the key is finding things he enjoys just as much as playing video games or watching tv."

LEGOs are real expensive these days, and you really have to kind of. . .tailor the experience for them until they're 6 or so, so that they use them safely and so that they aren't presented with too much complexity and once. That said, for both my 5 yo nephew and myself growing, they're a great toy because they can be a group or solo activity, and because they help respond to creativity ("I want to build X!") without removing all the imagination - video games tend to offer a more "complete" experience (i.e. leave fewer "gaps" for the child to fill), and less modular toys can feel limiting in what kind of play can be accomplished.

Just my two cents.

My opinion (as a parent of two <10yr old boys) is that screens are the new rock music/comic books/video games/bad-thing-du-jour that parents are demonizing as destroying the younger generation. There's always something, and it's never anywhere near as bad or destructive as was feared. It's just the next phase of a natural and inescapable societal progression.

I think media can harm attention spans. I used to spend a lot of time reading books/programming for fun and after spending more time consuming short term content my attention span seems far more fragile.

Abstractly, anything you spend a lot of time doing is going to shape how you think and not necessarily in positive ways.

Those were generally about culture and morals though, right? Rock and roll, drugs, etc scared parents because it was viewed as depraved & debaucherous, nobody was worried it was a substitute for good parenting and that it would impair your development of social skills.

Concerns about "screens" today seems more analogous to the old "TV-as-parent" issue.

Worse, screens today are about companies directly tapping into brain mechanisms to induce as close to addiction as they can get. Opiate of the masses indeed.

Just limit to one hour a day unless they’re programming or researching or creating and they’ll be fine.

Was limited to an hour of tv and games a day as a kid and of course craved more, but me and siblings did well in school and socially partially from that.

Anecdotal 2 cents.

I think this is a good point.

How are the screens being used—are they playing games or learning to make things? Making things should be encouraged.

I'm a father of an autistic 4 year old girl. Removing screens entirely from her has caused her to develop language and sleep better. I can't say why or how but I highly recommend just avoiding screens (including TV's). The hardest thing too I think causing all this is us as parents tend to hover much more than our parents did to us.

How do you disentangle this from normal development? It could be like taking vitamin C to cure a cold?

Eh, you won't be able to give your children the independence they need to develop as a mature adult (society will prevent you from doing that), so might as well let them sink into a screen. The alternative is forbidding literally the only outlet in the entire world that gives them even the barest illusion of autonomy and surveilling and manipulating them continuously while watching them break down into learned helplessness.

This is probably one of the most important questions possible: How should I teach my kids?

I was denied access to computers, and I don't think it did me any good. I'm 27, so a bit old for this topic, but my house was specially up to date bc of my dad's job. The internet was dangerous and diabolic in my mom's mind though, and my access to computers was extremely limited.

This, I feel, made me want computers even more. I realised early the magical powers of the internet. I wanted nothing more than a computer for myself. Even now, I easily get hooked (wouldn't say addicted) with videogames, porn, or just browsing.

Observing my friends, those who had more freedom in this regard are the ones that cares less about any of this; those of us still playing too much videogames are the ones who had very stingy restrictions there.

I'm under the impression that what my parents would have been better advised to do is give me more freedom. All of my younger siblings had more leeway in that sense, and I'm by far the most introverted of the bunch. All of my peers were very obviously more socially apt than me; they had been going out for years by the time I was allowed. Feeling at a constant disadvantage in social situations stifled me.

Of course, anecdata. Also, raising a child might be one of the most difficult and terrible things you can do. And at the same time, kids are more resilient that we give them credit for, as long as they're loved (!) and fed.

(I feel my parents did a fantastic job, even though I could point out a dozen things I think were very wrong. I'm sure if I had children of my own my opinion on my parents' job would increase dramatically.)

Raising children with technology is certainly a challenge. I have 5 kids, oldest 8 years old, youngest 15 months, living in a condo in LA because...you know......f'ing real estate prices, single family homes with 1200 square feet are 1.3 million in our district. So how do you let kids be free if they can't even go outside really?...and multiple kids in a condo without some kind of T.V. or tablet is utter insanity.

It's been very tough, but we don't have a T.V., we do let our kids use the tablet, with restricted apps and time. Our neighbors below us hate us and are moving....because you know....five kids stomping around above them, but I guess this is the new reality. The best thing we did was smooth coat all the walls with plaster and then make 2 large chalkboard walls. I am constantly surprised by how well this worked out. I think the tactility of the chalk has been an important factor, one that I overlooked, as I always used dry erase markers. I'm a convert to chalk now and my kids only use the best, Hagaromo full-touch. Working on math homework is a dream now as I can easily sketch out geometric concepts and have them trace over it with their fingers. Sure you could do it on paper, but something about standing in front of the chalkboard makes it more compelling. Aside from that setting up a folding table on the balcony and buying them a bunch of mid-grade chemistry stuff has also worked out surprisingly well. A couple days ago they created a catalytic reaction that actually gave off quite a good bit of heat. Could they have injured themselves? Probably. I'd rather have them experiment and explore.

4 of my kids are girls, and this raises special challenges. We fought a war with both sets of grandparents about not buying them dresses or pink gender defining toys. I was shocked how much resistance we got on this, but I strongly advise parents of girls to consider what the value of gender neutrality is, and whether or not it makes sense for them to try and abide by it when buying toys or clothes. If you do, be prepared to meet with a lot of resistance, both from your parents and public school. Just my two cents.

Why did you decide to have 5 kids in that kind of environment?

Fair enough question I suppose. I am a millennial, and I think many of our generation, and especially the younger generation are afraid of having more than say two or three kids, if they plan on having kids. This is certainly reasonable given the economic challenges we face and most principal among those housing costs. Short answer: We are punks I guess, we didn't want to let any of those economic factors dictate what size family we could have. Our condo is 1400 square ft., and costs exactly half what a 1200 square ft. house costs. In general, people I think way overvalue the quintessential American home. Parks and malls are free and work great, and it's nice to get out of the house more often. We live 1.2 miles from the beach, another great resource made possible for us only because of the decision to live in a condo. For us it made sense and it works great. We wanted a bigger family and we just did it, no regrets.

Are you doing something similar like the http://5kids1condo.com/ guy is? With shared bedrooms and such?

Wow, had no idea there were others writing a blog:). Yes, shared bedrooms, before when our place was smaller we had two in the living room.

That is an absolutely fascinating and perspective-altering idea, thanks for sharing the link.

The inability to get a quiet room alone is my personal vision of hell, but I suppose that if I literally never had the experience of a quiet room to myself, I wouldn't miss it. I wonder if this is like language learning... much easier if you're immersed in it from birth, than trying to adapt later in life.

I love that you had five kids. Kids are wonderful and our population is declining. You’re doing the best thing for yourself – and the best thing for society.

The worst thing you can do for the environment isn't flying; it is having a child. Having multiple, is, well.. X times worse.

Our population isn't declining either, as long as you watch it from Earth's PoV instead of whatever nation you're from.

I don't want to judge a specific person on having a number of children, and being the parent of one child I can't even fathom having five (!!!) but the general notions you made in conclusion to that I disagree with.

Is it? Or is he a monster who brought 5 beings into a existence of suffering?

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/is-life-actually-wort...

Mind if I ask how old you are? What are your thoughts on the merits of this philosophy? I'm genuinely curious.

I love my life and am very thankful that my parents decided to give it to me.

Is it best for society, though? The earth is already massively overpopulated. Perhaps it's best if some populations decline. And is it the best for himself if, for instance, the kids grow up to hate OP because of, say, global warming forcing them to fight to survive? Or if he has to live to see them struggle with that?

https://www.amazon.com/End-Doom-Environmental-Renewal-Twenty...

Perhaps we should all read this, or at least look at it from a different perspective, as I confess I do not study these issues carefully, but I don't think any type of neo-Malthusianism is worthwhile.

What do you think is benefit of fighting that pink?

(Full disclosure: I hate pink and was shocked too over how much of it grandparents and such forced on us and in what way. But I am still curious about your reasons. )

This is a pretty charged topic, and it's difficult to make the case unequivocally. In our family, it got to the point where people were emailing research papers(academics and doctors in the family) back and forth and Christmas was ruined. I don't have time to cite all the papers on both sides of this, but for us(my wife feels even more strongly about this than I do), it came down to the realization that AT BEST all the girl's toys and clothes could do no harm to their psyche. AT WORST, it could possibly instill in them a type of inferiority with respect to boys in terms of technical ability, and a diminished sense of their place in the world with respect to boys. As a scientist, I have to consider all the evidence, and as a parent, I have to make the decisions I think will help make my children stronger. My wife and I basically came to the conclusion that "girl's toys" and "girl's clothes" were bullshit, and an unnecessary risk to their psyche. Unfortunately pink is collateral damage in this war, as it is so ubiquitously used in our culture to demarcate girl from boy. I can in no way say that we are right, not in a scientific sense, I can only say that after spending hours and hours in toy and clothes aisles, I would say as a culture it's time to rethink gender neutrality, and the way we are separating boys and girls with clothes and toys from a very young age.

Don’t like pink or princess stuff for my daughter, but a few minor things slipped through the cracks. Should I get rid of them?

We struggled quite a bit with this question. I think our initial instinct was to be a bit militant about it, but the reality is there is so much of this in our society that unless you're willing to go full Captain Fantastic they will inevitably be exposed to these types of things growing up. It happens through relatives, well-meaning friends, birthday parties, school, media, etc, it's impossible to try and weed it all out. I guess now we take the approach where if someone gives them something we wouldn't, we don't make a big deal about it, especially not in front of the kids. Kids are very malleable and fickle, and as soon as they forget about it(maybe an hour, a day, whatever), we just throw it away. We do make it clear to our immediate family what we don't find appropriate, but at the same time, we're fully conscious of the culture we are a part of. It's not necessarily an easy line to walk, and there isn't really much guidance out there, but we feel it's important to be strong in our course, without being so inflexible given the realities.

What are your thoughts on Captain Fantastic?

I think it is tapping into the concerns of some, like for instance Alan Kay, that television, apps, screens, media, etc have successfully captured a good portion of the attention span of a very wide swath of our population. It questions whether or not this is a good thing, especially for kids, and whether they would be better served removed from this exposure, or if isolation in itself presents risks..ie social development. I guess I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think people need to go to the extremes. The 'extreme' thing I did was get rid of the T.V., so basically I'm the only person with kids that I know that does not have one in their living room...I guess that's weird enough?

I like your take, we also don’t have TV and limited device time, and as a result the kid loves to read.

I hope all of my kids are avid readers, I would count that as success.

You might cause backslash in other direction if you are too militant. Ultimately, kids want the same as other kids have once they go to preschool.

Also, the association between apparently girly and bad or dumb is not healthy if you happen to be girl.

In my experiences growing up, if something was fully restricted, it made me: a) really want that thing (happened a lot with tech) b) develop really unnatural aversions to it (a religious upbringing made this rear it's head in a lot of plays)

So my (completely amateur) opinion is to have a policy like you're doing, but only enforce it like 80% of the time. 100% is where you start to get into giving people complexes territory.

Just for reference, pink was worn by boys until early-mid 20th century [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink#Modern_history

>Sure you could do it on paper, but something about standing in front of the chalkboard makes it more compelling.

Yes.

I credit my parents restricting my internet access for my career, in a very weird and roundabout way.

My family got our first computer in 1998, when I was 13 years old. Nobody in my family was very computer literate at the time but they knew they could "ground" me from the computer by changing the Windows password.

Somewhere along the line (in a gaming magazine, probably) I stumbled an article about Slackware and Linux and later BeOS. I was determined to have access to the computer when I was grounded and my parents weren't home so I figured out how to download Slackware and BeOS floppies from friend's computers and get them working on our home PC.

Without all of this dedication to mischief and getting around the rules, I might still consider a computer just a terminal for sports news, games and email.

Breaking these rules and discovering Linux and the fact that I could write software without "doing crazy math problems" changed my life.

With two kids, I'd say it depends on the personality. My son (10) is totally absorbed by screens and digital games of any sort. For him, I would have reduced early digital exposure had I known how hooked up he gets. On the other hand, my daughter (7) has as much exposure to screens as he does and she seems to naturally shift her interest between various things, the majority of which do not include smart devices.

Eh, I don't know. The only thing I know we are doing right is having strict limits on screen time.

this IS the biggest parental challenge of the century since it will affect every cognitive, emotional, and social development of our next gen.

My wife and I decided to ban our son (now 5) from all digital consumption as long as possible. we went hard-edged when we noticed his uncontrollable addiction. it was all he asked for daily. nothing else mattered. no interest in the robot cubetto we bought him, reading, playing with toys, or even being very communicative.

sure it was EASY to just hand him the digital pacifier when he was 1,2,3 yrs old. now we see the start of the epidemic before our eyes. its real but we are taking back control and starting on a healthy hands-on path of learning and having fun the good ol way.

and if he ends up being in the minority - so be it. at least he will be a a whole human being with empathy who can create, dance, run for miles, focus, communicate, and think critically miles beyond his zombified peers. Its never too late.

I'm a parent of 14 and 11 year-olds and we're always struggling with this. I'd like to chat with you about this further. Find me on #parents-with-tech on freenode IRC (I've invited one other parent I've found).

thanks for the invite but im not on IRC. you can checkout this app to help track usage : https://inthemoment.io/

24. My middle school was dominated by a publicly-placed crappy terminal with an internet timer. My parents said I had to do one sport and play one instrument, but other than that didn't force anything. I could hang out with friends whenever I wanted, but I was a bit socially awkward and introverted until high school.

I’m reminded of the under-25-set reacting to the Stranger Things children just sort of running around unsupervised as “unrealistic.” Nope, that was how we rolled.

> that was how we rolled

Speaking of rolling, that's what bikes were for. Running around unsupervised in the neighborhood. I'm not sure what kids do with bikes today. Or if they even get bikes.

They sure do get scooters, at least in New York. Literally every single child over 5 has one.

Those scooters are to help the five year olds keep up with you while you walk about town for the day. The alternatives include taking more taxis or getting a stroller for your five year old. They don't exactly serve the same purpose as a bike for a 10-year-old who lives in a cul-de-sac.

My parents are baby boomers and they said there were just kids everywhere when they grew up. Every house on the street had at least two. Kids went outside to play. Parents had real perspective on the dangers and risks in life after living through ww2 and a kid falling out of a tree was not a concern.

Growing up in the 90's, there were far more kids playing outside. Even in the early 2000's, I used to remark how kids aren't getting out much anymore. Now there are articles about this phenomenon that are being taken seriously, so I guess I was right.

In the 80s/90s, I rarely had that many kids on my block but I was always outside. I had a bike and roamed ~10 mile radius around my house. So my friends and I would just meet up some place and decide where to go.

I wouldn't say the war impacted the parental decision(s), historically kids always played outside so they were just continuing what they knew, but we kids did have safety in numbers and that's why I'd say this is a perpetuating issue.

If a parent today told their kid to go outside and play, that kid would be alone and less safe. So parents just don't allow it.

More like child services would be called and the parent charged with something. That foundational law is what prevents parents from sending out their kids nowadays.

Makes me wonder how much of helicopter parenting is caused by emergency rooms becoming probibitevly expensive?

It's the same all over the West, right? But emergency rooms are free in much of it as well.

Don't forget the depression. The way my grandpa talked about growing up in the depression, I got the impression that kids were basically independent by the age of 7-8, out of necessity. Many of them had what could be considered part time jobs for after school and were responsible for running errands which could involve walking alone many miles from home to go shopping or drop something off.

Ironically, kids now have GPS trackers and cell phones. You'd think it'd be easier to let them loose.

Even if you wanted to, it's de facto illegal to do so. There's a very real risk of CPS being called on you or getting cited for child endangerment for this.

My parents live in a subdivision with several parks that are completely empty. I took my niece to one and discovered that's apparently suspicious behavior to use a public park in the middle of a weekend afternoon after a local PD officer stopped by to "have a chat."

The police also literally barricade the subdivision for Halloween. Nobody comes in or out between the hours of 7 & 9.

Your parents live in a bad neighborhood.

Also somewhat anecdotal, but in Japan kids are given freedom to the other extreme [1].

[1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are-littl...

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

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

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

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

You met one kids who was well-behaved and respectful of the teacher, and shy, that's deeply wrong" ?

And you contrast that against Asian kids being wild and healthy?

http://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publication...

"Appropriate behavior includes learning how to be reserved, cooperative, and supportive of the group."

You met one kids who was well-behaved and respectful of the teacher, and shy, that's deeply wrong"?

Not at all. My comment is not about being respectful. My comment is about how that kid had no curiosity and initiative. In fact, that kid was commanded to figure out his interface. Nothing. He would do nothing without adult instruction.

I don't understand what you think is wrong with the kid awaiting instruction. Sounds like a kid who has some sense of self-control, which is a positive and not a negative.

I don't understand what you think is wrong with the kid awaiting instruction.

In fact, the kid was instructed to figure out the interface on his own. Nothing.

Sounds like a kid who has some sense of self-control, which is a positive and not a negative.

There is having self control, then there is a total lack of independence and initiative.

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

The sad thing is, your story seems to be the rule and not the exception these days. I fear for a future run by people who grew up being constantly sheltered and hidden away from the world around them, while being "raised" by Facebook/Google/etc.

I hope these parents are prepared to keep taking care of their "kids" well into their 30s, because no kid who was kept locked up until age 18 is going to be anywhere near prepared to venture out on their own before then.

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

My parents were early adopters of this, about 20 years ago. They wanted me to be 15-16. I don't remember exactly, since by that point I was well practised at lying about why I'd be late home from school, who I'd be with, etc, so it didn't make much difference.

Age 10, my friend's parents let him take the public bus home alone (like most parents, I think). Mine didn't, and I didn't like being in the 2-3 kids waiting at the school for my mum to collect me, especially as she was always late.

So there was "computer club" on Wednesdays, "robot club" on Fridays, and "technology club" erratically. They were (or had been) real after-school clubs, so I'd sometimes show up for a few minutes, in case my parents asked a teacher about it. Mostly I'd spend the hour walking around the weirder streets in the city. (Unusual example: going to the fetish/bondage with my friend so he could buy the net shirt to dress up like the main character in Rocky Horror.)

Weekends were more difficult, it needed good co-operation from friends and their parents.

Essentially, by restricting my independence far beyond the average of my peers, I lost a huge amount of trust and respect for my parents. This has still not recovered.

> most of my friends are online rather than 4 real friends in real life

I think it's time to stop thinking of online as something less real than meatspace, and online friends as somehow inferior to face-to-face friends.

(Cue copious evidence of amazing friendships and happy marriages started online.)

How people find online communities that aren't so terrible that loneliness is preferable is beyond me. Of course, that's also true of meatspace communities, so maybe the problem is just me.

My recipe is trivial: look for people who are clearly brighter than me, and follow them; continue recursively with their friends as you get introduced.

This gave me a few brilliant real-life friends who I first had met back in the day e.g. on LiveJournal when it was still alive.

Heck, I met my wife online, and proposed online, back in 20th century. We're still happily together.

Problem is that people clearly brighter than me are not easy to come by.

...wait, that sounds like I mean that I think I'm really super smart. That isn't the case, I just don't meet many people, and those that I do meet I don't think are clearly brighter than me. The ones that are, usually don't really seem interested in being friends, so whatever.

Turns out these things aren't so simple as random people on the internet claim.

It's understandable. My method is actively see more people; online it's much simpler. Then get an idea of their interests, and if we share some of them, to try to communicate regarding these things. Soon enough you are somehow acquainted with a number of smart people. Even if few will become your friends, you keep learning from them, and keep getting leads to other potentially interesting people.

Try to frame it as an engineering task of a graph traversal optimization. Also, you have to be open; no people are going to check all boxes. Limit the filter to really important stuff.

There is nothing wrong with having online friends, but there is an obvious deficit in richness of communication and experience between online and meatspace interactions.

Perhaps in years to come VR will overcome that deficit, though.

I grew up in the 90's like this after my family moved to the US, coming from a culture that was the complete opposite, where I went anywhere in the city at seven years old by myself. I figured it was just because my parents were super paranoid immigrants who went through hell back home and for years to get to the US. I know what you say is anecdotal, but I too have seen it in some of my other friends' families also. It saddens me to no end that this has potentially become the new norm here. It really borders on child abuse, IMO, and causes me to question the values of a society which encourages and even enforces such disgusting, shameful treatment of kids.

When I was like 5 or 6 we roamed freely in South Korea during the early 90s and when we came to Canada, we still used to hang out in the apartment complexes, playing hockey, riding bicycles, building tree forts....looking back we lived in a notorious low class white ghetto with regular police & k9 units with few attempted home invasions...it just got worse as we neared year 2000 and past...Gang became a fad and by then we stopped hanging out as a whole...even walking to school sometimes felt a bit unnerving because my friends would be targeted by ethnic affiliation.

I understand why parents don't want their kids out in environments like that. If I have kids it's going to be a struggle to let them out into that scary world...but growing up in the ghetto doesn't come without life lessons.

My cousin had a similar upbringing experience 30 years ago. At that time, we called it emotionally abusive as the micromanagement was accompanied by an unforgiving parental style. When the chains were finally lifted, the parents found they had the exact type of person they raised, one who ran from them and ignored them at every opportunity.

My son is 17 now, and for years I begged him to go hang out with friends. Didn't want to. He wanted to "meet" them online in games every Fri/Sat night (the nights he was allowed to play video games).

I thought about cutting off the video games, but it was his only form of socialization, so I was really hesitant to try that experiment.

I have had dozens of conversations with him, over the years, about the possible negative side effects of not meeting people in person (for later in life, when patterns solidify).

Now, he does go to parties with his online friends a few times a year. There are usually 8-10 of them there and they have pizza and watch movies. Usually is a bday party (but he never wants to do this for his bday).

I've given up trying to influence him (given his age). He is very mature in most ways. I'm just worried about the future.

There's another part of the trend that is less obvious: the social giants haven't focused on making it easier to hang out with friends IRL. On the surface that statement might seem counterintuitive; after all, if I want to message a friend for lunch, I can just DM them with messenger/imsg/snap/insta. When I want to invite a bunch of friends to my super bowl party, just create a fb event. Simple right?

Not quite. There are a million opportunities in between to have genuine, in-person connections with friends that don't necessarily fall into those two categories. Just to prove it, here's a thought exercise. Take your top 5 friends, local people you'd be most inclined to hang with on any given day. Now ask yourself, what are they doing tonight on this random Wednesday? If you had trouble answering this question, you're not alone. We're all so busy nowadays, it's become harder to line up those fleeting moments of availability that we do have. Now think about how many intersecting pockets of free time amongst your friends that were probably missed in the past month. Some of these opportunities could've been a quick cup of coffee together, swinging by to watch Isaiah's debut with the Cavs, or last minute studying for mid terms.

Coordination has to become easier, because everything else competing for your free time has become easier. This is one of the primary reasons why I left Yahoo and founded a new startup called Blink. We're creating an app that bridges the gap between your phone and your real life.

We are eventually planning to do a "Show HN" to give folks a preview of what we're building, but I couldn't help but notice quite a few here (westmeal, ktta, joaomacp, julianh95 and others) who are both young in age and have quite a sophisticated understanding of how our social trends are evolving. If you're under 25, we'd really love to get your feedback on where we are going with Blink! You can check it out here (iOS only):

https://blinkwith.me/hn-teens-dont-party

We're also looking for a junior iOS engineer who's as passionate about this stuff as we are, but that's also an entirely different HN post altogether!

I am double your age; I was at that time, and am again, addicted to computing. I thought, until I was 17, that leaving my computer and programming env was a frivolous waste of my time (my parents indeed echoed that idea). Then I got interested in playing the guitar and went to uni; I spent around 6 years partying and playing in bands. I would not have missed that for the world as it did wonders for my social skills, but, I can imagine it is considered waste of time by many. For my brain (luckily I had uni) it was not very good and for my wallet it was very bad. If your parents pay their last money to get you through a good highschool and college (in NL this was mostly free or very cheap compared) I can especially imagine that feeling.

I do think that it is was worth it for me, but then again, I would say that. Also I now do not believe everything has to have ‘worth’ anymore (I did then and I wanted to become a pro musician,but found it monotonous and annoying even as an amateur; every day the same songs...). Or maybe doing nothing or frivolous things has it’s own worth.

I wonder why the "young adult nightlife experience" feels so stagnant. I like going to the occasional upscale cocktail bar, but in general spending Friday or Saturday night in a crowded bar or club is not my idea of a fun thing to do. What is the alternative for more introverted people? Stay home?

I went to Copenhagen recently and on a Friday night came across a big coffee/beer+wine place with lots of tables/sofas that was packed with people drinking beer and playing board games. It seems like such an obvious concept/nightlife alternative for people who don't want to stay home but don't want to go to a loud bar. Doesn't seem to exist in the U.S. as far as I know.

18-21 seems alive and well in the UK but we do have a very odd night life drinking culture.

I found once people get to their 3rd and 4th years of university they can see "Real life" on the horizon and the awful 3am kebab shop behavior largely stops.

Like you've described pub culture is quite popular for the 25-40 bracket. Somewhere you can meet and socialise which is like being at home without pounding music and £8 drinks

As an American who lived in London from age 34-37, I loved the pub culture because it allows one to get outside and have a couple drinks with colleagues at a reasonable hour and still be home for dinner with the family. Also, cask ale much easier on my stomach than super cold and carbonated lagers.

If you're ever in Seattle https://www.moxboardinghouse.com

We got them all over the DC area, and they are mostly microbreweries. Most don't serve food since they don't have a kitchen or a license for that, but they often times have food trucks outside where you get your snacks.

I think there are lots of options.

1. Board game venues. They're becoming more popular, and yes, they exist in the US. I would be surprised if there wasn't one in any major US city.

2. Escape rooms. I think there are at least 50 in my city. They're literally everywhere if I search on Google Maps.

3. Cafes. If you're looking for something low key, you should be able to find some cafes with some hot wine, snacks, and couches for relaxing with friends.

4. Pubs. You can search for one with pool or darts if you feel like doing an activity while having casual drinks.

5. Meetups/Couchsurfing events. If you want to get together with a few dozen random people, there are usually events on both of these sites.

6. Rooftop or outdoor movie venues. They're a nice change from the usual movie theater if you want something a bit different.

7. VR experiences. These are starting to pop up as well. They have a bunch of rooms with headsets, and TVs showing what the person with the headset is seeing. So, you rent a room with friends, one person is playing, others are watching on the TV. Or, there are VR experiences where everyone puts on a headset, and you run around a VR warehouse playing together.

8. Lots of random activities that have existed for ages, like bowling, ice skating, go-karting, etc.

9. If you want very low key just go to a big book store, get a coffee, and read some books.

In short, I don't think the "young adult nightlife experience" is stagnant, and I think it's probably more interesting than ever before, with lots of alternatives to clubs or loud pubs.

Outside of a pub (which is a bar?) none of these places would typically be open on a late Fri/Sat.

I think there's plenty of opportunity to reinvent the nightlife experience in a way that hasn't been done yet. Hopefully in a few years you can decide between a bar, club, or ____ at 12am on a Friday night.

The idea of being sandwiched in the middle of loud drunk sweaty people in a place where I can barely hear what someone else is saying and waiting 20m to get the attention of a bartender to pay $15 for a well drink makes me cringe.

> Outside of a pub (which is a bar?) none of these places would typically be open on a late Fri/Sat.

How late are you talking about? I'm looking at the weekend hours now in my city.

Board game venues: 2AM.

Escape rooms: Midnight - 1AM.

VR: Midnight

Meetup/Couchsurfing: I've been out to 5AM.

Rooftop/outdoor movies obviously don't start until after dark, and then they usually serve alcohol, so people hang out and have drinks after.

Bowling: 2AM

Durham just got a vrcade and I kinda want to try it out.

A pub or inn in British usage tends to have quiet or no music, and enough seats for people to sit. They're the original board games café: you'll probably find darts or a similar game, and at the quieter ones copies of Scrabble, chess, draughts or packs of cards.

But as was mentioned, the board game café in Copenhagen is open until 2 on Friday and Saturday nights: https://bastardcafe.dk/opening-hours-and-events/

Ah yeah that's it.

I think just as we're seeing the rise of niche co-working spaces for women/LGBT some enterprising introvert will create a new category of nightlife that is fun, open, not crazy loud, and not necessarily centered around alcohol. We've reinvented work but we've regressed when it comes to socializing IMO.

A pub is not a bar. The only real similarity is that a pub and a bar both serve alcohol. The atmosphere is completely different. I suspect this may not be abundantly clear to a lot of Americans, who seem to lack exposure to a true European style pub.

Few of us seem to know that "pub" is short for "public house".

(What a great idea!)

"Public house."

Unfortunately, American "pubs" are little different from our clubs or sports bars with unbearably loud music or twenty televisions playing every flavor of ESPN. Nearly every alcohol-serving establishment I've been to in my region (Washington DC) is pricey, deafening, and not conducive to any sort of socialization beyond drunkenly grinding against strangers. I hate it.

There are plenty of small, quiet beer and wine bars here in LA that seem similar to the UK “pub experience”. Are you sure there aren’t many like that in DC? I would be surprised.

Tip: Look for places that serve espresso and/or tea.

I see you live in a city!

i feel this. (in SF.) i think it's extra bad here in SF because most people have really small apts, so not great for getting a group together at a house. end up in kinda-shitty over-priced bars. meh.

(there's probably cooler places/things going on and i just haven't discovered them. maybe?)

There are a few niche venues, but overall yeah I agree with your assessment. One compounding factor is that public transportation in SF has terrible coverage, stops early, and just kind of sucks all around. In Tokyo or Paris, spending the night with a friend who lives a few kilometers away is not a problem. In SF, if you live in the mission and your friend is in the sunset, you’re probably not going to hang out together that often.

There’s Lyft/Uber, but they’re a bit pricey, and you’re just contributing to a slimy system and not doing anything to help public transit.

It depends on the person not the neighborhood.

Uber/Lyft is not a luxury in SF, you can get most places for under $15, not to mention you can split the cost with others when you travel.

Transit is horrible but if you live by BART, it’s 1,000,000% better. Train to where you’re going and Uber back home for $10.

$15 is expensive! I can cover a 40 mile stretch of land in Tokyo using public transit for about $5. And I'll be supporting a transit company that serves the entire community, instead of an SF startup that is abusing contract workers.

I live right next to BART in the mission, and that doesn't help me when I want to hang out with my friends in the sunset. Even if I'm just going to go to a nearby neighborhood, say the Castro or Hayes Valley, it's just faster to walk than think about taking public transit. I love walking so I don't really mind all that much, but for a major world city, that's kind of ridiculous.

Go to Urban Putt.

It took me nearly a year to crack into the SF nightlife scene. There are a staggering amount of events going on in the city and Oakland, you just have to meet the right people. Unfortunately, you won’t find these people at expensive bars.

Hanging around dance places and being proactively social (or a dance maniac) is a good start (Public Works, 1015 Folsom, Nocturnal Codes, etc). Eventually you’ll be invited to the most exclusive beach fires, kikis, kickbacks, etc.

Whatever you do don’t just stand in the corner expecting things to happen.

or just look for BurningMan parties or meetups.

There are places in the US that offer that type of experience, as well as several other alternatives to crowded noisy bars. Although it could be location dependent on what your options are.

> I wonder why the "young adult nightlife experience" feels so stagnant.

I'm wondering if financial pressures play into this, student loans, saving for a downpayment in a property market that's accelerating away from you, ballooning rents, health insurance, saving for retirement etc

I think there is a transition from a focus on consumption to a focus on creation.

At least in my city (Phoenix), there are plenty of arts-focused, small parties happening in warehouses, art galleries, etc.

> What is the alternative for more introverted people? Stay home?

Come on now. There's literally FUCKTONS of stuff to do on your own. I had this existential crisis when I realized how shitty Vancouver nightlife is and that it was never going to get better.

Here's a list of stuff that I'm working on alone, even in the most boring city in the world. It's a combination of high adrenaline activities with quiet solitude mixed in.

- Ride a motorcycle

- Ride a seaplane

- Ride a regular plane

- Ride a boat and do stuff on it

- Snowboard & Ski

- Play jazz piano at a bar/cafe (bore other people to death!)

- Buy a cheap island, attempt PrimitiveTechnology or Proenneke. Bring kindle

Can you elaborate more on "buy a cheap island"? Do you mean actually purchase land? Have you done this? Where are the cheap islands I can buy?

Nothing new under the sun ...

___________________________________________

Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment and because books were scarce and difficult to reproduce. The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium. At present people in search of pleasure naturally tend to congregate in large herds and to make a noise; in future their natural tendency will be to seek solitude and quiet.

- Aldous Huxley, Chrome Yellow

I'm not sure I would agree with this statement. I think there needs to be a balance of both solitude and human interaction, and that balances differs from person to person. I’m definitely more introverted but it doesn’t mean I don’t need human interaction. An example is that I play a ton of video games, one reason is for the solitude, but I also enjoy board games for the social component. At the core of games, I love the strategy and competition, but different types of games can scratch different itches. I think things like that can apply to a lot of parts of life.

All this quote says is that solitude through literature will become a natural tendency. Which it definitely has become, much more than in the centuries before today.

> As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.

spoken like a true hermit....material objects cannot replace human connection...the author of that quote is escaping that harsh truth which I'm sure he realized towards the end like so many others that came before him.

Books are both written and read by humans. That is human connection.

> because reading was not a common accomplishment

This isn't true, not even in his lifetime. In 1870, the illiteracy rate among whites was 11%. It dropped even lower after that. 89% seems pretty "common" to me.

Blacks were much higher, but slavery had only just ended. That group hit 11% about 1947.

https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/lit_history.asp

I am a total introvert and some of my happiest high school memories involve friends pushing me to go to giant parties that pushed me out of my comfort zone. I would say that there are moments in there which are integral to who I am as a person.

I really feel like they’re missing out on a developmental milestone.

I almost feel like these kids are brainwashed but that’s probably just me looking in as an outsider. I am just getting old (31) and struggling with the fact that I no longer understand the youth.

> I really feel like they’re missing out on a developmental milestone.

Are they though? Those milestones can take many different forms, as evidenced by the fact that "giant parties" are a relatively recent phenomenon, historically speaking.

Kids are missing out on developmental milestones, I know I did. It doesn't have to be parties. The just hanging out thing is down too according to the article. Many people are leaving their teen years far too sheltered and socially underdeveloped, because indulging in endless digital distraction takes up more and more of our time as a society.

I've been wondering for years now, what is the difference between hanging out irl, and a chat room, or Facebook, or whatever? Not trying to be rude, but I just don't get how talking to your friends in meat space is socializing, but talking to your friends on the phone is a distraction?

I agree with you on the sheltered thing.

>as evidenced by the fact that "giant parties" are a relatively recent phenomenon, historically speaking.

That is nowhere near true.

Teenage boys and girls partying together without adults is something many kind of societies frowned upon. They used to be scared of unwanted pregnancy a lot.

It did happened occasionally, but it was seen as something bad and stigma (especially toward such girls) could be quite high.

>Teenage boys and girls partying together without adults

I was assuming you were suggesting large parties regardless of age is a new historical phenomenon.

Although, fraternities and sororities have been around for hundreds of years and they're 17-21 or so. I'm sure they've had parties most of that time. It's probably how they started. Not sure if that counts with teen-only criteria. The concept of adult age has changed over time as well.

Humans party. Always have, always will. They of course were called "feasts" in historical times. Lack of partying is probably more of an anomaly (assuming the article is true). Of course, I would venture that even having a large online gaming or chat session would constitute a party. I mean its a group of people socializing, and I'm sure some of them are having beverages or botany of their choice, plus some hot pockets.

Sororities were around for hundreds years? Are they not offshots of fraternities after women were allowed on universities?

When I read old times, I tend to imagine either rural living or middle classes in cities or something else more common. Of course they had fun and socialized, but it was not the same as 80ties or something.

US Sororities have been around in the US since the mid-late 1800s, but that's not really the point. The point is teen-ish people have been having big parties a lot longer than "recent phenomena." Fraternities, think Greeks and Romans, pagan festivals, etc.

It's much easier to remember things that are different from your norm. I grew up around giant parties as in 20+ kegs and you still run out of beer. However, some of my strongest memories where odd things that happened not so much masses of people dancing.

Funny, most of my worst memories involve friends pushing me out of my comfort zone. Sometimes people are not social for good reason.

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

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

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

> Society is sick, let's face it, and technology is largely to blame.

Technology is never to blame for anything, because technology is not a moral actor; people may be to blame for the manner in which they use technology.

OTOH, people have been falsely conflating “the youth of today seem to have a different lifestyle than I preferred in my youth” with “society is sick” for at least as long as we have historical evidence of what people thought.

There's lots of evidence that people in their early 20s and under are psychologically different than older people (higher rates of anxiety/depression at the same age, etc.). Anecdotally, I've noticed that people don't talk to strangers as much on planes anymore as when I was a child.

I guess you could argue that technology isn't to blame, but technology changes people. And it's hard not to use technology when it's so pervasive. At work I have a hard time not eating donuts when someone brings them in. Technology is similar. If everyone around you is on their phone or facebook or whatever it takes a lot of willpower/willingness to be different to not do the same.

Or it could be the fact that they paid 11 times as much as their parents for college and then couldn't get a job. Technology is a common scapegoat, it's not that it has 0 effect on us. Obviously fear of missing out is a real thing. However its almost never the dominating problem in our lives.

Did people really talk to strangers on public transportation back in the old days? Or did they actually read books, magazines and newspapers?

Random NYC shot from the 50s: http://i.imgur.com/SoG7Yqh.jpg

You are confusing technology, defined as "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes", with smartphone/OS design choices taken by companies that want to create addiction in users.

Not sure if there is any research, but I have noticed that younger people seem to be more open to talking about mental illnesses like depression. I have even seen people on Twitch talking about their illness to the chat! That was unthinkable in my day, and I'm only in my low 30's.

If there is less stigma in admitting it, people are going to come forward more. Thus more cases are recorded. Which is good, as then they can get help. I remember people saying you need to see a shrink as an insult. Imagine people making fun of you for seeing a doctor about your broken leg!

Right, and guns don't kill people.

Technology, progress are moral.

Postman argues that omitting (excluding) technology from discussion of the human condition is exactly the problem. All changes lead to winners and losers. It's both denial and hubris to not even update the ledger.

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology http://a.co/3WNmkU3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly

Further, Donald Norman argues every thing (technology, tool) has its own affordances, for better or worse. Which is opposite to the myopia captured in the cliche "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

> Technology is never to blame for anything, because technology is not a moral actor; people may be to blame for the manner in which they use technology.

For a very narrow and incomplete definition of technology, sure. Technology literally means the science of craft. Technology isn't just the product, its something you practice when you're engineering and inventing a means to an end. In practicing technology, you make choices in identifying what problems to solve, how, and whether they are problems in the first place. Such choices are subject to morality. In that sense you can indeed blame technology.

I don't think there's ever been a discussion about the ethics of technology here without someone trying to pull the brakes by pointing out that inanimate things themselves are not moral actors, but let's face it, if someone participates in discussion on this site their IQ is probably higher than 70, and understand that already. Assume for a minute, at least for the sake of discussion, that this isn't the point GP is trying to make.

I think you're right that technology is not to blame, though it could be a factor due to how we relate with technology.

I think society is still sick and it's because we are more alienated[0] from our roles in it than we ever have been. This is somewhat connected with our use of modern technology but has more to do with our economic relations with each other and with the material world.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

This argument has been made every single decade. Socrates even voiced concerns about writing and how it creates an illusion of understanding. It's been wrong every decade since and is wrong today.

If we are talking about the same thing, Socrates actually said that writing an argumentation was bad because words are fixed and your adversary can give them interpretations that don't fit what you had in mind. I don't think he was against the technology of writing, he just made a point that is still true today. And it is not because technology has been beneficial in its infancy, that it will keep helping us. Current concerns about technology are supported by scientific facts. Before, it was mainly fearmongering and rumors. (Or was it ? If you have scientific study about the negative effects of technology back then..)

"When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result"

-Marshall McLuhan

There is an element of truth to those anxieties. New forms of media create new spatial relationships that are often destructive to previous forms.

So in a sense, new media can be highly destructive of the way people have perceived reality their whole lives:

>As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

-Frederick Douglass on learning how to read as a slave (which was illegal)

> The ageing mill towns of East Lancashire, UK, still enjoyed a culture of trust and respect for your neighbours such that you could leave your front door open without fear of theft.

That is a strange line to include there, as I am not sure how people staying inside and having very little social life would erode public trust in the idea that your house won't be robbed while you're away. There are hundreds of factors that play into the changing landscape of trust, but I know my small town parents still have no real concern leaving the door unlocked in their small town of ~1000 or so people.

Personally, I'd say the trust issue has to do with the fact that the world population has almost perfectly doubled since 1969, and humanity's short history has not prepared us for the population explosion that has occurred over the last 150 years. We live closer together than ever before -- but cities have never really been safe, and serial killing predates electricity (oddly) without even getting near to modern technology or us collectively being "blinded by everything shiny".

The issue with our population now is that our cities are larger, there are fewer small towns and rural areas, hence the erosion of trust.

I think Dunbar's Number (colloquially the Monkeysphere) kind of covers why we aren't handling the explosion of social circles well. But that can't be blamed completely on technology.

Surely you knew multiculturalism would destroy your high-trust homogeneous society. If not, the lesson is now very clear.

It's not too late. We can go back.

Woah now, let's not make any wild leaps here.

The Roman Empire was fantastically multicultural at its high points and its low. The United States has never been homogeneous, no matter where in its history you find yourself -- the low or the high points.

In fact, I (and many others) would argue that a lot of the meteoric rise of the United States occurred on the backs of labor that did not match the current ideals of those far enough right to want a homogeneous United States -- whether it was black slavery, cheap Chinese labor, late 19th century immigration towards the American Dream...

There is more to the equation than homogeneity is what I am saying here.

The most stereotypically dangerous areas (where you get the stories that drive a lot of the helicopter parenting and such) are also highly stratified and segregated ones. New York, LA, Chicago are known for their high-crime areas, but also have money and cost of living presenting far harder barriers to integrated, multicultural local neighborhoods than anyway in the more-stereotypically-"actively racist" urban southern part of the country.

My 80s/90s childhood was one of "high-trust" ethnic diversity in just such a place, since my family didn't run in the elite, isolated-private-school/gated-suburbs circles. I had friends of every background, and so did most everyone else I knew, it was just how things were, not some liberal hollywood propaganda job. Somewhere like inside-the-perimeter Atlanta isn't perfect by any means, but it's actual diversity seems to make it way less sneakily unintentionally racist than NYC or SF. Or, worse, someone in random-white-person-ville small midwestern town who hears about Chicago gangs in the news.

And now I see a bunch of people online scared of / angry about diversity or its portrayals who seem completely confused by the concept of a boba joint with local latinos, blacks, whites, and asians all as customers in the same shop - cause if a movie portrayed a group like that, you know it would get called out for "SJW brainwashing" - so it seems like the argument is completely backward. The more you actually encounter and interact with people who don't share your ethnicity, the more trust you build. While the more you segregate minorities into clusters of poverty and desperation, the more you'll fear crime and so on.

That idea is not new, either -- we just have a collective propensity to forget hard lessons.

>Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. -Mark Twain

The strange irony is that you no longer have to travel very far to meet a broad range of people, but still so many avoid leaving their gated communities.

The Roman empire contained a lot of geographically segregated cultures. There was definitely a lot of influence on each other over time but 'when in Rome' didn't come out of nowhere.

I don't know if he's really worth responding to, but it really depends on your definition of 'homogeneous'. Historically, the US was certainly much more homogeneous in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d...

You mention Chinese labor, for example, but the Asian presence in the US was below 1% until 1980. There were only three demographics that really existed in any numbers in US history up until the past few decades: Native Americans (mostly genocided or blended with other categories, and not counted as part of the population until this happened), whites (80-90% until 1980s), and the black people who were mostly either slaves or descended from slaves (fluctuated between 10 and 20%). Since the 1980s, the Hispanic population has seen a massive upsurge, with Asians also increased as a proportion of the population by almost 5x, and "Other" going from basically 0% to 6%.

This is not exactly a diverse picture, even if it isn't 100% homogeneous.

> The Roman Empire was fantastically multicultural at its high points and its low.

Citation needed. As far as I am aware from my understanding of history, Roman Empire was very large geographically but there were homogeneous cultures / tribes living in separate areas of the vast empire. You had Germanic tribes living together in proximity, same with Gauls, Eastern tribes like Vandals or Visigoths, local cultures also inhabited parts of Roman Empire outside of European continent such as Northern Africa or Israel.

This should be evident as Europe was very homogeneous until early 20th century still with societies being mainly composed of similar peoples in their respective areas and this was obviously a continuation of Roman Empire’s former tribes.

Trying to make a comparison with current world where you have melting pots in places like London or New York might be inaccurate. But I’d like to be educated on this issue more.

We've banned this account for reasons explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16065249.

> that does not mean peering at each other through the alienating window of a mobile phone screen.

Says who? You are falling into the trap every old person does. Thinking their youth was great and that society is going to crumble since you are on your way out and the kids today didn't live like you did.

> In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sense of danger.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. When you were 9, your grandparents and other old people were saying the same thing. Society is falling apart. Kids are sat in front of "idiot boxes", turntables, etc. Or wasting time playing silly games or rotting their brains listening to rock and roll.

When I was growing up in the 90s, old people were blaming MTV, gangsta rap and 3 way phone conservations for the end of society.

> There was balance because we had less technology

Not compared to your grandparents.

> It's unthinkable.

It's unthinkable because you are old and out of touch. Kids today do all the things you did. Maybe not as much. They go to school. Interact with their classmates. Hang out with their neighborhood friends. Play stickball, football, etc.

So don't worry. Society will be fine without you and life will go on. Who knows, when I get to be your age, I'll be saying how VR tech is ruining kids. I hope not.

This crosses into personal attack, and several of your other comments are bordering on breaking the site guidelines if not breaking them outright. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make a course correction? We're looking for thoughtful, substantive discussion here.

> Society is sick, let's face it, and technology is largely to blame.

[ ... ]

> In 1969, at the age of 9, I could be left to play with my friends and wander several miles from home without any sense of danger.

How's technology to blame for helicopter parenting, fear of terrorism and crime in general, the notion there seemingly is a nonce behind every street corner and similarly irrational ideas and behaviours rampant today?

While social media does its share to exacerbate these fears and overly cautious behaviour so does TV and other more traditional media.

The underlying cause isn't technology but what we allow others to do to us with it.

>How's technology to blame for helicopter parenting, fear of terrorism and crime in general, the notion there seemingly is a nonce behind every street corner and similarly irrational ideas and behaviours rampant today?

It seems obvious that this is the result of fear mongering-profiteering in the news media.

Which is something that has existed for a long time and long before 1969 and the advent of modern news media or social media. News has always been about entertainment as well as information. Otherwise there wouldn't have been any newspapers and we'd all be reading Reuters or AFP.

Instead of superficially blaming technology for our failings we had better find out what the actual causes of these failings are and remedy those.

> Society is sick, let's face it, and technology is largely to blame.

Maybe birthrate is more reasonable. Anecdotally, my nephew is an only child and he doesn't get to run around a lot (nor does he have a lot of desire to). When I was growing up in the 80's, it seemed like families were bigger, so it was less of a big deal if one kid drowns while swimming in the river or blows up playing with gasoline. If you only have one kid, you're probably less likely to attribute cliff jumping or playing with gasoline to "just kids being kids".

I loved being my room playing legos it reading novels or the encyclopedia. I suppose there are lots of different types of people, but I liked being alone even when there weren’t screens.

Basically it feels as if parts of American society are becoming desocialized--losing the ability to interact effectively with other members of the society. This article echoes Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" thesis [0]. His ideas are at least a quarter century old but now seem prescient.

I find the social changes the Wired article describes far more disturbing than the "Internet is frying our brains" threat that people like Nick Carr fear, let alone Artificial General Intelligence. Unlike the latter we see evidence of the former on a daily basis.

[0] http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/assoc/bowling.html

I think you are correct. I am in the UK and I saw a change happen to the students that went to university after I left. This was early nineties so pre-internet. Nothing to do with screens. However, my generation created and participated in untold amount of parties. We did not go to official organised events most of the time, more things we did. So no fancy concerts with known acts, just some of us playing records, everyone else dancing or propping up the bar (or taking drugs). In fact even the drug taking was different, it was about the 'raves' and not the drugs. People didn't take the drugs outside of the events. Undoubtedly the drug scene was a huge appeal to some but more people were happy on regular alcohol.

The generation that came along after just did not have the aptitude for getting together with a few hundred close friends for beach parties or illegal raves. At the same time the 'rave' scene or proper party scene had been killed off by capitalism, with larger venues in big cities - nightclubs - being the new thing.

In the days of partying the idea of spending a Friday/Saturday in front of a screen and not going out would be tantamount to hell. Also, back in the day, it would be possible to physically see a party event and hear the music. Nowadays that never happens, I don't see house parties as frequently as how they used to happen, e.g. on a Saturday night walking back across town there is no party to be heard, everything has to be properly organised now.

I think that the change happened with Reagan/Thatcher and how the individual mattered more than society, we become atomised then.

It would be nice to know how teenagers partied before the invention of the teenager to see the whole pattern and not assume everything is due to me being 'getting old'.

It's worth digging one level deeper.

Screen time has increased, and it may be at the expense of parties, but screen time is also an unsupervised place where the parties have an expectation of privacy and control.

The stereotypical party the article laments is a complex affair that requires transportation, supplies, a venue, and desirable participants, and doesn't spring into place organically. Social circles at colleges can organize these, but there has been extraordinary scrutiny into campus parties in recent years, due to accounts of sexual assaults. These related developments makes them more difficult to plan, drives desirable participants away, and makes resulting parties less enjoyable. With common people's parties blunted, partying becomes the domain of the wealthy and attractive, in entertainment playgrounds like Miami and Vegas.

As for teenagers, parental supervision is at an all-time high, so organizing a party often requires finding a cooperating adult (e.g. a socially-connected college student, an older sibling, a laissez-faire parent) who is willing to provide the venue and supplies away from the eyes of concerned parents. Fewer college parties means fewer teen parties too.

>extraordinary scrutiny into campus parties

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

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

What would be the reas on for citing? I mean, you need to break some law for the cop to do so. I am pretty sure it is possible to have drinking party without dping something illegal (harder with marihuanna and that should be lagalized imo).

It's almost a given that any college party is going to have underage drinking, and providing alcohol to minors. When we used to have registered parties, there were wristbands for the few juniors and seniors that were over 21, and everybody else knew to set their cups down when Safety and Security did their walk-throughs.

Not to mention any other drugs that might get into the mix.

By virtue of anyone being under 21 there (which was usually about 2/3s of those attending, since most older people went to bars) we were doing something illegal. Additionally, noise complaint citations were a thing, and were often the reason why the cops came in the first place. Not that we were trying to be obnoxious about it, but when you pile 80-100 people in one location they're not going to be quiet.

I also think that the consequences of being cited have increased, or at least became more complicated. I (and many people I knew) were paranoid about running into legal trouble because of job prospects. Any opportunity to get a citation expunged was worth it.

I think a decent portion should also be laid at the feet of technology in general, not even just Netflix, but also that how teens interact on social media is more or less in the public (and their parents) eyes, with the exceptions of things like Snapchat which isn't very conducive to planning a party.

It's also worth noting that it's much, much harder for teens to get ahold of booze these days, and the penalties for having anything they shouldn't have, be it alcohol, drugs, whatever, are extremely steep. Not saying that stops it completely, but they keep that sort of thing quiet if they don't want to end up in prison for a couple of decades. Enough weed to throw a party, in many states, would get you put in a cell until you were middle-aged.

After all of that, a good amount I agree with the article is just down to kids having more to do that doesn't carry anything close to the same kind of risks; I also don't understand why this is a bad thing?

>> It's also worth noting that it's much, much harder for teens to get ahold of booze these days

20 years ago we just had an older sibling or co-worker buy for us. What's changed?

More stigma attached to it for the buyer.

Stricter enforcement of 21 to drink rules so older sibling will have a harder time buying with a fake ID if under 21.

Fewer teens working so less interaction with over 21s.

Also see above about high consequences. Any over 21 with a brain wouldn't do it, because that's another of those ways to fuck your life up that boomers and Xers could afford to do, but millennials really can't.

Technology has made law enforcement much more efficient and as a society we've pushed for greater and greater protections for children. For instance all the examples of people getting the cops called on them for letting their children walk outside unsupervised

The parties aren't a bad thing, but the article also mentions teens hang out with friends less. Good relationships are important to our health and life satisfaction, and it's a shame kids are missing out on learning the social skills that encourage good relationships.

> it's much, much harder for teens to get ahold of booze these days

Which I think is foolish. Of course total prohibition followed by total access a day later leads to abuse and binging. It’s simply stupid. I’d had decent, safe access to alcohol for a while before my twenty first rolled around, and as a consequence had no desire to drink until I die of alcohol poisoning when it was legal.

I don’t know exactly how to implement it but I think we should have a graduated system, like let 17 year olds buy 3.2 beer, and work it’s way up from there. Let kids get their sea legs before throwing them into the deep end.

My parents were very liberal regarding alcohol; I'd request, they'd see how much I'd requested recently (wasn't ever much, spent too much money on video-games to afford alcoholism) they'd pick it up for me. In fact my Dad educated me a lot on whiskeys, what to look for, what to avoid, etc.

I never felt alcohol was stigmatized in my house, and so when I turned 21, I did have a pretty big party with other drinking aged friends and actually bought drinks myself at restaurants, but aside of that, not much changed. I still drink socially, but I've never felt even the slightest urge to overdo it (and in fact, only get stumble drunk at home with friends).

Umm, 25 here. All my friends are in the same age-group (21-29) and every other weekend we party like crazy. Sure, it's no longer the drink-until-you-puke type of party that we had when we were 18 (yes, in Europe you don't need be 21 to buy alcohol, 18 will suffice). It might be due to the fact that I also live in Barcelona, which is known for its parties.

As far as how I was raised - umm, mom gave me a beer to try when I was 16, I spit it out because it tasted awfully (I to this day don't drink beer, do not understand the appeal), but when I got 18 I bought some cuba libre and realized that not all alcohol tastes bad. I've never had exactly strict parenting, more-so "learn through your own mistakes" with guidance provided by my parents. I think I turned out alright.

> All my friends are in the same age-group (21-29)

Your friend group is millennials. This article is about Gen Z, a decade younger than most millennials.

At a decade younger, you're talking a range of 11-19. At the lower end, hopefully not partying much. At 19, probably very similar to the 21 year old crowd.

I wonder how much the pervasiveness of dating apps has to do with this as well. One of the bigger social motivators for my generation growing up was "are members of the opposite sex gonna be there?". Nowadays a lot of people meet on dating apps, _then_ choose to potentially socialize with each other and go out, whereas before you'd have to go out and be social to stand a chance of finding someone to date. Now you actually _can_ sit at home on your couch all day and still meet girls/guys.

I think there's definitely some of this, and it's more pronounced in smaller cities. I used to live in a big city and it was easy to meet people in bars. Now I live in much smaller city and I have a much harder time meeting people in bars, so I use dating apps more.

As someone who's used a lot of dating apps:

It's an awful way to meet new people, especially potential partners. You (being the average male, since this is my experience) are competing to have a coffee date against a ridiculous number of above average males with someone who you've never met, who knows none of your friends and likely has very little in common with you. If you get their attention (which is a very hard thing to do) you might get one or two reply messages before you're forgotten about. If you manage to get a date it's unlikely to be someone who has all that much in common with you, it's likely to be someone looking for sex rather than an actual relationship, and they're unlikely to go on a second date with you anyway.

Honestly I haven't had a lot of luck dating in person or on line but at least I've made a lot of friends from doing stuff IRL, while dating apps leave you with absolutely nothing.

I have a theory that introversion and extraversion don't really exist as personality traits, and that we build up preferences out of existing culture about how much social interaction we want in our daily lives.

If the culture changes, then so will our preferences.

I can easily imagine a world in which I'm gregarious and fun all the time. Making that world happen on the other hand...

> I can easily imagine a world in which I'm gregarious and fun all the time

Must be an overactive imagination.

Think "8 year old boy in the 1800s." Castles, dragons, kings, jousting. My mind just doesn't know how to quit.

I'd recommend searching for "Introversion and extroversion brain differences" and similar topics in your favorite search engine. There's evidence that there are physical differences in the brain.

Hopefully somebody with a background in medicine or neuroscience can provide a more comprehensive answer.

And if someone has neuroscience background, maybe they can tell us if that difference is present from birth or if these changes to the brain are environmental based on our social experiences.

Having seen how much more sociable the Spanish are compared to the English I'm inclined to agree there is a significant cultural component here. This could be just genetic, but I believe it isn't. A very quick search suggests this is something that academia is considering and has not answered definitively.

Almost certainly purely cultural - look at the huge difference in reputations between how friendly places like Glasgow and Edinburgh are even though they are actually ~75km apart.

My experience has been that people sort themselves into different cities according to their preferences, so there could very well be a genetic component as well.

Having seen how much more sociable the Spanish are compared to the English

I can atest that there are many Spanish introverts. In a very open society you must make an extra effort to fit, but that doesn't change such a traits. My father used to push me very hard to go out and meet people. Annoying at the time, but I'm happy he did.

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

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

I consider myself a skeptic in the sense that I won't believe that any part of my personality is _permanent_ unless proven irrefutably.

Extraversion/Introversion is one of the big five personality traits and is ~50% heritable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#He...

That's not to say introversion/extraversion wouldn't manifest differently in different contexts, but the trait does exist (as much as any personality trait does) and appears to have a large genetic component to it.

Isn't "~50% heritable" a different way of stating that the results are indistinguishable from a coin flip? That doesn't sound too hereditary.

No, because it's not a binary choice. There are degrees to which people are open to new experiences or extraverted.

No:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability

I'd rather interpret it as "50% are fixed (nature) and the other 50% are a coin flip (nurture).

No? Lets say we intro-/extroversion is either heritable (with prob .5) or random(with prob .5). If both of your parents are introverted you have a 50% chance of inheriting the introversion of your parents or a 50% chance at a coinflip, which gives us 75% for introversion and 25% for extraversion.

I took it to mean a covariance of 0.5.

Heritable doesn't necessarily imply genetic. Culture is heritable. Traits can propagate through generations memetically.

"Heritable" definitely means genetic when used in a technical rather than a casual sense, though. Studies control for environment by looking at, for example, identical twins adopted by different families.

Heritability refers to trait variation due to genetic variation within a population.

This is different than the amount genetics actually contributes to a trait.

While you are controlling for environmental factors in heritability studies you are still referring to a specific population. It can be the case that two identical genotypes across two different populations show two different phenotypes.

In Susan Cain's book about introversion "The Quiet Revolution", she speculated that introversion could become a cultural norm, pointing towards Asian nations as an example.

If I were a teenager today, I don't know that I'd be going out to the gravel pits or up to camp and raging like we used to, and that was not so long ago. Social media is wildly more omnipresent than it was then; when we were sitting around bonfires and drinking bud lights, most people didn't even have cameras in their cell phones. When you've got that kind of evidence spread all over Instagram and SnapChat and Facebook, with little ability to control its privacy, it changes the amount of risk involved in those activities. Unless the po-pos actually paid a visit to the shindig, or you stumbled in home the next morning stove up and reeking of beer, it was pretty easy to get away with things back then.

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

I was on the millennial bubble (1999) and I was a total jock in HS. I was so fearful of getting kicked off my teams, I never partied or drank beer, I was a total straight edge.

Fast forward into college and at the beginning of my Freshman year I still wasn't partying because I didn't want to flunk out of college. I was so into my classes and doing well, I just didn't have time. By the middle of Freshman year, my soccer teammates basically kidnapped me and took me to my first real party where I drank, got loaded and flirted with all the girls. It was really an eye opening experience for me to learn how to be in social situations with members of the opposite sex, as well as socialize with other students my age.

With less and less people of the current generation skipping college, I can easily see a huge reduction in partying and drinking overall. Add in the financial burden of being on your own and how much decent beer or alcohol costs and it just becomes out of reach due to financial circumstances.

Not surprised at all by the conclusions in the article.

Our society has institutionalized child abuse by preventing them from doing things on their own until post-university adulthood.

I understand it to a degree. I've personally never liked partying; hated the music and the culture around alcohol and only did it in order to get girls.

There are more efficient ways today.

I think you're on to something. That was the only point of going out for me too. Occasionally, I'd just want to get hammered and goof off with my friends, but we could do that at home. Most of the time, it was to chase girls.

Didn't realize it until this comment, but you're right. Tinder really made hooking up a lot more efficient, and finding mates was the only reason I had to go out after I was ~23.

Apparently the use of tinder in the NBA is actually making a big impact on away teams' sleep schedules. http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinder...

Nostalgia for parties that "wretched parents house" says more about older people and their lack of empathy then something bad about youngsters.

Am I only one who did not grew with cell phones and still did not wretched anybodies house? I would not invite kids likely to wretch our house home.

I disagree with their conclusion. Yes, teens are certainly partying less. But they're also increasingly unwilling to get driver's licenses or jobs as well. Basically, the overly controlling atmosphere of schooling and helicopter parenting has worked - it has broken them. They are successfully being prevented from experiencing the natural maturation process of growing independence. We can only hope that the neurological development which supports independence and the ability to form and maintain complex human relationships is not like other aspects of neurological development which is impossible to compensate for if the critical period of development is missed.

I can personally assure everyone that plenty of people are still partying and have no problem with social interaction. This is an article that's practically targeted towards the hacker news audience of older introverted people who feel like they don't understand younger generations. One difference that might be real is people might be a little more responsible, because our education system is better and parents are more careful and have more support. But plenty of people still love going out, even when they can't legally drink.

Totally anecdotal, but I'm a 17 year old in the Bay Area, and teens are partying more than they were when my older siblings (early and late 20's) grew up in the same area.

My point is that my experience isn't true for all, and I can't prove that it isn't true for the majority. This article is the same way - not enough statistical evidence to support it.

Like yes, teens get together with friends less often on a day-to-day basis. But what teens party on a day to day basis?

While I'm slightly too old to have experienced what the article is describing, the trend is there and I believe technology plays an undenyable role (followed by parenting). I have many siblings but notably a brother who's in his first year high school. I also just attended a wedding and got to meet the high school brother of the groom.

I was talking to my brother on NYE. He was lamenting that he could not find anyone to hang out with on NYE for a party. We asked why he didn't text people and get something together, "that's not how it works, people communicate with snapchat, and I'm not allowed to have that, not that I want it.. it's just people posting weed and coke stories". He was obviously a little moody but still unable to find any social gathering (even a parent hosted on) on NYE of all nights.

The brother of the groom: nice kid but wholly uninterested in anything other than maintaining his snapchat streaks. First he came to me for data. A few days later his phone was dead and he wanted to install snapchat on my phone to continue the streaks. It's psychologically addicting. And it made me realize how much people are depending on fabricated social experiences on their phones instead of real social interactions.

One thing is common: snapchat. People don't hang out anymore, they have streaks. If they do hang out it's over pot or coke, no one is even that interested in drinking these days. Oh no tech is ruining everything! Well, no. But something is happening. It's not snapchat's fault, either (unless they deliberately exploit addicting behaviors to increase engagement and retention). I think parents are largely to blame. It's easy to let your 14yr old become consumed in their phone because that means more internet time and less driving around for you. My parents are very wary of this and it's largely why they waited as long as they could before giving my younger brothers a phone and why they are reluctant to let them create an entirely digital social life.

My generation, we discovered the internet before our parents knew what it was. I administered networks at 15. I built websites at 14. I was a moderator of large forums at 13. My dad gave me his old laptop when I was 12--bobs celebs era. And I think I've turned out pretty decent.

So it leaves me all really torn. Do we embrace technology or shun it? My main fear isn't necessarily the tech itself, but the dependence on it. I fear the iGen isn't learning how to use computers as tools and simply becoming consumers of all the experiences we create with them. And at the same time I hate some of those things we've created like SC and FB for literally taking the human out of humanity--despite having grown quite accustomed to virtual interactions growing up.

So I guess the real question is whether it's a problem that people aren't socializing anymore, or at least doing it differently. And if so what will we do about it? Maybe AR to the rescue...

> unless they deliberately exploit addicting behaviors to increase engagement and retention

I can assure that this is something on the forefront of any consumer-oriented service. This stuff is tracked, tweaked, reported on, KPIs are built around it and used as important ways of measuring the health of the company.

See Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products[1] which describes some of this process.

> Do we embrace technology or shun it? My main fear isn't necessarily the tech itself, but the dependence on it. I fear the iGen isn't learning how to use computers as tools and simply becoming consumers of all the experiences we create with them.

YES. I'm in the same boat as you and I think the key difference is that while we created things and explored the tech world much like a giant box of LEGOs, now it's all about giving into the latest ready-made shiny expericence that is heavily marketed to us. But I don't think it has to be so. I remain hopeful that we can train our kids to only use tech on the condition that something useful or truly creative arises out of it, not just passively consuming what's offered. Yet I realize this is going to be an uphill battle...

[1] https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked

The weird thing for me is that instead of partying people are watching Netflix videos of fictional people partying. Which makes those people fictional indeed. Are we going to eventually have movies about watching movies, about playing video games, and so on?

> Are we going to eventually have movies about watching movies

MST3K and it's descendants already exist.

> about playing video games,

Again, it's been done.

>MST3K

Thanks. Must check that out.

What I ought to have said: we've have had movies where movies or video games are part of the adventure e.g. Wargames (1983).

But an adventure takes place against a background of people living ordinary lives, which used to consist mainly of communal office work, socialising, chatting, families at the breakfast table and whatnot. Whereas now ordinary lives consist more and more of digital interaction. So the background will have to change too.

Mostly? I suspect it's the fact that they always have something more interesting to do than attempt to interact with another human which, let's face it, generally has a low probability of being interesting.

The Atlantic did a long-form article about this, if anyone is interested in further reading (with survey results!): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the...

I remember me and a friend(same age as me) went to a concert with my brother and his friend(same age as him). We offered them drinks and things, and they declined. After the concert, I was in a state of paranoia and my friend was puking in the toilet. My brother and his friend were just sitting quietly in a separate room, chilling, watching netflix on their own computers.

It was odd.

Bah, I was a nerd/loser and never got invited to parties as a teenager (in the 90s) anyway.

Actually, I still don't get invited to parties...

Dang, way to rub it in, downvoters.

I'm sorry for the situation you describe. For what it's worth, the downvotes (I did not downvote you) are due to HN's insistence on comments that are productive/on topic.

It was mostly an attempt at self-deprecating humor, which admittedly wasn't particularly productive and was only marginally on-topic.

One thing I haven’t seen in the comments is the pressure and expectation that you are supposed to be an excellent student and get into a good school and/or get scholarships. The pressure and work pushed onto kids from a young age is staggering.

I graduated HS in 2006. I feel like I was on the early-ish side of “must get very good grades, have multiple extra curriculars, and get into a good school.” I had 4-6 hours of homework a night after sitting in school all day and having a 2-2.5 hour sports practice or a game (which was even more of a time commitment). I was often up until midnight or later and waking up at 6:15-6:30 on weekdays. Weekends were used for more practices and more homework. Even when classmates would party, it would be exceedingly rare. I would often only hang out with friends 3-5 times a month for no more than 2-3 hours. I simply didn’t have the time.

I don’t buy that the homework time is the same. I think the amount of homework that kids get is absolutely insane. When I would (rarely) miss school becaus I was sick, I realized how little I actually missed during the day; I was basically fine if I got my homework done.

If a boss told me in order to get a promotion (college) to a midlevel manager position I would have to work for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, spend 2-3 hours 6 days a week for a mandatory but not mandatory activity (sports, band, plays, etc) to make my resume look better, spend another 4-6 hours after work and activities preparing for the next day, and and finally spend another 10-16 hours on the weekend learning more about my job I would be job hunting before the door closed behind me. Oh, and those mandatory activities? They cannot really be minimum wage jobs. They don’t seem to do a whole lot to impress the colleges.

All told, to get into a decent state shool you are looking at ~82 hours a week! Why is that at all acceptable? That is two 40 hour work weeks!

We are also at the point where kids have zero room for screwups. I have a family friend who is ~10 years younger than me. They had a C+/B- average freshman year. Became B+/A- into sophomore and junior year. They didn’t get into Pitt or PSU main campus (those are the in state schools) despite having solid extra cuticular activities for all the years. Essentially, an average semester at the start of their HS career sunk them getting into the main campus of the big state schools. 20-25 years ago, they are accepted to Pitt/PSU main campus without a second thought.

So, between the absurd amount of work/time it takes to get into a decent school and the utter lack of room to be anything but the best, no wonder teens aren’t doing anything with the very limited free time they have.

IMO, teens would be much better off with less homework, less demand on what it takes to get into a decent school, more time to work jobs, and more opportunity to be the odd kid/adult hybrids they are.

I think you're closer to our root issues than most of the comments, but there are still links further down the causal chain from here.

College admission is hyper-important and hyper-competitive today because life is hyper-competitive. Stagnant wages and a steadily increasing cost of existing are destroying leisure and stability in all age groups, not just the teenagers.

It honestly terrifies me. I'm extraordinarily lucky in almost every sense, so personally I'll likely be able to live a good life no matter what. But I feel like the systems that undergird every part of our society are getting more and more fragile. Huge groups of Americans are one small misfortune from ruin, and that's choking everything from entrepreneurial risk-taking to teenage partying and other pure leisure activities that used to shape our culture.

Does the same hold true in Europe?

I worked in a company with a lot of 18-25 year olds recently.Based in Barcelona but a very international mix of people. They seemed to do a lot of drinking and a lot of social media (we had a work trip to Rome one weekend and they looked nervous when they didn't have wifi or their phone was out of charge).

As it was a very international crowd out of their home countries and most working in sales maybe it captured a fairly extroverted sample of the age group.

I'm in Berlin, and in my 30s. I'm partying more now than I ever did as a teenager or in my 20s.

This city has a somewhat unique club culture with a bend towards left-wing politics and art (plus electronic music and psychedelics). It's gotten so big that the local government has started to consider the scene economically important, and works to protect the venues from the threats of gentrification.

Festivals (in all of Europe) also seem to be growing every year. Plus there are of course house parties–I don't go as often, but most students I know do every weekend.

Should we call this generation the "Solarians"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria

Is it just me or was this article very thin on sources of information and in general? It ended very abruptly and was not that convincing.

Not good. Better to get all the partying done in high school so one can buckle down in college.

Yea... the moment the author used iGen they lost all credibility.

Frankly this is totally case by case. I’m 22 and have been partying hard since 15. Simultaneous to that my career hasn’t been a distraction or a replacement. It would make sense that the support on a developer driven channel like Hacker News would sway the kids who hang inside more. I promise you HN, kids are partying hard.

It's about population trends, not individuals.

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