Ask HN: What skills should a 13 year old be learning right now?
What the most important skills a 13 year old should be working on right now?
One of the things that I really think more people should teach their kids is how to look back at history of science, politics, or economics and evaluate how we came to the point where we are today. That change takes time, but someone have to have the guts to start. All radical ideas were unpopular at first.
Most of these new generations are soft and spoiled, yes I am talking about my peers and partly myself, Hardwork is an incredible skill that everyone have to acquire by himself.
PS: you can't teach them everything, sometimes you just gotta prepare the way
I'd also add try to really get good at math regardless of what you do in life. I think Math ability is one of the most useful skills to have in this day and age. Check out artofproblemsolving.com and get involved in the community.
In the meantime, enjoy life the way one prefers.
I'm not being sarcastic. There's no particular point in trying to pick up particular skills. The specifics you pick aren't going to be marketable no matter what; what matters is the general skills you pick up and how quickly you can leverage them to learn later.
I'd recommend avoiding hyperspecialization; it's kinda easy for a 13-year-old to become something like a master expert with RPG Maker or something, but unless that's your end goal, that can kinda be a bit of a trap. (You end up with an understanding of computing too bent around local considerations and get too much time into learning hacks around them, and mistaking them for fundamentals. When Dijkstra was complaining about BASIC [1] this is the sort of thing he meant. If you spent too much time learning how to deal with the limitations of 1970s/1980s BASIC you came away with some really bent ideas of how to do good programming.)
Oh, and try to avoid putting any sort of dynamic website up on the internet if you can avoid it. Web security has gotten quite hard. If you want to build a website I recommend static site generators; you learn a lot of good stuff applicable to web development, but security is a near non-issue.
(And for the love of all you consider holy, stay away from cryptocurrency.)
[1]: https://programmingisterrible.com/post/40132515169/dijkstra-...
* Evaluate the money/time tradeoffs in your immediate environment
* Know when someone is trying to help you, is just living their life, or is actively trying to harm you
* Say no to anybody
* Make decisions (lots of decisions on things of varying consequences), and then actively look back and evaluate them, and being OK with them being wrong in retrospect
Right now or at any other time 13 year olds need to start learning how to become adults, because they are starting to look like adults in enough ways that they will progressively be less and less protected by the people around them. This takes a decade or so for most people, but it's mostly okay. Some things take time.
How? Writing letters.
Whom? That's up to you? Someone well established in their field even near retirement age. No less than 25 years of experience in their field.
When? Now.
Whether that's fixing cars or writing code, if they enjoy it and can do it long term, they'll probably be successful.
It's just that writing code is usually lest dangerous than saws and welders and brake dust, so, choose wisely.
Not all the time, of course. But solo reading, solo building-stuff, and solo walking/cycling are my fondest childhood memories and on the whole I think they've stood me in pretty good stead. It's worth making some space and time for solitude.
- (foreign) language[s]
- time management
- self discipline ( some martial art is great for this )
- financial education