Comment by iheartpotatoes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iheartpotatoes | Hacker News Reader

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I volunteer at STEM after school program at a Northern California suburban public school in a very affluent county. Engineers from the local companies work on projects with hacker kids.

It's a pretty dreamy albeit "canned" town, I never lived in a place that nice. Lots of cul de sacs and "mini malls" and "canned fun" places that are very walkable (unlike the poorer suburbs where kids have to cross 8 lanes of traffic to meet at a Shari's).

I noticed that before I show up at 5PM (I get to leave work early two fridays a month, yay!, the kids are sitting around on their phones. And when I leave at 7pm, kids just go home with their parents. First: few of them drive. WTF?! Then the weird part: there's a frigging movieplex down the street with a bunch of restaurants and TWO parks on opposite sides of the main E/W street... and they just ... go home. WTF.

Maybe they are lying to the adults in the room, but the parents claim they go home and text or play computer games all night.

> few of them drive. WTF?!

Rad? I didn't need to drive in High School, and I still found plenty to do back in the 90s. Kids today have even more options.

> there's a frigging movieplex down the street with a bunch of restaurants and TWO parks on opposite sides of the main E/W street... and they just ... go home. WTF.

First, movie theaters are awful. Second, there's so much cool stuff to do once you get home! I can go home and play a space marine with my friends, or build castles, or ride dragons, or be the last one standing in any number of variations on king of the hill. I can jump online with my crew and be literally anything you can imagine. With tools like Roll20, I can tell stories and roleplay. I can watch Netflix with my friends online.

Restaurants are expensive. Parks are fun for a bit, but it seems pretty out of touch to say, "What The Fuck."

Is being so boring and antisocial a norm these days ? :D (Just busting your balls haha)

I think a lot of us deeply care about the future society that will cater to the people that are currently young. And it seems remarkably boring, superficial and for the lack of a better word, just devoid of anything fun.

In the end noone cares if this is a subculture (there were enough subcultures when I was in school i.e goths, metalheads etc), its more of a problem if this behaviour becomes uniform across all cultures and mainstream.

My argument is that it's not anti social. It's maybe less visibly social, but being in a group voice or video chat while playing board or video games is definitely a social activity. Or building something together - computers enable us to engage in storytelling and art in ways our ancestors could only dream of.

Yeah, sure, they aren't social in the same way you were. But you weren't social in the same ways your parents were either. Calling the younger generations antisocial because they've fully embraced technology as a core part of their identity smacks of patronism to me. Kids these days with their rock and roll, so antisocial!

So then, how does sex happen? (Or any intimacy.)

That's the bit the old people don't understand.

Board games are fine, as would be video games in the same room as the other players. But online?

Note that the same worry would apply to a youth who spent all their free time reading alone in the past.

Sex wasn't exactly supposed to be happening in past generations of teens. One of the reasons people sometimes had their first sexual experience in cars was because both sets of parents would block it at home, and they couldn't rent a hotel room.

My high school apparently got complaints from neighboring homes that students were having sex in their bushes.

So, yes, changing social lives may be an issue, but it doesn't seem like it was easy before.

It does not. That's why we have a massive drop in teenage pregnancies.

I disagree, kids have more access to sex education than ever now and tinder is a really good tool for hookups. They just know to use a condom. I remember my dad thought that if the woman was on top and you came inside her she wouldn't get pregnant because of gravity, 9 months later I showed up. Thank you catholic school for only teaching abstinence.

Online, like it did on IRC? ;)

You can be interesting and social indoors, online.

In my teenage years I played online games and had a group of online friends for years, some of which I am still in touch with regularly.

I don't understand how you get the boring bit though, partaking in outside activities does not make you interesting.

Fun for you != fun for everyone else.

"I can go home and play a space marine with my friends, or build castles, or ride dragons, or be the last one standing in any number of variations on king of the hill."

Wow. Just: wow.

I am eager to see how a generation that grew up in virtual reality deals with actual reality. So far it ain't lookin' so good.

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