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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

I love the positivity. It's true that a lot of minor improvements in products and services have added up to a relatively frictionless experience. He forgot to mention that GPS is ubiquitous and you can travel great distances with no prior planning, find great restaurants, book hotels, etc. You can also hail a Lyft or Uber with ease in most urban areas. And now, even grocery delivery is very commonplace.

Adulting in 2020 is child's play.

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One thing people tend to forget when talking about improvement in tech is the added stress social media creates for the younger generations. The pressure from outside is higher now then when we 40+ grew up and became adults. There are blogs and youtube stars showing you what you should be, there are comments to tell you that you are not good enough. And if you are female, they will tell you even worse things.

There are facebook to show you that your "friends" have a much nicer house than you, they have vacations in warm countries, they eat at expencive restaurants and their kids are wonderful geniuses and certainly don't watch TV all day or eat any sugar. And so on.

The mental stress is grinding our young down and we do see the results of it already. The modern sickness is the burnout of youth.

I don’t have a constructive comment, I just wanted to point out that your phrase _“The modern sickness is the burnout of youth.”_ is beautiful and really struck a chord.

I don't know, man. I know social media presents different stresses.

But fuck. I'm bisexual. I literally knew no one like me. I did get shunned by folks deciding I was lesbian. I was pressured into being girly, into fitting in, into simply going to church and acting like everyone else.

I've been turned down for a job because I'm female - in the 90's, long after this should be a thing. It was another female that did it.

I could have, with the internet, found a couple of folks more like me. (It still does this: My spouse and I met over the internet). The internet brings all sorts of resources (some toxic, some wonderful). I'd argue that it is us that are failing the children because we aren't teaching others how to harness this good for, well, good.

Stress is just different now. Luckily, the trend isn't "Suck it up and go on with life" for the most part now - so we actually know about these stresses.

>> Stress is just different now

I agree with you that a lot of the discrimination and pressures you faced are marginally better now in the aggregate but the fundamental change I'm seeing is the always present, ubiquitous social media pressures. Kids cannot get away from it.

When I was bullied in middle school I looked forward to getting home and especially weekends so I could escape my tormentors for a few days. That respite is gone now. Every kid 12+ is attached to a phone during their waking hours and even when they are not present their online persona is at risk of being bullied & pressured, waiting their for the next time they check updates, messages or really just glance at their screen.

I'm also not convinced we've lost the "suck it up" attitude. Perhaps for major "events" or transgressions, but a lot of this is now standard operating procedure and we completely accept it, the same as previous issues in the past. Just check the comments here on HN; this is a relatively civil group yet I've never needed a moderator to remind me of a relatively obvious code of conduct when talking with strangers or associates in real life.

I had AIM in the 90s and some behavior I experienced back then would now be considered cyber bullying. It's not unique to this era.

I also would not say that relying on being able to escape your physical tormentors on the weekends is a good solution either. Dealing with bullying has always been a challenge.

You can't even get away from it by pretending facebook or other social media don't exist. Someone will create a profile for you and set you up even worse. You have to be on all social media to protect your name. And it's not 12+, it's closer to 8+. Facebook is out though, that's where the parents hang. You don't want to be where your parents are.

We just need more unions. They are historically the only thing that actually worked to level the playing field between employee and employer.

> Adulting in 2020 is child's play.

Weirdly taking care of kids is not substantially more convenient nowadays. It's hard to compare, because most of us haven't had kids with a 25 year gap, but I do know a guy who has done just that.

Tech is a double edged sword with kids. You can throw a tablet at them to placate them for a while, but often it leads to the kid being difficult when you take it away.

You still need to sit with them to put them to sleep, nobody seems to have made an app that buys back that time. Again, tech sort of looks like it will work ("I'll put on a soothing melody from YouTube") but often it backfires somehow.

Kids misbehaving? Where's the app to fix that?

And then there's the whole education side of things, where tech promises a lot more than it delivers. The only things I find useful are Khan Academy and various times table type apps. They're just straight replacements for a person, which is great. Anything more complex, I'm very sceptical of.

Haha, yeah I wouldn't say parenting is child's play. Pretty sure that's an NP Hard problem.

Another guy here (28 year gap): While I agree with the general statement (past/today), the specific situation (children with high age differences and the same parent) is different.

I am much more relaxed then 30 years ago. Some things have settled in terms of economic circumstances, own ambitions etc. Some work against (health), but if not extreme, the positive factors outweigh the negative. Also, dealing with technology is probably more mature. We have a 10-year old boy and a 4-year old daughter without smartphone, devices are our own and are only used together with us. It causes no problems. Probably it helps to have the separation between an offline world before and an online world afterwards in one's own history, as well as the strategies to lead a life under both premises.

Working on a vibrating hot water bottle to get my toddler to self soothe.

The dream is a sleepbox. You know, close the lid and kids are asleep.

A friend trained his kids to go to sleep while he held them and danced to heavy metal music. I was shockingly effective and so far from the classic routine I really think consistency is the important factor.

I like that concept. Don't try to calm them to sleep -- expose them to a higher intensity stimulus than their own urge to cry -- sensorally overwhelmed, but comforted in safety, they fall asleep.

While it may work for some hearing damage can be permanent, both for the child and adult.

Though I suspect shushing in their ear is based on a similar phenomenon.

I do the same thing with loud house/techno/trap music. Works like a charm

>You still need to sit with them to put them to sleep, nobody seems to have made an app that buys back that time.

I don't know why anyone would want to buy back that time. I might even pay to be able to do that again.

Thanks, I was about to write that in response.

> He forgot to mention that GPS is ubiquitous

Hinted at with:

> we no longer have to worry about our car windows being smashed to steal our radios, or our GPSes

Which I took partly to mean that a Garmin gadget is not considered worth anything. Sure as hell can't fence it. Everyone's got GPS!

(But also yeah, lower crime rates.)

Or even better, GPS in our pockets with live maps

Ask me how I updated my old standalone GPS using a virtual machine + USB. Bonus points: when the update starts the USB device ID changes.

I had the same issue with a Navigon device. The trick was to set the virtualisation software to automatically attach all devices (maybe even on port X) to the VM. After that it worked flawlessly.

> Adulting in 2020 is child's play.

As a fairly new adult in 2020, :(

There’s no reason to want more difficult times. It does not make you better. It just wastes your time.

Perhaps you misunderstood; I think being an adult is a lot of work…

I’m not sure how old you are, but as a late-20s person, you grow into adulthood quite quickly. FICO scores, time and financial management, mortgages, bills, etc...all of those are (rightly) complex when you just enter into adulthood, but their difficulty quickly fades away.

Hopefully!

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