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Comment by testing22321 | Hacker News Reader

Do people really want to restrict 16 year olds with alcohol? 16 is nearly adult, they need to learn responsibility

This metaphor, while it seems intended to challenge the OP, kinda reinforces it. Many countries and cultures give some limited access to alcohol at a younger age, and the result is generally that they end up having fewer instances of problematic binge drinking when they come of age. A little bit of exposure instead of complete abstention helps people learn to have a healthier relationship than letting them hit 21 and dropping them into the deep end unrestricted.

Teenagers learning how to have a couple of beers with a meal would be an improvement on them turning 18/20/21 and going and getting hammered on shots

It's interesting how many conclusions are being assumed here

In many countries cultures, strict parents/laws are seen as loving and protecting. Being told "don't drink untl you're at least 20" isn't seen as "forbidden fruit" you're being denied.

What countries do you have in mind? I find it hard to believe you can tell teenagers not to do some kind of fun activity based purely on age and cause no significant feelings of forbidden fruit.

I think the evidence points the other way. Giving younger people a drink with their meal during adolescence leads to more drinking problems later in life.

As far as I know the evidence points to getting drunk younger leads to more drinking problems later in life. Drinking moderately younger leads to fewer.

I don't think so although I can't find the report I read right now.

Is that data from kids who drank without adult supervision? It's hard to tell without more context if you're proving or disproving the point that's been made, which is that maybe learning how to drink responsibly with parents could lead to better outcomes than binging with buddies at parties when there are no adults around, which is a lot more common when adult are super strict about it (I'm saying this as someone who literally never drinks and never has; I've literally not had a beer or a glass of wine in my life, so I'm about as far from an apologist as I can imagine)

IIRC its kids who drank without adult supervision or with adults who allowed them to drink excessively (e.g. people who had alcohol problems themselves).

I definitely think it is a result of learning more responsible habits from adults, with supervision of what and how much they are allowed to drink. There is a huge difference between having a glass of wine (and maybe starting with diluted wine as mine did) with a family meal and spirits with mixers with friends who themselves do not have good habits.

I think this applies to a lot of other things too: kids need to learn good habits and behaviour from adults in general. I sometimes wonder whether the worst effect on kids of phones is that they get less attention from distracted adults.

I don't think you're wrong, but I also don't think that keeping phones from kids will really make a huge impact. I have trouble imagining that the same parents who are (according to this framing) using phones as an excuse not to interact with their kids in as healthy ways wouldn't suddenly start interacting with them in healthy ways if the kids started needed more attention; they'd probably just interact with them in other unhealthy ways, which would not be possible to enumerate in order to try to legislate against.

On the other hand, I totally agree with your last point! I find it quite plausible that maybe parents having phones directly detracts from the quality of the parenting that a child receives; if we're saying these devices/apps are literally addictive, it stands to reason that a parent might get hooked to the detriment of their child, and with a modern perspective of addiction, it's not due to a character flaw as much as just a fundamental bug in our biology and psychology as humans. It would honestly make more sense to me to restrict the use of smartphones/social media for parents than children, but of course that has zero chance of happening (and there are are surely a myriad of downsides for this approach as well), so in general I'm just skeptical of this sort of thing being enforced from the top-down despite being pretty extreme in my left-wing views (and therefore not particularly adverse to government regulation in cases where I think it makes sense).

In Europe, I think it is more common tbh. Even in the UK my dad would let me try making cocktails etc. at the weekend when I was 17.

It meant when I got to university I knew how much I could drink (although as a student I was too poor to drink much anyway haha) whereas there were people drinking like half a bottle of vodka.

I don't drink any alcohol nowadays so it's not like it turned me into an alcoholic either.

Its usually in the UK in my experience to give teenagers wine, beer or cider with meals.

16 year olds can currently have them with a meal in a restaurant or pub. Until a few years ago it was 14.

> It meant when I got to university I knew how much I could drink (although as a student I was too poor to drink much anyway haha) whereas there were people drinking like half a bottle of vodka.

I gave my kids some alcoholic drinks for just that reason.

The UK law on drinking is age 6 :D

In parts of europe you can legally drink wine and beer at the age of 14-16. In many parts of europe you start drinking alcohol at around 14-15 illegally but socially acceptable to some extent. I started at that age, which is the same age adolescents start going out and dating.

16 used to be the minimum drinking age in Netherland, until they raised it to 18. It wouldn't surprise me if there were still countries where it's 16.

But it's not really a fair comparison, because alcohol has a very direct detrimental effect on brain development. Many things can have a detrimental effect, but alcohol always does. Which is probably why they raised the age to 18.

It would be nice to ease people into alcohol over a greater amount of time, but with phones you're using them constantly and "avoid it" or "only have two" are not workable solutions like they are with alcohol.

I appreciate giving another perspective, but alcohol is not a good analogue of phone. There's no need to “learn” how to use alcohol --- one can do without it. Yet, practically speaking, a phone is a necessity.

> practically speaking, a phone is a necessity.

no. it isn’t.

my apologies for sounding more blunt than im meaning to, but, im not at all sure where i would fall on the idea of banning kids from having social media powered phones, but i know they’re not a “necessity”.

I could have been clearer. A phone is practically a necessity of modern life. Sooner or later people have to use it, unlike alcohol. Whether social media is a necessity is a different question. I bet everyone gets their own dose of it, whether they like it or not.

> A phone is practically a necessity of modern life.

It isn't yet.

> Sooner or later people have to use it, unlike alcohol.

So far I've avoided having a smart phone, I've not had a mobile phone since flip phones - I went off always being contactable about that time, having had bleeding edge sat phones for decades.

I have a land line, an answering machine, travel, purchase, am part of several overlapping businesses and deliver work for clients.

eMail, cash, debit cards still get me by <shrug>

> It isn't yet.

Would you care to elaborate how you don't think a phone is not “practically necessary”?

I have never personally met someone like you. I've never known someone who personally met someone like you either. Theoretically, nothing is a necessity. That's why I wrote “practically”. Practically nobody lives like you do.

> Would you care to elaborate how you don't think a phone is not “practically necessary”?

Can you rephrase sans the cascading negatives. To restate, I have a full life in a G20 country, I don't own or use a smart phone.

> I have never personally met someone like you.

There are many people on the planet.

> Practically nobody lives like you do.

There are many people like me .. you don't met them via your smart phone.

I've had smart phones since the first Android, and my whole live revolves around my digital data (even more so when I have 2FA on everything)

But I've had plenty of moments in my life without a phone, be it the battery is dead, or I've lost/broke it. And I've survived fine.

I've had to re-engineer some parts of life, but yet I remain...

It really isn't

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