Joseph Szabo’s pictures of American adolescents
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> Retrospective aging is the perceptual illusion where people from past decades look significantly older in old photographs and videos than people of the same age do today
Vsauce did an interesting video about this a while back[1].
High school was a really awkward period for me that was much more stressful than enjoyable. The idea that I could choose to never return to anything like that and have a completely different rest of my life was exhilarating to contemplate.
It turned out to be true. College was much better for me than high school; finishing college and becoming an adult was better than being in school at all. Everyone has different experiences but I doubt mine is all that rare, I think a lot of people have kind of a miserable time in high school before going on to figure out a life they enjoy. This pop culture idolization of the period does seem over the top to me as well.
Like someone else in the thread said, they might have been miserable, but they had potential, options, future ambiguity. After a certain point, those narrow and solidify. A miserable past where the future wasn't set feels more glamorous than a miserable present railroaded into a miserable future.
College was a great experience too, and I made some great friends, but I really focused on graduating in engineering so I slowly became the party-pooper, and in grad school my wife and I moved in together, got married, so it was a completely different life experience. Now my focus is on work and getting my 3 kids into good colleges.
I sometimes dream about being in high school again, or taking my kids back with me to see what life was like pre-cell phones. I wouldn't say that high school was the best part of my life, but it is a chapter I reminisce about and wish I could revisit occasionally.
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?" - Stephen King, Stand By Me
My high school and early college years were pretty rough (depression, suicidal, some substance abuse (couldn't access anything super serious)), but ho boy do I miss having time to casually build a compiler over a week of school holidays, spending all my afternoons fiddling with weird little coding things, and having zero concerns about any of it being fit for purpose or even useful and basicaly never feeling tired.
Being an adult is great but every year brings more accumulated responsibilities and that part kinda sucks. The days where I can get sucked into something interesting and forget time exists are becoming fewer and fewer. And the space of things that feel new and interesting diminishes surprisingly quickly too. The novelty wears off the more things you learn about
Would it be accurate to say that the modern concept of adolescence is an American invention?
I don't think US culture is significantly different on this point from that of the rest of the core Anglosphere. So, I doubt "no country as much as America" is true.
In some ways Australia is more US-influenced than the UK is though
It also wouldn’t surprise me if one’s experiences of the topic depend on factors such as which generation you belong to, your subculture, etc
If you want to see a realistic depiction of 1970s teens see the movie "Over The Edge". The plot is absurd, but it captured the way the teens looked and acted.
Interestingly, at the time kids carried oversized combs in their pockets (including the boys). The movie is the only one I've seen where the kids carried those combs.
I'm wondering if young people are really less hedonistic now, or if the types of hedonistic activies people engage in have just changed? Would you consider doomscrolling to be a form of hedonism, for example?
EDIT: I actually don't really know what Huarache1 is really talking about. I'm an elder millennial (Xenial, really) and we were plenty hedonistic, just a little safer about it, so it could be the case of younger people relegating anyone they deem old to be a "boomer." I think Millennials have a lot of blame on their shoulders for being so willing to make social media such a huge part of our lives.
why are you blaming the kids who had their brains destroyed via algorithmic social media created by the generations above them? how did the kids ever stand a chance when they were given something stronger than drugs at an age before personality coalescing?
> you are blaming the kids who had their brains destroyed by your generation?
I'm curious as to what part of my post makes you think I'm blaming kids (today) when I explicitly said it's my generation that has a lot of blame. I thought I was pretty clear on that, going as far as to say I think generations ragging on each other is bullshit.
Non-tech people of my generation were also victims to a degree, though at the same time there were a lot, and I mean a LOT of us who HATED social media and avoided it for as long as they could. Unfortunately, I can't count myself as one of them.
You're also making the assumption that I'm sitting passively doing nothing about it. I don't do MUCH, but I have been removing a lot of tech from my life, and I talk about it with people, including younger people. I ditched my smartphone eight months ago, I give my money to as few big tech companies as possible (this includes all the "AI" companies), I don't use anything by Google other than YouTube, as well as some artist ventures. I know it's not much, but I'm a nobody. If you have any other ideas how I can do more, I'm open to listening.
Anyway, your experience at the DJ event is exactly what my Gen X'er friend was describing to me the other day (then I read about it online). She was at a work event and said the "older" folks were all dancing while the younger ones were standing around looking at their phones.
Oh, also my comment around "I hope things get better" is that I've heard that a lot of younger people are indeed ditching their phones and social media, but none that I know (and being 45 without children, I don't exactly interact very often with anyone younger than ~30).
EDIT: I think I got it, is it that I said "I think Millennials have a lot of blame on their shoulders" which makes I sound like I was blaming Gen Z and below? Really my intent there. That is the phenomena of assuming anyone successful and obviously adult is older than me and therefore, not part of my generation. In my mind, Zuck is like 10 years older than me when in reality he's three years younger.
I said:
> I'm an elder millennial (Xenial, really)
I’m a millennial. I could have left it at “elder millennial” I suppose. “Xenial” is a micro-generation, which is a searchable term.
> if generations raging on each other is bullshit then im not sure why generations were brought up at all
Because the original user, Huarache1, that you were responding to that prompted my response brought them up.
> u could come up with some plans too if u wanted ...
At this point it seems you have decided you just don’t like me and are looking for reasons to continue not to like me. That’s fine, you are a stranger on the internet, though odd because we’re fighting the same fight. And for the record, I really like your anger.
Also for the record, I told you what I’m currently doing, never insinuated that I had ever stopped thinking of things to do, and asked if you had any ideas yourself which you threw back in my face (in two different ways at that), so this is a pretty futile conversation.
A truly sincere good luck to you, though!
In any event, peace!
Uh, it was heavily marketed towards us, too. And it was a godsend to those of us stuck at home in suburban hell, around the time when retailers and fast food joints stopped hiring teenagers and cars were becoming more expensive and harder to work on without a bunch of expensive tools.
Absolutely it was. It was also quite different in the beginning, though. Many people saw facebook as a photo-sharing site and a way to exchange stupid, public-facing messages. Remember a year or so after the news feed introduced and fb messaging was just becoming a thing (no dedicated app yet) and people started freaking out that their "private" messages were now public when really it was just stuff they had written on each others "walls" that in everyone's minds (with not fault to them) was private to their friend group?
> And it was a godsend to those of us stuck at home in suburban hell,
Very fair so ya, my life-long city-boyness is showing.
There is this tremendous realization, for the few of us capable of not scrolling endlessly, of what we lost. I believe this is what's causing the immense political upheaval and anger between men and women. The System isn't working, and it's gotten so bad that I think trying to do anything is genuinely better than what it is now.
Yes, anyone can be recorded, which then dictates social norms for many who want to remain silent. This forces us to never be too open about our interests, and the few which are open about them, often are only doing what is acceptable within a subculture. And even then, it's likely to be laughed off by people not from those subcultures.
Now, because we are poorer, we mostly gamble what our meager pay gives us, on prediction markets and Gacha games. Some poor fellows even pay for steamers, or for Onlyfans girls and "believe the Sex Worker was into them" so to speak.
It's lonely, nobody wants to speak out publicly about their interests, those that do, often do so out of anger and are jeered off.
So, no wonder our mental health issues are terrible compared to the past. We're not even facing people most of the time.
There are pros and cons to both. Both provide outlets for creativity and socialization. But I've lost several childhood friends to drug overdoses, and spending too much time on the phone can lead to withdrawal and depression.
I feel like you are asking me pick one or the other as the superior pastime, but I would choose neither. IMO kids are better off playing sports, playing in a band (without the drugs), drama club, etc. Those are structured activities - but given enough time and space people will start to form relationships too.
I imagine a lonely young adult scrolling away, then I imagine woodstock. not many parallels outside of the species involved ..
But as a result, the sexual revolution brought about a great "romance famine", wherein the modern day has everything to favor different people to stay separate. The specific reasons of which vary between the sexes, but point is that both have more to gain by staying single. Therefore there is significantly less sex taking place in my generation.
Not only that, but screen addiction, political polarization, mass inequality, the prices of everything keeps getting much higher. Our Dollars are also worth much less than that of the Boomer era. This means we have to work much more for less pay, and less value for each Dollar.
The Hedonism of our times is more solitary, more lonely, arguably more self-destructive, but that's because we feel as though we have little to lose.
This comes into spending more on food, more expensive tea and coffee (since Alcohol is still more expensive than that). Gambling, gacha games, prediction markets. Pornography, chatbots, social media, anything to kill the emotional apathy. As for drugs, that's just Xanax, anti-anxiety medications that are abused, as well as weed and opiates to "slow" down the world since it goes by so fast. Vapes, Codeine (Purple Drank), carts, etc.
All of these forms of Hedonism are inherently very insular, and lonely, rather than going clubbing, Woodstock, going for Joyrides with friends, or even having sex.
Now you have to spend 4 years studying and go into debt to have a chance at that life. But aside from having a cash flow problem, you can't get caught doing anything a college admissions counselor or job recruiter doesn't like or the plan will fall apart. So don't break any laws, get filmed doing anything unsavory (and everyone has a recording device in their pocket), and expect to have gray hair before you get your feet under you financially--if that day ever comes.
Now regardless of who you blame for this economy (though I suggest you look at the age of the people in charge), it's striking how the only decent social safety nets in the US are for retirees. Baby boomers can get government healthcare, social security, along with more benefits/tax breaks at the state and local level. The young have to pay for their own educations, pay for their own healthcare, and then get taxed to pay for the older generations too.
One generation hollowed out the economy, voted to give benefits to themselves while cutting them for everyone else, and ran up debt at every level of government in the process. Now no one else can afford to live the life they did.
Participation was lower in the 70s (60%), due to most Women not entering the workforce. But ours includes most women, so your point is genuinely incomparable.
No, the kids aren't "all right". I'm not blaming you for this, just pointing out that yes, we have it much, much worse, not even taking into account just how lonely, sick, and poorer we are, per salary, per dollar, and our lack of homeownership (that's an entirely different set of data I'm not posting here).
Also, remind me how many of y'all were drafted to go fight in Nam?
Getting drafted is terrible, but at least you had a nation worth fighting for, even in a pointless war. (Not mentioning how many drafted were poor, non-college educated people, of which even if we are poorer, much more of us go to college for worse wages and outcomes)
The only reason we aren't drafted, is because we, by every metric, are starting worse off health-wise compared to you.
Also, the threat of nuclear war never went away, we just stopped caring about it.
Again, I'm not blaming you specifically.
The first item on your new list is absurd. The 70s are the decade that coined the term stagflation. To be nostalgic for the 70s because of the value of the dollar is wild.
People today are more closed, I think they’d be less likely to do that, even as they get into middle age and past the insecurities of youth.
Sex/drugs/rock-n-roll probably got a segment of the population out of its shell that otherwise wouldn’t.
B&W is also standard for street and art photography.
You're gonna argue this _now_?
"The past is stupid"
Somehow this needs to be about poor constrained do-it-yourself professionals?
You can process and print B&W yourself. Color needs to go to a lab.
This has all to do with a feel, and It could be that it was mostly shot in color and converted to B&W. Or, the wonderful dynamic range of B&W could be the reason. That's fine, but it has nothing to do with lack of choice.
So if you were an artist and interested in building and maintaining a permanent portfolio, B&W was pretty much your only option.
These people don't look ancient to me. They look like you could reach out and touch them, converse with them, share the story of their lives.
Shooting in b&w was common, because it was much cheaper. But of course, he could've chosen it or aesthetic reasons.