I think it's social media, that's what's really changed: Every single teenager is now comparing themselves against every other kid in the world instead of just their local peers (and maybe a few grainy MTV stars over 525 scan lines). And of course the "popular" ones they're comparing to are the most successful, most good-looking, most privileged i.e. the most "perfect" ones (because that's how they got to be the most popular). It's a terrible yardstick for anyone to measure themselves against, let along impressionable young minds.

Reality for kids seems so much more competitive and ruthless in every way. And there are so few resources available to them to help them deal with it.

At the same time opportunities are shrinking and pressure to perform is increasing. It's not enough to be adequate, you have to be outstanding in looks, talent, ability, work ethic, party ethic, lifestyle, income, and education.

But you can't be. Because you're not competing with a small group of relative peers, you're competing with the entire online world.

At the same time there's incoming doom in the form of climate change, Covid mismanagement, outrageous and crippling economic inequality, various wars, and now the threat of AI.

It would be strange if kids weren't getting depressed under these circumstances.

It's actually even worse than that: you're competing separately in each field, in parallel. But you only see the others in the context of that which they are good at, which is why you see them in that space in the first place.

I believe a large amount of the negative effects is that people take themselves too seriously. Every quote on social media is put on the scale and becoming a pariah is basically random. The haunting is mostly done by people with a lack of self-worth and confidence themselves.

But some values also changed for the worse in my opinion. Confidence is valued much more than humility and seen as leadership material. I don't believe it prudent to encourage people that actually do look for strong figures out of fear.

When I was a kid you went to whatever school was in your neighborhood. On the other hand, when i was a kid my parents had no idea what a good school event meant.

Dr Varshavski can project charisma but i don’t know how well that translates in one on one interactions as his patient. He also doesn’t really seem to be at the top of his field in knowledge and skill, maybe in bedside manners.

Probably the icing on the cake for me, looking like no job prospect and potential for serious consequences ranging from mass scale disinformation to extinction.

We need to get our priorities straight as a species.

She does, however, uncritically ingest way too much TikTok shit.

But parent comment abv has a point teaching is a big factor here. And teaching in the current environment has become much more complex.

There is endless over stimulation and distraction which ruins environments where learning is possible. And secondly information has exploding. Kids can easily get overwhelmed just looking at a Wikipedia article. Teachers have a very hard job keeping things on track.

All of those issues felt less existential (or at least had very clear points of no return that we managed to avoid going over the brink on), and climate change for many, maybe quite reasonably so, feels like we will be the proverbial boiling frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

It feels different because of the complexity and scale is no longer definable or predicated on a clear discrete set of objects (e.g. Nuclear powers, key banking systems, a hot war with defined participants) but is by global definition....everything.

It's abstract yet ever present (e.g. all the recent climate weirdness, and the disasters that have followed, both in terms of pure environmental impacts as well as economic and overall regional stability as byproducts thereof) and that becomes much more difficult to "manage"

This is so out of touch. You might as well be using the "It's the video games!" excuse of yore.

Teenagers and those in their 20s see what their parents were able to do. They hear what their parents bought their house for, they know about their pensions, they see that their parents could afford raising a child into their teens, they find out that college was actually affordable. They know that's now all out of reach.

Some even see their parents struggling, and know it's going to be much much worse for them.

You all really think this is about influencers?

I think you're on target about the discouraging aspects of being visibly worse off than your parents' generation, and I think that millennials have that problem as well.

The situation is likely to get worse as AI-fueled productivity increases are unlikely to improve wages either.

The movie Red Dawn was the ultimate manifestation of 80's red hysteria and triumphal American exceptionalism.

~625 scanlines (PAL)? We only had ~480 scan lines with NTSC.

My parents had a roof-mounted VHF/UHF antenna that could be electrically rotated with a dial. Looking something like this

Antenna:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

Channel Master:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WXgAAOSwGJJfoJlz/s-l640.jpg

My grandparents had an analog HBO pirate cheat box with a fixed, directional antenna. I remember watching George Carlin standup specials.

Has this specter gone away?

I remember when I realized I was making enough money that I could pay all my bills and no longer needed anything from my dad. It felt really good. For me that was the dividing line between being a child and an adult.

The problem stems from the fact that there are not enough legal immigrants to go around. If they limit themselves to legal immigrants, they would not be able to run as large an operation as they do.

Sorry, I don't get fulfillment from a job, nor do I base my personality on it. A job is a thing that I have to do to live and do some stuff I like.

That's it, nothing more. I'd never do actual work unless I had to, and I'd never work full time if I didn't have to. I'm never going to be motivated to work harder for a fancy car if I can have a reliable, efficient car. I'd like more space, but it needs not be huge or pretty (though, I'd like to cook and make art).

Making art is fulfilling. I enjoy making food - work means I eat more convenience foods. I don't need to be paid to help folks, either. I can get a sense of accomplishment by doing things that are difficult, from projects to playing games.

Productive work, in general, is fulfilling even if you don't happen to like your current "job." It is not the job itself, it is the act of taking action in order to achieve your values. If you value producing art, that is productive work even if it's not your "job" and even if it doesn't pay the bills. You are achieving some value from that. If you are truly fortunate you can find a way to monetize doing work that you would do even if it didn't pay ... but if your job is "just a means to an end", that end is clearly a value and the job is helping you achieve it. It's the achievement of the value that is rewarding.

Fundamentally, people value what they work to achieve. Things gotten without effort are not valued.

BTW, having a job does look good on a college application.

Your words, not gp. A part-time job as a teen helps you navigate and integrate into society. Part-time helps you get out of your bubble and interact with the public, who may be different to your upbringing.

It is immediately clear to me who has had a job as a teen (read: service job), and who has not in my experience. This may be a form of reverse-classism on my part, but learning to sweep a floor and take out the trash for a few months during summer is not going to KILL YOUR DREAMS which seems to be the meme. In fact, you could view it as service to your community!

While I was working 10h/w during high school, I was also making DOOM wads and learning BSP algo in my extremely ample free time.

Also note, that many skills gained in these jobs can directly translate to irl skills. For me, working at a deli taught me how to make food, be on time, measure crap, clean things, interact with people not in my generation, and more!

Maybe you don't get fulfillment, but as a teen with nothing going on it was nice to have some extra money and essentially a playground to learn new skills on someone else's time. It wasn't to live, it was to prime the pump for later in life.

I don't recall having what I would call "ample" spare time in high school. I recall being at school 8:30 to 4 every day, then a few hours of homework daily and/or exam prep for the endless exams ("don't fail" they said, "or you'll never go to university and your life is ruined forever!"). I wasn't even that social and rarely spent time at friend's houses, let alone partying or clubbing. In fact, I had so little time I didn't explore "computers" as an industry until I finally did get to university and could actually spend 6 hours a day after lectures fiddling with a laptop and this thing called "Python".

In fact probably the one thing that got me going on electronics and computers at university wasn't the lectures and assignments as much as the free time and ability to spend whole days on things, not to mention socialising freely and at length.

With the min-maxing of pre-university CVs that it seems you need to do to get into the Right Schools (TM) and then into university, I'm not sure it has gotten better since then.

In retrospect I should have told them all to do one and spent high school on what I wanted rather than another essay about WWII and the endless, endless coursework that would suck up any spare time ("I've got an hour, I'd better polish the portfolio even more"), and even if I'd gotten the dreaded lower grades and so not gotten into the same university it would probably have been better over all.

I think homework overload could be part of the problem.

When I went to highschool in the Aughts, UC tracked students rarely had homework, maybe 30 min a day, and school got out at 2:15. If you had a good job, you could get 1 or 2 hours of school credit instead.

Young family members I know now talk about several hours of work per day.

I certainly wouldn't be happy with that

I did not have a "portfolio". I had a bunch of weak programming experience from books I checked out from the library and a compiler I stole from my high school because I wanted to program so badly. (1998~, open source compilers existed but to my eyes I wanted Borland Turbo C++) Yea that's right I copied that floppy! :D Imagine a time when you had to BUY compilers!!

I wrote an entrance essay that I used for all four of my college applications about how computer games were the next huge entertainment media, replacing movies. I didn't min max anything because I didn't care / had no idea / was stupid. I was accepted at all of them, Case Western Reserve, Drexel, Rutgers, Rowan. I went to a non-ivy competitive engineering school in my area, which I'm repeatedly discovering was a very good computer science program.

I went on to a fruitful research career for 10y, and now industry.

Maybe I'm telling on myself that somehow I have incredible luck or privilege, since compared to you I sound like a failure. I am the first person to go to college in my family, and worked while I was in college as well as paid internship at a research university.

The only skill I had was doing the thing directly in front of me and keeping my eyes on the next thing. The jobs I had were nothing special: a dogsbody at a deli, delivering newspapers, Toys R Us, Staples, Dominos Pizza.

Every job taught me something different: - something can go wrong and it not be your fault - if you have time to lean you have time to clean - some jobs are just fighting entropy, and that's normal (note: this is in service of bigger goals, every time) - everyone is happy to see the pizza guy

I'm not sure how old you are, I'm ~40, so it is entirely possible we have different eras. Maybe it's possible to over optimize, also maybe I'm too old for this discussion. Anecdotes aren't data.

In short, if you've never cleaned a toilet that isn't yours, it is less likely I will trust you.

I long ago lost all interest in playing games. The problem with them is nothing is accomplished. Play pinball and get a number on the display. Play Doom and - nothing. Although I invented the Empire game, most of my pleasure in it was developing it.

Seems normal enough to me. I found a plateau in playing games, so switched to modding and making them, even as a teen. Everyone has different thresholds and can find joy wherever it suits them.

When I was a kid there was never a time when I could pay for everything. The first time that happened was an internship I got during college, and then my first job right after.

$12/hr is the absolute lowest I've heard of in the past year or two.

Employers do value experience at menial jobs, at least for their own entry level positions. Any work experience is better than none.

0. How do kids socialize without devices these days?

1a-b. Do they meet new people like them and/or unlike them?

2. Do they go outside and explore the world nearby?

3a-b. Do they get in the same or different kinds of trouble as past generations of kids?

4a-d. What are the fundamental social values they share that differ from 1-4 generations ago?

5a-c. Do they have as much curiosity, work ethic, or resiliency to setbacks?

Here's my neon fuchsia fanny-pack, old personitis for reference:

When I was a kid, I had to wake up at 5:45 am to get ready to walk 1.3 mi (2 km) to a school bus stop when there was a perfectly good school 0.25 mi away. (Supposedly, I was denied a slot due to race-integration busing but I attribute it to paranoid parents rationalizing their lack of resolve.) The bus ride was 90 minutes each way for 3 hours total, depending on traffic. It was a magnet school where there were many kids from broken homes, abuse, poverty, undocumented parents hanging on, and situations adjacent to drug gangs. The non-IEP classroom material was too slow for me and I was often bored. The turnover of teachers was about 50%/year. Many substitute teachers. There were bullies, girls who behaved in age-inappropriate manners, carved graffiti-encased desks, and mountains of scantrons and dittos (spirit duplicator). No school uniforms, but gang colors and teen pregnancy were omnipresent concerns. Hardcover textbooks were worn to where bindings had saggy wrinkles. No computers and no cell phones.

I've used your numbering system to organize answers.

2. Less than previous generations.

There's simply far less places that will let kids just hang out.

Until a certain age its likely CPS will be called and police will be involved if your kids are out exploring, and after that age said kids hanging out is deemed antisocial and undesirable... So private security or the police hassle them.

3a-b: some the same, some different. Underage drinking/smoking/fucking is down, illicit drug use is down somewhat, but smoking's been replaced by vapes, and the drugs are different - often pharmaceuticals (real or counterfeit) such as xanax, etc.

Actual antisocial behavior is way down, but perceived antisocial behavior is up. Behaviours that previously were deemed largely benign (kids hanging out) are deemed unwanted. As per answer 2.

4a-d: the kids tend to be significantly more "tolerant" than previous generations. Make of that what you will.

5a-c: yes? They are still curious as all fuck, but work ethic is a funny animal.

Most traditional avenues for teenagers to "work" (outside of academics) are being closed off due to labour rules, liability, etc.

So a lot of younger people try make money online, have some kind of hustle. This ranges across the board of legality, morality, etc. Be it flipping clothes on Depop, dubious schemes involving dropshipping or selling knockoff designer gear online, selling artwork/crafts, trying to become an influencer/streamer/whatever... There's massive pressure to try monetize any hobby.

Resilience? Its teenagers. Some are hard as nails, some are drips.

I'd like to add some nuance to this. While student performance seems to be clearly declining (at least at the college level, which I'm familiar with), I don't know how well we can distinguish the contributions of poor teaching and poor student preparedness.

I'll give a concrete example from South Korea. For several years, the English proficiency of incoming university students was so high, there was serious talk of closing English language programs as no longer needed. Within the last few years though, student ability levels have plummeted, requiring drastic dumbing-down of the curriculum at the school where I work. I know many Korean primary, secondary, and college teachers, and I don't think the decline in student achievement is due to their slacking off. It seems to be due to something going on in society outside the schools.

Whatever is happening in public schools, you'd do well to increase your child's odds by putting them into something else if you can afford it.

Private school, tutoring, homeschooling, college (dual-enrollment), etc..

most of the poor here still is relatively much better off than those from under-developed countries, plus our school provides free lunch, many programs will waive fees if you're economically disadvantaged, etc. It's not as good as those well-off families but it's really good enough for you to do fine in education.

I saw so many economically challenged kids carrying new iphones, dressed well, yet not really into learning at schools, it's certainly not just an economic problem.

Education wise, middle class in a developing or under developed country will still beat poor in a developed country even if the latter have more money than the former. Culture has a lot to do with it, a lot has to do with the latter's parents not teaching current parents the same thing that the former's were taught. Home situation is much of the problem, and you can't just throw money at the problem, unfortunately.

European countries might do a better job at this by either (a) having less poor people (immigrants) or (b) putting in more resources to ensure that these kids get more support at home and in school to make up for their disadvantage. But often, you'll find in European countries that they have the same problems with kids from disadvantaged background being behind middle class kids, they just work at solving the problem better than we do in the states.

It's a mixture of reasons, from low pay to high demands, but I think a large part is a lack of respect from students, parents and admin. Teachers have been stripped of most of their power to do anything about it. The last year I taught public school a student was verbally abusing others and threatening them in class and I couldn't get him removed. It ruined the class and scared other students, but because he had documented issues they said they couldn't do anything.

I teach in overseas private schools now, and the kids are fantastic and the pay is decent, but the job has an increasing amount of non-teaching related stuff which detracts from the what matters, the kids. Also, the syllabus for CS is so outdated, and I find myself apologizing to the kids since I need to to teach it to them for their exams. I teach around the syllabus as best I can, but you still need to get results.

TLDR: Experienced teachers leaving, lack of autonomy, curriculum suck