[HN Gopher] Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts
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Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts
Author : pseudolus
Score : 307 points
Date : 2024-12-17 23:44 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| Original source (4 points, 8 hours ago)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42442279
| Izkata wrote:
| > But, according to data released Tuesday, the number of eighth,
| 10th, and 12th graders who collectively abstained from the use of
| alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine hit a new high this year. Use of
| illicit drugs also fell on the whole and use of non-heroin
| narcotics (Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet) hit an all-time low.
|
| From an unexpected conversation with some younger people not long
| ago (though not this young), they may have just switched to LSD.
| fullshark wrote:
| They switched to smartphones
| smartmic wrote:
| This. And what about the psychosocial consequences, will it
| be an improvement compared to the other substances? I doubt
| it.
| prerok wrote:
| While I don't think smartphone addiction should be taken
| lightly, it's still a far cry from substance abuse.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not so sure, especially if you look at the sum
| societal impact, and not just the worst outcomes.
|
| My personal take is that the net social impact is
| positive for alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, and maybe
| some of the party drugs. For most people, they tend to be
| a social lubricant, tool for exploration, and source of
| fun.
|
| I think that smartphone use probably balances out
| negatively. I think for most people, they have a pretty
| severe negative impact on their lives, and for some, an
| extremely negative impact.
|
| The worst outcomes for drug use are probably worse than
| those for smartphones, but not by too much in my opinion.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Substance abuse is pretty much universally understood to
| be wrong (including by the addicts themselves, but they
| lack the help to get out of it).
|
| Social media usage on the other hand has been normalized
| and now humanity's social fabric is in the control of a
| few companies who are happy to rent it out to the highest
| bidder. This has obvious implications regarding
| democracy, surveillance, misinformation, etc.
|
| From a society perspective, I'll take substance/alcohol
| abuse any day because it appears to be self-regulating at
| a level that while is higher than we'd like, is much
| lower than what it takes to destabilize society and
| democracy.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > will it be an improvement compared to the other
| substances? I doubt it
|
| Smartphone addiction beats having cirrhosis.
|
| Therapy's cheaper than a liver transplant.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You don't use LSD habitually. If they switched to LSD, then
| that's very interesting.
| codr7 wrote:
| Some do, and that's fine too.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| "If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic
| drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes,
| and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye
| permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works
| on what he has seen." -- Alan Watts
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| LSD is not a drug that you _can_ develop an addiction to.
| Habit is one thing--some people take it regularly--but it
| doesn 't work very well if you do take it frequently.
|
| Which is not to say that LSD can't potentially be harmful.
| Of course it can. But it's not very analogous to the
| typically destructive drugs (alcohol, amphetamines, strong
| opiates) and it's not going to mess with your dopamine the
| way they do.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Some do, and that's fine too.
|
| And those should learn something from Syd Barret's life
|
| Could had been a millionaire rock star, women, expensive
| toys, children. He could had everything for the rest of his
| life. But he choose LSD. As a lot of people claim, LSD is a
| cool and harmless funny drug, right?.
|
| His life instead was: living in his mum house since 24 Yo,
| with his brain like a car crash, and all the time in the
| world to think on his boy room about how he managed to mess
| up his life so badly.
|
| So thanks, but no way.
| quesera wrote:
| I don't think you can speak authoritatively about Syd
| Barrett's life, or his mental health issues.
|
| Those that can, do not agree that LSD was causative.
|
| Syd was not the only person doing LSD in the 1960s, and
| if your argument boils down to "people with life-long
| major neurodivergence, who are living multiple years of
| extraordinarily stressful life, should not do huge
| amounts of psychedelic drugs" ... then OK! That's a good
| rule of thumb!
|
| But the vast majority of people are not latent
| schizophrenics. And the vast majority of drug users could
| not approach Syd's consumption in quantity or duration.
|
| So an argument from the same data is that occasional or
| even moderate use of LSD by almost every adult human, is
| perfectly safe.
|
| ...
|
| Reframed: Every adult can make their own decisions about
| their personal level of risk tolerance. Hopefully the
| decision will be an informed one. Syd Barrett can be a
| huge terrifying red flag, or a bright illuminating green
| light, depending on the decisions you've made.
|
| On one extreme of risk tolerance, you'd never leave the
| house. On the other extreme, (with some bad luck, some
| excellent luck, and a great deal of effort and
| resources!) you might approach Syd Barrett's lifestyle.
| Neither extreme is appropriate for most people.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Not in the same way as alcohol, weed or cigarettes. Not
| even close.
| jsheard wrote:
| Notably absent from those stats is nitrous oxide, which has had
| a resurgence in popularity lately.
|
| https://archive.is/wRa3Q
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Anyone that has experienced LSD would know that what you are
| saying is impossible and makes zero sense. Other than both
| being chemicals, the effects are so radically different that
| they have no interchangeable purpose. Specifically LSD cannot
| be used to escape trauma or negative emotions, if anything it
| does the opposite and makes you confront them head on, often
| terrifyingly so, and as such LSD has something like negative
| addictiveness. It's like saying someone switched from using
| staples to orange juice- it's an incoherent statement.
| Izkata wrote:
| The study makes no distinction between that and recreational
| use. "Getting drunk with friends" counted, for example.
|
| Besides if anything I'd say current generations have less
| trauma to avoid so they're more likely to use it than past
| generations.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I wonder if the new drug of choice is actually technology. In
| some ways I think that the addiction to technology has some
| similar mellowing effects as drugs. Some research indicates that
| smartphone addiction is also related to low self-esteem and
| avoidant attachment [1] and that smartphones can become an object
| of attachment [2]. The replacement of drugs by technology is not
| surprising as it significantly strengthens technological
| development especially as it is already well past the point of
| diminishing returns for improving every day life.
|
| 1.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
|
| 2.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
| eikenberry wrote:
| The article discusses all drug use, not just addictive use. I
| don't think addiction is prevalent enough to solely explain
| those numbers.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well, I think there is also an emergent theme in the research
| that there also needs to be two distinct concepts: addiction,
| and _attachment_. See [1].
|
| [1] Hertlein, Katherine M., and Markie LC Twist. "Attachment
| to technology: The missing link." Journal of Couple &
| Relationship Therapy 17.1 (2018): 2-6.
| some_furry wrote:
| Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural pathways
| as addictive substances?
|
| Because "addiction" is a very loaded term (with a specific
| clinical definition when it's not being used colloquially), and
| the sources you cited used "attachment" instead.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I think the answer here is a bit subtle and hard to explain,
| because it contradicts a lot of common assumptions about
| addiction and drugs.
|
| In short, many addictive substances create a chemical
| dependence that often has awful, even potentially fatal
| chemical withdrawal symptoms. Behavioral addictions don't
| cause this, which makes people assume they are entirely
| something different, and categorically less serious and
| damaging.
|
| This is wrong- because those withdrawal symptoms, while they
| do make it harder to quit by making going cold turkey
| difficult and sometimes impossible, they are not the
| underlying reason why these drugs are being abused in the
| first place, nor the reason they destroy peoples lives. The
| reason is that they stimulate the reward system and/or allow
| one to escape negative emotions and trauma. Behavioral
| addictions _also_ do that, and can just as easily ruin ones
| life, by completely overcoming someones mind and will, such
| that they no longer are able to live their life, and are
| unable to escape or quit with willpower, just as much so as
| with drugs that cause withdrawal. They can still completely
| ruin your life and drive you to suicide, etc.
|
| Moreover, people also often emphasize that many addictive
| substances can directly cause serious health problems, or
| even death. This is also not central to their harmfulness,
| nor always the case. In fact, for a drug to have substantial
| abuse potential it must be relatively free from serious
| adverse health effects, at least in the short term, or else
| it would become impossible to abuse- the most damaging
| substances are the ones where people can take higher doses
| for longer with less adverse effects, because this more
| strongly emphasizes its ability to be used to strongly
| stimulate the reward system and escape negative emotions and
| trauma for longer periods of time - cementing the addiction-,
| without causing a new negative experience on its own.
| Methamphetamine for example is unique among stimulants in how
| benign it is- allowing people to take massive doses over
| really long periods of time, and not face immediate health
| issues. Counter-intuitively, this is actually what makes it
| have so much abuse potential and cause so much harm, compared
| to other stimulants which quickly make you sick or feel awful
| at high doses. From this perspective, you can see that the
| fact that behavioral addictions are also able to be repeated
| in "large doses" for long periods of time without immediate
| short term health consequences can make them have a high
| potential for harm in the long term.
| card_zero wrote:
| Explain why MDMA isn't a huge addiction problem like meth
| (or all that popular any more).
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| MDMA has little addiction potential- for one it isn't
| really just an unhealthy escape from negative feelings,
| but helps people process traumatic experiences and
| negative emotions by temporarily lowering anxiety and
| fear, and may be close to being FDA approved for that
| therapeutic purpose.
|
| I have only tried it once, and it permanently eliminated
| my crippling social anxiety, by temporarily eliminating
| it, and allowing me to experience and remember what that
| was like. I felt no desire to use it again, because the
| (life changing positive) effect was permanent.
|
| Second, it seems to have rapidly diminishing effects that
| make it self limiting- if sometime takes MDMA too much or
| too frequently, it stops having the desired effect.
| hylaride wrote:
| MDMA can be addictive, though usually on people who are
| dealing various issues that, like alcohol, can mask or
| suppress "bad" feelings. It pumps up the serotonin levels
| and people can definitely get addicted to that (the same
| way shopaholics are addicted to the temporary dopamine
| hits they get when they buy something new).
|
| MDMA (and other drugs that fall under the psychedelic
| umbrella like magic mushrooms or LSD) has has shown some
| clinical success in dealing with trauma and other mental
| health issues, but only supervised and combined with
| professional help. Most people I know that have used
| MDMA/Ecstasy usually only stopped because the crash sucks
| as they didn't want to deal with it after. That's the
| main reason it was used for social gatherings like raves;
| it really helps eliminate social anxiety.
| stef25 wrote:
| Yes we know :)
|
| Every time there's talk of drugs people will just shuffle
| and repackage some random facts they know about whatever
| drug in question and preach it like it's something they
| just discovered.
| imtringued wrote:
| I'm not really sure how the behavioural addiction here is
| harming the person. You're talking about an external harm
| with the behavioural addiction being symptom treatment due
| to feeling trapped.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It ends up consuming all of a persons time and energy,
| and they stop doing everything else that is important or
| essential- maintaining their own career, friendships,
| family obligations, and health. They lose the ability to
| feel joy or engage positively in anything but the
| addiction. This causes a downward spiral of physical and
| mental health, that destroys quality of like and can in
| some cases be ultimately fatal.
| krispyfi wrote:
| Some corollaries, that might not be obvious for those not
| deeply familiar with drug policy:
|
| 1. Statements like "we can't legalize a drug until we have
| proven that it's not harmful" are nonsensical given that
| it's easier to become habituated to drugs that are less
| harmful. The standard should be, "when measured
| holistically, does legalization and regulation increase or
| decrease harm relative to banning and criminalization?"
|
| 2. Lumping habitual use and sporadic use together as
| "abuse" is counter-productive.
|
| 3. A humane and just drug policy would focus on removing
| the causes of people wanting to escape negative emotions
| rather than on removing the tools they use to escape those
| emotions.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Fair point. Some other studies use addiction too, though, and
| there is a distinction between both addiction and attachment
| and the links between them is a bit nebulous. You can check
| out the results on Google Scholar if interested.
| superkuh wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. Using the term addiction in contexts
| where it is not medically valid is very dangerous (like
| yelling "fire" in a theater) and leads to the use of violent
| force against those one falsely claims are "addicted".
|
| Audio-visual stimuli from screens and speakers has never been
| shown to be able to have the same effects as a dopaminergic
| drug which is to say, completely turning up incentive
| salience regardless of reward or lack of it. That is why
| drugs are dangerous.
|
| Technology can only be habit forming (in some contexts,
| maybe) if it continues to be rewarding in some way.
| Psychological dependence, maybe, but never addiction, and not
| even physiological dependence. Addictive drugs do not have to
| be rewarding or pleasurable. They just hijack wanting.
|
| They are not the same and definitely should not be legislated
| the same. Enjoying something that is actually fun is not the
| same as wanting something because it chemically turned on
| wanting.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| There is no reason to assume that a behavior that activates
| the reward system is categorically less harmful than a
| molecule that activates it directly. In both cases it can
| completely overcome someones will such that it destroys
| their life and they can't escape it. Both are addiction.
| You're making a distinction without a difference- a fire
| only needs to be hot enough to kill, it does not become
| "invalid" just because you can think of other types of
| fire, or hotter fires.
|
| You are using the word "medical" to emphasize your point
| incorrectly- behavioral addictions are included in the
| modern medical concept of addiction, and the idea that they
| should be considered categorically separate from substances
| is an outdated concept. The DSM-5 for example has a
| diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural
| pathways as addictive substances?
|
| Absolutely yes: the dopamine circuit.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Be careful of a possible false dichotomy; People don't need to
| have a drug.
| ndileas wrote:
| Hey, speak for yourself, buddy.
|
| More seriously, I think there's ample historical evidence
| that drugs (with a liberal definition, beer, etc) are very
| popular across various times and places.
| kube-system wrote:
| And religion:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
| ikanreed wrote:
| That very wikipedia article you links makes it clear it's
| not intended to mean religion is a "Drug" in the sense of
| being addictive, but rather a sociological pain killer. A
| tonic that limits how much people react to their own
| suffering.
| kube-system wrote:
| Absolutely. And smart phones are also not literally a
| drug. Drugs, video games, alcohol, and religion, are all
| used as a part of coping mechanisms for many, however.
| vacuity wrote:
| > a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological
| need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity
| having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects
| and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as
| anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon
| withdrawal or abstinence
|
| (Merriam-Webster, "addiction")
|
| It might be stretching it somewhat, but I think video
| games, social media, and religion can manifest a habitual
| need to indulge, negative effects from doing so, and
| negative effects from not doing so. Perhaps not in most
| people.
|
| Coping mechanisms/painkillers can naturally cause some
| people to be "in too deep" because they keep using it and
| become dependent.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Popularity doesn't necessarily imply a need.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| If you want to get technical, doesn't it? When some
| particular variety of thing is popular across all human
| cultures, doesn't this point to it addressing some deep
| desire we might put on mazlow's? What distinguishes a
| deep, innate human desire from a need?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| One way to distinguish them is the retrospective analysis
| of the outcome. What happens when someone obtains or goes
| without each category?
|
| To go deeper, I think one needs to more fully defined
| "need". Need for what? Are we talking about needs.. to
| sustain biological life? Are we talking about needs... To
| sustain happy and productive lives?
|
| If we take the second definition, there is a pretty clear
| difference between a desire and a need. Satisfaction of a
| desire does not necessarily advance that goal, and can
| very well be counter to it.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I would just argue that "happy and productive" is vastly
| too reductive. This seems like a very difficult
| definition to nail down, but those needs which are not
| required for survival would probably be defined as
| something like "those things which increase the
| flourishing of, maximize the potential of, and/or
| contribute to a valid and lasting feeling of deep
| satisfaction in the individual."
|
| From this definition, it seems like some drugs and some
| uses of drugs are most certainly not necessary while
| others seem to be contributing to a real psychological
| need. Some drugs can give people insight into the nature
| of their own mind or of their experience, or reshape
| their worldview for the better. They can allow us to
| experiment with our own consciousness, which seems to be
| something that we derive a lot of satisfaction and even
| utility from. In these cases, drugs may be fulfilling a
| need. Simultaneously we can recognize that drug use
| intended more just to anesthetize or produce blind
| pleasure is most likely not contributing to a need, as it
| was defined above.
| behnamoh wrote:
| OP didn't say that.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Who like hermits and people that follow asceticism?
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| That's fair. But I was only referring to those that tend
| towards drugs, since the entire study is about a reduction in
| drug use.
| dpndencekultur wrote:
| Indoctrination into a dependency mindset fits the "buy a
| solution" model that our societies run on. We are already
| primed for this indoctrination from the moment mother puts a
| pacifier in our mouths. Then constantly looking up at her
| approval, that constitutes the beginning of our need of
| approval from the women in our lives. We are programmed and
| primed from day 0.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| We're just missing a cigar and a dream about trains here.
| sandy_coyote wrote:
| What's the reference here? I thought Pink Floyd at first.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Quoth the AI:
|
| > According to Freud, dreaming about trains often
| symbolizes the journey of life, with the train
| representing the progression of time and the destination
| representing death, and the act of riding a train can be
| linked to unconscious sexual desires due to the sensation
| of movement and confinement, particularly when
| experiencing anxiety about missing a train or being
| trapped on one.
| mindslight wrote:
| Any exceptions for when you had train wallpaper as a kid?
| Asking for a friend.
| 9dev wrote:
| That kind of misogyny sounds like some deeply rooted trauma
| you have there, buddy.
|
| Have you ever considered that humans are simply social
| creatures, that the only thing really separating us from
| other animals is our ability to socialize and organise in
| groups?
|
| There is no programming, it's our nature.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| So if babies are ignored and raised in isolation they
| still grow up with normal social skills? I think it's
| fairly clear that socialization is learned (a term which
| I think is equivalent to programmed in this context) and
| not something as innate (or "in our nature") as
| breathing.
| 9dev wrote:
| That's a fallacy. Human babies don't grow up in
| isolation; if they do, it's in contrived experiments, and
| drawing conclusions from that is about as helpful as
| watching birds in a cage.
|
| Humans in their natural environment will interact with
| other humans socially, mirror their display of emotion,
| and have a desire for affection.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| Of course they will. But that's is programming.
| Nurturing, socializing, teaching... all of it is
| programming. I'm not placing any negative connotations on
| the word. I'm not sure why you don't view those things as
| programming?
| mindslight wrote:
| A human baby is helpless and "primed" for it - there is
| simply no other way they could be (without a drastically
| different evolutionary path). This whole thread is about
| the modern difficulties of teaching children to become
| independent in spite of that beginning and the corporate
| machine that wishes to keep us there ("commoditize your
| complements"). So uh, welcome to the conversation and try
| not to be so fatalistic.
| layer8 wrote:
| So what's your drug of choice?
| techfeathers wrote:
| I really found it interesting that in the engineered society
| of Brave New World, everyone got a drug. I guess my
| personally opinion is that I disagree with you, that in a
| world where you know about drugs, drugs are a sort of need.
| jart wrote:
| If everyone is switching from drugs to social media, then
| that's progress. Twitter and Facebook won't harm your body.
| They're also free, so your habit will never make you poor and
| desperate. This kind of revolution in improving our health
| makes me proud to work in the tech industry. The worst that can
| happen is you'll feel sad if people bully you online, but
| that's the fault of people, not the technology. We can improve
| the human condition, but we can't change human nature.
| hgh wrote:
| Perhaps? But a confounder is the strengthening or weakening
| of social ties. It's not clear that what seems to increasing
| loneliness is doing well by this next generation.
| kube-system wrote:
| Mental health is health, and poor mental health can result in
| death... death rates that we have seen climb precipitously
| among children. Trading heroin deaths for suicides isn't an
| improvement, even if the dealers feel they aren't directly
| responsible.
| dagss wrote:
| Plenty of bad side effects: Harming your brains development,
| ability to concentrate, harm the ability to find joy in non-
| screen activities, mental health and so on.
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| I'd argue that targeted advertising and unprecedentedly-
| centralized corporate control of what text, images, and video
| we see online is just as potentially harmful as
| (recreational) drug use, if not worse. And online-
| shopping/adventure-travel/other addictions facilitated by
| targeted ads and targeted content algorithms can definitely
| leave people unable to achieve goals in life.
|
| Creating a new addiction to replace the last generation's
| isn't really something to be proud of. As developers, we
| should be aiming to create ways to communicate that _aren't_
| addictive and facilitate genuine connection with others that
| includes their highs, the lows, and financial /socioeconomic
| transparency.
| rurp wrote:
| I strongly disagree with this. Social media companies are
| incredibly valuable specifically because they are effective
| at getting people to spend their money on things they
| otherwise wouldn't have.
|
| Depression, suicide, and other serious mental health
| disorders are strongly linked with social media use. Is that
| better than more kids drinking and smoking pot? I don't know,
| it's complicated. It's certainly not clearly better and might
| be significantly worse.
|
| Hand waving away these costs is putting on some seriously
| rose colored glasses.
| dpndencekultur wrote:
| They are also really valuable at building/generating
| personality models of large swaths of the population, the
| data can be said knows us better than we know ourselves.
| Since the memory of our patterns can be mined for discovery
| or narrative creation. That's why they really exist. Just
| follow the money.
| Clubber wrote:
| Drug addicts sell their children (in the worst way) for the
| next hit. It's not the same.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| And likewise child porn trade/child trafficking is a
| nagging problem on social media platforms. Stereotyping
| is rarely illuminating.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > It's not the same.
|
| I would not be so sure of that:
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/farmville-playing-mom-
| admits-sh...
| melagonster wrote:
| Hello, depending on data from the CDC, we have:
|
| >Number of alcohol-induced deaths, excluding accidents and
| homicides: 51,191 Alcohol-induced deaths, excluding
| accidents and homicides per 100,000 population: 15.4
|
| >All suicides Number of deaths: 49,476 Deaths per 100,000
| population: 14.8
|
| Apparently, not all suicides are caused by social media,
| and accidents may be more important here. I just want to
| offer some data that can be easily fetched.
| addicted wrote:
| The problem with alcohol is that it's a drug that isn't
| just legal and tolerated, it's a drug that's celebrated
| and encouraged.
| throaway2501 wrote:
| social media can definitely harm your body if you're
| constantly overstimulated and sedentary
| techfeathers wrote:
| As someone who grew up in the 90's and partied the way they
| did in the 90's If there is a switch from drugs to social
| media I find that incredibly dystopian.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Twitter and Facebook won't harm your body. They're also
| free
|
| Only if you value your time at exactly zero.
|
| > The worst that can happen is you'll feel sad if people
| bully you online, but that's the fault of people, not the
| technology.
|
| By that logic it's also your body's fault to react poorly to
| drugs, not the drugs'.
|
| Thinking of it in terms of "fault" is also not very
| productive. I'd say it's definitely a (possible) negative
| consequence of social media usage that might otherwise not
| have happened, and as such worth studying.
| d_tr wrote:
| > This kind of revolution in improving our health makes me
| proud to work in the tech industry.
|
| I can say with some amount of confidence that the number of
| people wasting their talent and life in making up bullshit
| engagement algorithms, who thought about it as a way of
| getting people away from drugs, has been exactly zero. So, it
| is definitely not something to be proud of, but maybe
| something to think of as a funny coincidence, provided that
| the premise actually holds.
|
| > The worst that can happen is ...
|
| That you'll remain or become an idiot, or suffer physically
| and mentally as a result of being inactive while consuming
| the garbage your proud tech workers shove down your head.
| achairapart wrote:
| Suddenly I remember this movie from the 90s where people
| drugged themself with some kind of minidisc. "Strange Days",
| maybe? Anyhow, I always found the plot weird, but maybe they
| actually were onto something...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The minidiscs in that case where full-sensory VR recordings
| of people's experiences.
| genezeta wrote:
| The discs had -in the movie- the memories of another person,
| and you would experience that memory and sensations as if you
| were living it. So, e.g. someone would record themselves
| doing something risky and you would get the adrenaline rush
| from watching it.
|
| So... Maybe in _some_ way one could argue that social media
| gives some sort of connection were you get some feelings from
| what others are doing /showing. I mean, technologically it's
| quite a leap, but in a conceptual way... it's still a bit of
| a leap but maybe not that big.
| twiceaday wrote:
| Sounds like Brain Dances (BDs) from Cyberpunk 2077.
| nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
| Yes, which originally came from Cyberpunk, the first
| sourcebook for which was released in 1988, with Cyberpunk
| 2020 releasing in 1990 complete with the idea for pre-
| recorded replayable memories/full sensory experience,
| ie:Braindance.
|
| Strange Days was released in 1995.
|
| Maximum Mike was, and is, a prophet right alongside
| Gibson.
|
| edit: Although almost certainly this wasn't the first
| place people imagined being able to record and playback
| memories.
| saxonww wrote:
| Made me think of Total Recall, which was adapted from "We
| Can Remember It For You Wholesale," looks like from 1966.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| Wiki tells me there was a Cyberpunk 2013 released in
| 1988. Feels like a millennial cult that keeps missing
| it's big day...
|
| Cyberpunk 2013 - join us! Jack in choom
|
| Cyberpunk 2020 - oops sorry, had to reschedule
|
| Cyberpunk 2077 - crazy story, anyway we've got a new date
|
| Cyberpunk ???? - this time, we promise!
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Simstim from Neuromancer (released in 1984) is the first
| mention of such a thing that I know of.
| atombender wrote:
| Brainstorm (1983) did it before Neuromancer. The movie is
| about a device that records and replays sensory and
| emotional experiences, and a central plot point is that
| it records the dying moments of a character.
| bregma wrote:
| I thought the central point was the porn played on a
| loop. Maybe I was distracted and missed the real plot.
| Also maybe mixed up by the fact that one of the principle
| actors died in real life while the movie was being made.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| The central point was like Lawnmower Man, the military /
| government were going to misuse the tech for evil
| purposes.
|
| The porn and the vicarious near-death-experience were
| just plot points.
| atombender wrote:
| The porn thing showed that the device could be harmful to
| the viewer. This adds another dimension of risk to the
| later scenes where the Walker character is experiencing
| the death tape.
|
| The actor was Natalie Wood, and the event is shrouded in
| mystery about how she died. However, the character who
| dies in the movie is played by Louise Fletcher.
| wahern wrote:
| > Maybe in some way one could argue that social media gives
| some sort of connection were you get some feelings from
| what others are doing/showing. I mean, technologically it's
| quite a leap
|
| That technology exists; it's called empathy, and the
| extremely powerful form of it innate to humans is arguably
| our singularly defining characteristic. It's our tech moat,
| so to speak.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| This is exactly the parasocial way my girlfriend's niece
| and friends experience life. No relationships of their own,
| it is all celebrities and their lives, ingested on their
| phones. I don't have the heart to tell them that 95% of it
| is stuff created by PR firms.
| lazystar wrote:
| playing devils advocate for a minute... isnt that similar
| to what our parents said in the 80's/90's about our
| generation? all that "tv and phone" brain rot
| tirant wrote:
| And they were right. But we would watch TV usually
| together and only for around 4-5 hours a day. Do you know
| how much screen time are people having ? 8 to 10 hours
| are not uncommon. And alone.
| maccard wrote:
| Yes. And what the previous generation said about rock
| music.
|
| Celebrities and "socialites" have been idolised for years
| - Paris Hilton certainly isn't the doing of this
| generation, neither is Jackie Kennedy.
|
| If you think that what we're doing with mobile apps and
| social media is new, take a look at the 20th century a
| little harder.
| addicted wrote:
| 1. People were clearly wrong about music. Audio only is
| clearly not as addictive as video + audio.
|
| 2. People did say that about TV and TV maybe had the
| potential to be like this. However, TV failed in many
| ways to be a hyper addictive device. Some of the many
| reasons: i. Just less content. There wasn't that much TV
| content at all. YT probably adds more content in an hour
| than all the TV content ever created.
|
| ii. You couldn't choose what you wanted to watch beyond a
| few dozen channels at best. So you always had
| opportunities where you were forced to do something
| different at many times.
|
| iii. The TV wasn't available to you at all times. You had
| to go to the den to watch it and you couldn't take it to
| school with you.
|
| iv. TV couldn't specifically target you individually with
| content to keep you watching. The most amount of
| targeting TV could do was at maybe a county level.
|
| v. You couldn't be part of the TV. Social media and
| phones today make you an integral part of the "show"
| where a kid can end up having a video of them popping
| their pants on a playground shown to millions of people.
| Even in a more ordinary sense, a kid commenting on a
| video or sending a message to a friend makes them part of
| the device in a way TV never could outside of
| extraordinary situations.
| dotancohen wrote:
| TV certainly could target their audiences. Television
| shows would share their viewer demographics with
| advertisers: age groups, income levels, race and other
| social indicators, related interests.
|
| The shows had target markets often driven by the need to
| reach certain demographics, though actual viewer
| demographics sometimes were surprisingly way off the
| mark.
| graemep wrote:
| They could not do this at the individual level, nor did
| they have ways of reaching people to persuade them to
| watch (notifications from mobile apps, emails about
| posts).
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| > 1. People were clearly wrong about music. Audio only is
| clearly not as addictive as video + audio.
|
| Or they weren't and addiction wasn't the crux of their
| position; and I say that as someone who loves a lot of
| rock derivatives.
|
| The influence pop icons with broken lives had on teen
| generations was horribly deleterious (and I'm not even
| talking about hippies), mainly because malleable and
| unproperly taught minds rarely see that an artist's
| respectability is completely separate from his output.
|
| The ancients had the concept of muses for a reason.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The key is limits. In the past, even if celebrites were
| idolized, we had a limited amont of information compared
| to now. The fluid variable is the increase in
| information, which makes the situation different.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| You might need to recall just how crazy it was e.g.
| literal shrines to boy bands were just normal. To cover
| every inch of your bedroom walls and ceiling with photos
| of a celebrity crush was not unheard of. At school, every
| conversation could be about these obsessions.
| Folders/files would be covered with pledges of devotion.
|
| No comment on how it is today, but looking back it was
| terrifyingly nuts - full on religious fervour to the
| point of mental disorder. When bands broke or people
| married/died, there would be full on breakdowns and
| sympathy suicides.
|
| The lack of information might have helped exacerbate the
| religious mystery and make more space for imagination,
| fantasy and faith.
| graemep wrote:
| I do think TV was, and is, harmful. I do not have one for
| that reason and I think it was good for my kids (as well
| as myself).
|
| I also think social media is a lot worse.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| And our kids will warn their kids about how the 'direct
| to brain' type interface they will use is rotting their
| brains. Each generation will have been a little correct
| along the way; the harm at each step was just always
| gentle enough to not scold the frogs too quickly.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> some sort of connection were you get some feelings from
| what others are doing/showing. I mean, technologically it's
| quite a leap, but in a conceptual way... it's still a bit
| of a leap but maybe not that big.
|
| Play that VR game set within in the shark cage. The
| adrenaline rush is definitely not much of a leap from the
| real thing.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Game [0].
| Every time I watch that I get this eerie sensation that we're
| essentially giving our free will up to the masters of the
| games and social platforms we're addicted to.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28Star_Trek:_The_
| Nex...
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Darn, I forgot that episode. That's a very eerie parallel
| to some of what we have today.
| NBJack wrote:
| "If you just let the game happen, it almost plays
| itself." The quote from the episode certainly makes me
| think about the "idle games" genre that has emerged in
| that last several years.
| dartos wrote:
| Wow! The game in this episode has been living in my head
| since I was a child and I could never find where it was
| from!
|
| I need to watch this episode again
| Izkata wrote:
| Offhand the only drug-like thing I remember from that series
| is the nutrition bars that had 0 calories that most of the
| school got addicted to. Or maybe the cheerleader that got bee
| pheromones and started controlling the rest of the students.
|
| Aside - I just learned a month ago that there's an official
| followup miniseries that brought back several of the original
| actors, titled "Echoes", with hopefully more coming since
| it's called Season 1. Came out over 2022-2023: https://www.yo
| utube.com/playlist?list=PLHGrvCp5nsDJ1qSoKZEmm... (the
| trailers are at the bottom of the playlist)
| Izkata wrote:
| Dangit tried to delete this when I realized this is
| completely unrelated, just a similar name, and was seconds
| late. Got the delete link then it denied me.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Straight to the dungeon for you.
| layer8 wrote:
| Brainstorm (1983) had the tape version of that.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Suddenly I remember this movie from the 90s where people
| drugged themself with some kind of minidisc.
|
| With Ralph Fiennes. I think that, although strange, it's
| actually an underrated movie.
| briandear wrote:
| That movie was awesome. I remember the first time I saw the
| trailer in an actual movie theater. It was mindblowing.
|
| "Have you ever jacked-in, wire-tripped.."
|
| "Santa Claus of the subconscious"
|
| https://youtu.be/8RoOs-S_JVI
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| In Serial Experiments Lain, they have a drug that makes your
| brain think really fast.
| rolph wrote:
| Tek comes to mind
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TekWar
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Hey I remember that show! What a weird one. I kinda liked it
| though.
| alecco wrote:
| Gen Z was conditioned with algorithmic timelines and loot boxes
| (gambling).
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| I wonder if that's why there's now such a fucking problem
| with sports betting...
| Klonoar wrote:
| It is somewhat amusing that Leary had a period of saying that
| computers were the new drugs ("PC is the new LSD" or something)
| dbtc wrote:
| Marshall "Joyce is my LSD" McLuhan would agree emphatically.
| mindcrime wrote:
| "Turn on, boot up, jack in" ~~ Timothy Leary
| briandear wrote:
| Chaos and Cycberculture, Timothy Leary, 1994.
|
| An astounding book.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Opiate of the masses (21st Century version)
| mr_toad wrote:
| Bread and Circuses. Or at least, circuses.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They'll have bread, but they won't have bred.
| dbtc wrote:
| I think psychedelic is more apt (but not a perfect analogy
| either).
|
| Expands horizons, connects self to world, catalyzes cults and
| psychoses.
| thr0w wrote:
| Growing up, people on the street would fidget with their
| cigarettes. Now they fidget with their phones.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I would argue that the health impacts of both habits are
| comparable too.
| yowayb wrote:
| Makes complete sense to me. Drugs are an effective distraction
| because they're easy to use and often fast-acting.
| Outdoor/sport distractions require effort (driving, etc). Video
| games require much less effort. Add to that less-trivial things
| like investing and research, and you've got the perfect
| "addiction"
| akira2501 wrote:
| There are games designed to be addicting. Some even have
| gambling built in. Technology is just a tool.
| jvm___ wrote:
| You can order custom kitten being killed videos on the
| internet. Is this suppressing the serial killers and rapists in
| our society?
|
| It's along the lines of your theory, the internet is filling in
| a base need for a segment of society that's always been there.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if it is like facebook.
|
| The next generation weren't interested in facebook, because
| "that's what moms use" and figured out something different.
|
| As to drugs, now many are legal, so parents can now partake in
| what used to be illegal for them. Or for harder drugs, "Uncle
| Bob does drugs, and he's always in trouble".
|
| So one generation of parents acts as a negative example for the
| next generation to reject.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| It does replace a demand of people who want to mellow out.
|
| The same tech completely disrupts how drug-use spreads as well.
| There is nobody to offer a first hit if you're hanging out
| online.
|
| ---
|
| Though I would caution taking tech as _the_ cause. Things like
| demographics and the general zeitgeist shouldn't be ignored.
|
| Maybe the kids are really into DARE.
| globular-toast wrote:
| This was my first thought too. Their phones are all they need.
| Plus they are legal, encouraged even.
| card_zero wrote:
| This is a massively overstated, trendy, technically incorrect
| thing to say.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Even if technological "addiction" is not like real drug
| addiction, it is something strange. People constantly
| checking, scrolling without any real purpose. There's some
| sort of conditioned behaviour in it that has some facets of
| addiction.
| astura wrote:
| How do you know they don't have a purpose? Seems like
| you're projecting your insecurities on strangers.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| A lot of people have the same feeling about technology. I
| personally regulate my technological use fairly
| stringently. I almost never carry a smartphone with me
| for instance. It's got nothing to do with personal
| insecurities. I'm just interested in contributing to a
| more critical discussion on technology.
| casey2 wrote:
| You should read some absurdist literature, people doing
| things without any real purpose is very common.
|
| Nobody cared about drug addiction until it was politicized.
| US politicians have a long history of using drug users as
| scapegoats to win elections to disastrous results.
| Prohibition, drug war, next are social media bans. The
| insanity will never end.
| nvarsj wrote:
| Agreed. The original comment just made me think "good grief".
|
| No, scrolling on a website is not the same as doing lines of
| coke in the club bathroom.
| 1986 wrote:
| No, it's not, but there's a spectrum of drug experiences.
| Scrolling social media is more like sitting in a shitty
| motel by yourself on a meth binge, or being on the nod.
| tirant wrote:
| I fear the (negative) impact of our current technological drugs
| goes beyond the impact of traditional drugs.
|
| I've seen kids not even 3-4 years old already hooked to
| smartphone screens. Even toddlers around 1 year old with an
| smartphone mount in their stroller.
|
| Main impact on kids is lack of socialization, lack of emotional
| regulation and a complete impact on their capabilities to keep
| their attention. Those used to be indicators for a future
| failed adulthood.
|
| I remember traditional drugs only becoming present around 14-16
| years old. Alcohol was probably the most prevalent, and
| probably the most dangerous. Followed by Cannabis, tobacco and
| some recreational drugs like MDMA.
|
| Most of those drugs had a component that actually pushed kids
| heavily towards socialization and forming peer groups. Now
| looking back to the results of that drug consumption I would
| say that most of the individuals engaging on them were able to
| regulate and continue to what it seems to be a very normal
| adult life. Obviously tobacco with terrible potential future
| health effects, but beyond that, everyone I know turned up
| pretty healthy. Not only that, I remember some time later that
| the most experimental group (mdma, LSD, mushrooms) of drug
| users being full of people with Master Degrees and PhDs.
|
| The new technological drugs scare me way more than the old
| traditional ones. Obviously it is a normal response of the
| known va unknown. Time will tell.
| will5421 wrote:
| Playing Devil's advocate... Socialisation is what's driving
| technology use. It's just happening on the phones, not irl.
| Just like with alcohol, anyone not participating will be left
| out. If everyone's on their phones all the time, IRL
| socialisation won't matter compared to socialisation via
| phones.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Disagree. Nothing can replace face to face socialization.
| We're not even close. Our minds are just adapting, but to a
| new local maximum that is far away from the global maximum
| of ideal.
|
| (Edit: corrected typographical error.)
| Timshel wrote:
| Socialization online exists, but I'm not sure that it's the
| main activity on phones.
|
| When you look at https://explodingtopics.com/blog/screen-
| time-for-teens it does not look promising. Video is
| leading, then Gaming which can include socialization then
| third come Social media but with Tik Tok leading which I
| would not categorize as socialization.
| tgv wrote:
| Rather: avoidance of socialization is what's driving it.
| It's the easy way out of meeting people while still getting
| compliments and such and pretending "everything is fine".
| In that sense, it indeed has a lot in common with alcohol.
| herval wrote:
| I think this was true a decade ago, where people used
| social media to _talk to each other_ and actively kept
| chats with friends, etc.
|
| What I'm seeing now is social media got so hyper optimized
| for engagement that it became a passive consumption
| mechanism, and the only "socialization" left is sharing
| memes. It's a widespread digital heroin epidemic
| jorvi wrote:
| I'm very much for legalizing and regulating (almost) all
| drugs, but watch out with the confirmation bias of "everyone
| in my social circle who used recreationally turned out fine."
|
| I can't find it right now but I read a great comment on
| legalization that pointed out that a kid experimenting with
| weed and cocaine in college is doing so for a radically
| different reason than a kid doing it escape the daily misery
| of his ghetto neighborhood.
|
| This is also why you'll often see staunch opposition to
| legalization in the lower socio-economic classes, with them
| having seen people close to them destroyed by drug use.
|
| And yes, legalization and regulation would of course also
| allow harm reduction. But it is good to be able to take the
| opposition's perspective :)
| tremon wrote:
| > with them having seen people close to them destroyed by
| drug use.
|
| But isn't this a false correlation, then? Were they
| destroyed by drug use, or by the daily misery of their
| ghetto neighborhood?
| westerno wrote:
| The combination, which is the point of the comment above.
| Legalization may be fine in places where people have
| other support factors that make them less likely to
| destroy their lives with drugs and alcohol, but in areas
| without those protective forces, it's good that there are
| some controls (or at least many of the people who live
| there think so).
| jacksnipe wrote:
| At that point it becomes important to ask (1) how much
| damage does the illegalization itself do; (2) how much
| harm does the limited access _actually_ prevent; and (3)
| how much damage alcohol does, and what the tradeoff is.
|
| If you're going to make a harm reduction argument, you
| need to do your best to fully account for all the harms
| in play.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| Spot on- so many social problems get attributed to
| everything but the economy and inequality. If we could
| make our system more equitable, then we would not have
| such desperation.
| chaps wrote:
| Imagine hearing someone's loved one dying to drug use and
| asking them, "But isn't this a false correlation?". What
| a deeply and unsettlingly cold question that lacks any
| potential for empathy.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Okay, but the person wasn't asking this of the family of
| a dying loved one, they were asking it in this space
| where ideas are discussed and examined. Yes, it would be
| disturbingly unempathetic to ask that question in such a
| circumstance, but asking it in _this_ circumstance is
| neither cold, inappropriate, or a demonstration that the
| asker lacks empathy.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| > "But isn't this a false correlation?". What a deeply
| and unsettlingly cold question that lacks any potential
| for empathy.
|
| That's an absurd mental picture you've imagined. Using
| that to undermine the discussion of the reality that
| people use drugs to temporarily escape from desperate
| conditions is unsettling and lacks empathy and judgment.
| chaps wrote:
| You've deeply misunderstood my comment.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| You've deeply misunderstood your own comment
| knome wrote:
| I disagree entirely, and I have personally witnessed
| people lose themselves to drug use.
|
| Anyone with a relative dying of addiction has no doubt
| been long exhausted in watching them circle the pit of
| their addiction. They are going to be under no illusions
| regarding the chances there were to escape it, and the
| choices made to remain there.
|
| Asking if they were escaping from a miserable reality vs
| chasing a high isn't offensive. It's just dealing with
| the reality of the situation as it is. The only person I
| see being offended is someone in denial, blaming the
| drugs alone rather than allowing any blame to the person
| using them, trying to imagine them an innocent victim
| without agency in the matter.
|
| The question is a good one. It actually looks for what
| caused everything to go wrong, rather than just being
| pointlessly offended on behalf of the imagined umbrage
| you think others might feel.
| chaps wrote:
| I disagree with your characterization of my comment and I
| think you greatly missed the point I was making. The OP
| presented a false dichotomy as if these things aren't
| woven in with each other in a large feedback loop.
|
| You comment falsely assumes that I don't have familiarity
| or loss stemming from addiction.
| knome wrote:
| You've had multiple people "misunderstand" your comment.
| I suggest reconsidering how you express whatever it is
| you are trying to say, as I and the others are responding
| to what you managed to actually communicate, whether that
| message was your intended one or no.
| chaps wrote:
| It has been put into consideration. But now that we've
| made it clear that there have been ~ misunderstandings ~,
| can you try to see where I'm coming from now? :)
| knome wrote:
| No, I don't know what you intended to say there if not
| what I initially read it as. It seems a straightforward
| reading to me.
| chaps wrote:
| My point was to suggest to OP that their dichotomous
| reductionism goes way, way overboard to the point of
| unproductive callousness. People with addictions aren't
| just data points. Saying this as a data journalist who
| focuses on policing and jails.
| herval wrote:
| I think poor people in the US are against legalization
| mostly due to the decades of "war on drugs" propaganda or
| other forms of conservatism (eg religion), not because
| they've seen people close to them being destroyed by drug
| use
| bluejekyll wrote:
| The primary reason to legalize isn't to make it easier to
| do drugs, it's to not use the justice and court system for
| dealing with addiction problems.
|
| Our goal should be to legalize use and then take the money
| saved from police enforcement and funnel that into programs
| that get people off drugs. In the US an issue is that the
| latter part is part of the healthcare system, and we all
| know that has a lot of issues in serving people who fall
| into the under-employed category.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Several states have tried that. Some have already
| repealed the laws because they were a disaster.
| remixff2400 wrote:
| Not my area of expertise per se, but the counterargument
| that I've seen is that the states (e.g. Oregon) that
| tried it never got the backstops in place to help soften
| and support the transition (i.e. rehab centers, support
| programs, social programs). Instead, it was just a hard
| switch that went expectedly bad.
|
| There's at least a theory that people believe will work
| that hasn't been correctly implemented yet, but whether
| or not it's feasible to implement at all, I'm not holding
| my breath.
| righthand wrote:
| When this happens the reason 90% of the time is usually
| not because the program wasn't working but the opposition
| to the program has made sure to either gut the funding or
| put in measures that makes those programs not work (only
| hiring 2 people to handle all the work or excessive
| operating requirements.
|
| Cops will fight tooth and nail against social programs
| because it reduces their budget when problems are solved.
|
| Look up these programs and you will see centrists
| claiming the progressive program was bad, but never
| indicate reasons as to why.
| macpete42 wrote:
| Works for Portugal since forever
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Those states half arsed it.
|
| They did the decriminalisation step and then never
| bothered with the "redirecting savings from policing into
| services" step.
|
| They also fucked it in other ways.
|
| For an example of where it does work - see Portugal.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Most of those drugs had a component that actually pushed
| kids heavily towards socialization and forming peer groups.
| Now looking back to the results of that drug consumption I
| would say that most of the individuals engaging on them were
| able to regulate and continue to what it seems to be a very
| normal adult life.
|
| Counterargument: a "very normal adult life" in our
| generations treats alcohol as basically mandatory for having
| a good time with a group. As someone who doesn't drink, I'm
| perfectly happy to go to parties and hang out and socialize,
| but as the night wears on it becomes less and less
| stimulating as the alcohol kicks in. People get less
| interesting on drugs, but they _perceive themselves_ to be
| having more fun. It 's a crutch.
|
| Now, maybe having a social crutch like alcohol is better than
| having a drug which encourages disappearing from the physical
| social world entirely, but our generation's answer was hardly
| healthy.
| johnisgood wrote:
| A substance is a means to an end. What you described is
| just one of the many.
|
| And I agree. I do not drink, not even in social settings,
| and I feel like I'm the odd one out for doing so, thus I
| typically avoid parties and gatherings as much as possible.
|
| I do take something people would consider a drug though,
| but for different reasons you described. It is to manage
| pain, anxiety, and depression, difficulty walking, and
| urinary incontinence. What I take works for all of the
| problems that affects the quality of my life.
|
| That said, new year is coming up, and I'm definitely not
| going to drink.
| frereubu wrote:
| I don't think that's true any more, at least not in the UK.
| Not drinking alcohol is becoming normalised to a large
| extent - most restaurants and bars I go to now have non-
| alcoholic options, some of which are really delicious. I
| had a non-alcoholic "dry martini" in a bar the other day
| which had a really nice bite to it. I used to feel a bit
| cheated with non-alcoholic options because they were mostly
| like overly sweet cocktails or nasty-tasting beers, but the
| choices are really opening out now.
| api wrote:
| Old drugs are also at least sometimes social. Even heroin
| gives rise to cliques of users. It's deeply unhealthy and
| self destructive but at least there is connection. Sometimes
| you get art out of it too. A whole era of great music has
| many bittersweet odes to smack.
|
| I particularly worry about men. The greater cultural and
| possibly (more controversial) biological susceptibility to
| isolation coupled with this stuff means a generation of young
| men who are isolated, hopeless, poor, lonely, and sexless.
|
| Then we have a culture that, depending on which side you
| listen to, either shames them as potential rapists from the
| patriarchy or simply "losers." (IMHO the "woke" shaming is
| just code for loser, as I have heard said in private.) They
| are neither. They are victims of exploitation, of a nearly
| exact analog to the Matrix that is destroying their minds.
|
| I speak mostly of social media and addiction optimized
| gaming, not all tech. The problem is the apps not the phone.
| Really anything that works very hard to "maximize engagement"
| should be considered guilty unless proven innocent. This
| phrase is code for addiction.
|
| As we have seen the gurus that appeal to such men are the
| likes of Andrew Tate. As awful as he is Jordan Peterson is
| actually among the less toxic of the crew since he does
| occasionally say something good.
|
| In the future we could have gurus for hordes of lonely poor
| men that make Tate look helpful and wise. This is how we
| either LARP the Handmaid's Tale or -- worse -- ISIS or the
| Khmer Rouge.
|
| I have two daughters and I fear for their safety in a country
| full of fascism radicalized angry emotionally stunted men who
| have been told they are losers and then handed pitchforks.
|
| Our industry is the industry making the opium to which these
| youth are addicted and that is destroying them. We are
| destroying the minds of a generation every time any B2C app
| tries to optimize its time on app KPI.
|
| Mothers and fathers of boys: raise your sons or Andrew Tate
| will.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If you read William Dalrymple's book about the early
| Christian church in the Middle East, that is exactly what
| happened in terms of gurus for hordes of fanatic monks.
| api wrote:
| I'm sure that's just one of endless historical examples.
|
| Large numbers of desperate people are a danger to
| society. I harp on men because I think they are more
| vulnerable (for various reasons and the reasons don't
| matter much) to isolation and radicalization, though as
| we recently saw with our young lady school shooter this
| is definitely not universal.
|
| I also didn't mean to dismiss the damage addictionware
| can do to young womens' self esteem and mental health,
| and I have noticed a disturbing rise in "femcel" rhetoric
| that mirrors the incel cancer. The style of the rhetoric
| is a little different but it's coming from similar places
| and has similar effects.
|
| We need to stop calling it social media too. It stopped
| being social when algorithmic timelines were introduced
| and over time it's evolving toward less and less
| connection and more shoveling of engagement bait slop.
| sevensor wrote:
| Why are the moral panics always about the media diets of
| children? Let's talk about old people for a minute.
|
| 1) They can be socially isolated in ways that few children
| are. An unsupervised septuagenarian can go literal days
| without speaking to another live human being.
|
| 2) They're more technologically competent than we give them
| credit for, certainly enough to spend days doomscrolling
| their politically aligned newsfeeds of choice. The generation
| who thought their CD-ROM drives were cupholders passed quite
| some time ago.
|
| 3) They have an outsized influence on politics. Not only do
| they vote more than any other demographic in the US, they are
| the most likely to turn up and harangue your city council or
| school board meeting.
|
| Of course, nothing new under the sun, their parents'
| generation was mainlining cable news and AM talk radio 20-30
| years ago.
| mistermann wrote:
| >Why are the moral panics always about the media diets of
| children? Let's talk about old people for a minute.
|
| This same reasoning is highly applicable to how various "so
| terrible, they're a threat to X!" are constantly vilified,
| yet the Normies (who cause most of the problems) get a free
| pass.
|
| Rigged popularity contests are a terrible way to run a
| world, yet we _insist on it_.
| agency wrote:
| because children are undergoing a critical phase in their
| development that has no analogy for older populations? I'm
| not saying isolation among the elderly is not concerning,
| nor widespread phone/tech addiction among adults. But I
| think there's ample reason to have particular concern for
| the effects on children.
| dasil003 wrote:
| LOL at "mainlining cable news and AM talk radio".
| qwertox wrote:
| > I've seen kids not even 3-4 years old already hooked to
| smartphone screens. Even toddlers around 1 year old with an
| smartphone mount in their stroller.
|
| Now imagine that they would not be engaging with silly
| YouTube videos, but with an AI trying to get them to interact
| with them in order to learn to speak, to learn about the
| world. Things which parents can't dedicate enough time to.
| Then also give the kids ideas for what to do with the
| parents, what to talk about, tease them about science and
| stuff they'd normally have no access to, because it is
| information mostly hidden in books or in an inaccessible
| format, like dedicated to students.
|
| I do see a huge potential in this, call it cheaply a "nanny
| for the brain", to help develop it better and faster. There
| are certainly risks to it, but if it were well done, in a way
| in which we assume universities are "places well done", it
| could be better than just having the kids watching TV.
| jader201 wrote:
| Please no.
|
| While what you describe _may_ be better than YouTube /TV,
| there is no replacement for development through human
| interaction and contact.
|
| Let's not give parents another excuse to have devices
| babysit/raise their children.
|
| EDIT: and if your post is being upvoted -- and it seems to
| be -- I hope it's by people that don't have children, and
| will later realize how bad of an idea this is once they do
| have children.
| siva7 wrote:
| Sometimes there is no choice when both parents must work
| so better raise the child by AI rather than TV.
| jader201 wrote:
| If you have a nanny/preschool/daycare that is letting
| your child be raised by TV, the solution isn't instead
| have your child be raised by AI.
|
| The solution is to replace the nanny/reschool/daycare
| with a better nanny/preschool/daycare.
| qwertox wrote:
| > there is no replacement for development through human
| interaction and contact.
|
| The issue was that he has seen these kids being
| entertained by smartphones. This kind of implies that
| they were not in daycare or any other position where they
| could interact with humans, unless the parents wanted to
| interact with them, which they obviously didn't (or
| couldn't, for whichever reason). That was the context.
| jader201 wrote:
| See my response to your sibling post.
|
| The parent post is throwing AI at the problem. The
| solution isn't to improve technology to make it better at
| parenting/babysitting our children.
|
| The solution is to replace technology with humans.
|
| > This kind of implies that they were not in daycare or
| any other position where they could interact with humans
|
| I'm not sure where it is ok for children, particularly
| early developing children, to not be around other humans,
| or humans that can't or don't want to interact with the
| children. If that's the case, that's another problem
| altogether.
|
| If people are having children just to have them raised by
| technology/AI, I hope they realize that before having
| children and reconsider.
| etimberg wrote:
| I assume you don't have kids because as the parent of a
| toddler this is a terrible idea. The last thing a toddler
| needs is AI hallucinations "teaching" them
| qwertox wrote:
| I don't have kids, but I am not talking about
| contemporary AIs which love to hallucinate.
| derwiki wrote:
| Sounds like "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" by
| Stephenson
| qwertox wrote:
| Thanks. I started with Snow Crash and disliked the style
| and parts of the content so much that I ditched it and
| never bothered to read any other book from him. Maybe I
| should try that one then.
| iteria wrote:
| First off, kids that young learn best in context and with
| tactile feedback. Until AI have bodies, they will not fill
| that niche.
|
| Secondly, there is a while cottage industry of young kid's
| videos to just show kid's the world and engage via a screen
| with it and explain it. A 3 and 4 year old knows so little,
| they don't want even know what questions to ask because
| they know nothing. The value of slop like Blippie or even
| Ryan's World is alerting kids to the fact that things exist
| in a digestible way. And they need to loop it. They need to
| be exposed to the information many, many times to truly get
| it. Early education is in no way shape or form a good
| candidate for AI. I'd argue that the repetitive videos we
| have now are about as ideal as we can get once we filter
| out the surreal nonsensical videos targeted at kids.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| We could already have extremely high quality children's
| educational content via videos. But instead the ecosystem
| is dominated by garbage that can draw engagement rather
| than enrich.
|
| Why would AI be any different? I'd expect AI content for
| babies to be garbage because the incentive structure is
| exactly the same as it is for noninteractive videos.
| addicted wrote:
| I've said this story before but I quit Facebook about 10 years
| ago, at a time when it was essentially the only social media
| game in town, so I was essentially quitting social media, and
| the quitting process felt exactly like when I had quit smoking
| the year before that.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Indeed. And I do feel that we need a sort of new terminology
| for technological "attachment/addiction" or whatever it is.
| Because people continue to nitpick on whether it is
| physiologically the same as physical dependence and that
| completely misses the point.
| fsflover wrote:
| Yes, and a former executive confirmed that it's intentional:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > I wonder if the new drug of choice is actually technology
|
| Technology certainly is the _economic sector_ that we privilege
| against all criticism of the harm it does to young people, to
| voting adults, to information quality, to public discourse, and
| to democracy itself.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Well, we have tied all of the smooth functioning of society
| to producing new technology, so regardless of its negative
| effects or its diminishing returns, we develop it. It's a
| strong piece of circumstantial evidence for technological
| determinism, not to mention many advancements are clear-cut
| cases of the prisoner's dilemma (arms race), such as computer
| security vs. hackers.
| hamburga wrote:
| I've been looking at it more from an ecological angle.
|
| "We have tied all of the smooth functioning of society to
| producing new technology" -- this implies it was a
| deliberate decision. Whereas in reality, there's a
| selection effect where leaders who embrace technology the
| most aggressively simply get rewarded in money and power,
| and they go on to promote accelerationist views with that
| power.
|
| With the logical conclusion that people are increasingly
| treated as resources to be harvested by technology.
|
| I don't know the answer, but I refuse to accept determinism
| (despite not believing in free will, separate
| conversation), and I think that framing this as an
| ecological competition between species -- humans vs
| machines -- is clarifying.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > "We have tied all of the smooth functioning of society
| to producing new technology" -- this implies it was a
| deliberate decision. Whereas in reality, there's a
| selection effect where leaders [...]
|
| No, it doesn't imply a deliberate decision. I've never
| said it was deliberate. It's more of an emergent
| phenomenon.
|
| > I don't know the answer, but I refuse to accept
| determinism (despite not believing in free will, separate
| conversation), and I think that framing this as an
| ecological competition between species -- humans vs
| machines -- is clarifying.
|
| True, but determinism shouldn't be thought of as
| inevitable. And that's not the case in the philosophical
| literature either. Technological determinism is more of a
| force like gravity that can be overcome, and can be
| measured (theoretically, some have tried) numerically.
| The large the force, the harder it is to overcome, but
| overcoming it is not impossible obviously. Feel free to
| email to discuss further.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think it's not technology as a thing people are hooked to -
| it's taken over social life. My 13 year old and his buddies
| socialize online, period. In person stuff is mostly organized.
| That is helped by school policy that got rid of the idea of a
| neighborhood school.
|
| Additionally, the social activities that coalesced around
| things like alcohol are out of reach of many teens. I live in a
| city that had a very active college bar scene. It's dead and
| gone. Crackdowns on underage serving and cost drives it away.
| Happy hour special at a place that other day was $12 for 4
| coors lights in a bucket. In 1998, I'd pay $15 for a dozen
| wings and all you can drink swill for 3 hours.
| cluckindan wrote:
| "My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period."
|
| Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like that
| 30 something years ago.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It's a different beast, these days, though.
|
| Back then, only "nerds" socialized online. Nowadays,
| _everyone_ does it.
|
| I'm of two minds about this.
|
| On one hand, I'm really glad that kids aren't screwing up
| their formative years. Drug use during growing/development
| years can wreck someone's life.
|
| The issue is that, if you are an addict (which is different
| from physical addiction. Many addicts never get physically
| addicted to anything), then you'll eventually have problems
| with drugs; even if they are "socially acceptable" ones,
| like pot or alcohol (pot being "socially acceptable" is
| kinda new, around here, but Things Have Changed).
|
| It'll still destroy your life, but, at least, you'll
| hopefully have something like an education, and living
| skills, by then, which can help Recovery (and also hinder
| it).
| derwiki wrote:
| It was maybe only nerds in 1994, but by 1998 everyone at
| school was asking their parents for the internet so they
| could talk on ICQ--not just the nerds!
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like
| that 30 something years ago.
|
| (1) When I was growing up, nobody had any online presence.
| I remember life without the internet.
|
| (2) The fact that it is not new does not mean it has not
| changed in magnitude and addictiveness.
|
| (3) The fact that it is not new does not mean that it is
| not a problem. It is a growing problem. Especially because
| societies these days do nothing about their problems except
| through more technology at them, which rarely solves the
| underlying issue.
| ghaff wrote:
| Aside from BBSs from about the mid-80s, followed by some
| Usenet and related later, there was very little online
| presence until getting well into the mid-90s or so.
| Certainly my social friends who weren't part of the local
| BBS scene had no online presence until maybe the dot-coms
| really took off.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Mid-90s were 30 something years ago. Perhaps the US was a
| little slow to develop in this front compared to Europe.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe, though that would surprise me a bit. My first
| personal webpage was probably around 1996 or 1997--and I
| assume that was fairly early for that sort of thing. As I
| said, I had been using BBSs for a while and also accessed
| usenet and FTP sites somewhat later. (I would have only
| had access from work to the Internet for quite a while.)
|
| For most people, it probably wasn't until MySpace and the
| like and the popularization of blogging in maybe the
| early 2000s that an "online presence" was really a thing
| although people increasingly had access to email etc.
|
| (My dates may be a bit off but not by a lot.)
| iteria wrote:
| AOL. In the late 90s, I was in the chat rooms, by the
| early 00s me and my friends would swap between AIM and
| text messaging depending when texts were free. Kids
| definitely had an online presence, but it wasn't like the
| mid-00s and after when social media rose up.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > I think it's not technology as a thing people are hooked to
| - it's taken over social life.
|
| One cannot separate the tool from the use. Of course, you are
| right, though. Technology has done two things: it has
| eradicated communities by making communities less
| economically valuable, and it provides a superficial
| alternative.
|
| But the end result is that people become effectively hooked
| on using the device. The device is nothing without what is
| happening on it, but it cannot be deconstructed and separated
| either into a social component and the technology itself
| because it is more than the sum of its parts.
| badpun wrote:
| I wonder if we're entering an era of social stagnation, caused
| by screens. Before screen-based entertainment was so
| ubiquitous, young people (teens and young adults) experienced a
| lot of boredom, which pushed them to do new things. Many of
| those things were stupid and bad (drugs etc.), but some of
| those kids decided they were ambitious and wanted their life to
| be above ordinary in terms of achievement and impact on the
| world. Today, there's less room for such thoughts to even
| emerge - and if they do, they have to compete for mindshare
| with addictive entertainment on a daily basis.
| foobarian wrote:
| I always thought, thank goodness for video games because without
| them I would probably be a drunk or something similarly
| physically harmful. I guess the world is just now catching up :-D
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I used to regularly skip meals when I gamed. Weight started
| creeping up after I quit
| amelius wrote:
| You also got older ... Age is a factor.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Does weight increase as you get older if you consume the
| correct amount of calories?
| munk-a wrote:
| Weight will increase as you get older if you consume a
| constant amount of calories. Your metabolism slows with
| age (and generally entering the job market means a much
| more sedentary life style for most white collar workers).
| gardenhedge wrote:
| So you adjust your calories
| munk-a wrote:
| Calorie counting is a habit that's generally unnecessary
| as a teenager so it's a habit not everyone is familiar
| with.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Easy to say difficult to do. Most people have family,
| work, 100's of tensions etc.. Reducing calories might not
| be that much of priority.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| People tend to have more major life events as they get
| older, and sometimes they choose to soothe with food when
| facing major loss in other areas.
| kbelder wrote:
| No, but the 'correct amount of calories' is a steadily
| decreasing number, so it requires constant adjustment.
| logicchains wrote:
| Presumably it's related to increased conservatism in gen Z males:
| https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll .
| Conservatives generally have more negative attitudes to drug use.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| That poll is really confusing. There are multiple types of
| conservatism--one is very media-driven (e.g. "omg they did a
| gender wokeness in my game") and then there's the global
| variety (liking traditional values). The poll presumes these
| are the same social phenomena when they're very obviously not.
| It doesn't help that the way our political parties (which is
| what the poll seems to be based on) differentiate themselves
| map _extremely poorly_ onto how americans differentiate
| themselves.
|
| edit: political -> media-driven
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Nope, women are getting less conservative and this applies to
| them too.
|
| > Conservatives generally have more negative attitudes to drug
| use
|
| That is categorically false.
|
| I think it would be interesting to look at whether the rate of
| physical / sexual abuse has changed, since that's significantly
| correlated with use of hard drugs.
| rockskon wrote:
| Not really. Don't conflate octogenarian-guided party and
| community policy with what people actually do.
| rvense wrote:
| Do they actually have lower rates of drug use, though? They
| also have more negative views of homosexuality, but their
| gatherings can still make Grindr crash.
| ikmckenz wrote:
| Teens aren't doing drugs, smoking, drinking, or having sex. And
| the suicide rate has never been higher.
| hathawsh wrote:
| I'm not contradicting you, but it appears that the suicide rate
| hasn't changed since 2018. See this interactive chart and
| switch the Injury Type to Suicide:
|
| https://wisqars.cdc.gov/fatal-injury-trends/
|
| That chart shows the rate has hovered around 4000 per month for
| years. That's 4000 too many, but at least it's not increasing.
| ecshafer wrote:
| But we are also seeing shrinking amounts of children. So a
| steady suicide amount in raw terms is an increasing rate.
| kube-system wrote:
| That is the raw number, not the rate.
|
| Since the spread of social media, suicide rates are up for
| children, significantly:
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf
|
| > The suicide rate for people aged 15-19 did not change
| significantly from 2001 through 2009, then increased 57% from
| 2009 through 2017
|
| > For people aged 10-14, the suicide rate tripled from 2007
| through 2018
| moralestapia wrote:
| I don't follow.
|
| If the rate has gone and population as well, how come the
| total number is about the same?
| Schiendelman wrote:
| It decreased for older folks, and there are fewer kids
| now.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Oh, I see it now. Thanks!
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| How are you disagreeing? The comment you responded to said
| it hasn't changed since 2018.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > I'm not contradicting you, but it appears that the suicide
| rate hasn't changed since 2018.
|
| Peak social media?
| conductr wrote:
| I've had is persisting thought that, we as a society have been
| delaying adulthood, thus extending childhood, with each decade
| for a while. And we've now pushed it so far that the current
| cohort of teens simply are effectively young children on a
| social/emotion perspective making them unprepared to handle the
| stresses their age is exposing them to.
| FredPret wrote:
| There must be a good balance between the grow-up-quick-or-
| die-horribly of the pre-technology world and the my-cats-are-
| my-kids life of the post-danger world
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| The age of majority should be the end of a journey, not a
| bureaucratic milestone.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I would agree that modern childhood is protracted to what is
| perhaps a damaging extent, but would also argue that the
| stresses and anxieties of everyday life are more constant and
| overbearing than the human psyche is equipped to handle. It's
| mot healthy for well-adjusted adults either. We're built for
| dangers and stresses that come in relatively short bursts,
| not those that are without end.
| llm_trw wrote:
| In 1924 you would expect to be a child in a family of 5
| with two dying before they hit their majority.
|
| We are simply blind to how much even the relatively recent
| past sucked.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > have been delaying adulthood
|
| If you have kids, do you see them as less mature than how you
| perceived yourself at their age ?
|
| TBH I feel the opposite: current kids have a lot more to deal
| with, and are expected to be much much more down to earth
| than a few decades ago. The most basic things: a single post
| on an SNS can stick with them for the rest of their life, yet
| we moved half of our social life online.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| My observation of teens online, as someone who was once an
| online teenager, is that they are noticeably less mature
| than my cohort. Perhaps because it's no longer just the
| nerds who are online all day--if everyone in my high school
| was chronically online, there's a high possibility that
| Bush-era teens would've been just as openly immature and
| stupid as today's youth. Whatever happened to pretending to
| be an apathetic 24-year-old?
| bbarn wrote:
| By 17 I was on my own and joining the military. My daughter
| is 25 and just got her first real job out of college. By
| her age I had a 6 year old child (her). I'm not saying I
| took the right path (I didn't) but the level of maturity I
| had at her age was vastly different. Her peers are all
| similar, and when I was young many of mine were similar to
| me. I do thing generationally / culturally there's a
| difference.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > current kids have a lot more to deal with, and are
| expected to be much much more down to earth than a few
| decades ago
|
| For sure not. They are pushed to play in a stage and fake
| drama. Decades ago, many 13 years old kids worked for 10-16
| hours a day.
| dpndencekultur wrote:
| Erich Fromm said this in his "Fear of Freedom" We live in a
| time that we are able to customize our lives to our delights.
| That makes us lose perspective and purpose. So we look to
| movements to fill the void.
|
| That was back in the 50's/60's I think he was spot on why this
| generation can't see past the last scroll or click. They don't
| have perspective because they have not been bred to have it.
| It's very sad.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > They don't have perspective because they have not been bred
| to have it. It's very sad.
|
| Did 'bred' once include upbringing? I thought it began and
| ended with mate selection, pairing, and procreation.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Teens aren't ... having sex.
|
| Nor are people in their 20s (that is, both groups are having
| much less sex). That is the most worrying thing to me. People
| are not even engaging in the most fundamental, unavoidable,
| pleasurable human drive.
|
| They seem very much like traumatized people, on a massive
| scale, just trying to survive.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I think we all realize deep down there are too many humans on
| this planet.
| jpcom wrote:
| We can comfortably host 100B or more on this beautiful
| planet. Just gotta be strategic about it.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| It's possible to have infinite sex without influencing the
| population quantity. Well, you could decrease it.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I fundamentally disagree with this take, it's at odds with
| my belief in growth and dynamism.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Quorum-sensing ain't just for bacteria.
| robertoandred wrote:
| When you don't get matches, it's pretty easy to avoid sex.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| ... and if everyone is always on screens it's hard to avoid
| the dating apps where they're not getting matches.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I'm starting to think many people just aren't into sex that
| much, in the same way many people aren't into food.
|
| Many people just get hungry and inhale the most convenient
| thing they can to scratch the hunger itch. McDonald's is
| always busy. People would be there on Christmas day if it was
| open. These people aren't into food as pleasure, they just
| don't want to be hungry. Of course with meal replacements
| bottles etc McDonald's isn't even the bottom of that
| particular barrel.
|
| It's the same with sex. I've met people who define themselves
| by their sexuality. They consider it a primary pursuit in
| life. But for others it's just scratching an itch. I've
| realised I'm basically that way. It doesn't mean that much to
| me, it's just something my body makes me do. Porn is now
| everywhere and more easily accessible than drugs. People are
| now able to reach for McDonald's or the meal replacement, but
| for sex.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| On the flip side, imagine the tremendous spiritual
| development possible to be unlocked by a generation
| undistracted by carnal desire.
| grecy wrote:
| > _They seem very much like traumatized people, on a massive
| scale, just trying to survive._
|
| Every few years I like to leave the world for a bit and do
| something else to reset a bit. For example I just finished
| walking 779km on the Camino in Spain.
|
| What you said is essentially true for the vast majority of
| people in our modern world. What we have built is terrible
| for us, and we're all suffering and very sick.
| belval wrote:
| > Monitoring the Future Study, which annually surveys eighth,
| 10th and 12th grade students across the United States.
|
| I wonder if there is correlation to the opioid crisis, where the
| "downsides" (if you want to call it that) of drug abuse are so
| visible to teenagers that they are staying away from it. Doing
| drugs when it's associated with being "cool"/interesting like
| rappers is one thing, but when you associate it to fentanyl
| zombies living in the streets it loses a lot of its glamour.
|
| I was not able to find the regional breakdown so it's just a
| conjecture though.
| conductr wrote:
| Not data driven at all, just my life experience, but I was a
| teen during the crack epidemic phase. It certainly had me and
| my peers cautious of crack itself, nobody wanted anything do to
| with it, but it was not a deterrence to drug usage in general.
| I was pretty experimental but when offered some crack once I
| remember declining; I wasn't even curious. The things that had
| the most correlation with my drug experimentation was 1) social
| activity/partying and 2) boredom. I think it's important to
| note as the average teen socializes significantly less and
| always has a digital crack pipe to cure their boredom; so I'd
| look there for a stronger causation.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I can't speak for anyone else but I've completely stopped doing
| any drugs that I can't make myself or purchase from a liquor
| store or dispensary (or shroom store). The risk of fentanyl
| making it into the product even for unrelated party drugs is
| just insane now and I don't trust myself to use fentanyl strips
| properly while already high or tripping.
|
| I wonder if that impacts teen drug use too, because for the
| first time opponents have a tangible risk to point to instead
| of just a dumb frying pan commercial and fearmongering.
| bbarn wrote:
| I was a big fan of cocaine back in the 90s. I never got to
| the "problem" level with it but if it was there I was the
| first to raise my hand.
|
| My personality has changed a little, but I'd still probably
| jump at it today, if it weren't for the fear of fentanyl. I'm
| not worried about addiction, I'm worried about death.
| jjmarr wrote:
| I go to university next to a safe injection site. It's very
| clear what addiction leads to.
| sailfast wrote:
| Is it possible this batch of survey respondents just doesn't
| trust anyone with information about their habits, so they lied?
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Came here to say this. I remember these surveys in high school
| and how non-seriously we took them. Really, I can't imagine any
| group less credible to survey than high schoolers.
| _tom_ wrote:
| But it's changing over time, and students always lied.
|
| But it's possible that this generation is wiser/ more cynical
| and doesn't believe in anonymous surveys.
|
| I know I don't.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| everywhere this survey has been done. colleges, independent
| firms, doctors office, the results are all the same.
|
| Teens and young adults today are doing less sex, less drugs.
| All those can't be wrong unless todays teens are collectively
| less truthful than tennagers from previous eras. I doubt that.
| oortoo wrote:
| Another aspect here I think is the generalized fear and anxiety
| present in young people. Having spoken to some family members in
| the 15-18 age bracket, the message they seem to be receiving is
| that they are without a future... they won't be buying homes,
| they won't be getting high paying jobs, and that the system is
| not going to work in their favor. I think people of this age are
| uniquely feeling mortal and vulnerable in a way teens typically
| have not, causing them to be more hesitant to risk losing their
| mind which they may need to protect themselves down the road. But
| they also are modern teenagers, not only low in willpower but
| also coddled by their smartphones, which is why technology
| addiction is the go to "safer" alternative to habitual drug use.
|
| Also, you typically need to be unsupervised with friends to get
| into drugs, something teenagers no longer have access to compared
| to 10-15 years ago. If we look at the social decline due to the
| pandemic, what made experts think these kids would bounce back?
| They are forever changed, and will forever be less social than
| other generations because they missed out on formative
| experiences.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > uniquely feeling mortal and vulnerable in a way teens
| typically have not, causing them to be more hesitant to risk
| losing their mind which they may need to protect themselves
| down the road
|
| its just as easy to reach the exact opposite conclusion when
| everything is so hopeless and nihilistic. you are extrapolating
| way too much here.
|
| less unsupervised time, location tracking from parents,
| unregulated dopamine from chatgroups and algorithms in public
| social media, and the risk of fentany and other poisons in
| drugs, are much better contributors to extrapolate from
| crtified wrote:
| I imagine that, for the young people of the world, the Covid
| years really ripped away the illusion that the adults of the
| world are in competent control. To a degree that modern
| generations (from otherwise relatively stable, wealthy
| countries) have never experienced. While there are other major
| factors clearly contributing to the generational angst, I think
| this was the catalyst.
|
| I wonder how the economics stack up, because intoxicants aren't
| free. If the researchers are saying there's X less drug use,
| then presumably that either implies (a) teenagers are now
| spending X more on other areas instead (and what are they?), or
| (b) teenagers now have X less money.
| HPsquared wrote:
| See also: anyone who lived through the decline and fall of
| the USSR.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Presumably you're referring to disillusioning a generation,
| right? I wonder if the masses had smartphones in 1992 if
| they would have withdrew to the internet rather than vodka.
| Genuine question - yours is an interesting connection
| because the circumstances of disillusionment are so
| different.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Online services have displaced at least:
| - the TV - the radio - board games -
| card games - video games - theaters -
| phones and faxes - the mail
|
| Perhaps the above where the equivalent of vodka to some
| of you, but I wouldn't look at someone with their
| smartphone and think "wow, they're getting wasted !"
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| It replaced those things but that list doesn't include
| the major time sinks, besides TV: social media, porn,
| doomscrolling. We already made fun of TV zombies, and at
| the worst it absolutely can remind me of a drunk or
| unstable person.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I understand how much people are emotionally reactive to
| these part of the net, and the cultural hatred some can
| have for "unproductive" time (does it match what you call
| "time sinks"?)
|
| I still don't think they stand on the same foot as vodka.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Agreed that Covid was disillusioning for young people, but
| uniquely so? The 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, and the GWoT
| would all like a word.
|
| The only generation I can think of without a similar
| formative crisis (in the US at least) is Gen X. Does the
| death of Kurt Cobain count?
| sznio wrote:
| the financial crisis was just financial. 9/11 or war on
| terror was just behind a tv screen.
|
| covid was actually something everyone felt personally - not
| just empathized with through media. I feel like I just
| started recovering mentally from the lockdowns - all my
| college years eaten up by them.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I mean, lock down absolutely was a disruption - but I
| know more than one or two young men that ended up in the
| desert after 9/11. Maybe we've also acclimated so much to
| the post-9/11 infrastructure of fear and surveillance
| that we assume this is how it always was?
| throwameme wrote:
| i am just old enough to have experienced 9/11 when i was
| in elementary school. it was a similar change to society
| to how covid screwed everything
|
| when i was a child, there was no security in airports.
| like literally NONE. you could walk in and buy a flight
| with physical cash. if you wanted an international
| flight, there was a metal detector like you might find in
| a night club
|
| government ID and drivers licence did not have your
| photograph on it, and some state drivers licenses were
| printed on non-laminated card. there was also no
| functional internet surveillance (there were no good
| search algorithms or tools in the early internet, so the
| government couldnt search either).
|
| but the real big change, which is kind of what everyone
| felt i think, is the whole world was celebrating the end
| of the cold war and so vehemently protested going into
| the middle east, and the government just did it anyway.
| the largest protests in the history of the west were
| against that war and it was all totally ignored https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
|
| then we got the PATRIOT act, NSA/CIA spying on the
| population, heavily armed police. btw, in the 1990s you
| would NEVER see police with assault rifles and armoured
| trucks etc except for swat teams in major cities and the
| ATF. The idea of your local police department having a
| heap of military equipment was crazy. a great example of
| this is the LA riots in '92 - they had to call in the
| army and the national guard because the police simply
| werent equipped for it
|
| and they would run these polls on tv, like gallup polls,
| falsely claiming that 20%+ of people publicly supported
| the war
|
| even though it didnt affect anyone as much personally, it
| was the turning point where the gov just started brazenly
| ignoring people and introducing the heavy duty
| surveillance state, which was especially painfully felt
| in aus, canada, new zealand, the us, and the uk. and
| covid19 tyranny was only possible because of what bush
| did in response to 9/11 - it physically could not have
| happened in the 1990s as there were no government
| agencies that could have done it
| aeonik wrote:
| I thought the AR-15s that the police carried in America
| were semi-auto. More like a sporting rifle than what the
| military uses.
|
| AR-15s are more versatile than shotguns, though less
| powerful they are more accurate. If your going to carry a
| long gun around, it's probably the most logical option.
|
| Basically anyone who isn't a prohibited person in America
| can field the same equipment. Though I think police have
| more access to restricted ammunition.
| fawley wrote:
| First-time home owners have increased in age[0], the middle
| class is shrinking[1], education costs have vastly outpaced
| inflation[2] as have medical costs[3].
|
| Perhaps the generalized fear is not so much about "coddling",
| but concrete realities. I do not envy them.
|
| [0] https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/american-housing-market-
| old... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-
| reads/2022/04/20/how-the-a... [2]
| https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...
| [3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/how-does-
| medical-i...
| mmooss wrote:
| Also the insane political risks and social instability,
| climate change, heightened risks of war and econmomic
| calamity, housing cost increase.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| All I want in life is a good union for software. Role
| finished this week, who needs me next week? Off I go.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| How would a union help you move between roles? Or are you
| saying the opposite.
| toast0 wrote:
| Most professional sports players are unionized and they
| move around all the time. :P
|
| I hope we get a union with a draft and such.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| This would rule. I would watch the FAANG draft.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| In the sense of how certain trade unions function as a
| hiring hall. Like a centralized job assignment. We
| already have a version of it except it's a million
| splintered hiring/recruitment agencies that may or may
| not be good. Lot's of time wasted.
|
| Probably the wrong place to be barking up this tree
| though.
| mmooss wrote:
| The political instability, social instability, climate
| change, wars, and more will affect you whether or not you
| deny them.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Those are easier to cope with when you live in a
| supportive society. _Most_ humans naturally help each
| others in case of emergency. It's easier when the
| framework is already in place.
| lizzas wrote:
| People help each other in war? Catastophy? Sometimes they
| do, sometimes they definitely do not.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at
| that age[0], real wages are increasing for the lower and
| middle class for the first time since 1970[1]. More people
| are leaving the workforce than anytime in history, creating
| high paying trade job openings at an unprecedented rate[2].
| Health care costs are growing slower now than any prior
| decade[3].
|
| Every generation has challenges and benefits. Framing the
| narrative can happen in any direction and the variance in
| group is bigger than the variance between.
|
| [0] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/09/05/how-gen-z-outpaces-
| past-...
|
| [1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/americans-wages-
| are...
|
| [2] https://www.protectedincome.org/news/labor-day-
| peak-65-trade...
|
| [3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-
| spe...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| [0] needs to breakout what proportion of the homeowners
| received help from parents, either via free rent or cash.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| [0] in the parent comment needs to note most of the
| increase comes from older people living and staying in
| their houses longer rather than dying, moving to
| facilities or in with family.
| Uehreka wrote:
| > More of gen z are home owners than previous generations
| at that age[0]
|
| If you're going to make a claim this bold and this counter
| to the prevailing narrative, you're gonna need to cite a
| better source than an outbrain-riddled webpage that tells
| me to "watch our video to find the lede we buried". I'm not
| saying this isn't true, but extraordinary claims require
| good sourcing and explanation.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Here is the underlying dataset
| https://www.ipums.org/projects/ipums-cps/d030.V11.0
|
| Redfin did the analysis quoted
| https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-
| generation...
| cj wrote:
| > The homeownership rate for 26-year-old Gen Zers is 30%,
| below 31% for millennials at 26, 32.5% of Gen Xers at 26,
| and 35.6% of boomers at 26.
|
| Unless you're specifically 26 years old, I suppose? This
| analysis seems far from scientific and cherry picks data
| in strange ways.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The fall in genz ownership rates is also quite
| interesting: I guess they weren't buying during the
| pandemic?
| 9rx wrote:
| _> If you're going to make a claim this bold and this
| counter to the prevailing narrative_
|
| What do you see as the prevailing narrative? The one I
| see is homeownership itself, which suggests that
| homeownership has been seen as being hotly desirable. I
| strongly suspect we wouldn't have a homeownership
| narrative to speak of if ownership was unwanted. When
| something becomes unusually desirable like homeownership
| has, it is not unexpected to see an uptick in
| participation around it; in this case owning a home. Much
| of the urban age has been marked with the majority of the
| population being renters. Everyone wanting to own a home
| with such furor is historically unusual.
|
| I expect homeownership has become so desirable as it has
| become seen as a way to build wealth. While,
| historically, housing only kept pace with inflation at
| best, real home values have risen by unfathomable amounts
| in the last decade or two. Which, again, attracts people
| willing to risk it all for a chance at some of that
| wealth opportunity. It would be unusual if said
| generational group had comparatively lower ownership
| rates given the "FOMO" aspect. People run away when
| prices are falling, not when they are rising.
|
| Given the market we've watched, the extraordinary claim
| would be that Gen-Z has lower ownership rates compared to
| previous generations at the same age.
| jasonkester wrote:
| Well said. I remember making a spreadsheet in maybe 1995
| laying out the math to compare the real costs and
| expected gains from buying vs. renting.
|
| It mathed out about even. I decided to go with renting
| instead of buying, with the logic that the S&P didn't
| need me to buy it a new roof every 15 years or to work in
| its garden every weekend.
|
| It worked nicely too, growing the money that would
| otherwise have gone into mortgages and property tax,
| letting me take some of it out recently and buy a house
| with cash.
|
| I don't see much of this attitude in my younger friends
| now. But living cheap and saving does actually work.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| A 20% down mortgage is a 5x levered bet. Plus you can
| roll capital gains into new real estate. The S&P 500
| cannot offer these advantages.
| abduhl wrote:
| With the proper mix of retirement accounts, options, and
| futures contracts it can. It can offer even more leverage
| if you want.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| The bigger win is the government subsidies and tax
| breaks.
|
| You need very little on hand cash to get a very low
| interest rate. Much lower than asset loans at equivalent
| levels of wealth.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| A 5x levered bet with no prepayment penalty subsidized by
| future Americans, and it cannot be called and is non
| recourse in many states. And it provides shelter.
| george_w_kush wrote:
| The claim isn't that homeownership is undesirable to Gen
| Z, but that a lower percentage of Gen Z owns homes
| compared to previous generations regardless of the
| specific reason. I think in this case the most likely
| cause is the increase in prices is causing houses to be
| unaffordable to Gen Z, despite their desire to own
| houses.
| 9rx wrote:
| There may be some temporal confusion here. Gen-Z rates of
| homeownership has stalled out over the past year or so.
| Prices are no longer rising like they once were, with
| fears over impending decline, so the desire is not what
| it once was. It may be fair to say that the narrative has
| shifted to "too expensive", but as they loaded up early
| when prices were rising at unprecedented rates there is a
| big head start at play. They don't have to buy any more
| homes for a while to maintain the lead.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Regarding home ownership: they only started with a higher
| rate. It's too early to say, but considering that growth
| has stagnated, they're on track to become the generation
| that will own the least homes.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > Health care costs are growing slower now than any prior
| decade[3].
|
| I don't see any data on that page supporting this claim.
| The current decade is growing much faster than the previous
| one, and they only show data up to 2023.
|
| > Health spending increased by 7.5% from 2022 to 2023,
| faster than the 4.6% increase from 2021 to 2022. The growth
| in total health spending from 2022 to 2023 is well above
| the average annual growth rate of the 2010s (4.1%).
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I should have said compared to gdp.
| notyourwork wrote:
| Society hasn't setup future society to be better. It's a grab
| and go everywhere you look and it's tiring. This is coming
| from a millennial with a good tech job. I cannot imagine how
| younger generations feel.
| speakfreely wrote:
| This is the inevitable result of higher connectivity in
| society. More spoils flow to top performers due to the
| reduced friction. I don't see any way to undo this trend
| short of undoing the connectivity, i.e. forcibly rolling
| back technological progress. Kind of a non-starter.
| speakfreely wrote:
| First-time home buyers are getting squeezed by a combination
| of peaking market forces, but those forces are peaking and
| we're probably seeing the worst of it at this moment [1]. It
| will get better.
|
| [1] https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-i-dont-
| inv...
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Their arguments for "won't go up much" are reasonable but
| their arguments for "will actually fall enough to allow two
| generations to finally own homes" are pretty fucking
| nonsensical.
|
| They're comparing to hosting dips in the world wars and
| while I assure you ww3 will have enough loss of life to
| make houses quite cheap a third time, you still won't want
| them because they'll be covered in radioactive
| contamination.
|
| The issue isn't blind supply and demand, it's that we've
| made construction expensive through code and arbitrary
| supply chain constraints and we're planning to deport all
| the construction workers. Even if population grown
| naturally slows to zero we will simply stop building houses
| because it won't be profitable. That's what got us here in
| the first place.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have
| medical costs[3].
|
| This is basically a law of nature. Anything that's done by
| humans and can't be scaled will necessarily get more
| expensive _in real terms_ over time. See: Baumol effect.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Your last point was my knee-jerk reaction, "where are they
| going to do drugs? There are fewer and fewer places available
| to spend time without paying a fee." I'd like to know if that's
| true or just a mistaken impression on my part.
| jajko wrote:
| > they won't be buying homes, they won't be getting high paying
| jobs, and that the system is not going to work in their favor
|
| I dont have a clue what your upbringing looked like, but even
| up to around age of 25, I never ever expected nor was told to
| expect any of that. The success despite all that is much
| sweeter.
|
| Maybe thats some US thing, being raised in eastern Europe you
| were born to shit, you were considered insignificant shit and
| that was about it. Thats what being occupied for 4 decades by
| russians causes to society, on top of other bad stuff they are
| so natural with.
|
| Maybe stop telling kids how they are all special and great and
| all will be astronauts and let them figure it all out by
| themselves? Teenagers being frustrated that they wont be owning
| some posh expensive house, thats pretty fucked up upbringing
| and life goals to be polite, thats not success in life in any
| meaningful way.
|
| I recommend checking biggest regrets of dying people, focus on
| careers and money hoarding are consistently at the top.
| yks wrote:
| It didn't even cross my mind until the very late teens that
| it might be possible for me to own a flat one day, the sums
| involved sounded not much different than a "gazillion
| dollars", but that particular future outlook definitely had
| zero effect on my behavior.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > Teenagers being frustrated that they wont be owning some
| posh expensive house
|
| Posh expensive house? Nowhere was that mentioned.
|
| The post-WWII 20th century American social contract was: "You
| will have the ability to get married, live in a modest home
| of your own, own a car, raise 2-3 young children, and go on a
| modest annual vacation even if you work in a factory".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The post-WWII 20th century American social contract was:
| "You will have the ability to get married, live in a modest
| home of your own, own a car, raise 2-3 young children, and
| go on a modest annual vacation even if you work in a
| factory"_
|
| Few under 50 actually want a suburban home in a no-name
| town with a single domestic holiday a year and a job
| requiring physical labor (and hard limits on clocking in
| and out) that feeds your family with industrial calories.
|
| If you do, you can get that with practically zero training
| in a mid-tier hospitality job (or working as an _e.g._ bank
| teller) with an hour commute each way. Small-town suburban
| homes are cheap.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Neither of my parents _ever_ went on vacation until they
| were adults themselves. Both were middle class and white. 3
| of my 4 grand parents worked in factories. 1 was a teacher.
|
| My dad's parents owned their own home. The _biggest_ one
| they owned was 1000 square feet, which they viewed as
| cavernous. The one my dad lived in as a small child had no
| indoor plumbing and the heat came from a single wood
| burning stove. I was alive when my dad first lived in a
| house with central air.
|
| My mom's parents never owned a home while she lived with
| them.
|
| The numbers will back me up that this was a completely
| typical middle class American experience post ww2.
|
| What seems to have changed is a) the class of housing stock
| available. b) trends around _where_ people live and c) the
| narrative about the past.
| legitster wrote:
| I have had the opposite observation. _Millenials_ and older Gen
| Z have extremely pessimistic takes on the future. Our
| childhoods were some of the most materially comfortable in
| human history, and everything in comparison is downhill from
| there.
|
| But high schoolers I know today seem more even keeled about
| things. They are graduating into a world where fast food jobs
| start at $17, no one needs to go to college if they don't want
| to, and they are accustomed to a world where everything is
| temporary and digital.
|
| I think the strongest evidence of this is the sharp decline in
| military recruitment.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Millennials had high hopes and were disappointed; Gen Z
| didn't have high hopes.
| corimaith wrote:
| Exactly. In 2014 I really thought we'd have flying cars,
| exploring space and world peace by 2024. Instead everything
| looks the same, regressed even in some areas and all-around
| alot more cynical
| bitwalker wrote:
| You might not need to go to college, but you're going into
| significant debt if you do, so now one has to decide which
| disadvantage they want to start their career with: no degree,
| or crippling debt.
|
| A fast food job might be $17/hr, but the cost of gas is >2x
| what it was when that same job paid $8/hr, not to mention
| other basic costs like groceries, rent, and buckle up if you
| have to go to the doctor. Pay has simply not kept up with the
| cost of living for most Americans.
|
| Why would anyone be happy that everything is ephemeral? That
| implies a lack of stability, more anxiety about the future,
| less confidence that you can weather bad times.
|
| Humans are tactile creatures, everything being digital leads
| to a counter-intuitive sense of isolation - more connected,
| but less personal. There are positives too, but as an older
| Millennial, it has been interesting to be along for the ride
| as the potential of the internet and social media went from a
| superpower, to kryptonite. Who knows where things will be in
| 5-10 years, but it's hard not to see how some of our greatest
| tools are being turned against us in the search for more
| profit.
|
| Millennials are, if anything, brutally realistic - a trait
| required to navigate the last 16 years. We were forced to
| watch as the last bit of life in the idea of a strong middle
| class was snuffed out, and had to enter the workforce right
| as the GFC hit. Our parents were the last generation where
| one could reasonably expect to live a life that truly lived
| up to the ideal of the American Dream - that one could get
| educated, get a job, buy a decent house and raise a family,
| without it being especially noteworthy to do so. For many
| Millennials, if not every generation following, it is
| essentially nothing more than a dream at this point.
| Corporate greed, and a government fully captured by it, has
| all but killed the middle class, and I fully expect that the
| advent of AI - rather than being a boon for the middle class
| - will drive a nail in its coffin. Those with the most to
| gain are already on top, and I've already heard way more
| people here talk about what they'll be able to do without
| needing to hire anyone, than I have about how the people left
| jobless will benefit. It is readily apparent that nobody with
| any power is going to do anything about it before a
| significant amount of suffering is felt - maybe not even
| then. All you have to do is listen to how people talk about
| it, as if everyone will magically figure out something else
| to do when every sector starts losing jobs simultaneously.
| Our society has a greater chance of eating itself alive
| first.
|
| I consider myself lucky amongst most Millennials - I entered
| the workforce before the GFC, then joined the military
| shortly after it (not due to the GFC, but the timing worked
| out). I was able to get far enough along in my career in
| those first years though that I never had to struggle with
| finding a job like many did. I was able to get a house in my
| 30s thanks to the GI bill. Very few of those I grew up with
| are in the same boat, many are living much the same as they
| were 15 years ago - unable to save enough to buy a house,
| facing reduced job prospects in the future. What reason do
| they have to be anything _but_ pessimistic?
|
| For me personally, I think we've simply lost the battle
| against greed, and there is a tipping point after which
| reigning it back in is impossible without burning it all
| down. That's something nobody should want, least of all the
| rich, but it's played out many times in history, and we keep
| falling into the same trap, just different ways. I think this
| time it probably was Citizens United where we lost our grip,
| that decision made it inevitable that corporate interests
| would be the driving force of government, not the needs of
| its people. Who can say for sure what will happen, but we're
| all along for the ride regardless.
| kortilla wrote:
| > A fast food job might be $17/hr, but the cost of gas is
| >2x what it was when that same job paid $8/hr
|
| This is probably the worst example. In 2008 gas cost as
| much as it does now and fast food did only pay $8/hr.
| https://www.creditdonkey.com/gas-price-history.html
|
| > Millennials are, if anything, brutally realistic
|
| No, your entire post is an example of the dramatic
| doomerism waxing on the anxieties of normal life.
| Complaining about anxiety is one of the hallmarks of a
| millennial.
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| As a person in that age bracket, I don't feel like my peers and
| I are lacking in opportunities to participate in drug & alcohol
| use.
|
| As to why I choose to abstain, I honestly am just not
| interested in drinking or doing drugs. I don't see any benefit
| to it socially, since I have more fun with my friends doing
| things while they are sober, and I don't want to be one of
| those adults that can't socialize without it. Also, the
| consequences for getting caught are high.
| sundvor wrote:
| I'm very pleased to see this sentiment, as a father of a 14
| year old boy. 4 years ago I decided to quit alcohol
| altogether (from a moderate by Australian standards
| consumption), and I hope to be a positive influence on him
| through his formative years through open and honest
| conversations about the topic.
|
| (He has no desire to start drinking etc early or at all at
| this point.)
|
| Long term health impacts are high, as someone in my 50s I'm
| certainly doing better for my choice. And yes, not making
| stupid decisions under influence also cannot be
| underestimated.
| captnObvious wrote:
| This is what I'm thinking. All of the kids I know from 16-22
| are the most level headed group of young adults I've known.
| It is hilarious to me that this group of brilliant
| technologists leans so heavily towards seeing the absolute
| worst in every data point.
|
| Could it be that, kids are doing less drugs because they're
| more informed, less bored, and less reckless than previous
| generations?
|
| We all aspire that our kids will do better than we have. We
| did our best to instill a sense of confidence and worth in
| them.
|
| What if it is finally starting to just, f'ing work?
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| > This is what I'm thinking. All of the kids I know from
| 16-22 are the most level headed group of young adults I've
| known.
|
| Taking this on a bit of a tangent, but as an elder
| millennial, I recall having been told (by elder relatives
| in their mid-30s at the time) all about how one day I'd too
| be an "old fogey" looking down on "teens being teens" and
| how such progression is just the way of things. Hell, I
| still hear people preaching such "wisdom" today to their
| youngers.
|
| Yet here I am, just past the age I'm supposedly meant to
| start ragging on "kids today", and all I can remark is that
| this same 16-22 set you speak of are remarkably respectful,
| polite, and considerate, perhaps more so than my own cohort
| at that age. I almost worry they're not rebellious enough
| for their own good.
| chasd00 wrote:
| My son is 15 and he's a lot more level headed,
| compassionate, and mature than I was at that age. Even his
| worst friends are just like mischievous vs the real menace
| to society type teens were in my generation. As a parent, I
| want to take the credit for the man my son is becoming but
| I know I'm just a part of the equation. ...a BIG part but
| still just a part :)
| jolmg wrote:
| > you typically need to be unsupervised with friends to get
| into drugs, something teenagers no longer have access to
| compared to 10-15 years ago.
|
| They don't? I'm pretty sure I saw unsupervised teens hanging
| out at a mall even just a few days ago.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Gen X's will probably remember being unsupervised from about
| the age they learned to ride a bike. I think we were the last
| "get home before dark" generation.
| kortilla wrote:
| Millennials were the same for the ones born in the late 80s
| and early 90s.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Not to sound snarky, but please consider interpreting
| comments like these as making a statement about rate rather
| than an absolute binary.
| jolmg wrote:
| Right back at you. I was also commenting on rate rather
| than saying that I saw one or 2 in the last 10-15 years.
|
| Not all locations are the same though, so maybe there has
| been a noticeable decrease where you're at. Personally, I
| think I've felt an increase if anything.
| exitb wrote:
| These changes aren't always easy to spot. I live in a
| city that acquired a significant Ukrainian population
| over the last two years. Whenever I see a group of kids
| that biked to an arbitrary location and play, they turn
| out to be young Ukrainians. They do the exact thing local
| kids would do 20 years ago.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I suggest you read up on or watch a documentary on the 60s. We
| are fucking pampered today.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| You'd think doomerism would lead to MORE drug use.
| john_minsk wrote:
| Bad times create strong people.
| john_minsk wrote:
| To clarify, I really think that is what's happening. People
| feel that their future is not a guaranteed success and make
| safer choices to be clear minded and focused to achieve
| success. Probably just my bias is talking...
| noobermin wrote:
| Today on HN, Jonathan Haidt afficionados lament the decline of
| use of addictive, life ruining, hard drugs. Something about
| "formative experiences." I think it's a good thing kids don't
| do hard drugs today, information addiction is a thing may be
| but going back to hard drugs isn't a good thing.
| fy20 wrote:
| > the message they seem to be receiving is that they are
| without a future...
|
| At least when I was that age, it was usually the low income
| people who's greatest achievement in life would be avoiding
| prison, who usually turned towards smoking, alcohol, drugs and
| sex. See "Common People" and similar 80s/90s Britpop songs.
|
| What changed?
|
| I grew up in a lower middle class family, and for me the
| feeling that I could end up like that - as many people I went
| to school with did - was what pushed me to achieve. My parents
| could only just afford their bills, so I didn't get any
| handouts from them. Of course I don't have a Lambo, so maybe
| I'm considered a failure by Gen Z? Has the boundary of what is
| considered "successful" shifted?
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > Also, you typically need to be unsupervised with friends
|
| There's a bigger cultural shift going on where people just
| don't like hanging out with each other anymore.
| sydd wrote:
| I don't think it's be cause if anxiety, it usually increases
| drug use not decreases.
|
| It's much more about people ha ing less friends and socializing
| less
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The article linked here doesn't compare previous time periods,
| only showing the percentages of use/abstaining that they detected
| now and just _saying_ that 's a decline or record decline, while
| the article _it_ links to does compare to prior time periods for
| you to make up your mind about that better
|
| https://news.umich.edu/missing-rebound-youth-drug-use-defies...
| kalium-xyz wrote:
| I remember lying on these surveys when i was 12 out of paranoia,
| i wonder if the internet makes teens more prone to this
| mschuster91 wrote:
| "surprising experts", LOL
|
| It was clear ever back when the Dutch decriminalised weed that
| its normalisation led to youth not being that much interested any
| more, and so it was everywhere else where weed was legalised
| decades later.
|
| But hey, just because the Dutch have had decades of experience,
| the rest of the world still isn't able to learn from them.
|
| It's time to end the war on drugs, once and for all. And DARE etc
| can go and die in a hellfire where it belongs.
|
| > The initial drop in drug use between 2020 and 2021 was among
| the largest ever recorded.
|
| No surprise, with the world in lockdown and most schools in
| lockdown it was harder to get drugs, and meeting up to consume
| drugs could in many countries lead to a knock on the door or even
| a raid from the police - it happened quite the surprising amount
| of times in Germany.
| pkaye wrote:
| They only legalized it recently though.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/legal-weed-netherlands/
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah, it was decriminalized... but that wasn't my point. The
| point is, police didn't care, and it wasn't _interesting_ for
| young people because of that.
| earnestinger wrote:
| Legalisation/decriminalisation was only one part of the
| strategy.
|
| Real problem they had was heroin. So they made heroin(or
| some replacement) free, pushing out drug dealers from the
| market. Importantly: providing other help to addicts, so
| they could/would be part of society.
|
| https://youtu.be/6OYLoPvLzPo?feature=shared (1h video
| comparing situation in US, Portugal, Netherlands;
| Netherlands part starts around 27:00)
| cullumsmith wrote:
| The drugs are digital now.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Well, tell the experts that if you just stay home and stare at
| your phone, you don't go out an experiment with drugs with your
| irl friends (because you don't have any) Also, when I was a teen,
| I had my own place kids nowadays live in the basement
| jimmar wrote:
| My pet theory is that buying drugs requires a level of personal
| interaction that many young people now avoid.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That actually makes a lot of sense. I know of quite a few
| younger people who pass on things they can't order online.
| Grubhub vs phone-in takeout, Amazon vs malls, etc. I wonder if
| the areas that are legalizing drugs will see a DrugHub app pop
| up.
| zingababba wrote:
| It's insanely easy to buy drugs online.
| cute_boi wrote:
| But someone has to tell that link and I am sure peer pressure
| can be one of the major reason for addiction.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You still need crypto, no?
| musictubes wrote:
| Nope. Don't even need the dark web. All you need is social
| media.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/who-needs-the-
| da...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I don't see anywhere how they actually buy the drug.
|
| Or do teenagers get legal access to credit cards in the
| US ?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Teenagers can fairly easily have credit cards in the US
| and Canada. I had my first credit card at 15. They can
| also have debit cards from childhood.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's not very common though.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| In my experience it is nowadays. I'm Gen Z, by 14 all my
| friends had credit or debit cards.
| CardenB wrote:
| The motivation to try drugs, especially initially, is often
| social. I would wager that's really what OP means
| threeseed wrote:
| There is also a corresponding decline in alcohol consumption.
|
| One angle that hasn't been researched enough is the link to anti-
| anxiety and anti-depression medication. These has been a
| significant rise in the prescription of both to young adults:
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/anxiety-prescripti...
|
| And on these medications there are often severe interactions with
| alcohol and drugs which would be enough to frighten off most
| people. Some e.g. bupropion even reduce addictive tendencies
| entirely.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| The other thing I haven't seen in this thread yet is that kids
| today are really focused on is: lifestyle -- they want to work
| hard at school so they can get great jobs to make a lot of
| money so they can afford to own a home and live healthy lives.
| With the cost of living, and everything else, they're going to
| have to make a lot of money to life the kind of life that
| they're used to as kids.
|
| My kids are not on social media. They eat like pro athletes.
| They ask me why I'm eating things with higher amounts of sugar
| or ultra-processed foods. They do an hour of gym class at
| school every weekday and then they want to do sports every
| night of the week and on the weekend. They do their homework
| and get straight As. They are concerned about bullying and
| suicide -- they talk to each other, even siblings, in a healthy
| and caring way.
|
| My oldest couldn't understand why people drink alcohol if it's
| bad for you. I explained that some people like the way it makes
| them feel, "So what? It's bad for you. Why would anyone do that
| to their body?" They couldn't understand why I bought a gas
| guzzling luxury sports car instead of an electric car given the
| state of the environment (I've wanted one my whole life and I
| could finally afford one, yes it's selfish and they are more
| ethical than I am).
|
| There are definitely a bunch of things going on with Gen Z and
| Alpha that have made (some of) them this way. But one of the
| results is that they're not interested in a lot of unhealthy
| things simply because they know they're unhealthy. They can't
| understand why we do things that we know are bad for us, the
| environment, etc. and they're probably right.
|
| They're not perfect, but I do have faith in the next generation
| and we're going to see some amazing leaders come out of this
| group.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| It's great but the way you write I can't stop comparing them
| to what used to be brainwashed communist kids.
|
| People aren't robots, or we would be living in a sad world
|
| What did you do to make them behave like that ? That's
| uncommon, at least in occidental society. Closer to what the
| CCP does.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > My kids are not on social media.
|
| Your kids are big outliers then. I wouldn't extrapolate to
| the general young population.
| altairprime wrote:
| > _kids today are really focused on is: lifestyle -- they
| want to work hard at school so they can get great jobs to
| make a lot of money so they can afford to own a home and live
| healthy lives_
|
| To expand on this point: American kids today are facing a
| world that's drawn up the ladder behind them economically,
| and their only hope of escaping the pit of despair is to work
| themselves to the bone for the dregs of pay available to
| them. Unhealthy habits cost precious wage-earning time. Their
| intoxicant of choice is prescription medications because
| they're covered by insurance, and that's largely kept things
| from boiling over into harming the ascended old people --
| until recently, anyways.
|
| > _I do have faith in the next generation and we're going to
| see some amazing leaders come out of this group._
|
| Not if today's leaders have anything to say about it. What
| leadership arises is, to date, captured by the pre-existing
| social structures and has had no power to keep the ever-older
| graying generations from holding the reins away from them.
| It'll be interesting to see what happens when public health
| insurance is taken away, as withdrawing the last of the
| price-accessible drugs will certainly put their skills to the
| test.
|
| I remain hopeful for the outcome, but the circumstances are
| already set in the recent past. What a time to be a social
| scientist, though!
| quesera wrote:
| I'll take a guess: you are raising kids in a small-to-medium,
| moderately-or-more affluent community -- or a similar
| enclave, or selective/private school, in a larger city.
|
| I would further postulate that your parenthood community is
| more affluent than your childhood community.
|
| My point being: the lifestyle you describe (and its offset
| from the median) has "always" (post-war at least) been common
| in "nice" places. But nice places are unusual.
| yloswgns wrote:
| Technology is causing antisocial behaviour in young people and
| teens, I see it everywhere in public. Even amongst friends on a
| night out people are glued to their phones. Antisocial behaviour
| brings fewer opportunities to meet people and be exposed to
| drugs. Drugs were rife during my adolescence in the UK no matter
| what part of 'society' you were from during the 2000s. I get the
| impression speaking to younger colleaugues that there a fewer big
| house parties and nights out clubbing and summers spent going
| from festival to festival. I started smoking weed as a young teen
| simply through boredom and curiosity, I only had access to a
| shared computer a few hours per day. The rest of the time I was
| out, god forbid, socialising with friends and strangers alike
| (the skatepark, local parks, parent-less houses, etc...).
| jaco6 wrote:
| Two things:
|
| Even the "cool kids" are staying inside and using their phones
| all day. Cool used to mean you were at the party, now it just
| means you have a high snapchat score.
|
| Other thing is genuine fear of accidental fentanyl consumption.
| They're making fake Xans with fentanyl in them, fentanyl is being
| found in coke powder. Plenty of people aren't taking the risk
| with street drugs anymore. Jelly Roll said so in an interview,
| he's a big recreational drug user but doesn't trust the supply
| anymore. Good job dealers!
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| > Even the "cool kids" are staying inside and using their
| phones all day. Cool used to mean you were at the party, now it
| just means you have a high snapchat score.
|
| Eyebrow raise.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| At what? This is clearly true by experience. As long as you
| remember it's a rate and not an absolute statement. Cool kids
| still go to more parties and are less terminally online than
| their lamer peers, but it's a lot less parties and a lot more
| screen time for the cool kid as well.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I think the eyebrow raise is due to the fact that nobody
| cool uses Snapchat anymore. It's like Facebook now.
| dag11 wrote:
| For millenials and older gen z yeah, but it's my
| understanding (and my complete surprise as a millenial)
| that snapchat is actually big again amongst actual
| children.
|
| Can anyone who better knows the reality here chime in?
| deadbabe wrote:
| Children aren't cool.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Try convincing the other children of this.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Yeah one of my younger brothers falls into this category,
| his Snapchat streaks have been going for years - from
| middle school to mid-university so far, and that's not an
| exaggeration.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Can confirm, Gen Alpha is all about Snapchat, and their
| DAUs bear this out:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-
| dau/
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Why would anyone put fent in cocaine? It's more expensive and
| has the opposite effect.
|
| Drug selling is all about repeat customers I don't really
| believe this happens apart from accidents.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I wondered about that too. The most likely answer is that a
| lot of dealers aren't meticulous about cleaning work surfaces
| between batches.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Search "speedball drug", this has been done for decades.
| swores wrote:
| TL;DR: If fentanyl could be evenly dispersed in cocaine at a
| tiny percentage of the weight, there's a theoretical reason
| for a dealer to add it. However, it's likely rare and more
| often accidental.
|
| I agree with kstrauser--most cases of fentanyl in cocaine are
| likely due to contamination from preparing multiple drugs in
| the same space. Accidental fentanyl poisonings usually
| involve people using other downers, like heroin or
| counterfeit benzos, rather than cocaine.
|
| That said, there's a theoretical motive for intentionally
| adding fentanyl to cocaine. While cocaine is highly mentally
| addictive, it doesn't cause the same physical dependence as
| opiates. A low, undetectable dose of fentanyl could enhance
| the high and subtly increase physical dependence, potentially
| leading to more frequent use. It's an unethical but plausible
| strategy for some dealers.
|
| Regarding cost, fentanyl is cheaper than it might seem. While
| per-gram prices for cocaine and fentanyl are similar,
| fentanyl's potency makes it far more economical in effective
| doses. A gram of fentanyl can be diluted across hundreds of
| grams of cocaine, making it cost-effective for someone aiming
| to enhance or manipulate their product.
|
| The real challenges are: 1. Mixing: Distributing fentanyl
| evenly in cocaine is extremely difficult without specialized
| equipment. Uneven mixing could make some doses dangerously
| potent. 2. User safety: Even tiny, "safe" doses can become
| deadly when combined with alcohol, benzos, or other opiates,
| all of which are common among cocaine users.
|
| In short, the risk and complexity of mixing fentanyl properly
| likely outweigh the benefits for most dealers. But that
| doesn't rule out less ethical or less cautious individuals
| attempting it.
|
| (I first wrote a too-lengthy reply of ~800 words as I'm too
| sleepy to write well atm, so I got ChatGPT to condense it
| which got rid of 70% - https://pastebin.com/raw/khm2VFxN )
| oseityphelysiol wrote:
| Interesting how I could instantly tell that this was
| written by AI. CharGPT has a very distinguishable style and
| reasoning.
| swores wrote:
| That's why I included a pastebin link of my original
| reply that I asked it to summarise - I hate when people
| comment "here's what ChatGPT thinks on this subject", but
| hoped people wouldn't mind a lazily-shortened version of
| my own writing!
| psyclobe wrote:
| I don't know but a very close friend's x-wife died that way,
| coke laced with fent.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| There just isn't just one type of "cool" anymore. Media is
| extremely targeted and everyone interacts within their own
| bubbles to the point where they don't know about the other
| bubbles. There are artists with 1B+ streams that I haven't
| heard of, because none of the algorithms ever recommended it to
| me.
|
| Same applies to "cool"ness, as there aren't a handful of
| tastemakers that decide on "what's more or less cool for a
| given environment".
| kickout wrote:
| Think most commenters are correct and that tech and screens have
| usurped more "medicinal" drugs.
|
| What I find interesting is the general lack of care among folks
| here at HN. There was a comment thread about some person in AL
| alluding to not being able to find qualified workers at their
| government contractor implying a morale hang up on "weapon
| systems"
|
| I'd argue tech kills more folks than these contractors but people
| can easily look past that.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| It's a question of spectacle. 300 people dying in a plane crash
| is perceived as worse than 300'000 dying of preventable
| disease.
|
| (Or 1 insurance CEO being killed being perceived as worse than
| 50'000 being killed by denied insurance claims)
| kickout wrote:
| Thus my point. Cognitive dissonance at its finest (worst)
| euniceee3 wrote:
| Blame the homeless for this win. Seeing the outcome so blatantly
| all around us is pushing a net positive. Next big shift will be
| from the legalization of more recreational drugs.
| thefaux wrote:
| I don't know about that. I feel like the cat is out of the bag
| with cannabis and that it actually has the net effect of making
| the population more docile and accepting of the status quo
| which is good for power (individual experiences may vary of
| course).
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Isn't there research showing that people are smoking _less_
| weed in the places it 's been legalized? It lost its "cool
| factor" after that.
| Peacefulz wrote:
| In the age of fentanyl I am not at all surprised by this news.
| The age of experimentation is waning when you can't be sure that
| your substance is genuine and the cost of being wrong could be
| your life. If I were a young person today I probably wouldn't
| even touch anything powdered or pressed.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| It's remarkable to me that many of the top-level comments on this
| story are all positing that _something_ (i.e. _the damn phones_ )
| must have replaced drug use and we're just not accounting for it.
| And if it isn't _the damn phones_ , then it must be that the kids
| are just too scared of modern-day drugs and the dangers lurking
| within.
|
| I'm not saying it's not phone addiction, or fentanyl in the weed,
| but is it really that hard to believe that the youths just don't
| want to do drugs as much as your generation did?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Ample bodycam footage of people on drugs, or overdosing is widely
| available. I'd like to imagine that many people's first exposure
| to drugs is seeing the terrifying things it leads them to do.
| Gigachad wrote:
| There's regular news articles about people straight up dying
| from dodgy pills. Why would you take that risk. There is no way
| to safely use drugs when a single pill could kill you
| instantly.
| bdangubic wrote:
| not that you are wrong but life without risk is what today's
| kids are mostly experiencing and it is no way to live.
| statistically based on number of pills consumed your chances
| of straight-up dying are very low. drug dealers do not want
| to kill you any more than Elon selling you a Tesla without
| brakes. we do thousands of inherently dangerous things all
| the time (e.g. each time you fly you should know that chances
| are your aircraft may have been maintained / repaired in any
| of the 900 facilities outside of the United States and such
| work is performed by people making less money per day than
| you spend on pumpkin spice latte... and yet we fly...)
| statistically though, your chances of dying from a dodgy pill
| are very very low
| Gigachad wrote:
| I find this discussion quite odd. Society has worked quite
| hard for a long time now to reduce drug usage, and now it's
| actually going down, and somehow that's meant to be a bad
| thing.
|
| I get the point about kids being afraid of taking any risks
| being bad. But why is taking drugs important to someone's
| life in a way that riding a mountain bike and risking
| hurting yourself doesn't satisfy?
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Is there? LiveLeak and it's ilk are gone now
| anonymouscaller wrote:
| I'm guessing it's linked to declining social interaction among
| teenagers, which also explains the decline in alcohol consumption
| too.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Isn't this good? We've literally told teenagers to not use drugs
| or have sex for decades and it's obviously working. The
| consequences are far higher today or at least more well
| understood and the messaging is getting through.
|
| We've trained younger generations to be extremely risk adverse
| and they've listened. I line they're probably dangerously exposed
| to other risks that we don't have generational knowledge of yet.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Social media, for example.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yeah I think it's just this. We learnt that alcohol is actually
| really bad for you in many ways, and we taught our children,
| and they listened. I think it's pretty funny that our instinct
| is somehow to be slightly horrified that they stopped drinking
| or using drugs. I guess they can't do anything right
| jppope wrote:
| I think the issue here is more about the unintended second
| order effects. Yay! Drug and alcohol use is down...
| annnnnnddddd now theres a mental health crisis, increase in
| suicide rate, and the fertility rate is dropping like well
| drug and alcohol use.
|
| I'm personally not saying the isolated health aspect of
| reduced drug and alcohol use is a bad thing. In a vacuum it
| is obviously positive. When you consider how they function in
| a broader social system it may turn out that its not a
| positive change.
| D-Coder wrote:
| Oddball theory:
|
| COVID hit credulous / non-technical people harder, because they
| refused to believe in it and didn't take precautions. So a lot of
| people who might have turned to drugs died for an entirely
| unrelated reason, leaving teens who are "smart" enough to avoid
| drugs. ("Smart" here is not intended to mean just IQ.)
| at-w wrote:
| From 2020-2024, the UN recorded ~17,000 deaths among children
| in all measured countries combined. The share of that that is
| among older children/teens and in developed countries like the
| US is vanishingly small.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| the appetite for self-destruction is just as big now as it used
| to be among teenagers. i think people simply dont understand how
| self-destructive social media is. thats why theyre surprised.
| rdl wrote:
| Fentanyl contamination/adulteration seems like a sufficient
| reason to not use any street drug active in greater than
| microgram quantities. (If I were a parent, I'd probably prefer to
| give "good" drugs to a kid who was unavoidably going to do them
| vs. trust their friends/etc. to find safe ones, although there's
| obviously horrible moral hazard there. I have no idea what the
| right answer is.)
| Arubis wrote:
| Most initial exposure to drugs is social. That happens less if
| you're holed up in your room on your phone.
| luckydata wrote:
| They don't know who to buy them from because they don't have any
| friends and don't go out.
| cyberax wrote:
| There are now very visible examples of drug use consequences in
| pretty much every Downtown of a large city.
| keepamovin wrote:
| It doesn't look so good on IG and TikTok if you're wasted and
| unhealthy. Image culture's positive flipside is appearance is a
| currency of respect, and people don't want to lose it. I guess
| there had to be some silver lining, right? Ha! :)
| whatever1 wrote:
| It's because they dont have same day delivery. Who has the energy
| to stop scrolling on tiktok and get out of the house to get
| anything. Let alone drugs that require you to speak to someone.
| _tom_ wrote:
| You can probably get same day delivery on drugs, too.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Incorrect title. "Illegal drug use among teens drops" is what the
| study is talking about.
|
| Psychoactive prescriptions are up probably orders of magnitude in
| the last fifty years.
|
| People have been talking about "self medicating" with alcohol and
| other legal drugs to deal with various problems for decades. Now
| there are legal "doctor medicating" options.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The obvious reason is they don't have the freedom or space to
| with helicopter parents and fear of strangers. It's a wonder they
| even leave the house but if they do mother will drive and pick
| them up.
|
| Plus weed is legal now in many places. Kids don't want to do what
| their parents are doing.
| Animats wrote:
| The pot industry is having serious problems. The market was not
| only way overestimated, sales are down.[1]
|
| World's smallest violin plays.
|
| [1]
| https://www.ft.com/content/de36eb98-f28d-4594-9ae6-624d25802...
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| This growth story I never understood. The grey market has been
| extremely saturated for at least 20-30 years - demand can't
| really grow from "everyone who wants it has it". There is
| barely any value add that a company can do with the raw output
| (flower). The growing and processing equipment is already a
| mature market. Growing is easy if you can follow a basic guide
| and invest $500 in equipment. Harvesting is just cutting it off
| the plant and putting it up to dry.. The vape cartridges etc,
| anyone can buy from AliBaba for cents a piece. I just don't see
| where you can outcompete a random Joe
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Fentanyl contamination is a real concern though.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Why would anyone put fentanyl in weed? The black market
| does have many negative consequences I agree on that
| nperez wrote:
| I think information and culture/fashion both have a lot to do
| with it.
|
| Pre-social media, you could get drunk and embarrass yourself, and
| forget about it by the next day. Now everything is recorded.
| Information about alcoholism is easier to come by, and there are
| influencers like worldoftshirts who show people what life as an
| alcoholic is like. I don't see how anyone could want a drink
| after watching content like that. Smoking weed in front of a
| camera doesn't seem as edgy as it used to now that it's legal.
| Having red eyes in a photo is annoying. Vaping has always had a
| cringe factor.
|
| All of this tech is giving us the ability to look in the mirror
| and see what we're doing to ourselves.
| yapyap wrote:
| oh my god, never thought there would be a day I saw
| WorldofTshirts mentioned on HN
| tempodox wrote:
| Or someone misunderstood. Teen drug use did not decline, it
| shifted. From substances to social media / "AI".
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Why would a teen use drugs when they have TikTok? All the kids I
| grew up with who did drugs did it largely because they were bored
| or had bad family lives. The internet is an increasingly
| addictive distraction.
| 01100011 wrote:
| A question for older folks: what did drugs do for us? Why did we
| do them?
|
| For me, drugs were:
|
| - socialization. I met a lot of friends through alcohol & drugs
| and they became the social glue for my circle. Alcohol & drugs
| became a large part of my identity.
|
| - a way to cope with boredom. Every day is a party when you're
| high.
|
| - identity. In my generation, drugs were mostly cool and
| associated with iconoclasts, artists, etc.
|
| Young people's culture changed. I don't think kids see alcohol,
| drugs and being out of control as cool anymore. I don't know
| specifically what changed this. Better social messaging, mass
| prescribing of ADHD meds, more competitive job markets.. Social
| media and multiplayer gaming have both ramped up competitive
| drives for what used to be more relaxing activities. Maybe the
| current optiate and meth epidemics are more effective as a
| warning than, say, the crack epidemic was for us?
|
| Kids have tech to glue them together(poorly in many cases, but it
| does fill the niche). Kids have internet subcultures to define
| their cultures now. Alternative lifestyles are much more
| accessible and take much less risk to participate in vs my
| childhood in the 80s. You don't need drugs to meet people or
| forge common identities.
|
| Kids are never bored anymore. I suspect there has never been a
| better time to be a kid in a boring small town. If you have
| bandwidth, you have culture. You have better shipping, home
| delivery, cheap imports, etc. Affluence seems more common than it
| used to be, even in our highly divided economy.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Gen Z here and people are definitely still doing drugs and
| drinking, but it does seem massively less.
|
| Just a personal anecdote, but there's still a lot of house
| parties and stuff going on, and most people will have a couple
| drinks, some will have none, etc. But you are absolutely
| expected to handle yourself appropriately, getting too drunk or
| taking drugs you couldn't handle isn't tolerated and you'll
| find yourself uninvited to future events. It is significantly
| more socially acceptable to drink no alcohol and take no drugs,
| than it is to get too drunk and act inappropriately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is significantly more socially acceptable to drink no
| alcohol and take no drugs, than it is to get too drunk and
| act inappropriately_
|
| From what I've seen, this is partly a function of embedded
| social media. A drunk night at a friend's isn't just a bad
| decision, it reflects poorly on everyone in the room,
| including the host, in a semi-permanent and semi-public way.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Handling your stuff isn't all that new. Unless you're hanging
| with very close friends you always needed to not be a problem
| or you wouldn't get invited back.
|
| I'm curious what GenZ+ thinks about the movie "The Boys &
| Girls Guide to Getting Down" which is a tongue-in-cheek,
| funny look at mid 00's partying culture in LA. That's not
| really my generation, but is a bit of a window into what I
| think was the last generation to really embrace intoxication.
| znpy wrote:
| As a millennial this is just great.
|
| The more i read about GenZ'rs and their attitude to work and
| life the more i like this generation.
|
| Yes, people should be expected to handle themselves
| appropriately. Getting black-out wasted with alcohol is not
| cool. It's just unhealthy. Way to go!
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| getting too drunk or taking drugs you couldn't handle isn't
| tolerated and you'll find yourself uninvited to future
| events. It is significantly more socially acceptable to
| drink no alcohol and take no drugs, than it is to get
| too drunk and act inappropriately.
|
| That doesn't sound all that different than previous
| generations. SXE's been a thing since the 80s. Not everyone
| is Bret Easton Ellis. I don't think that attitudes have
| changed all that much, but circumstances have. Inflation and
| wage stagnation mean less discretionary spending. Fentanyl
| analogues mean street drugs are significantly more lethal
| than in generations past. Legalized marijuana means there's
| less mystery and motivation to experiment further.
|
| I've interacted with a number of Gen Zers in their 20s and
| Millenials in their early 30s, some in passing and some on a
| more regular basis. In my experience that cohort spans the
| gamut. Some are teetotalers, sure. Most use drugs (cocaine,
| ketamine, assorted off-label prescription stuff, marijuana,
| etc.) at least occasionally, some daily. It really doesn't
| seem all that different from when I was their age. Excluding
| peer pressure, most of the societal ills that drove my peers
| to experiment with drugs still apply. Conversely I've seen a
| lot of my peers start to dial back drug and alcohol use as
| they get older.
| lakomen wrote:
| Yeah but at some point the life of the party became boring
| because it was all day every day. So we just hung out and
| smoked weed and played SNES, PSX on a daily basis and went to
| clubs on weekends and cafes from wed/thur onwards.
|
| I met so many people only through smoking weed. And because
| weed is such a laid back drug, we were all laid back and
| friendly with each other.
|
| What I learned to hate over the years was that daily routine of
| finding something to smoke. We had our dealers we phoned up or
| sometimes we would deal ourselves to finance our consumption.
|
| Dealing drugs was another level though. Hostilities arose. Some
| people claimed turf and threatened others with violence, those
| were "miraculously" found by the police and landed in jail.
| Also dealers that scammed others. The scene had a way to police
| themselves. Those were the good years.
|
| Later the quality became worse and the quantity as well. It was
| no longer... how should I put it,... fun and games but people
| discovered it as a source of making profit. Even friends or
| people you considered friends would try to scam you and you
| weren't any different. That time began approximately when the
| Afghanistan wars began and the CIA was cut off from the
| cannabis sources.
|
| It was like this, we would smoke weed in the summer and black
| afghan in winter. The black afghan fell off. What remained was
| green hash from the turks and weed, which was stretched with
| hairspray and silica sand.
|
| I quit doing ganja, also because I hated being stoned all day
| every day and having to do the daily finding weed routine. I
| was so tired of it, also "what am I doing with my life".
|
| I lost most "friends", I had to, to not be exposed to this crap
| on a daily basis. I wanted to get somewhere in life not just
| consume weed all day and be a loser who got nothing done.
| Better late than never.
|
| I very rarely do resin nowadays, not by smoking but orally, and
| it's like once a year or every 2 years. Cannabis is definitely
| good for your health, if not overdone.
| TomK32 wrote:
| The improved treatment, and acceptance, of ADHD is certainly
| one key element here. I hope we continue to support kids if
| they show symptoms of any psychological disorder.
|
| Here's a 2018 study following kids into adulthood and
| questioning them on their substance abuse:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5985671/
|
| My brother is one of those really bad cases, while I got my
| diagnosis just recently; never had more than a slight drinking
| problem which has almost disappeared since the I started taking
| medication.
| FireSquid2006 wrote:
| We can take a good thing too far (and probably are at that
| point). ADHD is being overdiagnosed and medication is being
| overprescribed, especially in young men.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I am about to turn 40 very soon. Do I fall in that generation?
| Because all those things did hold true and was there when I was
| growing up/adulting. But I never felt any need of it and many
| didn't. But many did. Many still do. Because those small
| pockets are still around where drug is still cool and even back
| then those were small pockets!
|
| One of the reasons is - it has become too difficult and costly
| (at least where I live). Even for weed, which was pretty much
| kosher unless you were caught by the police keeping KGs on your
| person or home, it has become too difficult to procure and not
| get caught. That could be a reason.
|
| In many places where weed is available like cigarettes - maybe
| it's not the forbidden fruit anymore. That danger or aura of
| different is gone with it.
| matt3210 wrote:
| TikTok is the drug of choice. I've found in my family people turn
| to drugs in downtime. Less downtime, less drugs
| pvaldes wrote:
| Hum, If we hypothesize that drugs abuse could be ruled in part by
| genetics (some people are more prone to became addict than
| other), then the drug epidemics from 70's, 80's and 90's should
| had pruned a lot of this genes from the population.
|
| The current teen not doing drugs are mostly the sons of the
| former teen not being killed by drugs on its 20's (because they
| didn't do drugs, or were able to quit drugs before it was too
| late).
|
| I wonder if an effect of the Fentanyl epidemic could be traced in
| the genetic makeup of the future USA population, when the
| children of all the young that died (obviously) never appear in
| the population pyramid.
| bgnn wrote:
| wow, you have no idea how genetics work.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Enlighten me, please
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Drugs don't usually kill or cause people to die or
| otherwise become unwilling or unable to reproduce? In fact
| they may remove inhibitions and lead to producing more
| children than those who abstain, at least on the whole.
|
| Anyway, I'm not sure and of that is true. It's just one set
| of possibilities.
| nextworddev wrote:
| TikTok might be more additive for the average teen
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| It says what but fail to explain the why. Some hypothesis in the
| comments about technology being the new 'drug' for teenager so
| they don't seek drugs, some other about how now everything is
| recorded so they can't go nuts, ... I don't buy it at all
|
| For me it's just a cultural shift, it's no more cool to be that
| guy that smoke weed or is drunk. That's all.
| lakomen wrote:
| What's surprising about it? Teens are attracted by things that
| are forbidden to them. When you legalize drugs that falls off.
| Also enough information is available nowadays that doesn't come
| from some finger waving "you you you" morality zealot, but actual
| real life examples.
|
| For me at least the pull of cannabis and other drugs, never did
| real hard and addictive drugs like heroin, was that they were
| illegal and the effects weren't as bad as the lectures said they
| were. So I thought what's true about cannabis is also true about
| cocaine, lsd, psilocybin, xtc etc, but I've seen enough movies
| about heroin addicts going to waste. I was wrong about lsd and
| psilocybin and coke had no positive effect on me, except once I
| became Mr super cool monopoly player ans the other time I was
| full of energy, but I believe it was mixed with something other
| than coke. LSD was very uncontrollable, the 1st time was great,
| simple laugh and dance, the next time was awful and I suffered
| from it for many years. Psilocybin then, with friends cleared my
| mind and I was able to articulate myself and think clearly like
| never before. Amphetamine, I'll never forget the sour smell, but
| essentially a useless drug, except to stay awake. MDMA varying
| degrees of happiness and community. But the worst drug was
| nicotine. Useless, super addictive and really bad for your
| health. So hard to quit and it's everywhere and it's even worse
| now with all the e-cigarettes / vapes. Nicotine is an epidemic
| that needs to be eradicated. It's pure evil.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > surveys a nationally representative group of teens each year
|
| Self reported with nothing actual to verify (e.g., hair sample,
| school sewer water sample, etc.) Self-reported data is notorious
| for being unreliable. Why would this be any different?
|
| Editorial: What a waste of time and money. Hopefully taxpayers
| aren't paying for this.
| glass1122 wrote:
| Inflation. they cannot afford. This is happy news. not surprising
| news.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| it's been SWITCHed to another addiction. Pun intended
| yapyap wrote:
| not that surprising given how everything is laced with fentanyl
| nowadays
| vitro wrote:
| What about sugar addiction? Read recently an article in the news
| that that's what is becoming a problem, actually, much more than
| alcohol or cigarettes. Anecdotally, I see kids around drinking
| all kinds of sweetened beverages. My friend who cleans at a
| college picks every day full baskets of empty bottles. And in my
| school, some parents giving kids chocolates for a snack or kids
| buying themselves a pack of sweets from their pocket money.
| navaed01 wrote:
| I find the decline in alcohol consumption fascinating, how much
| of it is lack of sociability, being more aaare of its dangers, or
| just not willing to put up with the hangover.
|
| I was at a family event last night and all the cousins and their
| friends were using zins - tobacco pouches. I don't see those
| mentioned in this data under nicotine in the article.
| cpcallen wrote:
| Technology (e.g. highly addictive short-form video apps) seems
| like a likely explanation; fear of fentanyl is less plausible (it
| would not deter drinking or vaping). Surely the biggest factor,
| however, is just the interruption of social contagion?
|
| I strongly suspect that physically separating highschool students
| from their older peers for a couple of years meant that most of
| the older kids who were in to drugs etc. graduated and were not
| around to introduce their younger peers to these vices.
|
| It's the flip side of the phenomenon whereby many university
| societies shut down and either never reopened after the pandemic
| or struggled to get going again (examples I know about including
| swing dance clubs and solar car racing teams), because the only
| students with enough experience to teach their younger peers had
| by then all graduated.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| The obvious reason for me is simply that everyone is much more
| health conscious now. That also plays much more of a role in
| social status than it did before. That also extends to showing
| off your healthy lifestyle on social media.
|
| Simply put, it's not as cool now.
| Unearned5161 wrote:
| I like this thought process your brought up here! I hadn't put
| much time into thinking about the physical separation of
| generations in organizations like schools. A certain absence of
| physical heritage if you will... A mini extinction event
|
| Makes you think of other, perhaps smaller, things that may have
| gotten a gap in physical hand offs. Perhaps I'm generalizing
| too strongly here, but certainly someone that was a middle
| school teacher or something before and after covid might have
| some observations on little oddities that may have escaped the
| public eye.
| lexicality wrote:
| smh kids be on they damn phone so much it's killing the drug
| dealing industry
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This is not accurate in what I see around me. Alcohol far less
| common among young people than it used to be. Cocaine and MDMA is
| flourishing.
|
| Ritalin like drugs is out there as well but I dont have much
| inside inot how common it is.
|
| That is a tiny tiny sample compared to the study so it does not
| in any way say that the study is wrong. It is just what I myself
| see and hear around me. (and what the police see a lot of )
| Eumenes wrote:
| Yeah, cause they're all on SSRIs, mood stabilizers, legal meth
| via ADHD drugs, and beta blockers.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| In the future, will there be drugs specifically for kids?
|
| I find it weird that we don't give kids coffee to help them focus
| on math. (But amphetamine is fine?) There is no evidence coffee
| is bad for kids.
|
| Psychedelics are so similar to kid level playfulness -- and
| sometimes I think it could be helpful to help them see the big
| picture.
|
| Even cannabis-- we know it's controlled use is fine for kids,
| based on studies of usage for epilepsy, etc.
|
| Why do we wait till kids try it themselves under suspect
| circumstances rather than introducing it with intention?
|
| Just provoking some free thought.
| meiraleal wrote:
| > Why do we wait till kids try it themselves under suspect
| circumstances rather than introducing it with intention?
|
| if you are talking about a "kid" of 16, 17 years old, that's
| less problematic. But a parent shouldn't be part of all
| experiences of a young person, much less actively pushing
| things.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| It's pretty normal for parents to drink alcohol with their
| kids. Letting kids of 12+ drink in special circumstances is
| common in Europe. But wanting to toke with a 15 year old to
| make sure they have a good first experience - why is that
| absolutely taboo?
| meiraleal wrote:
| I don't think it is a taboo but not something we should
| normalize, not because of the responsible parents but
| because of the already irresponsible ones.
| bdangubic wrote:
| we already drug our kids with heavy drugs like ritalin so why
| not other less dangerous drugs...
| stef25 wrote:
| Don't quit your day job just yet
| dartos wrote:
| It's probably because previous generations are becoming okay with
| drugs and millennials tend to be in favor of more permissive drug
| use.
|
| If parents think it's cool, teens won't.
|
| Pretty clear cut to me.
| nvarsj wrote:
| Yup this is exactly it. In the middle class UK even cocaine use
| is normalized. When your parents are smoking weed, doing lines
| of coke, and drinking excessive amounts of wine/beer, it's not
| exactly cool.
| jppope wrote:
| The general sentiment around this phenomenon tends to be that a
| drop in drug/alcohol use is a positive social change... I'm
| pretty skeptical of that hypothesis.
|
| They also left out that having sex is on the decline and that is
| 100% a bad thing for our society.
| siruncledrew wrote:
| I wonder if this decline means the public health campaigning and
| lessons about drinking/smoking/drugs prevention made a
| difference?
|
| As 1 data point, I have a cousin who is 17, and I am 35.
|
| As a 17 year old, she's been taught the dangers of cigarettes,
| that drinking is bad, and to avoid drugs for a number of years
| already.
|
| I'm not saying this is bad... it just feels like previous
| generations (Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, etc) did not really go
| into the informational side about the risks of drug use from a
| personal level, and moreso approached don't do drugs like an
| episode of COPS, which focused more on the risk as a scare
| tactic.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I'm one of those people that growing up, was bombarded with
| negative talk about drink, drugs etc. So I took more. And will
| continue to do so.
|
| Guess my age?
|
| _I give my kids_ my* advice. One had a 6 month period of
| getting fucked up, and now doesn't touch anything. Another,
| 'doesn't inhale', and has never touched alcohol.
|
| They have also learned to shut the fuck up when being lectured
| by some teacher that is parrotting (sp?) the party line, and
| they howl at the 'touch drugs snd you'll become an addict'
| government bullshit.
|
| My conclusion?
|
| 1/100: Scientists need to be young _now_ to understand,
| FireSquid2006 wrote:
| I was in eighth grade at the start of the pandemic (college
| freshman now. Insane how the pandemic was 5 years ago). For a lot
| of people like myself, it was when I got into programming and
| found my career. However, I know lots of other people who
| basically sat on dopamine loop apps all day.
|
| Our habits from then continued on. While I can't prove this, I
| would suspect that this isnt due to any lack of vice, but because
| plenty of people have that feeling satisfied by short form
| algorithm apps.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| I think the pandemic had nothing to do with that except maybe
| that it served as a trigger for you or others. Plenty of people
| got hooked on programming in normal and peaceful times, with
| plenty of addictive distractions around - be it chess, reading,
| popular sports, Pokemon, movies, etc. Not everyone is
| interested in, or has the patience for, programming. You see
| its potential and what you could do with it, they see it as a
| chore better left to people who like that kind of stuff.
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