
The kids are all right - pmcpinto
http://www.vox.com/a/teens
======
barrkel
OTOH, it could be that modern kids are more risk-averse, conformist and
acquiescent to paternalistic control; or it could be increasd neoteny, where
independence of thought and action is being delayed until later.

I, for one, don't want youth to blindly accept the conventions of their elders
and meekly conform to the way things are. I'd like to see more metrics around
positive aspects of nonconformity rather than just the negative, and see if
we're losing both ends of the spectrum here.

~~~
telesilla
Agreed, except smoking. Can we agree, smoking isn't a good idea anymore? I
lost 20 years of healthy life for a wasteful addiction and it started in 1991
when I was 16.

~~~
epx
People are drinking way more to compensate for that. I prefer that people kill
themselves instead of killing others (in traffic accidents related to alcohol,
etc.)

~~~
enraged_camel
>>People are drinking way more to compensate for that.

Very interesting. Are there statistics that demonstrate this? Specifically,
are people really drinking more, and if so, how do we know it is to compensate
for reduced smoking?

------
erikpukinskis
I wonder if they're just less bored.

When I was in high school, it was just hard to interact and hard to find stuff
to do. We mostly didn't have cars, phones, or spaces of our own, so we had to
sort of clandestinely squeeze our lives into grownups spaces. Have a friend
over in our parents house, borrow our parents car, use the shared phone (that
our parents could listen in on).

And we were limited to what little entertainment was in our hometown. For me
there was a movie theater and a couple of coffee shops, but largely just a lot
of empty space.

These days kids can create unlimited spaces in virtual reality* to connect
with each other, and they have unlimited access to virtual spaces created by
people all over the world. They can just pull out their phone and be endlessly
entertained.

The idea of having a baby is much more appealing when you are bored as hell
and have no other apparent future.

The article on apparent causes ([http://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/5987845/the-
mystery-of-the-fall...](http://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/5987845/the-mystery-of-
the-falling-teen-birth-rate)) also didn't mention feminism, which is an odd
omission. More and more young women are able to imagine all kinds of futures
for themselves. Girls have more to lose by getting pregnant than they ever
have, and because of the internet I think they know it.

* When I say virtual reality, I'm talking about Instagram, Tumblr, etc, not Oculus. The metaverse has existed for a long time, Oculus is just helping us immerse our bodies in it.

~~~
madaxe_again
I wonder if they're just more data-savvy, and understand that anonymous
questions usually aren't, and are therefore better at going "me? Misbehave?
Never!".

There's a hump in reported cannabis use in the UK drug use data sets from the
brief period when it was decriminalised - not necessarily because more people
were smoking, but because more were admitting it.

------
soared
My god do I enjoy dynamic content. Having the reader choose one variable (age,
in this case) massively improves how relevant the content is. There is another
article where you choose your county or districts that massively rewrites
after you pick where you born, but I can't find a link.

Any other examples of interesting dynamic content?

~~~
everly
I think this is the article you're referencing:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-
bes...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-and-
worst-places-to-grow-up-how-your-area-compares.html)

~~~
soared
That is the one! I'd love the see the engagement metrics for that article
compared to another.

------
cubano
Self-reporting surveys are of questionable value in general, and especially
now, when everyone understands that pretty much everything you ever do and say
in public becomes part of your Google persona.

My point? It is at least possible that these teens are now wise enough to know
admitting to any sort of nefarious behavior, no matter the setting, is just a
dumb thing to do.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Could be but this study correlates with many other studies, some of which have
factual data. e.g. things like teenage pregnancies are well-studied and can be
observed without relying on self-reported data, and they indeed have gotten
much better. Smoking is another one which has gotten much better.

On the whole it seems quite reliable, although some stats are not very
meaningfuk. e.g. watching TV is a bit of a silly stat if you ask me, kids have
just moved from traditional TV but they're probably 'wasting' as much time on
media entertainment as before through other channels.

------
humanrebar
It's odd that sexual matters are discussed at length but pornography is not
mentioned. There are certainly pros and cons to being (or raising) a teenager
in the internet porn era.

~~~
wrong_variable
I rather live in a world where everyone watches porn to take care of their
primal urges then in a world filled with unwanted pregnancies.

~~~
sbarre
If those were the only 2 sides to the coin, you might have a point but it's a
much more complex issue than that.

~~~
ScottBurson
It is complex, but that doesn't mean there's not a correlation there.

~~~
im3w1l
I bet lack of sex correlates with the rising problem of depression.

------
crystalmeph
I think I took this survey in high school. I'm not sure that I trust it, since
I told them I was a straight-A student that took heroin every day.

~~~
fnovd
I'm sure the researchers responsible for analyzing the data from this survey
were familiar with the concept of an outlier and how to deal with them when
publishing their findings. High school students have been goofing off instead
of doing what they were supposed to for as long as high schools have been a
thing.

~~~
kazazes
I took this survey in 2011. Teachers were not allowed to be present while we
took it. There was no moral pressure to be honest beyond "answer to the best
of your abilities" so as not to alienate the group. The entire room openly
read the questions and people answered with varying degrees of absurdity.
Whatever the results of that room were, they were not representative of the
group's risk taking behavior.

Take this anecdote as you will, but it will take me a lifetime to be convinced
that a faceless government form can poll the group of cards closest to a
teen's chest with any aggregate accuracy.

~~~
jldugger
Well, it may be that the numbers are under / overreported, but the test could
still be valid, in the sense that shifts in reported behavior are correlated
with shifts in actual behavior. In other words, if you assume today's kids are
no more likely to lie on a survey than in the past, you can get a sense of the
direction of trends, if not the absolute values.

------
VLM
Missed the most important survey question, that being something along the
lines of "Do you think your personal individual answers to this survey are
going to be kept forever and used against you by everyone in a position of
power such as college admissions and the job hiring process and security
clearances, just like your complete internet access record and all social
media use?"

You'd have to be pretty paranoid in '92 to assume they're out to get you,
you'd have to be pretty ignorant in '16 to assume they're not.

~~~
sharetea
kids today are also less paranoid about surveillance. It's a survey; no one is
going out to get you.

~~~
marcosdumay
No one is out to get you. But somebody you use it to get you someday.

I do agree that the kids are less paranoid about surveillance. And I think
that's a severe flaw on their education.

~~~
csense
From the government's point of view, lowering the degree to which people are
upset about what the government is doing is a feature of the education system,
not a bug.

------
lkrubner
This article is mostly good but it distorts the issue of teen pregnancy.
According to the government, teen pregnancy in the USA peaked in 1958, which
was the peak year of the Baby Boom. Teen pregnancy has been in decline since
1958 (there was a brief surge around 1990, and then the downward trend
renewed).

Please see the first chart in this National Vital Statistics Report from the
Centers Of Disease Control:

[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr49/nvsr49_10.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr49/nvsr49_10.pdf)

It's not very surprising that teen pregnancy has declined since it has been
declining for most of the last 60 years.

Of course, there is the separate issue of unmarried teens getting pregnant.
The unmarried rate has risen from 12% to 79%, as the chart in the CDC report
makes clear. Although even this trend seems to be now slowing, which is an
interesting thing the article could have focused on, but didn't.

ETA:

Also, the USA is not homogeneous, and the report mentions this:

"Birth rates for teenagers vary substantially by State. In 1999, the most
recent year for which State-specific birth rates are available, the rates for
ages 15–19 years ranged from 24.0 for New Hampshire to 72.5 in Mississippi."

~~~
throwxreturnx
Teen pregnancy in 1958 does not even come close to measuring the same thing
that "teen pregnancy" does today. Today, almost all teen pregnancies are
unwanted -- which was emphatically not the case in 1958.

I'm not sure that delayed childbirth is really such a good thing for society.
If you delay too long, you increase the risk of complications and birth
defects, hence the US's increasing infant mortality rate. But more
importantly, it weakens families by not having as many generations around for
as long. My grandmother was 45 when my older brother was born. Now, our
parents will be over 60 at their grandchild's birth. Our great-grandparents
were around until our teenage years, but our children won't have the same
privilege, because our grandparents are all dead.

~~~
a-saleh
I think this will self correct within a generation, on some more or less
optimal value.

Because I think this is not primarily about grandparents, it is about female
fertility on one hand and fear of "can I provide"/"I don't want such
obligation yet".

I.e: my aunt had her first born when she was over 40, and knows this will be
her last one.

I know several of my older peers that had their fistborn roughly at 30, and
they attempted the second one already within two years.

I had my first daughter at 26. (Similar to my parents and parents of my wife
first-borns were a kind of a happy accident :)

And I can understand these trade offs. Heck, sometimes even I have an argument
with my wife how much easier would some things have been if we have been
slightly more careful for one or two more years :-)

But I understand the sentiment about grand-parents :)

------
dannyrosen
Offtopic / Ontopic: I really liked the interactivity and personalization of
this article.

------
anexprogrammer
_Teenagers today are 31 percent less likely to binge drink than teenagers 20
years ago_

I am not convinced[1]. Experience and endless media items about health impacts
of alcohol, increased binge drinking, etc over the last decade simply do not
support it. Seems like they drink far more when they do binge too.

 _every two years, the federal government asks thousands of teenagers dozens
of questions about whether they are all right_

Teenagers today are 31 percent less likely to _admit_ binge drinking than
teenagers 20 years ago

Is a FAR more likely interpretation. Perhaps that's as a result of all that
media coverage!

[1] Or perhaps the UK and Europe experience of alcohol over the last 20 years
is the inverse of the US.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
There was an article in the UK recently which claimed my generation (i.e.
roughly 20 years ago) was "peak booze" in the UK and it had been declining
ever since. So St least on that stat UK and US seem to be in accord.

------
crimsonalucard
It's because kids are using social media on their phones instead of going
outside to play. Going outside to play is a precursor to all kinds of trouble.
Trouble leads to more trouble which eventually leads to conflict and heroin.

This old dude I once knew was shaking his head at complaining about how teens
nowadays are just playing with their phones all the time. Come on! This is a
good thing! The precursor to all physical conflict is having your hands free
to form a fist or hold a weapon. If teens are holding their phones more than
they are less likely to fight.

iPhone = world peace.

------
randomname2
Quillette had a good essay on this recently [1]

Excerpt:

The Kids Are All Right written by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard

Loudly chomping on a stick of gum, Emily finished the last few words of her
barely comprehensible text message: “BTW..that shit was cray. WTF!! : )” She
laughed, and slid back into her seat to listen. The professor droned on about
some dead playwright named Shakespeare. Who cares? The monotone began to
recede as she opened her laptop and checked her Instagram, eagerly eyeing the
number of “likes” her latest selfie had obtained. One thousand and twenty two!
This thrilled her. However, her cheer temporarily soured as she remembered
that her BMW was in the shop. How unfair. Now she had to ride home with her
roommate Rebecca, a nerd who would force her to listen to pretentious “indie”
bands on the drive home. Ugh. Her aged, out of touch, and pedantic professor
finally ceased speaking of something called Hamlet and dismissed the class.
Excitedly, Emily stood up, pulled down her pink “I love me” shirt, and walked
out of the classroom. As she entered the hall, she quickly turned up the
volume of her iPod, humming along to the lyrics of her favorite pop song: “I’m
so fancy/can’t you taste this gold/Remember my name/bout to blow.”

If you believe that society is deteriorating as traditional values and moral
verities decay, Emily is your worst nightmare: vain, selfish, impulsive, and
dismissive of anything of transcendent value. You are also not alone. Many
moral theorists, from Hesiod to Russell Kirk, have warned about the
selfishness and moral vacuousness of the next generation. Recently,
researchers have put forward data that seem to at least partially support such
pessimism about Millennials. In fact, Jean Twenge’s excellent and entertaining
book about these Millennials is tellingly entitled Generation Me.¹ She and W.
Keith Campbell followed this book with the more ominously titled, The
Narcissism Epidemic.²

Yet in this essay, we will forward a more optimistic perspective, arguing that
although some of the data Twenge and her colleagues have advanced are correct,
their interpretation of them is not. Some indicators of self-regard and even
narcissism have increased from the 70s through to the 2000s, but these
increases don’t reflect increasing narcissism; rather they reflect increasing
humanism–a general emphasis on the value of all individuals, including the
self.³

The kids are not only all right; in many ways, they are better than we are.

[1] [http://quillette.com/2016/01/05/the-kids-are-all-
right-2/](http://quillette.com/2016/01/05/the-kids-are-all-right-2/)

~~~
tines
> Now she had to ride home with her roommate Rebecca, a nerd who would force
> her to listen to pretentious “indie” bands on the drive home.

Sounds like an increasing emphasis on the value of all individuals to me.

------
joesmo
Some of the things this article assumes are negative are simply not.

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parennoob
This article is based on _self-reporting_ by _teenagers_. How can it be used
for concluding, well, anything? If you want to see how things like pregnancies
are decreasing among teenagers, you would have to get that data from hospitals
or such.

The only thing this tells me is that teenagers have become less comfortable
about revealing anything about their sex life or smoking. In an age where
Facebook photos and Tweets can cause you to lose your job, that is entirely
unsurprising.

~~~
pjscott
The teen pregnancy numbers here seem to be from the CDC's hospital data rather
than a self-report study.

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mikerichards
_﻿The kids are all right.

We know this because every two years, the federal government asks thousands of
teenagers dozens of questions about whether they are all right._

I didn't read the entire article. I hope the punchline was at the end.

------
CephalopodMD
"In 2011, 18.1 percent of teenagers smoked. Now, 15.7 percent do. That’s a 13
percent decline." I don't know about that one slim. Them numbers seem funny to
me.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
(18.1-15.7)/18.1 = 0.1325

In other words, of those who smoked, 13 percent fewer do now.

