This appears to be half "kids these days" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6795513/) and half an odd assortment of potentially concerning but maybe unrelated vignettes smashed together to suggest causality.
<<Until recently, getting a driver’s license was seen as a rite of passage for U.S. teenagers.>>
Well, from 1940 or so. About 3 generations.
<<...1977... having a car was a “virtual necessity” for anyone living in America.>>
Yes, but that works equally as a critique of US postwar urban planning.
<<death around every corner>>
I agree we overdo it, but survivor bias makes an ironic battle cry.
There are at least 6 interesting developments in here that MIGHT be related but would be far more convincing treated separately or in smaller groups. Stuck together like this, mostly what I hear is "I don't like it."
I've known to hang in dark pits off ropes and turn airplanes upside down. Not at the same time. Yet. And I drive everywhere, but I wouldn't pin any substantial critique in this article on *driving* being essential to life, freedom, or America. It's been a central James-Dean part of our culture for 3 generations. But I could take it or leave it. Maybe not you, and that's fine, but the country as a whole could -- it did. Now... the *Frontier* has been there since the beginning. And what else will replace it?
Maybe we've managed to teach today's teens how dangerous driving is. Riding in cars is, after all, the riskiest thing most folks do. Avoiding automobiles shows an intelligent ability to act on one's survival instinct. But calling today's teens risk adverse...???
Have you been paying attention to all the young folks toying with artificial intelligence while loudly proclaiming the very real dangers inherent to that activity?
Just like us oldsters rode around without seat belts or air bags (seat belts were uncomfortable and air bags too expensive), today's younger generations are riding through cyberspace with no circuit breakers to stop the brave new worlds they are establishing before our very eyes.
We risked, and continue to risk, the lives and bodies of everyone on the road to express our freedom. They are risking the lives and security of everyone in their struggle to be free.
Risk adverse is not a term I'd apply to today's teens ;)
My teenager is bucking the trend. She works part time, is saving for a car, obsesses over cars. She does spend tons of time online, but she and her friends seem otherwise like conventional teens. The one thing is that no one reads books. Online single paragraph mini-bits have replaced the slow, patient absorption of the world’s knowledge, and that’s a terrible trend, in my opinion.
How did this morph from generic teens to boys to a porn story? High school in the mid-2000s and the description sounds like something out of an oldies song - ‘with a girl in the passenger seat’. What is the thesis statement of the piece? Presumably, Gen Z is a disaster? The clear correlation between wanting a drivers license and ‘getting laid in the backseat’ is so vulgar. Where are girls in this story? I literally counted the days for two years prior to turning 16. I was no one’s passenger, man. Kind of a mess of an article.
In 1970 I bought an early 1959s VW bug for $50. Dead battery and no money to replace it so having to push the car to start became an excellent city bad neighborhood theft deterrent.
Sold it a few years later for $100. The American Way.
Excellent observations. I’m 65 but still vividly remember how bad I wanted that license. I still enjoy driving, with the windows down and music loud especially. I’ve read Haidt’s work and think he’s right. While I love tech and all it lets me do, including social media, it seems to have removed a lot of human interaction from many younger people’s lives, some intentionally, others not. I don’t know what the answers are - maybe people will just get tired of being on their phones so much - but I think it has far-reaching effects.
I recognize every single one of these stats in the undergrads I teach and most especially in my two nieces-who didn't get their licenses until about 2 years ago. They are 22 and 26.
I don’t know...there seems to be more than one way to interpret the narrative you describe in this article. While it may be true that teens are getting licenses later or not at all, to your point, it could be that they’re using rideshare more often or inflationary pressures have made it harder to purchase a vehicle. I don’t view this statistic in a negative light completely; the younger generation is emerging into a tough economic situation and tend to care about climate outcomes more than past generations. I thought the bit about teens being less inclined towards risky and dangerous behavior to be interesting as well...isn’t this a good thing? Gen Z is less likely to abuse alcohol than prior generations and the whole idea of “kids aren’t developing properly because they aren’t out drunk drag racing at 2 am” argument to be a little silly. I believe in the Jon Haidt thesis that mental health outcomes for young people have been declining since the advent of social media and the algorithm-based attention economy. That being said, I don’t want to generalize an entire generation just because they aren’t having as much pre-marital sex or engaging in dangerous behavior as frequently...
...women can drive too. Not sure why the emphasis has to be on boys but as a female millennial who took drivers Ed in high school I’m not sure what the point of the extreme gendered nature of this article is except for the fact that the author is male and I guess can’t or won’t stretch his journalistic acumen to make it more applicable across both genders
Thank God I wasn’t asked to parallel park for my test in 1976. I’d still be trying for my license.
There is another cost to teen driving aversion. Sixteen-year-olds still tend to live with their parents, the keepers of the keys. Screw up and you lose ‘em. The worse the infraction, the longer your time in the penalty box. In theory, the irresponsible driver becomes responsible, not to mention safer behind the wheel. Who disciples the twenty-something newly minted driver?
Alas, a car is responsibility, and parents, schools, society took that off kids’ To Do lists long ago. With it went fun and its outward manifestation— laughter. Pity.
Great article. We're becoming better cyborgs at the cost of losing our humanity. That's a pretty rotten—and hugely consequential—tradeoff if you ask me. My only issue with the piece is that someone appears to have mistakenly embedded the wrong "Thunder Road" video. You'll find the obviously far superior Hammersmith Odeon performance from '75 at the link below. 😉
This happened because of bad parenting. The parents drive them around rather than making them walk or use a bicycle. If they had to walk several miles everyday they would apply for a driver's license as soon as they turned 16 and would have asked for a bicycle by aged 10.
Now, they don't turn 16 until they're about 20 and their parents probably didn't have them until they were in their later 30's or early 40's themselves.
Somehow believing that they were protecting their children, these parents instead damaged them. They didn't give their children the basic skills necessary to survive-like letting them fail and take personal responsibility for their failures. Then when the kids grow up at about age 30, they realize that their parents didn't give them the basics and actually wind up hating mom and dad.
So parents, when you have a houseful of children and grandchildren living with you rent free, bringing home sex partners, using drugs in your home. stealing from you, eating for free and enjoying the free laundry service etc.., can you blame them? You've given them the basics they will need to survive in a state of welfare and irresponsibility, not to live and survive on their own.
Again, they will grow to hate you when they realize (maybe at age 50) that you didn't allow them to grow up, and they will someday be in charge of your long term health care, and your money-which they always believed they were "entitled to". They won't want to see your/their money spent on keeping you alive. Will you feel safe from your own children and grandchildren when they can't wait for you to go?
The lesson here is you should have made them walk or ride a bicycle; you should have made them get a job while still in high school to pay for the extras they wanted, and you should have kicked the out of the house at 18 if they didn't pursue a trade or attend a community college or a University and work part time along the way. If they knew these were the rules, they would have begged you to drive them to the DMV when they turned 16. This is all on you.
These folks need a quick trip south of the Mason-Dixon Line.Kids here drive tractors,cars,boats,airboats,heck if they can attach a leaf blower to a wagon,that will do.Most young men down here have been shooting and hunting with their fathers and uncles since they were nine.They learn knife skills while gutting the deer that will be on the table the following day.Most have been working with their families since they could carry something.Paid work is a summer quest so they can start saving for the junker car that will need tons of work.Are all these polls done in urban blue states?Thank God the kids I know don’t live the impoverished life you write about.
This appears to be half "kids these days" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6795513/) and half an odd assortment of potentially concerning but maybe unrelated vignettes smashed together to suggest causality.
<<Until recently, getting a driver’s license was seen as a rite of passage for U.S. teenagers.>>
Well, from 1940 or so. About 3 generations.
<<...1977... having a car was a “virtual necessity” for anyone living in America.>>
Yes, but that works equally as a critique of US postwar urban planning.
<<death around every corner>>
I agree we overdo it, but survivor bias makes an ironic battle cry.
There are at least 6 interesting developments in here that MIGHT be related but would be far more convincing treated separately or in smaller groups. Stuck together like this, mostly what I hear is "I don't like it."
I've known to hang in dark pits off ropes and turn airplanes upside down. Not at the same time. Yet. And I drive everywhere, but I wouldn't pin any substantial critique in this article on *driving* being essential to life, freedom, or America. It's been a central James-Dean part of our culture for 3 generations. But I could take it or leave it. Maybe not you, and that's fine, but the country as a whole could -- it did. Now... the *Frontier* has been there since the beginning. And what else will replace it?
Also, get off my lawn? ;-)
For a deeper dive on this subject, read Matthew Crawford's "Why We Drive." One of the most important books I have read in years.
Maybe we've managed to teach today's teens how dangerous driving is. Riding in cars is, after all, the riskiest thing most folks do. Avoiding automobiles shows an intelligent ability to act on one's survival instinct. But calling today's teens risk adverse...???
Have you been paying attention to all the young folks toying with artificial intelligence while loudly proclaiming the very real dangers inherent to that activity?
Just like us oldsters rode around without seat belts or air bags (seat belts were uncomfortable and air bags too expensive), today's younger generations are riding through cyberspace with no circuit breakers to stop the brave new worlds they are establishing before our very eyes.
We risked, and continue to risk, the lives and bodies of everyone on the road to express our freedom. They are risking the lives and security of everyone in their struggle to be free.
Risk adverse is not a term I'd apply to today's teens ;)
My teenager is bucking the trend. She works part time, is saving for a car, obsesses over cars. She does spend tons of time online, but she and her friends seem otherwise like conventional teens. The one thing is that no one reads books. Online single paragraph mini-bits have replaced the slow, patient absorption of the world’s knowledge, and that’s a terrible trend, in my opinion.
How did this morph from generic teens to boys to a porn story? High school in the mid-2000s and the description sounds like something out of an oldies song - ‘with a girl in the passenger seat’. What is the thesis statement of the piece? Presumably, Gen Z is a disaster? The clear correlation between wanting a drivers license and ‘getting laid in the backseat’ is so vulgar. Where are girls in this story? I literally counted the days for two years prior to turning 16. I was no one’s passenger, man. Kind of a mess of an article.
You can't text while driving. Well, you're not supposed to, anyway. And nothing is more important than texting.
In 1970 I bought an early 1959s VW bug for $50. Dead battery and no money to replace it so having to push the car to start became an excellent city bad neighborhood theft deterrent.
Sold it a few years later for $100. The American Way.
Excellent observations. I’m 65 but still vividly remember how bad I wanted that license. I still enjoy driving, with the windows down and music loud especially. I’ve read Haidt’s work and think he’s right. While I love tech and all it lets me do, including social media, it seems to have removed a lot of human interaction from many younger people’s lives, some intentionally, others not. I don’t know what the answers are - maybe people will just get tired of being on their phones so much - but I think it has far-reaching effects.
I recognize every single one of these stats in the undergrads I teach and most especially in my two nieces-who didn't get their licenses until about 2 years ago. They are 22 and 26.
This has been a trend since the late 1990s or early 2000s.
I don’t know...there seems to be more than one way to interpret the narrative you describe in this article. While it may be true that teens are getting licenses later or not at all, to your point, it could be that they’re using rideshare more often or inflationary pressures have made it harder to purchase a vehicle. I don’t view this statistic in a negative light completely; the younger generation is emerging into a tough economic situation and tend to care about climate outcomes more than past generations. I thought the bit about teens being less inclined towards risky and dangerous behavior to be interesting as well...isn’t this a good thing? Gen Z is less likely to abuse alcohol than prior generations and the whole idea of “kids aren’t developing properly because they aren’t out drunk drag racing at 2 am” argument to be a little silly. I believe in the Jon Haidt thesis that mental health outcomes for young people have been declining since the advent of social media and the algorithm-based attention economy. That being said, I don’t want to generalize an entire generation just because they aren’t having as much pre-marital sex or engaging in dangerous behavior as frequently...
Cars are simply less of a necessity today. Perhaps the trend will reverse itself when super cheap, self-driving EVs become the norm.
It is really a sad way to live a life
...women can drive too. Not sure why the emphasis has to be on boys but as a female millennial who took drivers Ed in high school I’m not sure what the point of the extreme gendered nature of this article is except for the fact that the author is male and I guess can’t or won’t stretch his journalistic acumen to make it more applicable across both genders
Thank God I wasn’t asked to parallel park for my test in 1976. I’d still be trying for my license.
There is another cost to teen driving aversion. Sixteen-year-olds still tend to live with their parents, the keepers of the keys. Screw up and you lose ‘em. The worse the infraction, the longer your time in the penalty box. In theory, the irresponsible driver becomes responsible, not to mention safer behind the wheel. Who disciples the twenty-something newly minted driver?
Alas, a car is responsibility, and parents, schools, society took that off kids’ To Do lists long ago. With it went fun and its outward manifestation— laughter. Pity.
Great article. We're becoming better cyborgs at the cost of losing our humanity. That's a pretty rotten—and hugely consequential—tradeoff if you ask me. My only issue with the piece is that someone appears to have mistakenly embedded the wrong "Thunder Road" video. You'll find the obviously far superior Hammersmith Odeon performance from '75 at the link below. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3MO2y30fU
This happened because of bad parenting. The parents drive them around rather than making them walk or use a bicycle. If they had to walk several miles everyday they would apply for a driver's license as soon as they turned 16 and would have asked for a bicycle by aged 10.
Now, they don't turn 16 until they're about 20 and their parents probably didn't have them until they were in their later 30's or early 40's themselves.
Somehow believing that they were protecting their children, these parents instead damaged them. They didn't give their children the basic skills necessary to survive-like letting them fail and take personal responsibility for their failures. Then when the kids grow up at about age 30, they realize that their parents didn't give them the basics and actually wind up hating mom and dad.
So parents, when you have a houseful of children and grandchildren living with you rent free, bringing home sex partners, using drugs in your home. stealing from you, eating for free and enjoying the free laundry service etc.., can you blame them? You've given them the basics they will need to survive in a state of welfare and irresponsibility, not to live and survive on their own.
Again, they will grow to hate you when they realize (maybe at age 50) that you didn't allow them to grow up, and they will someday be in charge of your long term health care, and your money-which they always believed they were "entitled to". They won't want to see your/their money spent on keeping you alive. Will you feel safe from your own children and grandchildren when they can't wait for you to go?
The lesson here is you should have made them walk or ride a bicycle; you should have made them get a job while still in high school to pay for the extras they wanted, and you should have kicked the out of the house at 18 if they didn't pursue a trade or attend a community college or a University and work part time along the way. If they knew these were the rules, they would have begged you to drive them to the DMV when they turned 16. This is all on you.
These folks need a quick trip south of the Mason-Dixon Line.Kids here drive tractors,cars,boats,airboats,heck if they can attach a leaf blower to a wagon,that will do.Most young men down here have been shooting and hunting with their fathers and uncles since they were nine.They learn knife skills while gutting the deer that will be on the table the following day.Most have been working with their families since they could carry something.Paid work is a summer quest so they can start saving for the junker car that will need tons of work.Are all these polls done in urban blue states?Thank God the kids I know don’t live the impoverished life you write about.