Stories to Watch: For teenagers, 18 is the new 14
Steven Faerm on trends away from adulting;
they are prolonging adolescence and entering adulthood more slowly (Twenge 2017) by engaging much later in life activities that commonly mark the entry into adulthood. For example, since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline of high school seniors who have a driver’s license (down 14%), who go on dates, (down 36%), and who work for pay (down 30%).
Pointer from Tyler Cowen, from his Twitter feed. Faerm was recycling a chart from Jean Twenge and Heejung Park (2019). Not sure why it is news on Twitter now, but I wanted to mark it for future reference.
Elsewhere, Tyler links to a recent paper by Peter Gray and others.
Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.
I recommend Gray’s substack.
substack’s referenced above:
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Yes to subscribing to Peter’s substack, all his D digression letters are interesting on teen suicide. Since I don’t fully believe Jon Haidt’s claim of smart phones as a huge cause teen girl poor mental health/ suicide, Peter’s theses about kid play and freedom from adult control strike me as bigger influences.
Jon makes a comment in the D3 note explaining the big temporary drop from 1990 - 2005; the future discussion will be interesting.
Kids need more time to play and more physical work to do.
Re. unemployed teens, in our state I suspect rising minimum wage is an issue, now over $16/hr. On the virtues of unsupervised play, Jonathan Haidt has been on this for nearly a decade. Also Jordan Peterson. My wife's sister has 25 grandkids ages about 3-19. When they gather, along with other cousins, they play energetically with little to no supervision, in continuously fluctuating group combinations. Many of them are homeschooled and look after farm animals. They win competitions at the regional state fair, sell their beautiful beasts at an exaggerated price, and use the money to buy pickup trucks. The oldest of this cohort is going to community college and plans to become a nurse. The oldest boy is looking to become a professional dog trainer. One of their other cousins was recently a starter on a state champion high school football team. I don't worry about any of them.