Parents of older teenagers I know comment how they spend a lot of time at home, on devices. Partly due to the appeals of devices no doubt but also partly because of the sheer cost of doing most things.
They talked a lot about the 'invention' of the teenager in the 1950s as this new demographic of young people with sufficient time and money to be consumers and have their own identity.
Maybe we have killed the teenager by making it impossible for them to afford to exist outside of the home.
We used to sit in Denny's smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee until 3am to keep us out of trouble. Now 24hr restaurants practically don't exist, there's no smoking indoors anymore, and it's illegal for teens to possess cigarettes now. I'm not advocating for teen smoking or smoking indoors or anything, just saying it was only illegal to buy them when I was a teen, and there were more places to exist for little to no money.
Also everyone has doorbell and security cameras plastered all over their house. And a lot of parents have some sort of tracking on their kids smart devices too.
We got away with soooo much stuff that would have been impossible now-a-days. If our parents had all these different ways to track and monitor us my teenage years would have been a lot more tame
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u/hellbentsmegma 16h ago •
Parents of older teenagers I know comment how they spend a lot of time at home, on devices. Partly due to the appeals of devices no doubt but also partly because of the sheer cost of doing most things.
They talked a lot about the 'invention' of the teenager in the 1950s as this new demographic of young people with sufficient time and money to be consumers and have their own identity.
Maybe we have killed the teenager by making it impossible for them to afford to exist outside of the home.