Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

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.

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.

> My kids are not on social media.

Your kids are big outliers then. I wouldn't extrapolate to the general young population.

> 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!

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.

As the article says, most kids aren't drinking or doing drugs these days. When I talk to my friends, that's true for their kids too. They're very different from how their parents were and still are to some degree. I don't know why my bad habits didn't rub off on them, and like I said, they criticize me for my bad habits, so I can assure you that if someone brainwashed them, it wasn't me.

That's true, most are on social media. But as the article says, most kids are the same as mine in several ways. When I talk to my friends, they say the same thing about their kids (anecdotal of course). We don't know why they're so different from us when we don't hide our poor habits from them.