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Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

(arstechnica.com)
349 points pseudolus | 20 comments | 17 Dec 24 23:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source | bottom
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vouaobrasil ◴[20 Dec 24 19:19 UTC] No.42474017[source]▶
I wonder if the new drug of choice is actually technology. In some ways I think that the addiction to technology has some similar mellowing effects as drugs. Some research indicates that smartphone addiction is also related to low self-esteem and avoidant attachment [1] and that smartphones can become an object of attachment [2]. The replacement of drugs by technology is not surprising as it significantly strengthens technological development especially as it is already well past the point of diminishing returns for improving every day life.

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...

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Spooky23 ◴[21 Dec 24 13:31 UTC] No.42479553[source]▶
I think it’s not technology as a thing people are hooked to - it’s taken over social life. My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period. In person stuff is mostly organized. That is helped by school policy that got rid of the idea of a neighborhood school.

Additionally, the social activities that coalesced around things like alcohol are out of reach of many teens. I live in a city that had a very active college bar scene. It’s dead and gone. Crackdowns on underage serving and cost drives it away. Happy hour special at a place that other day was $12 for 4 coors lights in a bucket. In 1998, I’d pay $15 for a dozen wings and all you can drink swill for 3 hours.

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1. cluckindan ◴[21 Dec 24 13:39 UTC] No.42479602[source]▶
”My 13 year old and his buddies socialize online, period.”

Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like that 30 something years ago.

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2. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[21 Dec 24 13:46 UTC] No.42479641[source]▶
It's a different beast, these days, though.

Back then, only "nerds" socialized online. Nowadays, everyone does it.

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, I'm really glad that kids aren't screwing up their formative years. Drug use during growing/development years can wreck someone's life.

The issue is that, if you are an addict (which is different from physical addiction. Many addicts never get physically addicted to anything), then you'll eventually have problems with drugs; even if they are "socially acceptable" ones, like pot or alcohol (pot being "socially acceptable" is kinda new, around here, but Things Have Changed).

It'll still destroy your life, but, at least, you'll hopefully have something like an education, and living skills, by then, which can help Recovery (and also hinder it).

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3. vouaobrasil ◴[21 Dec 24 13:54 UTC] No.42479685[source]▶
> Nothing new under the sun. Me and my friends were like that 30 something years ago.

(1) When I was growing up, nobody had any online presence. I remember life without the internet.

(2) The fact that it is not new does not mean it has not changed in magnitude and addictiveness.

(3) The fact that it is not new does not mean that it is not a problem. It is a growing problem. Especially because societies these days do nothing about their problems except through more technology at them, which rarely solves the underlying issue.

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4. ghaff ◴[21 Dec 24 14:10 UTC] No.42479783[source]▶
Aside from BBSs from about the mid-80s, followed by some Usenet and related later, there was very little online presence until getting well into the mid-90s or so. Certainly my social friends who weren't part of the local BBS scene had no online presence until maybe the dot-coms really took off.
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5. cluckindan ◴[21 Dec 24 15:36 UTC] No.42480231{3}[source]▶
Mid-90s were 30 something years ago. Perhaps the US was a little slow to develop in this front compared to Europe.
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6. ghaff ◴[21 Dec 24 16:19 UTC] No.42480479{4}[source]▶
Maybe, though that would surprise me a bit. My first personal webpage was probably around 1996 or 1997--and I assume that was fairly early for that sort of thing. As I said, I had been using BBSs for a while and also accessed usenet and FTP sites somewhat later. (I would have only had access from work to the Internet for quite a while.)

For most people, it probably wasn't until MySpace and the like and the popularization of blogging in maybe the early 2000s that an "online presence" was really a thing although people increasingly had access to email etc.

(My dates may be a bit off but not by a lot.)

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7. derwiki ◴[21 Dec 24 16:49 UTC] No.42480664[source]▶
It was maybe only nerds in 1994, but by 1998 everyone at school was asking their parents for the internet so they could talk on ICQ—not just the nerds!
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8. iteria ◴[21 Dec 24 17:50 UTC] No.42481058{5}[source]▶
AOL. In the late 90s, I was in the chat rooms, by the early 00s me and my friends would swap between AIM and text messaging depending when texts were free. Kids definitely had an online presence, but it wasn't like the mid-00s and after when social media rose up.
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9. ghaff ◴[21 Dec 24 18:15 UTC] No.42481204{6}[source]▶
I wasn't in instant messaging until I was an analyst in the 2000s. Never had an AOL account outside of being IM I used for some subset of mostly journalists. So, yeah, didn't really communicate with social contacts with email/IM until the 2000s for the most part.
10. jrm4 ◴[21 Dec 24 18:42 UTC] No.42481355[source]▶
My gut is that this will mostly break even at best.

Whatever "gains" you see in terms of less drug addiction, etc, you're going to see losses in terms of the negative effects of not being "in person."

I confess that it's probably to early to even strongly know what those negative effects are, but I don't think this picture is likely one of strong improvement.

11. mgbmtl ◴[21 Dec 24 18:48 UTC] No.42481401{3}[source]▶
ICQ was a way of texting friends so that you could go party. At least for me, and I'm a nerd. I remember even "normal" friends were using IRC as a way to hookup. Cell phones were not very common.

Looking at my non-nerd 17 year old, they meet maybe once a month, and it's to cook food together during the day. Nobody drinks. They just see it as a waste of money. Maybe not the most normal sample. They love biking and also go to circus school together (Montreal).

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12. ryoshu ◴[21 Dec 24 19:00 UTC] No.42481475{3}[source]▶
That was still nerd behavior depending on the group you were in. A lot of folks knew AIM, but ICQ was different.
13. klooney ◴[21 Dec 24 19:07 UTC] No.42481518[source]▶
I was addicted to, of all things, text MUDs, when I was younger. It's ditch weed compared to what you can get now.
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14. thefaux ◴[21 Dec 24 19:20 UTC] No.42481591{4}[source]▶
Love how you describe your kid as not a nerd and then mention he bikes and goes to circus school :)
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15. jamal-kumar ◴[21 Dec 24 19:43 UTC] No.42481730{5}[source]▶
Nah that's just normal quebecois stuff. Picture cirque du soliel or how much the french love bikes
16. Modified3019 ◴[21 Dec 24 19:54 UTC] No.42481825{3}[source]▶
My drug of choice was “Wyvern” by Steve Yegge, which was heavily influenced by MUDs despite being graphical: https://web.archive.org/web/20040102095422/http://www.caboch...

You could connect to it with just telnet, and while not realistically playable that way, it was great when just chatting.

17. aniviacat ◴[21 Dec 24 20:54 UTC] No.42482204[source]▶
> if you are an addict [...] then you'll eventually have problems with drugs

Do I understand you correctly that you're saying that people addicted to smartphones in their youth will (more likely) become drug addicts in adulthood?

What makes you think that people don't just continue being addicted to phones as adults (instead of doing drugs)?

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18. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[21 Dec 24 21:03 UTC] No.42482264{3}[source]▶
Nah, but addiction to smartphones might be an indication of future issues with other stuff (not just drugs). Long story, not really the kind most folks around here are interested in hearing.
19. DiggyJohnson ◴[21 Dec 24 21:21 UTC] No.42482414{3}[source]▶
I’m not sure which of you I agree with more, but I don’t think GP is crazy: self-control (i.e. delayed gratification) is a transferable skill.
20. Spooky23 ◴[22 Dec 24 03:04 UTC] No.42484113[source]▶
Fair. But you didn’t have teams of MIT PhDs driving your engagement upward.