←back to thread

Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

(arstechnica.com)
349 points pseudolus | 6 comments | 17 Dec 24 23:44 UTC | HN request time: 1.975s | source | bottom
Show context
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...

replies(27): >>42474251 #>>42474255 #>>42474258 #>>42474428 #>>42474552 #>>42474820 #>>42474840 #>>42475416 #>>42476573 #>>42476771 #>>42476830 #>>42477157 #>>42477286 #>>42477871 #>>42478303 #>>42478352 #>>42478504 #>>42478717 #>>42478824 #>>42478837 #>>42479083 #>>42479553 #>>42480244 #>>42481141 #>>42481485 #>>42482200 #>>42483991 #
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.

replies(2): >>42479602 #>>42479695 #
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.

replies(4): >>42479641 #>>42479685 #>>42482601 #>>42484113 #
1. 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.

replies(1): >>42479783 #
2. 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.
replies(1): >>42480231 #
3. cluckindan ◴[21 Dec 24 15:36 UTC] No.42480231[source]▶
Mid-90s were 30 something years ago. Perhaps the US was a little slow to develop in this front compared to Europe.
replies(1): >>42480479 #
4. ghaff ◴[21 Dec 24 16:19 UTC] No.42480479{3}[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.)

replies(1): >>42481058 #
5. iteria ◴[21 Dec 24 17:50 UTC] No.42481058{4}[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.
replies(1): >>42481204 #
6. ghaff ◴[21 Dec 24 18:15 UTC] No.42481204{5}[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.