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Seeing this question asked is sort of sad. Did this become a less common experience? What killed it?
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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The quality of life of kids has degraded at least in the US and no not primarily from smartphones and social media.
The answer is simple, life is harder for parents.
And also the lack of third places making it a lot harder for both adults and kids to get together with friends in person without having to spend money
Also the move towards car-centric infrastructure. Which is somewhat related to the lack of 3rd places.
A lot of the movies with these parties had the kids showing up by walking or biking, which just is not feasible anymore. I
I also think about all the teen movies that were largely set in shopping malls. Most of the malls around me have shut down, so what's next? Pretending people hang out and socialize in Wal-Marts for the sake of the movie?
When the 24 hour Walmart opened in my podunk town it was a popular teen hangout after 10 or so.
This was in the late 90s though. Iβm not sure what itβs like now, but that was also when teens got cheap ass cars as soon as they had a license.
Cash for clunkers, the economic busts and the auto industry eliminating affordable small cars (in the US at least), and more recently the insurance industry has changed car prices/expenses to make teens in that area less mobile and more isolated. Now itβs mostly drunks and retail employees after a shift in there after 9pm. And itβs not open 24 hours since the pandemic.
They actually do, or Target. Spend some time in there around 8-9pm and watch the little groups of teens wandering the store.
Wal-Mart "Did someone say product placement?"
Yeah the effect of that is really insidious and far reaching, I know it hurt me growing up no question.
The thing is, all the fun things that adults used to be able to do to blow off steam away from kids, keep getting ruined by going more "family friendly". When I was a kid, there was a thing at the boulder reservoir with music and events, and people would drink and smoke weed and be mostly left alone. They made it family friendly and it started to die, then they decided it wasn't eco-friendly so they killed it off.
Ragrbrai in Iowa happened the same way. A weeklong ride across the state that changes stops every year. Used to be drunken debauchery at the stops and now it's family friendly and no fun anymore. Concerts are the same way. I know kids listen to slipknot, but why the fuck should I watch my mouth now that kids are around, when the singers saying much worse (in context) on stage? I'm sure everyone everywhere in America has a story like this. 4th of July on Apple River, in Wisconsin, back in college it was a blast. Alcohol and titties everywhere. I haven't been since cops started going and enforcing shit.
I blame 2008 a lot of people didn't have money to spend individually so they had to combo it into family time. Combine that with the fact that a lot of the places that used to cater to adults started to get increasingly ratty and decrepit without being replaced and ya end up with a rather bad feedback loop. In my area for example there's only really one thing an adult can do at night in public that being go to a bar, but I know for a fact that when I was a kid a lot of places switched over to adults only past 8 PM so that they could attract folks who didn't want to deal with kids nearby and I'm not just talking about a mini golf course or some shit there used to be a hobby store near me that did adults only Warhammer games at night which just meant bear and cussing.
Itβs feels like America never really learned to maintain things.
Smartphones and social media are probably why the kids don't party like that anymore. They don't need to gather in one house to all talk when they have their group chats and junk like that. Pretty sad to think about a generation of kids just pissing away their youth looking at a little screen in their hands all day.
Social media has warped many brains into living life as a performance of moments for their feed-posts, and too few exercise their right to Privacy, so everything is tainted with the concept of the Observer that we didn't have in the past. Yes, we did party like those kids in those movies. It was rad.
Try being more curious about young people and actually listen to them talk when they are willing to be vulnerable to you and come back and tell me this is the problem. That is a lazy, easy narrative there you just spun.
IF we want to talk about anything regarding the human condition, that talk will necessarily be reductive. Should OP have written a thesis paper?
He clearly stated that this was his opinion. And I think he's getting downvoted for hitting a leetle too close to home.
Your assumptions are based on your imagination, since you don't know that I haven't done that
Then why do your descriptions of nuanced multifaceted humans portray them as such cartoonishly reductive caricatures dissected from any context outside of their control? Younger people by definition have the least control over their circumstance.
Sounds like you don't like what I wrote. It's not a big deal, but it is real. I've seen before and after, and what I said is what happened.
What up GenX! Yep. We had to leave the house because there was nothing to do there!
I dunno. I moved to Europe and there's smartphones and social media here. But my colleagues kids are at birthday parties and hanging out with friends and going to events every weekend. This seems like a real US thing.
To my knowledge kids in US have 10x the scheduled activities on weekends compared to the past. Apparently the thought of a kid just lying around all weekend entertaining themselves is gone. They have to have scheduled camps all summer as well.
They have scheduled camps all summer because both parents have to work, and those are often cheaper than regular childcare.
It's mostly a privileged thing. Everyone else just let's their kid read books and whatever to pass the time or takes them to the YMCA or boys and girls club, etc.
That sounds hellish to me.
Last weekend there was a big national festival in my area (Nijmeegse vierdaagse). I was late after the friday drinks at work. The trainand the stations were chuck full of teens and early 20 kids. They looked to be havin as much fun and being as stupid as I was at that age. Didn't seem like much had changed in that regard.