Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/the-kids-are-maybe-alright-teen-drug-use-hits-new-lows-in-ongoing-decline/1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07475...
I’ve seen kids not even 3-4 years old already hooked to smartphone screens. Even toddlers around 1 year old with an smartphone mount in their stroller.
Main impact on kids is lack of socialization, lack of emotional regulation and a complete impact on their capabilities to keep their attention. Those used to be indicators for a future failed adulthood.
I remember traditional drugs only becoming present around 14-16 years old. Alcohol was probably the most prevalent, and probably the most dangerous. Followed by Cannabis, tobacco and some recreational drugs like MDMA.
Most of those drugs had a component that actually pushed kids heavily towards socialization and forming peer groups. Now looking back to the results of that drug consumption I would say that most of the individuals engaging on them were able to regulate and continue to what it seems to be a very normal adult life. Obviously tobacco with terrible potential future health effects, but beyond that, everyone I know turned up pretty healthy. Not only that, I remember some time later that the most experimental group (mdma, LSD, mushrooms) of drug users being full of people with Master Degrees and PhDs.
The new technological drugs scare me way more than the old traditional ones. Obviously it is a normal response of the known va unknown. Time will tell.
Aside - I just learned a month ago that there's an official followup miniseries that brought back several of the original actors, titled "Echoes", with hopefully more coming since it's called Season 1. Came out over 2022-2023: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHGrvCp5nsDJ1qSoKZEmm... (the trailers are at the bottom of the playlist)
The next generation weren't interested in facebook, because "that's what moms use" and figured out something different.
As to drugs, now many are legal, so parents can now partake in what used to be illegal for them. Or for harder drugs, "Uncle Bob does drugs, and he's always in trouble".
So one generation of parents acts as a negative example for the next generation to reject.
Also, you typically need to be unsupervised with friends to get into drugs, something teenagers no longer have access to compared to 10-15 years ago. If we look at the social decline due to the pandemic, what made experts think these kids would bounce back? They are forever changed, and will forever be less social than other generations because they missed out on formative experiences.
But high schoolers I know today seem more even keeled about things. They are graduating into a world where fast food jobs start at $17, no one needs to go to college if they don't want to, and they are accustomed to a world where everything is temporary and digital.
I think the strongest evidence of this is the sharp decline in military recruitment.
I dont have a clue what your upbringing looked like, but even up to around age of 25, I never ever expected nor was told to expect any of that. The success despite all that is much sweeter.
Maybe thats some US thing, being raised in eastern Europe you were born to shit, you were considered insignificant shit and that was about it. Thats what being occupied for 4 decades by russians causes to society, on top of other bad stuff they are so natural with.
Maybe stop telling kids how they are all special and great and all will be astronauts and let them figure it all out by themselves? Teenagers being frustrated that they wont be owning some posh expensive house, thats pretty fucked up upbringing and life goals to be polite, thats not success in life in any meaningful way.
I recommend checking biggest regrets of dying people, focus on careers and money hoarding are consistently at the top.
Even the “cool kids” are staying inside and using their phones all day. Cool used to mean you were at the party, now it just means you have a high snapchat score.
Other thing is genuine fear of accidental fentanyl consumption. They’re making fake Xans with fentanyl in them, fentanyl is being found in coke powder. Plenty of people aren’t taking the risk with street drugs anymore. Jelly Roll said so in an interview, he’s a big recreational drug user but doesn’t trust the supply anymore. Good job dealers!
https://wisqars.cdc.gov/fatal-injury-trends/
That chart shows the rate has hovered around 4000 per month for years. That's 4000 too many, but at least it's not increasing.
Since the spread of social media, suicide rates are up for children, significantly: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db471.pdf
> The suicide rate for people aged 15–19 did not change significantly from 2001 through 2009, then increased 57% from 2009 through 2017
> For people aged 10–14, the suicide rate tripled from 2007 through 2018
If the rate has gone and population as well, how come the total number is about the same?
One angle that hasn't been researched enough is the link to anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication. These has been a significant rise in the prescription of both to young adults: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/anxiety-prescripti...
And on these medications there are often severe interactions with alcohol and drugs which would be enough to frighten off most people. Some e.g. bupropion even reduce addictive tendencies entirely.
I wonder if there is correlation to the opioid crisis, where the "downsides" (if you want to call it that) of drug abuse are so visible to teenagers that they are staying away from it. Doing drugs when it's associated with being "cool"/interesting like rappers is one thing, but when you associate it to fentanyl zombies living in the streets it loses a lot of its glamour.
I was not able to find the regional breakdown so it's just a conjecture though.
Psychoactive prescriptions are up probably orders of magnitude in the last fifty years.
People have been talking about "self medicating" with alcohol and other legal drugs to deal with various problems for decades. Now there are legal "doctor medicating" options.
Plus weed is legal now in many places. Kids don't want to do what their parents are doing.
I'm not saying it's not phone addiction, or fentanyl in the weed, but is it really that hard to believe that the youths just don't want to do drugs as much as your generation did?
We’ve trained younger generations to be extremely risk adverse and they’ve listened. I line they’re probably dangerously exposed to other risks that we don’t have generational knowledge of yet.
What I find interesting is the general lack of care among folks here at HN. There was a comment thread about some person in AL alluding to not being able to find qualified workers at their government contractor implying a morale hang up on “weapon systems”
I’d argue tech kills more folks than these contractors but people can easily look past that.
https://news.umich.edu/missing-rebound-youth-drug-use-defies...
It was clear ever back when the Dutch decriminalised weed that its normalisation led to youth not being that much interested any more, and so it was everywhere else where weed was legalised decades later.
But hey, just because the Dutch have had decades of experience, the rest of the world still isn't able to learn from them.
It's time to end the war on drugs, once and for all. And DARE etc can go and die in a hellfire where it belongs.
> The initial drop in drug use between 2020 and 2021 was among the largest ever recorded.
No surprise, with the world in lockdown and most schools in lockdown it was harder to get drugs, and meeting up to consume drugs could in many countries lead to a knock on the door or even a raid from the police - it happened quite the surprising amount of times in Germany.
From an unexpected conversation with some younger people not long ago (though not this young), they may have just switched to LSD.
COVID hit credulous / non-technical people harder, because they refused to believe in it and didn't take precautions. So a lot of people who might have turned to drugs died for an entirely unrelated reason, leaving teens who are "smart" enough to avoid drugs. ("Smart" here is not intended to mean just IQ.)