I’m very much for legalizing and regulating (almost) all drugs, but watch out with the confirmation bias of “everyone in my social circle who used recreationally turned out fine.”

I can’t find it right now but I read a great comment on legalization that pointed out that a kid experimenting with weed and cocaine in college is doing so for a radically different reason than a kid doing it escape the daily misery of his ghetto neighborhood.

This is also why you’ll often see staunch opposition to legalization in the lower socio-economic classes, with them having seen people close to them destroyed by drug use.

And yes, legalization and regulation would of course also allow harm reduction. But it is good to be able to take the opposition’s perspective :)

> 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.

Counterargument: a "very normal adult life" in our generations treats alcohol as basically mandatory for having a good time with a group. As someone who doesn't drink, I'm perfectly happy to go to parties and hang out and socialize, but as the night wears on it becomes less and less stimulating as the alcohol kicks in. People get less interesting on drugs, but they perceive themselves to be having more fun. It's a crutch.

Now, maybe having a social crutch like alcohol is better than having a drug which encourages disappearing from the physical social world entirely, but our generation's answer was hardly healthy.

Why are the moral panics always about the media diets of children? Let’s talk about old people for a minute.

1) They can be socially isolated in ways that few children are. An unsupervised septuagenarian can go literal days without speaking to another live human being.

2) They’re more technologically competent than we give them credit for, certainly enough to spend days doomscrolling their politically aligned newsfeeds of choice. The generation who thought their CD-ROM drives were cupholders passed quite some time ago.

3) They have an outsized influence on politics. Not only do they vote more than any other demographic in the US, they are the most likely to turn up and harangue your city council or school board meeting.

Of course, nothing new under the sun, their parents’ generation was mainlining cable news and AM talk radio 20-30 years ago.

> 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.

Now imagine that they would not be engaging with silly YouTube videos, but with an AI trying to get them to interact with them in order to learn to speak, to learn about the world. Things which parents can't dedicate enough time to. Then also give the kids ideas for what to do with the parents, what to talk about, tease them about science and stuff they'd normally have no access to, because it is information mostly hidden in books or in an inaccessible format, like dedicated to students.

I do see a huge potential in this, call it cheaply a "nanny for the brain", to help develop it better and faster. There are certainly risks to it, but if it were well done, in a way in which we assume universities are "places well done", it could be better than just having the kids watching TV.

Playing Devil’s advocate… Socialisation is what’s driving technology use. It’s just happening on the phones, not irl. Just like with alcohol, anyone not participating will be left out. If everyone’s on their phones all the time, IRL socialisation won’t matter compared to socialisation via phones.

Old drugs are also at least sometimes social. Even heroin gives rise to cliques of users. It’s deeply unhealthy and self destructive but at least there is connection. Sometimes you get art out of it too. A whole era of great music has many bittersweet odes to smack.

I particularly worry about men. The greater cultural and possibly (more controversial) biological susceptibility to isolation coupled with this stuff means a generation of young men who are isolated, hopeless, poor, lonely, and sexless.

Then we have a culture that, depending on which side you listen to, either shames them as potential rapists from the patriarchy or simply “losers.” (IMHO the “woke” shaming is just code for loser, as I have heard said in private.) They are neither. They are victims of exploitation, of a nearly exact analog to the Matrix that is destroying their minds.

I speak mostly of social media and addiction optimized gaming, not all tech. The problem is the apps not the phone. Really anything that works very hard to “maximize engagement” should be considered guilty unless proven innocent. This phrase is code for addiction.

As we have seen the gurus that appeal to such men are the likes of Andrew Tate. As awful as he is Jordan Peterson is actually among the less toxic of the crew since he does occasionally say something good.

In the future we could have gurus for hordes of lonely poor men that make Tate look helpful and wise. This is how we either LARP the Handmaid’s Tale or — worse — ISIS or the Khmer Rouge.

I have two daughters and I fear for their safety in a country full of fascism radicalized angry emotionally stunted men who have been told they are losers and then handed pitchforks.

Our industry is the industry making the opium to which these youth are addicted and that is destroying them. We are destroying the minds of a generation every time any B2C app tries to optimize its time on app KPI.

Mothers and fathers of boys: raise your sons or Andrew Tate will.

”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.

> I think it’s not technology as a thing people are hooked to - it’s taken over social life.

One cannot separate the tool from the use. Of course, you are right, though. Technology has done two things: it has eradicated communities by making communities less economically valuable, and it provides a superficial alternative.

But the end result is that people become effectively hooked on using the device. The device is nothing without what is happening on it, but it cannot be deconstructed and separated either into a social component and the technology itself because it is more than the sum of its parts.

There are games designed to be addicting. Some even have gambling built in. Technology is just a tool.

Indeed. And I do feel that we need a sort of new terminology for technological "attachment/addiction" or whatever it is. Because people continue to nitpick on whether it is physiologically the same as physical dependence and that completely misses the point.

The discs had -in the movie- the memories of another person, and you would experience that memory and sensations as if you were living it. So, e.g. someone would record themselves doing something risky and you would get the adrenaline rush from watching it.

So... Maybe in some way one could argue that social media gives some sort of connection were you get some feelings from what others are doing/showing. I mean, technologically it's quite a leap, but in a conceptual way... it's still a bit of a leap but maybe not that big.

Or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Game [0]. Every time I watch that I get this eerie sensation that we're essentially giving our free will up to the masters of the games and social platforms we're addicted to.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_%28Star_Trek:_The_Nex...

Offhand the only drug-like thing I remember from that series is the nutrition bars that had 0 calories that most of the school got addicted to. Or maybe the cheerleader that got bee pheromones and started controlling the rest of the students.

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)

In Serial Experiments Lain, they have a drug that makes your brain think really fast.

The minidiscs in that case where full-sensory VR recordings of people’s experiences.

Brainstorm (1983) had the tape version of that.

> Suddenly I remember this movie from the 90s where people drugged themself with some kind of minidisc.

With Ralph Fiennes. I think that, although strange, it's actually an underrated movie.

I would argue that the health impacts of both habits are comparable too.

Well, we have tied all of the smooth functioning of society to producing new technology, so regardless of its negative effects or its diminishing returns, we develop it. It's a strong piece of circumstantial evidence for technological determinism, not to mention many advancements are clear-cut cases of the prisoner's dilemma (arms race), such as computer security vs. hackers.

I really found it interesting that in the engineered society of Brave New World, everyone got a drug. I guess my personally opinion is that I disagree with you, that in a world where you know about drugs, drugs are a sort of need.

That's fair. But I was only referring to those that tend towards drugs, since the entire study is about a reduction in drug use.

Hey, speak for yourself, buddy.

More seriously, I think there's ample historical evidence that drugs (with a liberal definition, beer, etc) are very popular across various times and places.

Who like hermits and people that follow asceticism?

OP didn't say that.

So what‘s your drug of choice?

Indoctrination into a dependency mindset fits the "buy a solution" model that our societies run on. We are already primed for this indoctrination from the moment mother puts a pacifier in our mouths. Then constantly looking up at her approval, that constitutes the beginning of our need of approval from the women in our lives. We are programmed and primed from day 0.

"Turn on, boot up, jack in" ~~ Timothy Leary

Marshall "Joyce is my LSD" McLuhan would agree emphatically.

Chaos and Cycberculture, Timothy Leary, 1994.

An astounding book.

I wonder if that’s why there’s now such a fucking problem with sports betting…

Hey I remember that show! What a weird one. I kinda liked it though.

Agreed. The original comment just made me think "good grief".

No, scrolling on a website is not the same as doing lines of coke in the club bathroom.

Even if technological "addiction" is not like real drug addiction, it is something strange. People constantly checking, scrolling without any real purpose. There's some sort of conditioned behaviour in it that has some facets of addiction.

Well, I think there is also an emergent theme in the research that there also needs to be two distinct concepts: addiction, and attachment. See [1].

[1] Hertlein, Katherine M., and Markie LC Twist. "Attachment to technology: The missing link." Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy 17.1 (2018): 2-6.

I think the answer here is a bit subtle and hard to explain, because it contradicts a lot of common assumptions about addiction and drugs.

In short, many addictive substances create a chemical dependence that often has awful, even potentially fatal chemical withdrawal symptoms. Behavioral addictions don't cause this, which makes people assume they are entirely something different, and categorically less serious and damaging.

This is wrong- because those withdrawal symptoms, while they do make it harder to quit by making going cold turkey difficult and sometimes impossible, they are not the underlying reason why these drugs are being abused in the first place, nor the reason they destroy peoples lives. The reason is that they stimulate the reward system and/or allow one to escape negative emotions and trauma. Behavioral addictions also do that, and can just as easily ruin ones life, by completely overcoming someones mind and will, such that they no longer are able to live their life, and are unable to escape or quit with willpower, just as much so as with drugs that cause withdrawal. They can still completely ruin your life and drive you to suicide, etc.

Moreover, people also often emphasize that many addictive substances can directly cause serious health problems, or even death. This is also not central to their harmfulness, nor always the case. In fact, for a drug to have substantial abuse potential it must be relatively free from serious adverse health effects, at least in the short term, or else it would become impossible to abuse- the most damaging substances are the ones where people can take higher doses for longer with less adverse effects, because this more strongly emphasizes its ability to be used to strongly stimulate the reward system and escape negative emotions and trauma for longer periods of time - cementing the addiction-, without causing a new negative experience on its own. Methamphetamine for example is unique among stimulants in how benign it is- allowing people to take massive doses over really long periods of time, and not face immediate health issues. Counter-intuitively, this is actually what makes it have so much abuse potential and cause so much harm, compared to other stimulants which quickly make you sick or feel awful at high doses. From this perspective, you can see that the fact that behavioral addictions are also able to be repeated in "large doses" for long periods of time without immediate short term health consequences can make them have a high potential for harm in the long term.

Fair point. Some other studies use addiction too, though, and there is a distinction between both addiction and attachment and the links between them is a bit nebulous. You can check out the results on Google Scholar if interested.

> Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural pathways as addictive substances?

Absolutely yes: the dopamine circuit.

I couldn't agree more. Using the term addiction in contexts where it is not medically valid is very dangerous (like yelling "fire" in a theater) and leads to the use of violent force against those one falsely claims are "addicted".

Audio-visual stimuli from screens and speakers has never been shown to be able to have the same effects as a dopaminergic drug which is to say, completely turning up incentive salience regardless of reward or lack of it. That is why drugs are dangerous.

Technology can only be habit forming (in some contexts, maybe) if it continues to be rewarding in some way. Psychological dependence, maybe, but never addiction, and not even physiological dependence. Addictive drugs do not have to be rewarding or pleasurable. They just hijack wanting.

They are not the same and definitely should not be legislated the same. Enjoying something that is actually fun is not the same as wanting something because it chemically turned on wanting.

I strongly disagree with this. Social media companies are incredibly valuable specifically because they are effective at getting people to spend their money on things they otherwise wouldn't have.

Depression, suicide, and other serious mental health disorders are strongly linked with social media use. Is that better than more kids drinking and smoking pot? I don't know, it's complicated. It's certainly not clearly better and might be significantly worse.

Hand waving away these costs is putting on some seriously rose colored glasses.

> Twitter and Facebook won't harm your body. They're also free

Only if you value your time at exactly zero.

> The worst that can happen is you'll feel sad if people bully you online, but that's the fault of people, not the technology.

By that logic it’s also your body’s fault to react poorly to drugs, not the drugs’.

Thinking of it in terms of “fault” is also not very productive. I’d say it’s definitely a (possible) negative consequence of social media usage that might otherwise not have happened, and as such worth studying.

> This kind of revolution in improving our health makes me proud to work in the tech industry.

I can say with some amount of confidence that the number of people wasting their talent and life in making up bullshit engagement algorithms, who thought about it as a way of getting people away from drugs, has been exactly zero. So, it is definitely not something to be proud of, but maybe something to think of as a funny coincidence, provided that the premise actually holds.

> The worst that can happen is ...

That you'll remain or become an idiot, or suffer physically and mentally as a result of being inactive while consuming the garbage your proud tech workers shove down your head.

I’d argue that targeted advertising and unprecedentedly-centralized corporate control of what text, images, and video we see online is just as potentially harmful as (recreational) drug use, if not worse. And online-shopping/adventure-travel/other addictions facilitated by targeted ads and targeted content algorithms can definitely leave people unable to achieve goals in life.

Creating a new addiction to replace the last generation’s isn’t really something to be proud of. As developers, we should be aiming to create ways to communicate that aren’t addictive and facilitate genuine connection with others that includes their highs, the lows, and financial/socioeconomic transparency.

Perhaps? But a confounder is the strengthening or weakening of social ties. It's not clear that what seems to increasing loneliness is doing well by this next generation.

As someone who grew up in the 90’s and partied the way they did in the 90’s If there is a switch from drugs to social media I find that incredibly dystopian.

Mental health is health, and poor mental health can result in death... death rates that we have seen climb precipitously among children. Trading heroin deaths for suicides isn't an improvement, even if the dealers feel they aren't directly responsible.

Plenty of bad side effects: Harming your brains development, ability to concentrate, harm the ability to find joy in non-screen activities, mental health and so on.

social media can definitely harm your body if you’re constantly overstimulated and sedentary

I think psychedelic is more apt (but not a perfect analogy either).

Expands horizons, connects self to world, catalyzes cults and psychoses.

Bread and Circuses. Or at least, circuses.

More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at that age[0], real wages are increasing for the lower and middle class for the first time since 1970[1]. More people are leaving the workforce than anytime in history, creating high paying trade job openings at an unprecedented rate[2]. Health care costs are growing slower now than any prior decade[3].

Every generation has challenges and benefits. Framing the narrative can happen in any direction and the variance in group is bigger than the variance between.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/09/05/how-gen-z-outpaces-past-...

[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/americans-wages-are...

[2] https://www.protectedincome.org/news/labor-day-peak-65-trade...

[3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...

> education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have medical costs[3].

This is basically a law of nature. Anything that's done by humans and can't be scaled will necessarily get more expensive in real terms over time. See: Baumol effect.

First-time home buyers are getting squeezed by a combination of peaking market forces, but those forces are peaking and we're probably seeing the worst of it at this moment [1]. It will get better.

[1] https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-i-dont-inv...

Also the insane political risks and social instability, climate change, heightened risks of war and econmomic calamity, housing cost increase.

Society hasn’t setup future society to be better. It’s a grab and go everywhere you look and it’s tiring. This is coming from a millennial with a good tech job. I cannot imagine how younger generations feel.

Agreed that Covid was disillusioning for young people, but uniquely so? The 2008 financial crisis, 9/11, and the GWoT would all like a word.

The only generation I can think of without a similar formative crisis (in the US at least) is Gen X. Does the death of Kurt Cobain count?

See also: anyone who lived through the decline and fall of the USSR.

This is what I’m thinking. All of the kids I know from 16-22 are the most level headed group of young adults I’ve known. It is hilarious to me that this group of brilliant technologists leans so heavily towards seeing the absolute worst in every data point.

Could it be that, kids are doing less drugs because they’re more informed, less bored, and less reckless than previous generations?

We all aspire that our kids will do better than we have. We did our best to instill a sense of confidence and worth in them.

What if it is finally starting to just, f’ing work?

I'm very pleased to see this sentiment, as a father of a 14 year old boy. 4 years ago I decided to quit alcohol altogether (from a moderate by Australian standards consumption), and I hope to be a positive influence on him through his formative years through open and honest conversations about the topic.

(He has no desire to start drinking etc early or at all at this point.)

Long term health impacts are high, as someone in my 50s I'm certainly doing better for my choice. And yes, not making stupid decisions under influence also cannot be underestimated.

You might not need to go to college, but you're going into significant debt if you do, so now one has to decide which disadvantage they want to start their career with: no degree, or crippling debt.

A fast food job might be $17/hr, but the cost of gas is >2x what it was when that same job paid $8/hr, not to mention other basic costs like groceries, rent, and buckle up if you have to go to the doctor. Pay has simply not kept up with the cost of living for most Americans.

Why would anyone be happy that everything is ephemeral? That implies a lack of stability, more anxiety about the future, less confidence that you can weather bad times.

Humans are tactile creatures, everything being digital leads to a counter-intuitive sense of isolation - more connected, but less personal. There are positives too, but as an older Millennial, it has been interesting to be along for the ride as the potential of the internet and social media went from a superpower, to kryptonite. Who knows where things will be in 5-10 years, but it's hard not to see how some of our greatest tools are being turned against us in the search for more profit.

Millennials are, if anything, brutally realistic - a trait required to navigate the last 16 years. We were forced to watch as the last bit of life in the idea of a strong middle class was snuffed out, and had to enter the workforce right as the GFC hit. Our parents were the last generation where one could reasonably expect to live a life that truly lived up to the ideal of the American Dream - that one could get educated, get a job, buy a decent house and raise a family, without it being especially noteworthy to do so. For many Millennials, if not every generation following, it is essentially nothing more than a dream at this point. Corporate greed, and a government fully captured by it, has all but killed the middle class, and I fully expect that the advent of AI - rather than being a boon for the middle class - will drive a nail in its coffin. Those with the most to gain are already on top, and I've already heard way more people here talk about what they'll be able to do without needing to hire anyone, than I have about how the people left jobless will benefit. It is readily apparent that nobody with any power is going to do anything about it before a significant amount of suffering is felt - maybe not even then. All you have to do is listen to how people talk about it, as if everyone will magically figure out something else to do when every sector starts losing jobs simultaneously. Our society has a greater chance of eating itself alive first.

I consider myself lucky amongst most Millennials - I entered the workforce before the GFC, then joined the military shortly after it (not due to the GFC, but the timing worked out). I was able to get far enough along in my career in those first years though that I never had to struggle with finding a job like many did. I was able to get a house in my 30s thanks to the GI bill. Very few of those I grew up with are in the same boat, many are living much the same as they were 15 years ago - unable to save enough to buy a house, facing reduced job prospects in the future. What reason do they have to be anything _but_ pessimistic?

For me personally, I think we've simply lost the battle against greed, and there is a tipping point after which reigning it back in is impossible without burning it all down. That's something nobody should want, least of all the rich, but it's played out many times in history, and we keep falling into the same trap, just different ways. I think this time it probably was Citizens United where we lost our grip, that decision made it inevitable that corporate interests would be the driving force of government, not the needs of its people. Who can say for sure what will happen, but we're all along for the ride regardless.

Millennials had high hopes and were disappointed; Gen Z didn't have high hopes.

Gen X’s will probably remember being unsupervised from about the age they learned to ride a bike. I think we were the last “get home before dark” generation.

Not to sound snarky, but please consider interpreting comments like these as making a statement about rate rather than an absolute binary.

> Teenagers being frustrated that they wont be owning some posh expensive house

Posh expensive house? Nowhere was that mentioned.

The post-WWII 20th century American social contract was: "You will have the ability to get married, live in a modest home of your own, own a car, raise 2-3 young children, and go on a modest annual vacation even if you work in a factory".

It didn't even cross my mind until the very late teens that it might be possible for me to own a flat one day, the sums involved sounded not much different than a "gazillion dollars", but that particular future outlook definitely had zero effect on my behavior.

Bad times create strong people.

> It is significantly more socially acceptable to drink no alcohol and take no drugs, than it is to get too drunk and act inappropriately

From what I’ve seen, this is partly a function of embedded social media. A drunk night at a friend’s isn’t just a bad decision, it reflects poorly on everyone in the room, including the host, in a semi-permanent and semi-public way.

Handling your stuff isn't all that new. Unless you're hanging with very close friends you always needed to not be a problem or you wouldn't get invited back.

I'm curious what GenZ+ thinks about the movie "The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down" which is a tongue-in-cheek, funny look at mid 00's partying culture in LA. That's not really my generation, but is a bit of a window into what I think was the last generation to really embrace intoxication.

As a millennial this is just great.

The more i read about GenZ’rs and their attitude to work and life the more i like this generation.

Yes, people should be expected to handle themselves appropriately. Getting black-out wasted with alcohol is not cool. It’s just unhealthy. Way to go!

  getting too drunk or taking drugs you couldn’t handle isn’t tolerated
  and you’ll find yourself uninvited to future events. It is significantly
  more socially acceptable to drink no alcohol and take no drugs, than it
  is to get too drunk and act inappropriately.

I've interacted with a number of Gen Zers in their 20s and Millenials in their early 30s, some in passing and some on a more regular basis. In my experience that cohort spans the gamut. Some are teetotalers, sure. Most use drugs (cocaine, ketamine, assorted off-label prescription stuff, marijuana, etc.) at least occasionally, some daily. It really doesn't seem all that different from when I was their age. Excluding peer pressure, most of the societal ills that drove my peers to experiment with drugs still apply. Conversely I've seen a lot of my peers start to dial back drug and alcohol use as they get older.

We can take a good thing too far (and probably are at that point). ADHD is being overdiagnosed and medication is being overprescribed, especially in young men.

Search "speedball drug", this has been done for decades.

I wondered about that too. The most likely answer is that a lot of dealers aren't meticulous about cleaning work surfaces between batches.

I don't know but a very close friend's x-wife died that way, coke laced with fent.

TL;DR: If fentanyl could be evenly dispersed in cocaine at a tiny percentage of the weight, there’s a theoretical reason for a dealer to add it. However, it’s likely rare and more often accidental.

I agree with kstrauser—most cases of fentanyl in cocaine are likely due to contamination from preparing multiple drugs in the same space. Accidental fentanyl poisonings usually involve people using other downers, like heroin or counterfeit benzos, rather than cocaine.

That said, there’s a theoretical motive for intentionally adding fentanyl to cocaine. While cocaine is highly mentally addictive, it doesn’t cause the same physical dependence as opiates. A low, undetectable dose of fentanyl could enhance the high and subtly increase physical dependence, potentially leading to more frequent use. It’s an unethical but plausible strategy for some dealers.

Regarding cost, fentanyl is cheaper than it might seem. While per-gram prices for cocaine and fentanyl are similar, fentanyl’s potency makes it far more economical in effective doses. A gram of fentanyl can be diluted across hundreds of grams of cocaine, making it cost-effective for someone aiming to enhance or manipulate their product.

The real challenges are: 1. Mixing: Distributing fentanyl evenly in cocaine is extremely difficult without specialized equipment. Uneven mixing could make some doses dangerously potent. 2. User safety: Even tiny, “safe” doses can become deadly when combined with alcohol, benzos, or other opiates, all of which are common among cocaine users.

In short, the risk and complexity of mixing fentanyl properly likely outweigh the benefits for most dealers. But that doesn’t rule out less ethical or less cautious individuals attempting it.

(I first wrote a too-lengthy reply of ~800 words as I'm too sleepy to write well atm, so I got ChatGPT to condense it which got rid of 70% - https://pastebin.com/raw/khm2VFxN )

At what? This is clearly true by experience. As long as you remember it’s a rate and not an absolute statement. Cool kids still go to more parties and are less terminally online than their lamer peers, but it’s a lot less parties and a lot more screen time for the cool kid as well.

That is the raw number, not the rate.

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

But we are also seeing shrinking amounts of children. So a steady suicide amount in raw terms is an increasing rate.

> I'm not contradicting you, but it appears that the suicide rate hasn't changed since 2018.

Peak social media?

When you don't get matches, it's pretty easy to avoid sex.

> They seem very much like traumatized people, on a massive scale, just trying to survive.

Every few years I like to leave the world for a bit and do something else to reset a bit. For example I just finished walking 779km on the Camino in Spain.

What you said is essentially true for the vast majority of people in our modern world. What we have built is terrible for us, and we’re all suffering and very sick.

I'm starting to think many people just aren't into sex that much, in the same way many people aren't into food.

Many people just get hungry and inhale the most convenient thing they can to scratch the hunger itch. McDonald's is always busy. People would be there on Christmas day if it was open. These people aren't into food as pleasure, they just don't want to be hungry. Of course with meal replacements bottles etc McDonald's isn't even the bottom of that particular barrel.

It's the same with sex. I've met people who define themselves by their sexuality. They consider it a primary pursuit in life. But for others it's just scratching an itch. I've realised I'm basically that way. It doesn't mean that much to me, it's just something my body makes me do. Porn is now everywhere and more easily accessible than drugs. People are now able to reach for McDonald's or the meal replacement, but for sex.

I think we all realize deep down there are too many humans on this planet.

On the flip side, imagine the tremendous spiritual development possible to be unlocked by a generation undistracted by carnal desire.

> have been delaying adulthood

If you have kids, do you see them as less mature than how you perceived yourself at their age ?

TBH I feel the opposite: current kids have a lot more to deal with, and are expected to be much much more down to earth than a few decades ago. The most basic things: a single post on an SNS can stick with them for the rest of their life, yet we moved half of our social life online.

I would agree that modern childhood is protracted to what is perhaps a damaging extent, but would also argue that the stresses and anxieties of everyday life are more constant and overbearing than the human psyche is equipped to handle. It’s mot healthy for well-adjusted adults either. We’re built for dangers and stresses that come in relatively short bursts, not those that are without end.

There must be a good balance between the grow-up-quick-or-die-horribly of the pre-technology world and the my-cats-are-my-kids life of the post-danger world

The age of majority should be the end of a journey, not a bureaucratic milestone.

> They don't have perspective because they have not been bred to have it. It's very sad.

Did 'bred' once include upbringing? I thought it began and ended with mate selection, pairing, and procreation.

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.

> 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!

> My kids are not on social media.

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

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.

I was a big fan of cocaine back in the 90s. I never got to the "problem" level with it but if it was there I was the first to raise my hand.

My personality has changed a little, but I'd still probably jump at it today, if it weren't for the fear of fentanyl. I'm not worried about addiction, I'm worried about death.

The motivation to try drugs, especially initially, is often social. I would wager that’s really what OP means

You still need crypto, no?

But someone has to tell that link and I am sure peer pressure can be one of the major reason for addiction.

Fentanyl contamination is a real concern though.

You also got older ... Age is a factor.

It’s pretty normal for parents to drink alcohol with their kids. Letting kids of 12+ drink in special circumstances is common in Europe. But wanting to toke with a 15 year old to make sure they have a good first experience - why is that absolutely taboo?

Enlighten me, please

not that you are wrong but life without risk is what today’s kids are mostly experiencing and it is no way to live. statistically based on number of pills consumed your chances of straight-up dying are very low. drug dealers do not want to kill you any more than Elon selling you a Tesla without brakes. we do thousands of inherently dangerous things all the time (e.g. each time you fly you should know that chances are your aircraft may have been maintained / repaired in any of the 900 facilities outside of the United States and such work is performed by people making less money per day than you spend on pumpkin spice latte… and yet we fly…) statistically though, your chances of dying from a dodgy pill are very very low

But it's changing over time, and students always lied.

But it's possible that this generation is wiser/ more cynical and doesn't believe in anonymous surveys.

I know I don't.

I think the issue here is more about the unintended second order effects. Yay! Drug and alcohol use is down... annnnnnddddd now theres a mental health crisis, increase in suicide rate, and the fertility rate is dropping like well drug and alcohol use.

I'm personally not saying the isolated health aspect of reduced drug and alcohol use is a bad thing. In a vacuum it is obviously positive. When you consider how they function in a broader social system it may turn out that its not a positive change.

Thus my point. Cognitive dissonance at its finest (worst)

Isn't there research showing that people are smoking less weed in the places it's been legalized? It lost its "cool factor" after that.

Yeah, it was decriminalized... but that wasn't my point. The point is, police didn't care, and it wasn't interesting for young people because of that.