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This is simple to understand: it’s because the reason the kids are having less sex and doing less drugs is that they’re less healthy, socially connected, and happy — not because they’re following the social conservative model of being healthy, socially connected, and happy. The ideology of social conservatives is not “the kids must do less drugs, and I don’t care about anything else.”
We could solve drug abuse by just shooting anyone who’s addicted to drugs, but somehow I don’t expect that this would make anyone very happy.
The social conservatives thought if they could stop the kids from having sex, drugs, and rock and roll that the kids would be healthier, more socially connected, and happier. This turned out not to be the case.
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Their lives are also ridiculously locked down. They are tracked by phone apps, social media is read, driving privileges are extremely limited (you can’t drive with more than two friends in the car until 18 under graduated licenses). The ability for kids to just go do things the way that their parents and grandparents did doesn’t exist anymore. We used to ditch school all the time, we cut class, we would go outside with other kids and the adults would not know where we were until we came home. And it was entirely possible to have friends your parents would not approve of. Kids could get drugs to school because it was easy enough for a kid to go to skid row and score some to sell at school. Safetism coupled with modern social media and phone tracking killed this type of independence.
I think this explains the mental health crisis and the no sex and drugs thing. Kids are never allowed to be alone with other kids without all the adults being privy to where they are and what they are doing. It causes a mental health crisis because kids never learn to get out of messes on their own, or to be independent. This means that kids never learn that they are capable of being independent or that problems that come up are solvable, least of all by themselves. The sex thing is because it’s impossible to get alone with a member of the opposite sex. No telling mom you’re spending the night with Mike and then going to Mary’s house. Mom will be tracking you. If you go anywhere other than Mike’s house, you’ll be in big trouble.
A bigger factor than external restrictions is that the entire online world decreases the impetus to go out and do any of these things.
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And this is all taken seriously. When I was a kid we had the start of some of these rules... but I went to driver's ed with kids who drove themselves to the class. Restrictions on passengers and times driving were ignored by the kids themselves and not taken particularly seriously by the parents.
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To be honest, this sounds horrifying. I understand the rationale behind helicopter parenting a lot more if this is the perceived alternative.
Some level of independence is good but this really seems like too much. Independence is like bank lending - you prove you can have it by proving you don’t need it.
Helicopter parenting is a practice ruinous for children and parents alike. I see it around me all the time when turbo-neurotic mothers drive themselves and everyone around them and of course their children crazy with their unchecked overdramatic fears of absolutely everything that can imaginably go wrong going wrong in every moment, every day, all life long.
OTOH, full independence for kids has another set of pitfalls. Drugs, falling in with bad crowds, neglecting school are all entirely possible and I've seen them all happen very, very often in my immediate social circles.
The better solutions, as so often, are neither 0% nor 100% surveillance/independence, and require regular reevaluation.
Agreed, of course.
Yeah, I didn't take your post as advocating 100% surveillance helicoptering - just wanted to spell out my thoughts.
Sorry :P I’m on a very boring train ride with nothing else to do, so I keep refreshing. I will put together some more useful thoughts.
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No; given that social conservatism has failed to provide health, social connection, and happiness (indeed, it believes that teenagers should not have those things in general, a viewpoint they share with progressives) I judge it completely fair to say that the ideology of social conservatives is exactly that- or at least, it's not opposed to sacrificing health, social connection, and happiness on the altar of "the fun things in life are evil" because those things are not terminal values.
POSIWID.
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