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...
Another aspect here I think is the generalized fear and anxiety present in young people. Having spoken to some family members in the 15-18 age bracket, the message they seem to be receiving is that they are without a future... they won't be buying homes, they won't be getting high paying jobs, and that the system is not going to work in their favor. I think people of this age are uniquely feeling mortal and vulnerable in a way teens typically have not, causing them to be more hesitant to risk losing their mind which they may need to protect themselves down the road. But they also are modern teenagers, not only low in willpower but also coddled by their smartphones, which is why technology addiction is the go to "safer" alternative to habitual drug use.
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.
First-time home owners have increased in age[0], the middle class is shrinking[1], education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have medical costs[3].
Perhaps the generalized fear is not so much about "coddling", but concrete realities. I do not envy them.
[0] https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/american-housing-market-old... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-a... [2] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co... [3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/how-does-medical-i...
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...
> More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at that age[0]
If you’re going to make a claim this bold and this counter to the prevailing narrative, you’re gonna need to cite a better source than an outbrain-riddled webpage that tells me to “watch our video to find the lede we buried”. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but extraordinary claims require good sourcing and explanation.
> The homeownership rate for 26-year-old Gen Zers is 30%, below 31% for millennials at 26, 32.5% of Gen Xers at 26, and 35.6% of boomers at 26.
Unless you're specifically 26 years old, I suppose? This analysis seems far from scientific and cherry picks data in strange ways.
Well said. I remember making a spreadsheet in maybe 1995 laying out the math to compare the real costs and expected gains from buying vs. renting.
It mathed out about even. I decided to go with renting instead of buying, with the logic that the S&P didn’t need me to buy it a new roof every 15 years or to work in its garden every weekend.
It worked nicely too, growing the money that would otherwise have gone into mortgages and property tax, letting me take some of it out recently and buy a house with cash.
I don’t see much of this attitude in my younger friends now. But living cheap and saving does actually work.
The claim isn’t that homeownership is undesirable to Gen Z, but that a lower percentage of Gen Z owns homes compared to previous generations regardless of the specific reason. I think in this case the most likely cause is the increase in prices is causing houses to be unaffordable to Gen Z, despite their desire to own houses.
Regarding home ownership: they only started with a higher rate. It's too early to say, but considering that growth has stagnated, they're on track to become the generation that will own the least homes.
> Health care costs are growing slower now than any prior decade[3].
I don’t see any data on that page supporting this claim. The current decade is growing much faster than the previous one, and they only show data up to 2023.
> Health spending increased by 7.5% from 2022 to 2023, faster than the 4.6% increase from 2021 to 2022. The growth in total health spending from 2022 to 2023 is well above the average annual growth rate of the 2010s (4.1%).
[0] needs to breakout what proportion of the homeowners received help from parents, either via free rent or cash.
[0] in the parent comment needs to note most of the increase comes from older people living and staying in their houses longer rather than dying, moving to facilities or in with family.
Also the insane political risks and social instability, climate change, heightened risks of war and econmomic calamity, housing cost increase.
All I want in life is a good union for software. Role finished this week, who needs me next week? Off I go.
Those are easier to cope with when you live in a supportive society. _Most_ humans naturally help each others in case of emergency. It’s easier when the framework is already in place.
In the sense of how certain trade unions function as a hiring hall. Like a centralized job assignment. We already have a version of it except it's a million splintered hiring/recruitment agencies that may or may not be good. Lot's of time wasted.
Probably the wrong place to be barking up this tree though.
Most professional sports players are unionized and they move around all the time. :P
I hope we get a union with a draft and such.
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.
I imagine that, for the young people of the world, the Covid years really ripped away the illusion that the adults of the world are in competent control. To a degree that modern generations (from otherwise relatively stable, wealthy countries) have never experienced. While there are other major factors clearly contributing to the generational angst, I think this was the catalyst.
I wonder how the economics stack up, because intoxicants aren't free. If the researchers are saying there's X less drug use, then presumably that either implies (a) teenagers are now spending X more on other areas instead (and what are they?), or (b) teenagers now have X less money.
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?
the financial crisis was just financial. 9/11 or war on terror was just behind a tv screen.
covid was actually something everyone felt personally - not just empathized with through media. I feel like I just started recovering mentally from the lockdowns - all my college years eaten up by them.
I mean, lock down absolutely was a disruption - but I know more than one or two young men that ended up in the desert after 9/11. Maybe we’ve also acclimated so much to the post-9/11 infrastructure of fear and surveillance that we assume this is how it always was?
See also: anyone who lived through the decline and fall of the USSR.
Presumably you’re referring to disillusioning a generation, right? I wonder if the masses had smartphones in 1992 if they would have withdrew to the internet rather than vodka. Genuine question - yours is an interesting connection because the circumstances of disillusionment are so different.
It replaced those things but that list doesn’t include the major time sinks, besides TV: social media, porn, doomscrolling. We already made fun of TV zombies, and at the worst it absolutely can remind me of a drunk or unstable person.
> the message they seem to be receiving is that they are without a future...
At least when I was that age, it was usually the low income people who's greatest achievement in life would be avoiding prison, who usually turned towards smoking, alcohol, drugs and sex. See "Common People" and similar 80s/90s Britpop songs.
What changed?
I grew up in a lower middle class family, and for me the feeling that I could end up like that - as many people I went to school with did - was what pushed me to achieve. My parents could only just afford their bills, so I didn't get any handouts from them. Of course I don't have a Lambo, so maybe I'm considered a failure by Gen Z? Has the boundary of what is considered "successful" shifted?
As a person in that age bracket, I don't feel like my peers and I are lacking in opportunities to participate in drug & alcohol use.
As to why I choose to abstain, I honestly am just not interested in drinking or doing drugs. I don't see any benefit to it socially, since I have more fun with my friends doing things while they are sober, and I don't want to be one of those adults that can't socialize without it. Also, the consequences for getting caught are high.
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.
Today on HN, Jonathan Haidt afficionados lament the decline of use of addictive, life ruining, hard drugs. Something about "formative experiences." I think it's a good thing kids don't do hard drugs today, information addiction is a thing may be but going back to hard drugs isn't a good thing.
I have had the opposite observation. Millenials and older Gen Z have extremely pessimistic takes on the future. Our childhoods were some of the most materially comfortable in human history, and everything in comparison is downhill from there.
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.
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.
Exactly. In 2014 I really thought we'd have flying cars, exploring space and world peace by 2024. Instead everything looks the same, regressed even in some areas and all-around alot more cynical
> 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.
They don't? I'm pretty sure I saw unsupervised teens hanging out at a mall even just a few days ago.
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.
Right back at you. I was also commenting on rate rather than saying that I saw one or 2 in the last 10-15 years.
Not all locations are the same though, so maybe there has been a noticeable decrease where you're at. Personally, I think I've felt an increase if anything.
These changes aren't always easy to spot. I live in a city that acquired a significant Ukrainian population over the last two years. Whenever I see a group of kids that biked to an arbitrary location and play, they turn out to be young Ukrainians. They do the exact thing local kids would do 20 years ago.
> they won't be buying homes, they won't be getting high paying jobs, and that the system is not going to work in their favor
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.
> 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".
> 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"
Few under 50 actually want a suburban home in a no-name town with a single domestic holiday a year and a job requiring physical labor (and hard limits on clocking in and out) that feeds your family with industrial calories.
If you do, you can get that with practically zero training in a mid-tier hospitality job (or working as an e.g. bank teller) with an hour commute each way. Small-town suburban homes are cheap.
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.
> uniquely feeling mortal and vulnerable in a way teens typically have not, causing them to be more hesitant to risk losing their mind which they may need to protect themselves down the road
its just as easy to reach the exact opposite conclusion when everything is so hopeless and nihilistic. you are extrapolating way too much here.
less unsupervised time, location tracking from parents, unregulated dopamine from chatgroups and algorithms in public social media, and the risk of fentany and other poisons in drugs, are much better contributors to extrapolate from
You’d think doomerism would lead to MORE drug use.
Bad times create strong people.
To clarify, I really think that is what's happening. People feel that their future is not a guaranteed success and make safer choices to be clear minded and focused to achieve success. Probably just my bias is talking...
> Also, you typically need to be unsupervised with friends
There's a bigger cultural shift going on where people just don't like hanging out with each other anymore.
Your last point was my knee-jerk reaction, "where are they going to do drugs? There are fewer and fewer places available to spend time without paying a fee." I'd like to know if that's true or just a mistaken impression on my part.
I suggest you read up on or watch a documentary on the 60s. We are fucking pampered today.
Technology (e.g. highly addictive short-form video apps) seems like a likely explanation; fear of fentanyl is less plausible (it would not deter drinking or vaping). Surely the biggest factor, however, is just the interruption of social contagion?
I strongly suspect that physically separating highschool students from their older peers for a couple of years meant that most of the older kids who were in to drugs etc. graduated and were not around to introduce their younger peers to these vices.
It's the flip side of the phenomenon whereby many university societies shut down and either never reopened after the pandemic or struggled to get going again (examples I know about including swing dance clubs and solar car racing teams), because the only students with enough experience to teach their younger peers had by then all graduated.
I like this thought process your brought up here! I hadn't put much time into thinking about the physical separation of generations in organizations like schools. A certain absence of physical heritage if you will... A mini extinction event
Makes you think of other, perhaps smaller, things that may have gotten a gap in physical hand offs. Perhaps I'm generalizing too strongly here, but certainly someone that was a middle school teacher or something before and after covid might have some observations on little oddities that may have escaped the public eye.
The obvious reason for me is simply that everyone is much more health conscious now. That also plays much more of a role in social status than it did before. That also extends to showing off your healthy lifestyle on social media.
Simply put, it's not as cool now.
smh kids be on they damn phone so much it's killing the drug dealing industry
This is not accurate in what I see around me. Alcohol far less common among young people than it used to be. Cocaine and MDMA is flourishing.
Ritalin like drugs is out there as well but I dont have much inside inot how common it is.
That is a tiny tiny sample compared to the study so it does not in any way say that the study is wrong. It is just what I myself see and hear around me. (and what the police see a lot of )
I think information and culture/fashion both have a lot to do with it.
Pre-social media, you could get drunk and embarrass yourself, and forget about it by the next day. Now everything is recorded. Information about alcoholism is easier to come by, and there are influencers like worldoftshirts who show people what life as an alcoholic is like. I don't see how anyone could want a drink after watching content like that. Smoking weed in front of a camera doesn't seem as edgy as it used to now that it's legal. Having red eyes in a photo is annoying. Vaping has always had a cringe factor.
All of this tech is giving us the ability to look in the mirror and see what we're doing to ourselves.
oh my god, never thought there would be a day I saw WorldofTshirts mentioned on HN
A question for older folks: what did drugs do for us? Why did we do them?
For me, drugs were:
- socialization. I met a lot of friends through alcohol & drugs and they became the social glue for my circle. Alcohol & drugs became a large part of my identity.
- a way to cope with boredom. Every day is a party when you're high.
- identity. In my generation, drugs were mostly cool and associated with iconoclasts, artists, etc.
Young people's culture changed. I don't think kids see alcohol, drugs and being out of control as cool anymore. I don't know specifically what changed this. Better social messaging, mass prescribing of ADHD meds, more competitive job markets.. Social media and multiplayer gaming have both ramped up competitive drives for what used to be more relaxing activities. Maybe the current optiate and meth epidemics are more effective as a warning than, say, the crack epidemic was for us?
Kids have tech to glue them together(poorly in many cases, but it does fill the niche). Kids have internet subcultures to define their cultures now. Alternative lifestyles are much more accessible and take much less risk to participate in vs my childhood in the 80s. You don't need drugs to meet people or forge common identities.
Kids are never bored anymore. I suspect there has never been a better time to be a kid in a boring small town. If you have bandwidth, you have culture. You have better shipping, home delivery, cheap imports, etc. Affluence seems more common than it used to be, even in our highly divided economy.
Gen Z here and people are definitely still doing drugs and drinking, but it does seem massively less.
Just a personal anecdote, but there’s still a lot of house parties and stuff going on, and most people will have a couple drinks, some will have none, etc. But you are absolutely expected to handle yourself appropriately, 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.
> 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.
I am about to turn 40 very soon. Do I fall in that generation? Because all those things did hold true and was there when I was growing up/adulting. But I never felt any need of it and many didn’t. But many did. Many still do. Because those small pockets are still around where drug is still cool and even back then those were small pockets!
One of the reasons is - it has become too difficult and costly (at least where I live). Even for weed, which was pretty much kosher unless you were caught by the police keeping KGs on your person or home, it has become too difficult to procure and not get caught. That could be a reason.
In many places where weed is available like cigarettes - maybe it’s not the forbidden fruit anymore. That danger or aura of different is gone with it.
The improved treatment, and acceptance, of ADHD is certainly one key element here. I hope we continue to support kids if they show symptoms of any psychological disorder.
Here's a 2018 study following kids into adulthood and questioning them on their substance abuse: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5985671/
My brother is one of those really bad cases, while I got my diagnosis just recently; never had more than a slight drinking problem which has almost disappeared since the I started taking medication.
Yeah but at some point the life of the party became boring because it was all day every day. So we just hung out and smoked weed and played SNES, PSX on a daily basis and went to clubs on weekends and cafés from wed/thur onwards.
I met so many people only through smoking weed. And because weed is such a laid back drug, we were all laid back and friendly with each other.
What I learned to hate over the years was that daily routine of finding something to smoke. We had our dealers we phoned up or sometimes we would deal ourselves to finance our consumption.
Dealing drugs was another level though. Hostilities arose. Some people claimed turf and threatened others with violence, those were "miraculously" found by the police and landed in jail. Also dealers that scammed others. The scene had a way to police themselves. Those were the good years.
Later the quality became worse and the quantity as well. It was no longer... how should I put it,... fun and games but people discovered it as a source of making profit. Even friends or people you considered friends would try to scam you and you weren't any different. That time began approximately when the Afghanistan wars began and the CIA was cut off from the cannabis sources.
It was like this, we would smoke weed in the summer and black afghan in winter. The black afghan fell off. What remained was green hash from the turks and weed, which was stretched with hairspray and silica sand.
I quit doing ganja, also because I hated being stoned all day every day and having to do the daily finding weed routine. I was so tired of it, also "what am I doing with my life".
I lost most "friends", I had to, to not be exposed to this crap on a daily basis. I wanted to get somewhere in life not just consume weed all day and be a loser who got nothing done. Better late than never.
I very rarely do resin nowadays, not by smoking but orally, and it's like once a year or every 2 years. Cannabis is definitely good for your health, if not overdone.
Two things:
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!
Why would anyone put fent in cocaine? It’s more expensive and has the opposite effect.
Drug selling is all about repeat customers I don’t really believe this happens apart from accidents.
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 )
Interesting how I could instantly tell that this was written by AI. CharGPT has a very distinguishable style and reasoning.
That's why I included a pastebin link of my original reply that I asked it to summarise - I hate when people comment "here's what ChatGPT thinks on this subject", but hoped people wouldn't mind a lazily-shortened version of my own writing!
> 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.
Eyebrow raise.
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.
I think the eyebrow raise is due to the fact that nobody cool uses Snapchat anymore. It’s like Facebook now.
Can confirm, Gen Alpha is all about Snapchat, and their DAUs bear this out:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/
Yeah one of my younger brothers falls into this category, his Snapchat streaks have been going for years - from middle school to mid-university so far, and that's not an exaggeration.
Children aren’t cool.
There is also a corresponding decline in alcohol consumption.
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.
The other thing I haven't seen in this thread yet is that 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. With the cost of living, and everything else, they're going to have to make a lot of money to life the kind of life that they're used to as kids.
My kids are not on social media. They eat like pro athletes. They ask me why I'm eating things with higher amounts of sugar or ultra-processed foods. They do an hour of gym class at school every weekday and then they want to do sports every night of the week and on the weekend. They do their homework and get straight As. They are concerned about bullying and suicide -- they talk to each other, even siblings, in a healthy and caring way.
My oldest couldn't understand why people drink alcohol if it's bad for you. I explained that some people like the way it makes them feel, "So what? It's bad for you. Why would anyone do that to their body?" They couldn't understand why I bought a gas guzzling luxury sports car instead of an electric car given the state of the environment (I've wanted one my whole life and I could finally afford one, yes it's selfish and they are more ethical than I am).
There are definitely a bunch of things going on with Gen Z and Alpha that have made (some of) them this way. But one of the results is that they're not interested in a lot of unhealthy things simply because they know they're unhealthy. They can't understand why we do things that we know are bad for us, the environment, etc. and they're probably right.
They're not perfect, but I do have faith in the next generation and we're going to see some amazing leaders come out of this group.
> 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.
Teens aren't doing drugs, smoking, drinking, or having sex. And the suicide rate has never been higher.
I'm not contradicting you, but it appears that the suicide rate hasn't changed since 2018. See this interactive chart and switch the Injury Type to Suicide:
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.
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
How are you disagreeing? The comment you responded to said it hasn’t changed since 2018.
I don't follow.
If the rate has gone and population as well, how come the total number is about the same?
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?
> Teens aren't ... having sex.
Nor are people in their 20s (that is, both groups are having much less sex). That is the most worrying thing to me. People are not even engaging in the most fundamental, unavoidable, pleasurable human drive.
They seem very much like traumatized people, on a massive scale, just trying to survive.
When you don't get matches, it's pretty easy to avoid sex.
... and if everyone is always on screens it's hard to avoid the dating apps where they're not getting matches.
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.
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Disregarding the weird response, you do know 20-29 year olds have the lowest average BMI for adult age groups right?
Higher than the 40-50 year olds when I was that age.
I think we all realize deep down there are too many humans on this planet.
It’s possible to have infinite sex without influencing the population quantity. Well, you could decrease it.
I fundamentally disagree with this take, it's at odds with my belief in growth and dynamism.
We can comfortably host 100B or more on this beautiful planet. Just gotta be strategic about it.
I've had is persisting thought that, we as a society have been delaying adulthood, thus extending childhood, with each decade for a while. And we've now pushed it so far that the current cohort of teens simply are effectively young children on a social/emotion perspective making them unprepared to handle the stresses their age is exposing them to.
> 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.
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
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.
In 1924 you would expect to be a child in a family of 5 with two dying before they hit their majority.
We are simply blind to how much even the relatively recent past sucked.
The age of majority should be the end of a journey, not a bureaucratic milestone.
Erich Fromm said this in his "Fear of Freedom" We live in a time that we are able to customize our lives to our delights. That makes us lose perspective and purpose. So we look to movements to fill the void.
That was back in the 50's/60's I think he was spot on why this generation can't see past the last scroll or click. They don't have perspective because they have not been bred to have it. It's very sad.
> 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.
> Monitoring the Future Study, which annually surveys eighth, 10th and 12th grade students across the United States.
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.
Not data driven at all, just my life experience, but I was a teen during the crack epidemic phase. It certainly had me and my peers cautious of crack itself, nobody wanted anything do to with it, but it was not a deterrence to drug usage in general. I was pretty experimental but when offered some crack once I remember declining; I wasn't even curious. The things that had the most correlation with my drug experimentation was 1) social activity/partying and 2) boredom. I think it's important to note as the average teen socializes significantly less and always has a digital crack pipe to cure their boredom; so I'd look there for a stronger causation.
I go to university next to a safe injection site. It's very clear what addiction leads to.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve completely stopped doing any drugs that I can’t make myself or purchase from a liquor store or dispensary (or shroom store). The risk of fentanyl making it into the product even for unrelated party drugs is just insane now and I don’t trust myself to use fentanyl strips properly while already high or tripping.
I wonder if that impacts teen drug use too, because for the first time opponents have a tangible risk to point to instead of just a dumb frying pan commercial and fearmongering.
My pet theory is that buying drugs requires a level of personal interaction that many young people now avoid.
That actually makes a lot of sense. I know of quite a few younger people who pass on things they can't order online. Grubhub vs phone-in takeout, Amazon vs malls, etc. I wonder if the areas that are legalizing drugs will see a DrugHub app pop up.
It's insanely easy to buy drugs online.
The motivation to try drugs, especially initially, is often social. I would wager that’s really what OP means
You still need crypto, no?
Nope. Don't even need the dark web. All you need is social media.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/12/who-needs-the-da...
Teenagers can fairly easily have credit cards in the US and Canada. I had my first credit card at 15. They can also have debit cards from childhood.
But someone has to tell that link and I am sure peer pressure can be one of the major reason for addiction.
What about sugar addiction? Read recently an article in the news that that's what is becoming a problem, actually, much more than alcohol or cigarettes. Anecdotally, I see kids around drinking all kinds of sweetened beverages. My friend who cleans at a college picks every day full baskets of empty bottles. And in my school, some parents giving kids chocolates for a snack or kids buying themselves a pack of sweets from their pocket money.
I find the decline in alcohol consumption fascinating, how much of it is lack of sociability, being more aaare of its dangers, or just not willing to put up with the hangover.
I was at a family event last night and all the cousins and their friends were using zins - tobacco pouches. I don’t see those mentioned in this data under nicotine in the article.
Incorrect title. "Illegal drug use among teens drops" is what the study is talking about.
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.
In the age of fentanyl I am not at all surprised by this news. The age of experimentation is waning when you can't be sure that your substance is genuine and the cost of being wrong could be your life. If I were a young person today I probably wouldn't even touch anything powdered or pressed.
The pot industry is having serious problems. The market was not only way overestimated, sales are down.[1]
World's smallest violin plays.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/de36eb98-f28d-4594-9ae6-624d25802...
This growth story I never understood. The grey market has been extremely saturated for at least 20-30 years - demand can’t really grow from “everyone who wants it has it”. There is barely any value add that a company can do with the raw output (flower). The growing and processing equipment is already a mature market. Growing is easy if you can follow a basic guide and invest $500 in equipment. Harvesting is just cutting it off the plant and putting it up to dry.. The vape cartridges etc, anyone can buy from AliBaba for cents a piece. I just don’t see where you can outcompete a random Joe
Fentanyl contamination is a real concern though.
I always thought, thank goodness for video games because without them I would probably be a drunk or something similarly physically harmful. I guess the world is just now catching up :-D
I used to regularly skip meals when I gamed. Weight started creeping up after I quit
You also got older ... Age is a factor.
Does weight increase as you get older if you consume the correct amount of calories?
So you adjust your calories
People tend to have more major life events as they get older, and sometimes they choose to soothe with food when facing major loss in other areas.
No, but the 'correct amount of calories' is a steadily decreasing number, so it requires constant adjustment.
Hum, If we hypothesize that drugs abuse could be ruled in part by genetics (some people are more prone to became addict than other), then the drug epidemics from 70's, 80's and 90's should had pruned a lot of this genes from the population.
The current teen not doing drugs are mostly the sons of the former teen not being killed by drugs on its 20's (because they didn't do drugs, or were able to quit drugs before it was too late).
I wonder if an effect of the Fentanyl epidemic could be traced in the genetic makeup of the future USA population, when the children of all the young that died (obviously) never appear in the population pyramid.
wow, you have no idea how genetics work.
Enlighten me, please
Drugs don't usually kill or cause people to die or otherwise become unwilling or unable to reproduce? In fact they may remove inhibitions and lead to producing more children than those who abstain, at least on the whole.
Anyway, I'm not sure and of that is true. It's just one set of possibilities.
Technology is causing antisocial behaviour in young people and teens, I see it everywhere in public. Even amongst friends on a night out people are glued to their phones. Antisocial behaviour brings fewer opportunities to meet people and be exposed to drugs. Drugs were rife during my adolescence in the UK no matter what part of 'society' you were from during the 2000s. I get the impression speaking to younger colleaugues that there a fewer big house parties and nights out clubbing and summers spent going from festival to festival. I started smoking weed as a young teen simply through boredom and curiosity, I only had access to a shared computer a few hours per day. The rest of the time I was out, god forbid, socialising with friends and strangers alike (the skatepark, local parks, parent-less houses, etc...).
Or someone misunderstood. Teen drug use did not decline, it shifted. From substances to social media / “AI”.
Ample bodycam footage of people on drugs, or overdosing is widely available. I’d like to imagine that many people’s first exposure to drugs is seeing the terrifying things it leads them to do.
There’s regular news articles about people straight up dying from dodgy pills. Why would you take that risk. There is no way to safely use drugs when a single pill could kill you instantly.
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
I find this discussion quite odd. Society has worked quite hard for a long time now to reduce drug usage, and now it’s actually going down, and somehow that’s meant to be a bad thing.
I get the point about kids being afraid of taking any risks being bad. But why is taking drugs important to someone’s life in a way that riding a mountain bike and risking hurting yourself doesn’t satisfy?
Is there? LiveLeak and it's ilk are gone now
I remember lying on these surveys when i was 12 out of paranoia, i wonder if the internet makes teens more prone to this
Is it possible this batch of survey respondents just doesn’t trust anyone with information about their habits, so they lied?
everywhere this survey has been done. colleges, independent firms, doctors office, the results are all the same.
Teens and young adults today are doing less sex, less drugs. All those can't be wrong unless todays teens are collectively less truthful than tennagers from previous eras. I doubt that.
Came here to say this. I remember these surveys in high school and how non-seriously we took them. Really, I can’t imagine any group less credible to survey than high schoolers.
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’m guessing it’s linked to declining social interaction among teenagers, which also explains the decline in alcohol consumption too.
Well, tell the experts that if you just stay home and stare at your phone, you don’t go out an experiment with drugs with your irl friends (because you don’t have any) Also, when I was a teen, I had my own place kids nowadays live in the basement
Yeah, cause they're all on SSRIs, mood stabilizers, legal meth via ADHD drugs, and beta blockers.
The obvious reason is they don't have the freedom or space to with helicopter parents and fear of strangers. It's a wonder they even leave the house but if they do mother will drive and pick them up.
Plus weed is legal now in many places. Kids don't want to do what their parents are doing.
TikTok is the drug of choice. I’ve found in my family people turn to drugs in downtime. Less downtime, less drugs
It doesn't look so good on IG and TikTok if you're wasted and unhealthy. Image culture's positive flipside is appearance is a currency of respect, and people don't want to lose it. I guess there had to be some silver lining, right? Ha! :)
Why would a teen use drugs when they have TikTok? All the kids I grew up with who did drugs did it largely because they were bored or had bad family lives. The internet is an increasingly addictive distraction.
TikTok might be more additive for the average teen
Fentanyl contamination/adulteration seems like a sufficient reason to not use any street drug active in greater than microgram quantities. (If I were a parent, I'd probably prefer to give "good" drugs to a kid who was unavoidably going to do them vs. trust their friends/etc. to find safe ones, although there's obviously horrible moral hazard there. I have no idea what the right answer is.)
not that surprising given how everything is laced with fentanyl nowadays
Most initial exposure to drugs is social. That happens less if you’re holed up in your room on your phone.
Isn’t this good? We’ve literally told teenagers to not use drugs or have sex for decades and it’s obviously working. The consequences are far higher today or at least more well understood and the messaging is getting through.
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.
Social media, for example.
Yeah I think it’s just this. We learnt that alcohol is actually really bad for you in many ways, and we taught our children, and they listened. I think it’s pretty funny that our instinct is somehow to be slightly horrified that they stopped drinking or using drugs. I guess they can’t do anything right
The drugs are digital now.
It says what but fail to explain the why. Some hypothesis in the comments about technology being the new 'drug' for teenager so they don't seek drugs, some other about how now everything is recorded so they can't go nuts, ... I don't buy it at all
For me it's just a cultural shift, it's no more cool to be that guy that smoke weed or is drunk. That's all.
It's remarkable to me that many of the top-level comments on this story are all positing that something (i.e. the damn phones) must have replaced drug use and we're just not accounting for it. And if it isn't the damn phones, then it must be that the kids are just too scared of modern-day drugs and the dangers lurking within.
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?
They don't know who to buy them from because they don't have any friends and don't go out.
> surveys a nationally representative group of teens each year
Self reported with nothing actual to verify (e.g., hair sample, school sewer water sample, etc.) Self-reported data is notorious for being unreliable. Why would this be any different?
Editorial: What a waste of time and money. Hopefully taxpayers aren't paying for this.
It's because they dont have same day delivery. Who has the energy to stop scrolling on tiktok and get out of the house to get anything. Let alone drugs that require you to speak to someone.
You can probably get same day delivery on drugs, too.
Think most commenters are correct and that tech and screens have usurped more “medicinal” drugs.
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.
It's a question of spectacle. 300 people dying in a plane crash is perceived as worse than 300'000 dying of preventable disease.
(Or 1 insurance CEO being killed being perceived as worse than 50'000 being killed by denied insurance claims)
Thus my point. Cognitive dissonance at its finest (worst)
What's surprising about it? Teens are attracted by things that are forbidden to them. When you legalize drugs that falls off. Also enough information is available nowadays that doesn't come from some finger waving "you you you" morality zealot, but actual real life examples.
For me at least the pull of cannabis and other drugs, never did real hard and addictive drugs like heroin, was that they were illegal and the effects weren't as bad as the lectures said they were. So I thought what's true about cannabis is also true about cocaine, lsd, psilocybin, xtc etc, but I've seen enough movies about heroin addicts going to waste. I was wrong about lsd and psilocybin and coke had no positive effect on me, except once I became Mr super cool monopoly player ans the other time I was full of energy, but I believe it was mixed with something other than coke. LSD was very uncontrollable, the 1st time was great, simple laugh and dance, the next time was awful and I suffered from it for many years. Psilocybin then, with friends cleared my mind and I was able to articulate myself and think clearly like never before. Amphetamine, I'll never forget the sour smell, but essentially a useless drug, except to stay awake. MDMA varying degrees of happiness and community. But the worst drug was nicotine. Useless, super addictive and really bad for your health. So hard to quit and it's everywhere and it's even worse now with all the e-cigarettes / vapes. Nicotine is an epidemic that needs to be eradicated. It's pure evil.
Inflation. they cannot afford. This is happy news. not surprising news.
Original source (4 points, 8 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42442279
Blame the homeless for this win. Seeing the outcome so blatantly all around us is pushing a net positive. Next big shift will be from the legalization of more recreational drugs.
I don't know about that. I feel like the cat is out of the bag with cannabis and that it actually has the net effect of making the population more docile and accepting of the status quo which is good for power (individual experiences may vary of course).
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.
it's been SWITCHed to another addiction. Pun intended
the appetite for self-destruction is just as big now as it used to be among teenagers. i think people simply dont understand how self-destructive social media is. thats why theyre surprised.
There are now very visible examples of drug use consequences in pretty much every Downtown of a large city.
The article linked here doesn't compare previous time periods, only showing the percentages of use/abstaining that they detected now and just saying that's a decline or record decline, while the article it links to does compare to prior time periods for you to make up your mind about that better
https://news.umich.edu/missing-rebound-youth-drug-use-defies...
"surprising experts", LOL
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.
They only legalized it recently though.
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.
Legalisation/decriminalisation was only one part of the strategy.
Real problem they had was heroin. So they made heroin(or some replacement) free, pushing out drug dealers from the market. Importantly: providing other help to addicts, so they could/would be part of society.
https://youtu.be/6OYLoPvLzPo?feature=shared (1h video comparing situation in US, Portugal, Netherlands; Netherlands part starts around 27:00)
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Presumably it's related to increased conservatism in gen Z males: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll . Conservatives generally have more negative attitudes to drug use.
Do they actually have lower rates of drug use, though? They also have more negative views of homosexuality, but their gatherings can still make Grindr crash.
That poll is really confusing. There are multiple types of conservatism—one is very media-driven (e.g. "omg they did a gender wokeness in my game") and then there's the global variety (liking traditional values). The poll presumes these are the same social phenomena when they're very obviously not. It doesn't help that the way our political parties (which is what the poll seems to be based on) differentiate themselves map extremely poorly onto how americans differentiate themselves.
edit: political -> media-driven
Not really. Don't conflate octogenarian-guided party and community policy with what people actually do.
Nope, women are getting less conservative and this applies to them too.
> Conservatives generally have more negative attitudes to drug use
That is categorically false.
I think it would be interesting to look at whether the rate of physical / sexual abuse has changed, since that's significantly correlated with use of hard drugs.
> But, according to data released Tuesday, the number of eighth, 10th, and 12th graders who collectively abstained from the use of alcohol, marijuana, or nicotine hit a new high this year. Use of illicit drugs also fell on the whole and use of non-heroin narcotics (Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet) hit an all-time low.
From an unexpected conversation with some younger people not long ago (though not this young), they may have just switched to LSD.
Anyone that has experienced LSD would know that what you are saying is impossible and makes zero sense. Other than both being chemicals, the effects are so radically different that they have no interchangeable purpose. Specifically LSD cannot be used to escape trauma or negative emotions, if anything it does the opposite and makes you confront them head on, often terrifyingly so, and as such LSD has something like negative addictiveness. It’s like saying someone switched from using staples to orange juice- it’s an incoherent statement.
The study makes no distinction between that and recreational use. "Getting drunk with friends" counted, for example.
Besides if anything I'd say current generations have less trauma to avoid so they're more likely to use it than past generations.
They switched to smartphones
This. And what about the psychosocial consequences, will it be an improvement compared to the other substances? I doubt it.
While I don't think smartphone addiction should be taken lightly, it's still a far cry from substance abuse.
I'm not so sure, especially if you look at the sum societal impact, and not just the worst outcomes.
My personal take is that the net social impact is positive for alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, and maybe some of the party drugs. For most people, they tend to be a social lubricant, tool for exploration, and source of fun.
I think that smartphone use probably balances out negatively. I think for most people, they have a pretty severe negative impact on their lives, and for some, an extremely negative impact.
The worst outcomes for drug use are probably worse than those for smartphones, but not by too much in my opinion.
Substance abuse is pretty much universally understood to be wrong (including by the addicts themselves, but they lack the help to get out of it).
Social media usage on the other hand has been normalized and now humanity's social fabric is in the control of a few companies who are happy to rent it out to the highest bidder. This has obvious implications regarding democracy, surveillance, misinformation, etc.
From a society perspective, I'll take substance/alcohol abuse any day because it appears to be self-regulating at a level that while is higher than we'd like, is much lower than what it takes to destabilize society and democracy.
> will it be an improvement compared to the other substances? I doubt it
Smartphone addiction beats having cirrhosis.
Therapy's cheaper than a liver transplant.
Notably absent from those stats is nitrous oxide, which has had a resurgence in popularity lately.
You don't use LSD habitually. If they switched to LSD, then that's very interesting.
Some do, and that's fine too.
“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.” ― Alan Watts
LSD is not a drug that you can develop an addiction to. Habit is one thing—some people take it regularly—but it doesn't work very well if you do take it frequently.
Which is not to say that LSD can't potentially be harmful. Of course it can. But it's not very analogous to the typically destructive drugs (alcohol, amphetamines, strong opiates) and it's not going to mess with your dopamine the way they do.
> Some do, and that's fine too.
And those should learn something from Syd Barret's life
Could had been a millionaire rock star, women, expensive toys, children. He could had everything for the rest of his life. But he choose LSD. As a lot of people claim, LSD is a cool and harmless funny drug, right?.
His life instead was: living in his mum house since 24 Yo, with his brain like a car crash, and all the time in the world to think on his boy room about how he managed to mess up his life so badly.
So thanks, but no way.
Not in the same way as alcohol, weed or cigarettes. Not even close.
Oddball theory:
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.)
From 2020-2024, the UN recorded ~17,000 deaths among children in all measured countries combined. The share of that that is among older children/teens and in developed countries like the US is vanishingly small.
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.
> 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.
”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.
It's a different beast, these days, though.
Back then, only "nerds" socialized online. Nowadays, everyone does it.
I'm of two minds about this.
On one hand, I'm really glad that kids aren't screwing up their formative years. Drug use during growing/development years can wreck someone's life.
The issue is that, if you are an addict (which is different from physical addiction. Many addicts never get physically addicted to anything), then you'll eventually have problems with drugs; even if they are "socially acceptable" ones, like pot or alcohol (pot being "socially acceptable" is kinda new, around here, but Things Have Changed).
It'll still destroy your life, but, at least, you'll hopefully have something like an education, and living skills, by then, which can help Recovery (and also hinder it).
> 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.
I fear the (negative) impact of our current technological drugs goes beyond the impact of traditional drugs.
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.
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 :)
> with them having seen people close to them destroyed by drug use.
But isn't this a false correlation, then? Were they destroyed by drug use, or by the daily misery of their ghetto neighborhood?
> 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.
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.
I think this was true a decade ago, where people used social media to talk to each other and actively kept chats with friends, etc.
What I’m seeing now is social media got so hyper optimized for engagement that it became a passive consumption mechanism, and the only “socialization” left is sharing memes. It’s a widespread digital heroin epidemic
Disagree. Nothing can replace face to face socialization. We're not even close. Our minds are just adapting, but to a new local maximum that is far away from the global maximum of ideal.
(Edit: corrected typographical error.)
Socialization online exists, but I'm not sure that it's the main activity on phones.
When you look at https://explodingtopics.com/blog/screen-time-for-teens it does not look promising. Video is leading, then Gaming which can include socialization then third come Social media but with Tik Tok leading which I would not categorize as socialization.
Rather: avoidance of socialization is what's driving it. It's the easy way out of meeting people while still getting compliments and such and pretending "everything is fine". In that sense, it indeed has a lot in common with alcohol.
Makes complete sense to me. Drugs are an effective distraction because they're easy to use and often fast-acting. Outdoor/sport distractions require effort (driving, etc). Video games require much less effort. Add to that less-trivial things like investing and research, and you've got the perfect "addiction"
There are games designed to be addicting. Some even have gambling built in. Technology is just a tool.
I’ve said this story before but I quit Facebook about 10 years ago, at a time when it was essentially the only social media game in town, so I was essentially quitting social media, and the quitting process felt exactly like when I had quit smoking the year before that.
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.
Suddenly I remember this movie from the 90s where people drugged themself with some kind of minidisc. “Strange Days”, maybe? Anyhow, I always found the plot weird, but maybe they actually were onto something…
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.
Sounds like Brain Dances (BDs) from Cyberpunk 2077.
Made me think of Total Recall, which was adapted from "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," looks like from 1966.
Brainstorm (1983) did it before Neuromancer. The movie is about a device that records and replays sensory and emotional experiences, and a central plot point is that it records the dying moments of a character.
> 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
That technology exists; it's called empathy, and the extremely powerful form of it innate to humans is arguably our singularly defining characteristic. It's our tech moat, so to speak.
This is exactly the parasocial way my girlfriend's niece and friends experience life. No relationships of their own, it is all celebrities and their lives, ingested on their phones. I don't have the heart to tell them that 95% of it is stuff created by PR firms.
Yes. And what the previous generation said about rock music.
Celebrities and “socialites” have been idolised for years - Paris Hilton certainly isn’t the doing of this generation, neither is Jackie Kennedy.
If you think that what we’re doing with mobile apps and social media is new, take a look at the 20th century a little harder.
And they were right. But we would watch TV usually together and only for around 4-5 hours a day. Do you know how much screen time are people having ? 8 to 10 hours are not uncommon. And alone.
I do think TV was, and is, harmful. I do not have one for that reason and I think it was good for my kids (as well as myself).
I also think social media is a lot worse.
>> 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.
Play that VR game set within in the shark cage. The adrenaline rush is definitely not much of a leap from the real thing.
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...
Darn, I forgot that episode. That's a very eerie parallel to some of what we have today.
"If you just let the game happen, it almost plays itself." The quote from the episode certainly makes me think about the "idle games" genre that has emerged in that last several years.
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)
Dangit tried to delete this when I realized this is completely unrelated, just a similar name, and was seconds late. Got the delete link then it denied me.
Straight to the dungeon for you.
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.
That movie was awesome. I remember the first time I saw the trailer in an actual movie theater. It was mindblowing.
“Have you ever jacked-in, wire-tripped..”
“Santa Claus of the subconscious”
https://youtu.be/8RoOs-S_JVI
> I wonder if the new drug of choice is actually technology
Technology certainly is the economic sector that we privilege against all criticism of the harm it does to young people, to voting adults, to information quality, to public discourse, and to democracy itself.
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.
Growing up, people on the street would fidget with their cigarettes. Now they fidget with their phones.
I wonder if it is like facebook.
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.
Be careful of a possible false dichotomy; People don’t need to have a drug.
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.
And religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
Absolutely. And smart phones are also not literally a drug. Drugs, video games, alcohol, and religion, are all used as a part of coping mechanisms for many, however.
Popularity doesn't necessarily imply a need.
One way to distinguish them is the retrospective analysis of the outcome. What happens when someone obtains or goes without each category?
To go deeper, I think one needs to more fully defined "need”. Need for what? Are we talking about needs.. to sustain biological life? Are we talking about needs... To sustain happy and productive lives?
If we take the second definition, there is a pretty clear difference between a desire and a need. Satisfaction of a desire does not necessarily advance that goal, and can very well be counter to it.
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.
That kind of misogyny sounds like some deeply rooted trauma you have there, buddy.
Have you ever considered that humans are simply social creatures, that the only thing really separating us from other animals is our ability to socialize and organise in groups?
There is no programming, it’s our nature.
We're just missing a cigar and a dream about trains here.
Quoth the AI:
> According to Freud, dreaming about trains often symbolizes the journey of life, with the train representing the progression of time and the destination representing death, and the act of riding a train can be linked to unconscious sexual desires due to the sensation of movement and confinement, particularly when experiencing anxiety about missing a train or being trapped on one.
It is somewhat amusing that Leary had a period of saying that computers were the new drugs (“PC is the new LSD” or something)
"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.
Gen Z was conditioned with algorithmic timelines and loot boxes (gambling).
Tek comes to mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TekWar
Hey I remember that show! What a weird one. I kinda liked it though.
This is a massively overstated, trendy, technically incorrect thing to say.
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.
The article discusses all drug use, not just addictive use. I don't think addiction is prevalent enough to solely explain those numbers.
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.
It does replace a demand of people who want to mellow out.
The same tech completely disrupts how drug-use spreads as well. There is nobody to offer a first hit if you're hanging out online.
---
Though I would caution taking tech as _the_ cause. Things like demographics and the general zeitgeist shouldn't be ignored.
Maybe the kids are really into DARE.
Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural pathways as addictive substances?
Because "addiction" is a very loaded term (with a specific clinical definition when it's not being used colloquially), and the sources you cited used "attachment" instead.
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.
Some corollaries, that might not be obvious for those not deeply familiar with drug policy:
1. Statements like "we can't legalize a drug until we have proven that it's not harmful" are nonsensical given that it's easier to become habituated to drugs that are less harmful. The standard should be, "when measured holistically, does legalization and regulation increase or decrease harm relative to banning and criminalization?"
2. Lumping habitual use and sporadic use together as "abuse" is counter-productive.
3. A humane and just drug policy would focus on removing the causes of people wanting to escape negative emotions rather than on removing the tools they use to escape those emotions.
Explain why MDMA isn't a huge addiction problem like meth (or all that popular any more).
MDMA has little addiction potential- for one it isn’t really just an unhealthy escape from negative feelings, but helps people process traumatic experiences and negative emotions by temporarily lowering anxiety and fear, and may be close to being FDA approved for that therapeutic purpose.
I have only tried it once, and it permanently eliminated my crippling social anxiety, by temporarily eliminating it, and allowing me to experience and remember what that was like. I felt no desire to use it again, because the (life changing positive) effect was permanent.
Second, it seems to have rapidly diminishing effects that make it self limiting- if sometime takes MDMA too much or too frequently, it stops having the desired effect.
I'm not really sure how the behavioural addiction here is harming the person. You're talking about an external harm with the behavioural addiction being symptom treatment due to feeling trapped.
It ends up consuming all of a persons time and energy, and they stop doing everything else that is important or essential- maintaining their own career, friendships, family obligations, and health. They lose the ability to feel joy or engage positively in anything but the addiction. This causes a downward spiral of physical and mental health, that destroys quality of like and can in some cases be ultimately fatal.
> Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural pathways as addictive substances?
Absolutely yes: the dopamine circuit.
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.
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.
There is no reason to assume that a behavior that activates the reward system is categorically less harmful than a molecule that activates it directly. In both cases it can completely overcome someones will such that it destroys their life and they can’t escape it. Both are addiction. You’re making a distinction without a difference- a fire only needs to be hot enough to kill, it does not become “invalid” just because you can think of other types of fire, or hotter fires.
You are using the word “medical” to emphasize your point incorrectly- behavioral addictions are included in the modern medical concept of addiction, and the idea that they should be considered categorically separate from substances is an outdated concept. The DSM-5 for example has a diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction.
If everyone is switching from drugs to social media, then that's progress. Twitter and Facebook won't harm your body. They're also free, so your habit will never make you poor and desperate. This kind of revolution in improving our health makes me proud to work in the tech industry. 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. We can improve the human condition, but we can't change human nature.
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.
Hello, depending on data from the CDC, we have:
>Number of alcohol-induced deaths, excluding accidents and homicides: 51,191 Alcohol-induced deaths, excluding accidents and homicides per 100,000 population: 15.4
>All suicides Number of deaths: 49,476 Deaths per 100,000 population: 14.8
Apparently, not all suicides are caused by social media, and accidents may be more important here. I just want to offer some data that can be easily fetched.
The problem with alcohol is that it’s a drug that isn’t just legal and tolerated, it’s a drug that’s celebrated and encouraged.
Drug addicts sell their children (in the worst way) for the next hit. It's not the same.
And likewise child porn trade/child trafficking is a nagging problem on social media platforms. Stereotyping is rarely illuminating.
> It's not the same.
I would not be so sure of that: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/farmville-playing-mom-admits-sh...
They are also really valuable at building/generating personality models of large swaths of the population, the data can be said knows us better than we know ourselves. Since the memory of our patterns can be mined for discovery or narrative creation. That's why they really exist. Just follow the money.
> 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
You can order custom kitten being killed videos on the internet. Is this suppressing the serial killers and rapists in our society?
It's along the lines of your theory, the internet is filling in a base need for a segment of society that's always been there.
Yes, and a former executive confirmed that it's intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
Opiate of the masses (21st Century version)
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.
They'll have bread, but they won't have bred.
This was my first thought too. Their phones are all they need. Plus they are legal, encouraged even.