Who’s complacent? Your teenager?

…teenagers are increasingly delaying activities that had long been seen as rites of passage into adulthood. The study, published Tuesday in the journal Child Development, found that the percentage of adolescents in the U.S. who have a driver’s license, who have tried alcohol, who date, and who work for pay has plummeted since 1976, with the most precipitous decreases in the past decade.

The declines appeared across race, geographic, and socioeconomic lines, and in rural, urban, and suburban areas.

…Between 1976 and 1979, 86 percent of high school seniors had gone on a date; between 2010 and 2015 only 63 percent had, the study found. During the same period, the portion who had ever earned money from working plunged from 76 to 55 percent. And the portion who had tried alcohol plummeted from 93 percent between 1976 and 1979 to 67 percent between 2010 and 2016.

Teens have also reported a steady decline in sexual activity in recent decades, as the portion of high school students who have had sex fell from 54 percent in 1991 to 41 percent in 2015, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics.

Teens have also reported a steady decline in sexual activity in recent decades, as the portion of high school students who have had sex fell from 54 percent in 1991 to 41 percent in 2015, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics.

Here is the Tarah Barampour WaPo story.  Is it evolutionary psychology pushing us more into a more stable mode of behavior for safe circumstances, or perhaps teens being more aware of the need to build their resumes?  Or something else altogether different?

These developments are mostly positive, both as symptoms and as active causal agents, and yet…

Somewhere along the line there is a positive social payoff from risk-taking, including sometimes from teenagers.  How would rock and roll evolved in such a world?   Who is to help undo unjust social structures?  The graybeards?

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