7d ago

US teen drug, alcohol and tobacco use continues to decline

www.theguardian.com US teen drug, alcohol and tobacco use continues to decline

Record numbers of teens now abstain, a trend starting during the Covid pandemic and continuing to the present

Summary

Teen drug, alcohol, and tobacco use in the U.S. continues to decline, with record-low usage levels reported in 2023, according to the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future survey.

Among 12th graders, 66% reported no recent use of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, while 80% of 10th graders and 90% of 8th graders avoided these substances entirely.

Experts attribute the decline partly to reduced peer pressure during the pandemic.

However, nicotine pouch use has doubled among 12th graders, raising concerns.

Despite pop culture's glamorization of smoking, teen cigarette use remains low.

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I’ll offer this as a possible reason: Kids don’t solo travel like they used to. Kids not wanting driver’s licenses as much is a thing.
I think I can speak for older generations a little - we couldn’t wait to get enough independence to have a bike or driver’s license to get out of the house. There was only the telephone to talk to people - as in no internet, no social media, not everyone had computer games or consoles. Eventually you had messaging services like AIM or IRC, but you didn’t really meet up with friends on them because not everyone had PCs, or cared to learn how to use one. There was cable TV if you were lucky, but you didn’t watch that all day. We went from one friend’s house to another, or friends of friend’s homes. You got exposed to a lot more living conditions, often while completely unsupervised. Bored kids or kids with home problems didn’t mind pilfering the alcohol from the parents, or got whatever drug they could. Usually pot. Nothing else to do. Plus some peer pressure.
Now? Kids text. They meet up online on discord or whatever VoIP or messaging service is cool right now. Group chats. Play online games. They don’t need to leave the house to hang out, and in-person hangouts seem way less important to my kids than it ever was to me when I was younger. That’s a lot less opportunity to be introduced to alcohol or other drugs and have the access to them.
So maybe less peer pressure isn’t necessarily a Covid result, it’s the result of social interaction moving to online spaces and not physical spaces where access to alcohol or other drugs are present.
- People are also more poor in general.
  Wages have been stagnating for over 50 years.
  Independence requires financial independence.
  It's not possible to meaningfully participate in society without disposable income.
  This leads to the avg person having less power and influence than almost any of their ancestors.
  Unfortunately nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
  
  Video games are fundamentally experiences of agency, of being in some kind of environment that is dynamic, spontaneous and in conversation with the player.
  Modern life on the other hand is fundamentally the experience of having no agency and being in a car choked landscape where nothing is dynamic, spontaneous or in conversation with you (especially as pedestrian when not driving).
  I am goind to spend time where I have agency, where the landscape was designed in joyous anticipation of someone like me existing in it, the real life human spaces around me have been exhaustively rectified to the brutality and logic of latestage capitalism and thus these "real" landscapes around me are dead.
  Society seems to every day increasingly hate and punish people who want to explore, play and create. Why the fuck would I want to spend time in real life spaces when they were designed out of a specific hatred for the kind of thing that makes me feel happy, alive and welcome?
  Playing video games is something I do because I am poor AND because I gravitate towards landscapes and communities that were designed by people who don't hate my brain and the way I think and live.
  
  This. It's one thing to say wokeness is a problem if you live in California or Southern Ontario, it's another to say wokeness is bad in Texas or Manitoba. There are people out there so consumed by hate that they want innocent people to suffer simply for not conforming, and it doesn't matter who you are because there's a brand of extremism for that. People are tired of discrimination, period. They're sick of being told this is not a dream, of bowing to a Neon God that devours songs, devours innovations, devours even evil and fear by devouring our emotions... This world destroyed itself. Don't you get that? I feel more at home in a city where "Last night's body count lottery [sic]" was 30 people because if I met a person and they died, people cared enough to hire someone to avenge them. In a hyper-capitalist dystopia. I feel more fear from a goddamn invincible anomalous lizard than I fear the day my dad dies because I will kill myself when my parents are gone regardless. I can't live without my only support net.
  And I especially love worlds that are what everyone wishes. Tet was a hero to me, because he rescued the protagonists from a world that didn't value them at all. Hinobi is not evil to me, even as a relatively shady megacorp, because they've owned their mistakes. Why buy a car if you can buy Forza Horizon 5? Why go to Oxford or an Ivy League or CalTech if you could go to Hogwarts?
  Reality is the Matrix, not escapism. It always has been, it just looked like there was a more real world ruled by a God-Machine race about 30-15 years ago. It's way overdue people start realizing that what changed is that now we're living in The Matrix Ressurections, that not only is our reality mostly fake (money, power, fame) but our fiction is more fulfilling because it's a Matrix that we are aware we're in and that we can do as we please in, while actual reality only offers hollow, empty promises aimed at enriching the rich even more.
  I'm not saying we should give into our vices like it's nothing. I'm saying we deserve to be allowed to dream and not be told we are unworthy of happiness for being average, or worse, for being mentally disabled. Or worse than even that, for daring to have a unique opinion. If I have to have entire fake worlds on call to feel like I even have the 10-15 years of job experience I need to be employable IRL, I will. Because I'll never get that experience now. I and my entire generation are unemployable, because a few fucking bankers robbed our parents and then lied to our grandparents that we were lazy.
  Lazy? Or realistic? Math doesn't add up, assholes. We will never have anything because of the rest of you, you deserve to watch us play games while the world burns.
  
  I can barely afford to drink in my basement!
  
  But the point is you do it. Keep up the good fight!
  
  I mean if you didn't had disposable income, drugs were the last of your worries in that scenario
  
  you'd wish, but the thing with drugs is "you" (the drugs in you) wanna continue even in poverty and homelessness
- This is a big part of it for sure. I have a 21 year old nephew who refuses to get his license. He just says yeah I've got lots of friends that drive me where I need to go. It's not always going to be like that, kid.
  I got my learner's permit the day I turned 15 and my license the day I turned 16. Couldn't wait to get away from my family.
  
  nowadays insurance and vehicles are also significantly more expensive for younger people. In several states drivers with learners permits are automatically covered by their parents insurance reducing cost.
  
  Even then, cars are simply unattainable. Houses and apartments more so. A computer is the most expensive thing many 30-somethings own, they can't afford to not live with their parents when there is literally a housing shortage in Canada, and the United States doesn't offer health care insurance if you get an inconvenient tumor or have terrible genetics.
  We are 30 year olds with a college degree but no job experience competing with 20 year olds who have a college degree and can work an extra 10 years before they get paid pension.

139 comments