It's not (just) college. Even if you do make it past college, hitting what older generations would consider typical markers of adulthood (having your own place, a good job, a stable relationship, a family, etc.) are all delayed and/or more difficult to achieve.

Meanwhile many jobs are trying to sell themselves not through a TC that would let one hit these markers, but through football tables, pizza parties, drinks and other social outings. Not to hate on fun activities, but it sure does feel like trying to keep young adults in a perpetual student lifestyle when you keep the booze but not give them the wage to advance in life.

There are plenty of young adults who want to grow up, meeting a ridiculous amount of resistance.

When I was a teen, teenagers had after school jobs. McDonald's, stores, etc., were populated with teen workers at minimum wage.

Today those jobs are held by adults, expecting to be able to raise a family on it. Teenagers rarely have jobs, their first job waits until after they graduate from college.

Cherry on top: once they graduate, they are met with "entry-level jobs" asking for years of experience, giant requirements lists and an overall predatory environment, only to be reinforced that failure is a personal fault and not one of the system.

Personal responsibility is a good thing. People need to fail, this is one of the few ways to see critical feedback that fosters growth.

Ironic considering this is the market where feedback has been gradually taken away to the point of being so vague it is effectively useless, if there is any. Because ghosting and poor one-liners are more cost-effective.

Let's not cover up bad systems because a few individuals rise to the artificial challenge and bite through.

Based on my experience, the primary reason high school kids had jobs was to buy a car.

For various reasons (safety regulation, emissions requirements, minimum wage not keeping up with inflation, insurance outpacing inflation, cash for clunkers etc…) it’s now almost impossible to afford a car working a few hours at McDonald’s.

There’s also far more fast food restaurants per capita than there used to be, and food service/retail make up a larger part of the economy in general.

To top it off, the age of the average American has increased almost 10 years since 1960, so there are just fewer kids to do the jobs.

I still regret not buying that '68 Chevelle Super Sport for $600 when I was in h.s. That thing was a rocket with that giant V8 and very little car. I did wind up with a 67 289 Mustang. It was an automatic, and my buddy & I converted it to a 4 speed because muscle cars with automatics were for weeners.

We sure had fun shredding tires with it. I was lucky to survive the accident that terminated it.

And adults have always occupied those jobs too. How else did you get McDonalds Breakfast 30 years ago on a Wednesday at 8 AM in October going into the office?

Are you sure? I don't ever remember an adult behind the counter in those days. 18 and 19 year-olds are still teens.

And they are also considered legally adults, are they not?

I remember at 18 signing up for 5 years in the Navy. I'd say that is pretty adult. If it isn't, you should consider contacting your senator about raising the age of enlistment.

Legally adult, yes. They're still commonly regarded as kids, though, despite being eligible for the military. Note the drinking age is 21.

The ones that do sign up, though, grow up fast.

> Note the drinking age is 21.

All the more reason to contact your Senator. Lower the drinking age or make the age of enlistment higher. Adult enough to decide to become a sacrificial pawn, but not adult enough to drink a beer.

Kinda changing the subject.

I asked my high school math teacher to write me a recommendation letter for college. He politely refused, saying he could not in good conscience recommend me. I am grateful for him for letting me know, so I could ask another teacher.

More than once he'd announced in class that he was grading the class on a curve, but me separately.

Suffice to say we didn't get along.

> More than once he'd announced in class that he was grading the class on a curve, but me separately.

What was his public reason for doing so?

Let's just say the other kids complained that I was raising the curve.

So he didn't reject you because you were a poor student, but for some other reason? Sounds like you might want to consider what you could have done differently to improve on that outcome. Regardless of whether you agree with what s/he tells you, it's a chance to gain some valuable insights into what others think about you.

Apparently, I was pretty obnoxious in high school. It took me far too long to learn this. (And to learn when not to speak my opinion.) I would have been well served if I had swallowed pride and asked teachers (and peers) for some perspective on how my attitude was, frankly, self destructive.

You’re victim blaming somebody when they were a teenager with a power tripping asshole for a teacher…?

Oh, I know why. I was a brat.

I think your views on how kids view their peers who are good at math are outdated. For example, NASA gear has, fairly recently, become a fashion trend [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/9tk0jw/w...

I graduated high school in 1998, was great at math, and most teachers liked me, some loved me. MAYBE if you're talking about going to high school in the 70's or 80's, or in a more small football-centered town or something, this was accurate at some point.

good to know. a drop in the ocean is a good start. I will buy a few.

my kids are still in k-12, nothing has really changed for them though.

>college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days,

A good interpretation of humans generally is 'giant baby monkeys', in that we have curiosity and openness consistent with juveniles but not with most adult animals.

>on the STEM subject, teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest,

This doesn't bear any resemblance to my experience of a not-so-special US public school in the 2000s.

I'm not saying your comment is without valid points, but you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater on your attitude about childhood.

> college is delaying young people to become mature, we're producing giant babies these days, thanks to endless parenting, online gaming, social screen time, now probably even metaverse, you name it.

It persists into the professional space, just look at how infantilizing Silicon Valley became, trying to turn the workplace into a playpen complete with propeller head hats.

My propeller hat is a dignified part of my professional attire, thank you very much.

Can you explain how those things are "infantilizing" beyond pure bias?

Instead of playing foosball and gaming online, we should be playing cards and drinking like previous generations?

Or maybe, the entire west is increasingly a gerontocracy, with the 18-64 working age group being squeezed harder in every way to support a constantly growing number of retirees, who also as a group obstruct construction and make the traditional markers of adulthood harder to achieve. To a 70 year old, everyone below 40 must look like a baby.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old?...

> middle school kids are more keen about their gender or identities, or how awful US was in the past, or their hair color

Do you genuinely believe this stuff that youre typing? I know that conservative medias say this and use it as a boogeyman to get themselves into power, but do you truly believe it? Ive worked with elementary, middle, and high school kids for the last 5 years, in an area that conservatives constantly make fun of and call awful things, but none of that is even close to the reality.

Kids know that gay people exist (and are okay with that), and they know that they might want to look or act differently than they wouldve been forced to in the past.

Kids today are significantly more accepting of tech and STEM subjects than they were even just a few years ago. Its significantly more common and accepted to play video games, kids are interested in video and picture editing because of social media (like TikTok), and they are increasingly tech literate. None of these boogeyman topics you claim are true, but they are continually parroted by people who want to move our education system backwards.

And as a side note, > high school students must show how caring they're to the community

I personally think this is a great thing. We should encourage more community involvement with young people, especially things that help out disadvantaged community members and educate them about our government. Im surprised someone who parrots the original phrases from your comment would be against something like being caring in your community.

yes I believe it genuinely, as these are my three k-12 kids told me what's going on at school, and I got involved with school quite often, I can see those myself to some extent too. the middle school one actually told me she thinks at least 1/3 of her classmates are hard to tell their genders these days, and to greet a classmate the first sentence now should be: how should I address you? otherwise her classmates actually got offended if you got it wrong on the gender side.

my high school kids told me they are aware of those sensitive gender subjects at middle school and they feel it's more frequent these days.

Google will show you some data points, e.g. Gen Z (from 1995+) has close to 20% claiming to be LGBT+. Things changed a lot.

I'm neither a liberal or conservative, I consider myself independent.

What's wrong with those things? They are different from what I (and I guess you) knew and know, but so what? We did plenty that was shocking and new to our parents, and equally mocked - do you remember? How absurdly narrow-minded our parents seemed? We were mostly right too. Are we going to do the same?

The next generation should not tether themselves at all to what is in our comfort zones; if they aren't going far beyond them, they aren't thinking for themselves. When I was young I remember thinking that the old people were jaded, corrupt, and didn't even try to address their ignorance - and now that I'm 'old', I can see I was right! With power has come all those things - not a commitment to truth, but disdain for being made to learn anything. God I hope the next generation doesn't follow or accomodate us. And to this day, some people I know in the prior generation still don't understand things that are normal to us now as adults, because we grew up with them. I know some that won't wear blue jeans because they see jeans as a symbol of a challenging culture.

They say progress happens one funeral at a time! :)

> What's wrong with those things? They are different from what I (and I guess you) knew and know, but so what?

The numbers are vastly higher than scientific estimates of how many people are in these groups. That suggests it’s become a form of self expression, which is just a way of denying reality.

> We did plenty that was shocking and new to our parents, and equally mocked - do you remember?

Who is “we?” Millennials, as a group, are the good kids compared to baby boomers. They have less sex, do less drugs, etc.

> How absurdly narrow-minded our parents seemed? We were mostly right too.

Our parents started down this road of self expression and denying the realities of life. Mostly they sobered up after the drug binges of the 1960s, but left millennials poorly positioned to handle the real world. We are lucky to live in a society our grandparents built, because I don’t think we could build that society again today.

> The next generation should not tether themselves at all to what is in our comfort zones; if they aren't going far beyond them, they aren't thinking for themselves.

The realities of human existence don’t change so fast. The basic mechanics of American life aren’t much different today compared to 1989. If people are rushing past the comfort zones of their parents, that means they’re increasingly living in a delusion detached from reality.

> When I was young I remember thinking that the old people were jaded, corrupt, and didn't even try to address their ignorance - and now that I'm 'old', I can see I was right!

People’s brains don’t fully develop until they’re 25. So if you believe the same things now as you did when you were young…

> The numbers are vastly higher than scientific estimates of how many people are in these groups. That suggests it’s become a form of self expression, which is just a way of denying reality.

I thought the data was based on surveys of how people identify themselves, which only shows that identification has changed with time. Maybe fluid gender identity is a stage of development that has been denied before; who knows? Why do you have to tell these people what to do with their lives?

Self-expression is denying reality? I don't know what that means, what one has to do with the other. One way of looking at it is that what is inside you is part of reality; you are part of reality. Anyway, you are criticizing middle schoolers for denying reality?

Again, why do you have to tell them what to do, what to feel? Who are you to do it?

> ...

The rest is mostly your self-expression, not some objective reality. You are welcome to it, of course.

> teens good at math are never teacher's favorites, instead they're called nerds and some are even isolated from the rest, it's quite the opposite in Asia, or even in Europe

Nah, no on is going to isolate you for being good at math. Literally, that does not happen. Isolation of kids that cant fit it does happen and some of those are good at math. But, the "being good at math" part is not what gets them isolated. It is the other stuff and behaviors, roughly in the "poor social skills" (may include "have hard time being assertive about own boundaries") that gets you isolated.