I think teenagers have a lot to learn that we can only teach in theory or with fundamentals. Once they figure it out, we can learn from them.

I never grew up in a world where:

- we had ‘hide from an armed attacker’ drills in school.

- what I said as a 16 year old could jeopardize my career a dozen plus years later (thank god Usenet is dead.)

- marijuana was considered genuinely harmless and pseudo-legal.

- getting a ~5.0 weighted GPA and perfect SAT scores wasn’t enough to get you into any state school.

- even the most chaste kids are desensitized to porn as teenagers

Marijuana affects brain development in teenagers. Just FYI.

Did you think I was suggesting it didn’t?

> Why?

Because teenagers can go off the rails pretty quickly if you're not paying attention to what they think. They could be influenced by a malicious peer or get caught up in some thought cloud which you know is damaging and dangerous. Teenagers are susceptible to social contagions, like self-harm or suicide.

I have learned a lot from my kids. They have their own personalities and perspectives to contribute, and the world today is different than when I was a kid. They are not really at all like a blank program that you just need to run through the same boot up procedure that you went through. At least in my opinion.