I am a bit, no offense, surprised that you would classify adults in a different group than you at 16, but after all I guess it depends also on the claas, when I was 14 I was already at no global protests as Genova 2001
Probably kids from richer families can afford to live isolated from the world for longer, and right now there are more kids from poor families than in the past thanks to many factors that I won’t quote because I am here to share a theory rather than start a flame war
The over riding goal today has become attention capture/Like/View/Click collection. But this is a temporary blip.
The story is breaking down with the platforms seeing growth stall, reduction in free content (pushed behind paywalls/login screens), banks collapsing, period of low interest rates ending, advertising budgets shrinking, subscription charges rising, new regulations that are upending how things used to work etc etc.
The Attention Economy is under assault and things are going to change. Content creators (be it news orgs or influencers) are functioning under the belief that if they create the "right" content they will get the views.
But the platforms (just like HN) dont inform them as more and more content creators enter the chat, and more and more content is Produced, the amount of content being Consumed doesn't increase cause total collective Attention is a constant. It has become easy to produce content, copy it, broadcast it. So supply goes on rising. But demand cant match it. And then spending time analyzing what "works" for the content creators is delusion.