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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   31037 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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This is simple to understand: it’s because the reason the kids are having less sex and doing less drugs is that they’re less healthy, socially connected, and happy — not because they’re following the social conservative model of being healthy, socially connected, and happy. The ideology of social conservatives is not “the kids must do less drugs, and I don’t care about anything else.”

We could solve drug abuse by just shooting anyone who’s addicted to drugs, but somehow I don’t expect that this would make anyone very happy.

Social conservatives placed their bets on the law—eradicating sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—to mold a generation of upright, flourishing youth. Yet, even with less vice, the promised redemption hasn’t arrived. The young remain hollowed out, lonely, and adrift. Works alone, it seems, bring no salvation for the masses; true renewal, whether for all or the elect alone, demands a faith that transcends mere rule-keeping.

Sure. Fully agree that a positive vision is needed. But I disagree strongly that social conservatives didn’t have one, or that they aimed entirely to eliminate vice rather than supply virtue. That’s a caricature that could only be written by their enemies.

I'm not arguing they don't have a positive vision, they absolutely do. For the positive vision to manifest requires faith not works, the circumcision of the heart.

The social conservatives thought if they could stop the kids from having sex, drugs, and rock and roll that the kids would be healthier, more socially connected, and happier. This turned out not to be the case.

Social conservatives believed that curbing youthful excesses—sex, drugs, and reckless music—would pave the way for a healthier, more connected generation. Yet, while there may be less outright debauchery, the kids are still struggling, isolated and unhappy. It seems you can’t fashion a silk purse from a sow’s ear simply by enforcing restraint. Human nature, it turns out, demands more than just the absence of vice.

Human nature, it turns out, demands more than just the absence of vice.

More than that, absence of vice may actually be harmful.

Their lives are also ridiculously locked down. They are tracked by phone apps, social media is read, driving privileges are extremely limited (you can’t drive with more than two friends in the car until 18 under graduated licenses). The ability for kids to just go do things the way that their parents and grandparents did doesn’t exist anymore. We used to ditch school all the time, we cut class, we would go outside with other kids and the adults would not know where we were until we came home. And it was entirely possible to have friends your parents would not approve of. Kids could get drugs to school because it was easy enough for a kid to go to skid row and score some to sell at school. Safetism coupled with modern social media and phone tracking killed this type of independence.

I think this explains the mental health crisis and the no sex and drugs thing. Kids are never allowed to be alone with other kids without all the adults being privy to where they are and what they are doing. It causes a mental health crisis because kids never learn to get out of messes on their own, or to be independent. This means that kids never learn that they are capable of being independent or that problems that come up are solvable, least of all by themselves. The sex thing is because it’s impossible to get alone with a member of the opposite sex. No telling mom you’re spending the night with Mike and then going to Mary’s house. Mom will be tracking you. If you go anywhere other than Mike’s house, you’ll be in big trouble.

A bigger factor than external restrictions is that the entire online world decreases the impetus to go out and do any of these things.

I fully agree with this. I’m a zoomer, and many of my friends, including me, waited a long time to get drivers licenses, or be independent, or live outside the childhood home, etc. Seeing this as entirely or even mostly the result of restrictions put on by parents just doesn’t reflect what I’ve seen in my generation — it was voluntary, not imposed. The internet supplied enough pleasure to make leaving the house feel like a chore rather than an exciting prospect.

I think older generations find this hard to understand — why don’t you want to rebel? — which means that it’s easy to misattribute it to rules. I don’t doubt that this has had an effect. Maybe more so on gen alpha, I don’t know. But the internet has been for my generation what the car was for older ones — it’s the means of freedom and exploration. Why go through all the trouble of driving when the glass Skinner box gives you all the pleasure you could ever want?

It just so happens that the freedom and exploration it offers doesn’t actually make people connected to others.

That, rather than anything boomers did or conservatives did or geotracking did or the woke did, is the cause of stunted interpersonal development among the younger generations. We didn’t get rid of the sex and drugs and rock and roll but keep the social connections — which is what social conservatives wanted — we got rid of the social connections, which got rid of the sex and drugs and rock and roll. That the kids are unhappy in a situation where the sex and drugs are gone doesn’t say a single thing about whether social conservatives were right — the variables aren’t controlled. And the social conservatives definitely didn’t get what they want.

Eh, there's still a little of the social connections. People have group chats and social media, and I think gaming together is a thing for those who do much video games (not me). But yeah, that's definitely different from talking face to face or doing some activity in person together.

Their lives are also ridiculously locked down. They are tracked by phone apps, social media is read, driving privileges are extremely limited (you can’t drive with more than two friends in the car until 18 under graduated licenses).

And this is all taken seriously. When I was a kid we had the start of some of these rules... but I went to driver's ed with kids who drove themselves to the class. Restrictions on passengers and times driving were ignored by the kids themselves and not taken particularly seriously by the parents.

You can still do this. The chances of getting pulled over are still low. They always have been.

Yes, but parents and kids take it seriously now. And I think the official punishments have gone up, like losing your license until age 18 for a single violation.

I mean, half the teens these days don't get their license until eighteen anyways. People are just more risk averse than they had been.

We used to ditch school all the time, we cut class, we would go outside with other kids and the adults would not know where we were until we came home. And it was entirely possible to have friends your parents would not approve of. Kids could get drugs to school because it was easy enough for a kid to go to skid row and score some to sell at school.

To be honest, this sounds horrifying. I understand the rationale behind helicopter parenting a lot more if this is the perceived alternative.

Some level of independence is good but this really seems like too much. Independence is like bank lending - you prove you can have it by proving you don’t need it.

Most kids turned out just fine. And honestly I think it was ultimately good for us to have done those things. First of all because it taught us to self regulate behaviors and thus learn when and how to break rules with minimal danger to ourselves and others around us. Second because we’d end up getting in some level of danger either of getting caught breaking rules, or rarely physical danger, an$ would have to figure out how to get out of that mess. And finally because we learned how to get along with other kids without mom and dad to mediate. If you wanted to play one game and they want to do something else, you negotiate and figure it out.

I’m good with a chunk of that, don’t get me wrong. But if I were a parent, trying to calibrate how much independence to give my children, I would consider ‘cutting class and doing drugs’ as a VERY clear sign I’d erred too far towards lenience.

Helicopter parenting is a practice ruinous for children and parents alike. I see it around me all the time when turbo-neurotic mothers drive themselves and everyone around them and of course their children crazy with their unchecked overdramatic fears of absolutely everything that can imaginably go wrong going wrong in every moment, every day, all life long.

OTOH, full independence for kids has another set of pitfalls. Drugs, falling in with bad crowds, neglecting school are all entirely possible and I've seen them all happen very, very often in my immediate social circles.

The better solutions, as so often, are neither 0% nor 100% surveillance/independence, and require regular reevaluation.

Agreed, of course.

Yeah, I didn't take your post as advocating 100% surveillance helicoptering - just wanted to spell out my thoughts.

Sorry :P I’m on a very boring train ride with nothing else to do, so I keep refreshing. I will put together some more useful thoughts.

The ideology of social conservatives is not “the kids must do less drugs, and I don’t care about anything else.”

No; given that social conservatism has failed to provide health, social connection, and happiness (indeed, it believes that teenagers should not have those things in general, a viewpoint they share with progressives) I judge it completely fair to say that the ideology of social conservatives is exactly that- or at least, it's not opposed to sacrificing health, social connection, and happiness on the altar of "the fun things in life are evil" because those things are not terminal values.

POSIWID.

Are you under the impression that kids these days have grown up under a socially conservative system?

Yes- progressivism (the current dominant ideology of women and their corporate arms- schools, etc.) is omnipresent and an extremely socially conservative force, very publicly allergic to any kind of human dignity (typically referred to as "risk").

Sure, they sometimes pretend to be on the side of "liberalism", but they cheer when kids get arrested by CPS (or are themselves doing the arresting) for not being visibly accompanied by the head of the household, something they have in common with fundamentalist Muslims. That doesn't scream "freedom-respecting and risk tolerance" to me no matter how much leather they're wearing.

Ok, sure, if you redefine "social conservativism" to mean the opposite of how everybody uses it.

This is ignoring the massive confounding variable which is social media and the post 2014 culture (much more engagement with politics, for instance)

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