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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27551 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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The young people aren't having sex.

I think there are a few under-appreciated explanations for this one.

One reason is that kids are, frankly, surveilled by their parents to a degree that was literally impossible in the 90's. Tons of kids today have phones and tons of parents use location tracking apps so they know where their kids are at basically all times. And these kids often know they are being surveilled, which surely changes their behavior. In the 90's you could plausibly lie to your parents about your location to go hang out with your friends or SO. That is much harder today.

I spoke with hundreds of teens for my book, and they repeatedly told me that they resent having their activity—especially their grades and their texts—monitored, to the degree that it can drive them away from their parents. All of this tracking turns the already delicate parent-teen relationship adversarial: One student shared that if she had a bad day at school, her stress was compounded, knowing that she would have to face her mother at the end of the day, and that she might greet her at the door demanding an explanation for a low grade.

A mom in a southern city told me she started tracking her son’s location on Life360 after he started driving. One day, he said he was at the movies but was actually at a house—where, the mom learned after some detective work, a girl about her son’s age, whom he’d been interested in, lived. She confronted him about being “evasive” and learned that he and the girl were in the early days of a relationship.

She presented this to me as something of a success story: Her child had lied to her; she caught him. But in the same conversation, she also described him as “a very private person.” To me, the story raises big questions about consent and respect. How did the son feel about the way his new relationship was revealed to his parents? And in the future, will he choose to tell his mother anything, knowing she can surveil it out of him whether he discloses it or not?

It is much harder today to engage in the kind of deception required to have sex when one's parents wouldn't approve than it has been historically.

Another reason might be changing social mores about sex. There's been a big push to normalize ideas like enthusiastic consent and similar. If a lot of the sex in the 90's was dubiously consensual on the part of one party or the other it may be that kind of sex is happening less frequently, leading to less sex over all. I don't have hard data on this unfortunately but my impression from being on the internet is also that zoomer-age people tend to be more skeptical about significant age gaps. Sometimes to the point of silliness (I've seen Discourse about 25 year old being with a 21 year old) but if that translates to younger gaps as well that may be another factor.

I just don’t buy it. We figured out ways. Why not turn off your phone or leave it somewhere etc.

Lots of people, younger people especially I think, rely on their phones for many things. Navigating unfamiliar areas. Coordinating logistics with others. Phones are powerful tools of convenience. If you're young enough you might just not know another way to do a lot of these things. I had a bit of a shock with this recently when I left my phone in a friend's car on accident and so was without it for a few days.

Leaving your phone off is probably its own signal. If your parents are the type to track you with it what are they going to think when they see your location isn't in the app? Leaving it somewhere that would not arouse suspicion presents its own set of logistical hurdles.

I was of the first generation to be tracked(and my mother was a very early adopter; my dad is less technically savvy). If I went to the library she wanted to know what book I checked out, and she still doesn't understand why I didn't like that at the time. I don't know if she just thought she was being friendly or if she honestly believed constant surveillance was necessary; certainly I hadn't actually given her cause to believe that I would leave my phone in the trunk of my car parked at the library and meet a friend there who drove someplace, but I heard her spitballing the scenario with her friends when they talked about how to spy on their teenaged children(I never heard anyone express any reservations about the teen not liking it, and indeed it never seemed to occur to them that a teenager could not like their parents spying on them. I suspect it's extremely difficult for parents of teenagers to realize that the trust relationship between them now goes both ways).

My point is, a parent who really wants to spy on their kid can double check whatever story they're given and get at the real one.

I think it’s in large part about zoomer males being much more reticent to approach a female, probably some of which is pence effect and some of which is just living in a lower trust society.

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