Have teenagers become more out of control these days?

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I've just realised how isolated I was as a teenager aged between 13 and 16. My family know a lot of couples with teenage children who always seem to be out with friends, and it seems that a lot of teenagers these days are into drugs, drinking and parties. But although I wasn't really invited out anywhere with friends when I was a teenager, I still heard about what they did at weekends, and it wasn't drugs, drink and parties. It was more like shopping, sleepovers, movies and hanging out. Or they'd hang out at the youth centre, where there was music and pool. The worst they'd done was smoking cigarettes and stealing candy from stores. I never heard kids talking about parties that involved alcohol and drugs. I was invited to a birthday party by the most popular kids in my class when I was 12, but it was just a disco in a rented hall with no alcohol or drugs in sight.
OK a few kids in the last couple of years of high school may have been involved with drugs and probably got their hands on alcohol but it was usually outside of school hours and it wasn't as common among teenagers as it is now.
Now every teenager I speak to say there's loads of drugs and alcohol among kids at their school, during school hours (these are kids that went to the same high school I used to go to).

I'm sure teenagers have become more out of control these days than ever before. Does anyone agree?

They seem more in control based on what I remember.

Heh. I was going to say something similar. I was much worse than any teen I know today, including my own children.

Maybe it's a UK thing then. When my parents and their brothers and sisters were teenagers they weren't into drugs, drinks or parties, and neither were their friends. They were quite popular and knew a lot of people, and they did get up to mischief but they said that there wasn't any drink or drugs involved.

They're actually shell shocked by how alcohol and drugs have become so common among 14-year-olds these days. It seems that parents these days are letting their kids have house parties that involve drink and drugs. When I was a teenager parents were more stricter and most kids had a curfew. It was extremely hard to get hold of drugs and alcohol even if we wanted to. But these days so many kids seem to be smoking weed.

I dunno, most of what you're describing is what I remember as standard fair for that age group when I was in high school.

It also was pretty typical for Americans and Brits I knew online at the time. fwiw

Last edited by funeralxempire on 15 Jun 2021, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not that I have noticed, but I don't really hang around drunk 14 year olds are likely to be. When I was 14 and my friends wanted to get drunk we did it at home.

My mom ditched the field of public education back in 2019 because she refused to accept
the increase in parental leniency that she witnessed on a daily basis.

Example:
One day, when she was on lunch duty, it was raining outside and she saw a female student walk into the school cafeteria wearing nothing more than a short-sleeve shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. This shocked not only my mom, but also shocked a colleague of hers, but nothing was done about it.

Teenagers were pretty "out of control" when I was a teen, too......And that was in the 1970s.

They were involved with drugs and drinking frequently even when aged around 14-15. I was the "square" of the bunch---I didn't do either of those things. This rendered me lonely.

Don't forget: during the 1970s, the "sexual revolution" was in full swing.

I feel like Joe was lucky enough to have hung out with relatively "clean" teens who were raised well.

Most, if not all, of the girls in my class seemed to be raised well and were 'normal' (as in a "doing the right thing" context). But my cousin hung about with the "chavvy" types that were brought up badly by dysfunctional parents on drugs, but they (my cousin's friends) didn't do drugs. She went to one of their homes for a sleepover one time when she was 14 and they stayed up late eating snacks and then crept out to explore an abandoned house nearby (no drink or drugs on them). They did get into trouble by the police for trespassing on private property but at least they weren't involved in underage drugs and alcohol. And that's the sort of stuff teenagers got up to in my day, it seemed like about 5% done drugs or alcohol, but these days it seems that 50% do drugs or alcohol.

Do you think it could be the town where I grew up? Since I left school the town has become bigger, like more homes and apartments have been built, so maybe that has something to do with it?

I think every generation has its wild hooligans and its "good kids." When I was in high school circa 1970, there was plenty of drug and alcohol abuse but I wasn't interested. I kept to myself, had very few friends (not none, but few), and made good grades. But my sister, who was just two years younger, had a circle of friends with whom she drank and smoked and smoked marijuana and I'm not sure if there was more going on than that. My sister actually went to school drunk on more than one occasion. Surprise, surprise, when she grew up she had an alcohol habit to kick, as well as a smoking (tobacco) addiction. She was in the same generation as me but we couldn't have had a more different orientation to these things. We had an intact (if dysfunctional) family of comfortable means. shrug. I just think you can't make big generalizations about whole generations being more or less out of control.

@ Subject.

No, teenagers have always been a***holes and always will be.
The skunk has spoken.

You may be interested in the topic of peer orientation.

It's amusing reading old geezers who happily bomb kids in foreign countries to have cheap petrol for their suvs complaining about teenagers who sometimes get drunk... :3

What do you mean?

Do you ever watch World's Strictest Parents?

Those shows are made nearly 20 years ago, and the kids were out of control then.

I don't want to shock you, but my parents were like that the late 70s. Mostly weed I think. They were quite open with me and that put me off experimenting myself... They took the cool and mystique out of it. Also, I'm the result of a teenage pregnancy so they were definitely having sex lol.

I went to school in the 90s and Buckfast was the tipple of choice amongst teenagers because it was cheap and got you drunk fast due to the high alcohol content. I remember seeing drugs at school on the school grounds.

I didn't live in the same town as my school friends so didn't go out drinking with them, but they did drink in the park. There was a problem with gangs in the next town over.

One girl got so wasted she had to have her stomach pumped.