Teens: Does it make you mad how society doesn't care about you anymore just because you turn 18?
I thought the same thing. Once I got to college we were already expected to "act like adults" and know what to do. For example, no freshman knew to not ask permission to go to bathroom cuz for 17 years we hadda ask permission to go to bathroom. No clue if that's a good example, but I know what you mean. In college I hadda do everything myself, and advisors never wanted to help you the way they did in high school cuz "its not high school - its the real world" and some kids are afraid to go to their advisors for help cuz of it. I heard horrible professor stories where they don't feel like grading your stuff, purposely trying to fail the students, etc and some kids are afraid to ask advisor if they can do anything just by that response. I know we cant be coddled until we 40, but c'mon! at 18-23 we don't know what to do when we had parents intervene and do everything for us for 17 years! They did everything for us - think for us, teacher gave us crap and they called school, etc. Apparently in course of 60 seconds from turning 17 to 18 at stroke of midnight we have all the magic answers and no one wanna help or care enough to help.
The average teenager has the same level of anxiety as a psychiatric patient in the 1950s. Why is that?
There is so much more stress on you these days. You are asked to get good grades and yet have a lot of extracurricular activities. Life is too fast paced. Teenagers used to call one another’s house on rotary phones like the ones you see at antique stores. There were no cell phones. Think is almost like a rotary phone ☎️. Except no push buttons like the red one. Teens didn’t need to take calculus unless they were going into engineering. And then they’d take that in college. You only needed a high school education to get a good job and college degrees weren’t at such an astronomical cost. Teenagers went to dances they called hops and high school was fun for them. They got out more with friends and went to drive ins. Computers may make some of our lives easier. But, now everyone is at risk for identity theft. Also with less activities you have more time for fresh air and friends. There were drive ins that you saw the first run movies in. Today they are flea markets. People had more respect for one another, too. You didn’t have to worry about school shootings and didn’t have to have fencing and the policemen at schools. It was an easier and simpler time.
Do western teenagers behave immorally because their parents don't hit them while they're children?
Yes, I am generalizing, but I want to be straightforward with my point: My boyfriend's (Indo-Chinese) and I's (Japanese) parents used to hit us when we did something bad, and made it CLEAR to us that it was bad and we had to follow their instructions to become moral adults. The same goes to most Asian families. When I look at my Western friends at school (I go to an international school so a majority of the students are from the west) they go clubbing several times a week, late at night, and don't come back until early in the morning, they drink and smoke even during school hours, they have sex with random people, they're rude towards teachers, other students and their own PARENTS, they swear a lot, and some don't do well with schoolwork. (This isn't the case with ALL the Westerners, but with at least half of them.) Isn't it because their parents aren't strict enough to teach them morals and manners? Why don't western parents hit or spank their children to teach them?