[CW: academic mentions of suicide] This thread is articulating my profound sense of despair in how Gen Z is locked in a societal cage

Yup. I'm 100% on board with the "it's illegal for kids to be in public" and walking, being in a park, or being in a city center all carry a small ( ) but real chance of police harassment. Malls barely exist. Public transit sucks.

I spent one summer really in to home automation. I realized that the door locks could log, with a time stamp, when people went in and out, the cameras never saw anything but my roommates and neighbors, i could get logs of whose phones did what interactions wit the " smart" homes, when motion sensors were tripped, when lights were turned on and off, even when sensor equipped windows were opened and closed.

At the time it creeped me out bc it was a perfect toolkit for domestic abuse and rigid, to the second control of your partner's or family's movements. I didn't consider it in the context of "normal" parents monitoring their children but it's a 1:1 fit and, frankly, just as abusive to monitor your children on that level. Something I didn't see mentioned; once kids had cell phones they were expected to carry those phones at all time, and answer immediately when their parents called no matter what they were doing.

Also, the cops can see some or all of the recordings and info from Ring cameras, no warrant needed.

I turned almost all of it off except being able to unlock the door with your phone (one of the only actually useful things the system could accomplish), the camera i had aimed at my back yard to watch the opossum, and the open/closed sensor on my bedroom windows (it'd send me a push notification if it was going to rain and the window was open).

Idk much about the academics side of it. I graduated right before "No Child Left Behind" was brought on line and the destruction of the education system kicked in to high gear. As an older Millenial the mantra was "go to college go to college go to college" without any real guidance beyond that. Why? For what? Then everyone graduated in to the wreckage of 2007 (and in 2005 Biden made it illegal to discharge your debt under the pretense of someone, somewhere, might "cheat" the system somehow).

Where are kids supposed to party? They're under constant surveillance from countless cameras, cops, and concerned parents. Same with sex and dating, there's a ton of ways for parents to intrude on you at all times, even if it's just calling your cell to demand to know where you are. And all the cool places shut down in 07, the survivors crashed and burned in 19, so where do you go? The mall? Do malls even exist? And $$$$$$$$$$$$$

And "school resource officers" installed in schools to enforce submission, criminalize dissent and any attempt to push back at school as a system of control, reinforce us state race terrorism, and simplify the slave procurement system.

Also, "school shootings" given so much media attention people think they're common and widespread and kids are legit terrified they're going to be gunned down every day bc it's plastered across the news 24/7. "Active shooter drills". This is a personal peeve, I became sentient right when the 24/7 cable news cycle industry started with the First Gulf War. I've watched them go from war to PCP to salmonella on your kitchen counters to workplace shootings to "urban youth gangs" to trrrism (Al-Qaeda is in your shitty town!) To heroin, trying everything to discover what could create maximum terror in their viewership to ensure maximum engagement. Well the fuckers found it; there's nothing more terrifying than your helpless children being murdered at school where they're outside your control and observation. And the news has just hammered and hammered and hammered on that for years to keep people afraid and eyes on advertising, never you mind how low the odds of it actually happening are (i have a separate screed about "mass shooting" being cynically refined in the public imagination from meaning situations where a person deliberately intended to kill strangers to any shooting where more than one person was hit).

It's all very fucked. "Kids staring at their phones!" aren't the problem (though social media as a form of ruthless sousveillance, all kinds of gambling bullshit, attention stealing is). Phones are the last plave kids have where they can interact with the world without being hounded by parents, disciplined by school staff, harassed by cops, watched by hostile Nextdoor Gestapo, chased out by shop owners, or expected to pay to exist.

Like when was the last time you saw an eight year old or a ten year old wandering around unaccompanied catching bugs and swinging a stick? I literally cannot remember, but I used to wander all over town back in the day, walk miles to and from school, try to catch turtles in the creek all afternoon. This was not idyllic, i was maximizing my time away from an abusive home situation at some points. But not being home, and not being bothered about it, was an option to get away from that situation.

This is a rant i've ranted many times. Kids are no longer allowed much if any autonomy and are subject to constant, sometimes violent (physically and otherwise) surveillance and discipline wherever the go in life, supported by the digital panopticon that would have made the famed and much maligned STASI go "okay this is too intrusive y'all need to calm down"

Suburban psychosis. People are cooler in cities. I was out on New Year's in a major American city and saw at least a dozen high school aged kids out and about unsupervised, doubling up on rental bikes, riding the bus, etc. By comparison, I work in a white, conservative suburb of the city, and the amount of coworkers who are absolutely terrified of stepping foot in town is sizeable. A younger coworker (gen z) is mortified at the thought and is constantly repeating crime stories she heard/read.

When I was 23, I moved to North Oakland after a lifetime in white suburbs hearing the same constant racist/phobic drivel from everyone I grew up around. It was rough around the edges, and you could get in trouble if you were looking for it, but mostly it was just working class people trying to get by. Everything since feels like Disneyland by comparison

It sucks for kids now, more than before, but it sucked back then, too. The media plays a huge role. It's a symptom of suburban whiteness and fear of outsiders.

You know, I'd hoped generations after mine would get some reprieve from the bullshit of things like stranger danger, but the last few years have been anything but kind.

I mean a lot of young people spent time that they should have enjoyed in college/high school isolated at home as the people in power let the adults in their lives get sick and die for the sake of the economy. They had to go from living in fear of reactionary violence to witnessing institutional violence on screens.

It's not a comparison, but when I think about the 2008 financial crisis and Obama's presidential win giving me hope (sigh), younger generations didn't even have the luxury of a charismatic politician trying to inspire hope. It was two openly monstrous candidates talking down to Gen Z with no meaningful promises to prove life.

It's a fucking tragedy that we live in 2023, where there are enough houses for everyone, medical advancements that can sustain , and the internet, which in better hands, would allow for genuine connection.

Instead, rent costs so much that you can't take a sick day, getting sick can bankrupt you, and every bit of media and knowledge is behind a paywall or cluttered with ads.

But I try to think of what a better world would look like. It's all right there with the proper application of political will.

I know the facade is crumbling as the contradictions in capitalism become more apparent. Capitalists can't help themselves - they're still wringing out profit instead of granting the smallest of concessions. I'm still holding on and speaking out where I can because I want to outlive capitalism or at least the US.

There's also a significant material restriction on kids. More homework and pressure to do extracurriculars, less money, harder to get around, fewer brick and mortar places to go, less woods, parents have less time, etc. I was in school a decade ago at this point but most of us just played PlayStation together. I think as shit (specifically housing, cars, and college) gets more expensive and wages stagnate this is further exacerbated.

For the last ten years my local supermarkets force kids to leave their schoolbags at the door. No one guarding them. Out in the open where they can be stolen from.

The message is clear. Your property doesn't matter. You are a criminal until proven otherwise. We are god. You are scum. We get all the consideration and protection, you get none.

And the result? Youth crime has only increased! Big surprise, the people you treated like shit are lashing out. And instead of getting the hint? "WE MUST PUNISH THEM HARDER!"

And yet we are blamed for not wanting to go outside as much, like huh? We’ve been told over and over that if we step outside our parent’s sight we would be abducted and killed by people in unmarked white vans.

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Having that sort of childhood with parents that watched my every move and were control freaks coupled with I think mental health issues that never went diagnosed or acknowledged has put me into this position at nearly 30 where I don't even know what it means to grow up anymore. I just this year experienced being high and drunk, never had sex, don't go out any, no friends I see in person. But I don't know if the voice in my head telling me I need to grow up is right or if I'm just being too hard on myself or if I just get anxious whenever I'm convinced I'm not sufficiently anxious enough already.

Recommended book: KIds These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, by Malcolm Harris

http://library.lol/main/7A9F9C56ECF449348EE45C9136731C1E

“American Millennials come from somewhere—we didn’t emerge fully formed from the crack in an iPhone screen,” Harris writes. In his view, we are, down to our innermost being, the children of neoliberalism. The habits so often mocked and belittled in the press are in fact adaptations to tightening repressive and exploitative pressures, the survival strategies of a demographic “born in captivity.” https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-30/reviews/not-every-kid-bond-matures-2/

I mean it's not just Gen z. I don't really have much of a social life and when I try and tell people about how lonely I am they mostly just say "well yeah it's hard for adults to make friends." Thanks? Guess I was right the first time when I thought about how shooting myself as the best way to stop feeling lonely? Glad I can come to you with my problems and be basically told to stop whining, pretty much every person in my life (not a big number).

It's been mentioned before. The lack of "third places" where you can just exist without having to pay for it. Sadly, not only have these places been squeezed out of existence, the things that replace it are becoming increasingly expensive as people have decreasing amounts of disposable income. If a single night out at a bar costs me more than I spend on gas in a week, I'm not really going to go hang out at a bar.

Going to xth noticing that pattern begining with the millenial generation and how gen A is still in the cage, as too many authors point out this is just a positive feedback loop for reinforcing a fascist society, you get the whole alienated AF nuclear family and then show the kids nothing but sacrificing everything for said society or else, they internalize these lessons and it makes it harder for them to question or realize anything is wrong as adults.

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As much as I hate the small town I grew up in (with a passion, it killed my brother and my closest friend) in a way I am thankful for the freedom it granted me. My parents are fans of the "free range kid" method of parenting so I was free to roam around town on my bike. If I asked my parents to drive me they'd say "you have legs don't you?". I didn't have a cell phone till I was 16. I can't imagine growing up without that kind of freedom

Stop subposting without linking context. I want the context for this drama

I don’t think it being “criminalized” is really much of a problem. Kids love breaking the rules, so if it’s against the norm to be a kid, then they’re more likely to be acting out because it’s more fun. I can’t speak for others, but when I was a kid in the mid 2010s, some kidnapper in a white van was a funny idea because we believed that we could gang up on him and kick his ass before he could carry one of us away.

The real problem is that there’s really nothing to act out against. There are no “kids only” areas like skate parks and arcades or Rec centers every few blocks. There’s no woods, at least in my area. Everything is a 5-10 minute drive, which is the equivalent of like 45 minutes to walk or bike there. These complaints have already been pointed out by others. But my theory is that the “criminalization” of childhood will only make being a kid more enticing. It’s just there’s no physical location or mode of transportation that allows for that expression.

needs nsfw tag

Yeah this post and many like it should really have a big « I AM FROM THE US » tag because these things usually dont happen anywhere else. Not to knock on OP or his post, i actually remember reading his previous post too and enjoyed it too.