I figure this is better than continuing a fairly major hijack of this thread. This is my first time trying to do a poll as well as break off a hijack so bear with me if things don’t work.
So in the other thread I postulated that it is probable that we will be a 4 car household in the next 15 years as my 2 and 5 year old kids make it to driving age and wondered how those being electric (used for the kids) would impact the electrical needs of the household.
The high jack was a couple of us wondering if my kids will even have cars in 15 years. I’d like to expand this beyond my family since that will probably interest more people.
So here is the question with a poll below and and TLDR summary as well.
We live in a small town of 8,000 people as a rural suburb or a large city. The elementary school my 5 year old goes to is 6 miles away while their probable high school is 16 miles away and draws from all over the country. The vast majority of people in my town drive into the big city or work from home (there are only 3 fast food options and 2 grocery stores).
The question would be do you think the teenagers will live their lives on line: go to high school 100% remote, not participate in sports or after school activities except locally or on line, hang out with their friends/SOs 100% on line? I think there are better chances of pink elephants dancing down my street even with the massive societal change that is possible in a decade and a half. If nothing else the failure of remote school during COVID will make educators gun shy to try again soon and we saw a lot of people going stir crazy with just a year of 100% remote. Plus I have no doubt that like every teenager they’ll want to get laid.
To bring it back to the other thread walking is not an option in my town and there is basically no public transit that doesn’t go from the communal pick up points to downtown and then spoke and wheel its way back to the rest of the town. I don’t see how societal change will fix our poor mass transit in the next 15 years without construction projects starting today and even they they will focus on urban areas first to get the most bang for the buck. It was postulated that self-driving cars could be the answer in 15 years but I don’t see how a 1 way paying ride without a return trip could be less expensive then the ware and tear plus depreciation on an owned (used) vehicle. What other options might be viable in 15 years to chauffeur kids around who don’t drive themselves (parents are not an option)? Part of this was brought up on the theory that kids won’t want to drive in 15 years though I think this trend is 100% urban.
So the TLDR version. What are the odds the teenagers (16-18) will choose not to drive in a rural suburb and settle for a 100% remote life? (I’ve never done a poll so hopefully this works)
What are the odds a teenager will choose a 100% remote life in 2035?
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
0voters
Feel free to talk about any of my other questions I think the whole topic of envisioning social change interesting
I think it depends on the kid. Some kids like being mostly remote. Some hate to drive. Virtual is only going to get better. I think most kids will still want to see other kids in person, but one of your might not.
Given your strict requirements? It absolutely won’t happen. I could very much see online interactions becoming a larger and larger percentage, but it will never become 100%. This would be true even if your student is the rare person who is both aromantic and asexual. Even someone who is homebound would want some people to come over.
The main issue with having a car is that, if they go out relatively infrequently, it may not be necessary or cost effective. You have your Ubers and your busses and the possibility of self-driving cars that could pick them up.
Also, a lot of people don’t seem to think distance-learning failed. There’s actually even a movement to replace snow days with distance learning, which CGP Gray hates. This is apparently already the case in New York City.
Humans are by and large social creatures, but there will always be a small section of the teenage population who are introverted and/or misfits, who welcome the option of not having to interact with people who mock and torment them in public.
Your question seems to be worded ambiguously though, if you’re asking about the odds that all teenagers will convert to 100% remote life, then that is practically 0%, it’s like asking about the likelihood of every human on Earth blinking at the same time.
However, if what you meant is the percentage of teenagers who opt for 100% remote, then I guess it will hover around 5%, which isn’t a choice in the poll, but I found it amusing that you included the poll’s question itself as one of the choices, so I picked that one.
Uber and Lyft? Those are viable even now, although they’d probably be overpriced in rural suburbs.
2035 is a little soon for this kind of thing. By 2045 your kids will have kids of their own who think your kids are out of touch because they spend too much time online and not doing real things in the real world. They’ll also be wearing clothes like the ones you wear now.
As a teenager myself, I can say that…teens still like to socialise.
Sure, some may be introverted, but at the end of the day, we all have our own little “friend group” (at least I hope), and many still like to have sleepovers.
To be clear, in the other thread I was not in any way suggesting a 100% online life. The question was about whether kids in 2035 will be able to do without a car, even in a rural area where everywhere is really far apart.
With trends that are already apparent, I’d say the answer is pretty clearly yes. Again, the reduction doesn’t have to be 100%. But if 50, 70, 90% of stuff moves online/remote, the requirements become much less and so does the motivation to get a license. It’s not like most parents will refuse to drive their kids anywhere when they turn 16. And some teens, just not all, will still get licenses and drive their friends around. It’ll just be much less than today. Other services like self-driving cars may also play a role.
Teenage sex is already way down. That’s another trend that’s happening now and unlikely to reverse in the coming decades.
Maybe teledildonics will help plug the gap, too. Er, fill the hole. Nevermind.
Okay, not sex. But making out is pretty satisfying, very teen oriented if chaste. You can’t do that remotely either. I can’t see that not being a draw, ever.
The world is a big glorious place, and there are Hikikomori in it–folks who engage in complete isolation. I don’t know that the phenomenon has a name in English, but surely it exists.
But 20% of kids? No way. Even in 15 years, it’ll be a fraction of a fraction of a percent of kids.
Certainly, remote school works better than no school at all. But it also works a lot worse than in-person school. Right now, about 10% of my students are still remote. And of my students who are failing, about half are remote. Plus, of those failing remote students who eventually came back, all improved significantly. There are some for whom it works just fine (I have two remote students who literally haven’t missed a single point on any assignment all quarter), but those students would do fine in any environment.
I have teenage children and a couple of young children (5 and 3), ALL of them value in person contact far more than remote. The eldest is shy and awkward but still spends a lot of time physically with her friends. People are social creatures. The internet has allowed us to continue to be social when we aren’t physically with someone but that is as well as, not instead of face to face contact.
It’s not just sex that is down. Kids are, overall, way less romantically focused than they used to be. Yes, they still date, and yes, it’s a big deal, but it’s not the backbone of the whole teen hierarchy/social network in the same way. It’s much more socially acceptable not to be interested in dating. They mostly go stag to dances. When I was in school, a girl literally couldn’t go to a dance alone. It just Wasn’t Done. If no boy asked you, you stayed home. That’s gone.
It is absolutely true that teens are very comfortable hanging out virtually. Like, sleepovers are less popular because they want to play video games together all night, and that’s easier from home. With headsets, that still feels like hanging out.
Another aspect is that teens feel more comfortable at home than they used to. They usually have their own room. They generally have better relationships with their parents than my generation did. We always hung out as much to get away, as anything, and that’s less true now.
Finally, the driving thing specifically comes down to a lot of factors related to money. 1) insurance for teens has gone way up 2) used cars have gotten relatively more expensive 3) wages at low-paying jobs have remained stagnant. 30 years ago, you could spend $600-$1500 on a junker of a car on your kid’s 16th birthday and a teen could pay for gas and insurance working 2 shifts a week at McDonald’s. If they picked up a third shift, they also had spending money. Basically, none of that holds now.
On the other hand, if you buy a kid a $15k car at 16, it will now plausibly last until they graduate college and get established, which was not true of those junkers, or even a new car 30 years ago. But it’s a much steeper upfront cost.
Really? Hell, we’ll probably force the older kid to be a chafeur for the younger kid once she turns 16 and stop providing most rides for both of them at that point. Did you know people who were still being driven around by their parents at 16? My parents bought me a bike at 12 and that was the last time I got a ride unless it was a family outing, my parents happened to be going in the same direction or it was raining.
I just checked this and the ride to high school one way would be $28. That seem steep with any high school job and just getting to school and back would burn though most of the 20k I’d expect to spend on a car, insurance and fuel for 2 years.
I screwed up the poll in a couple of ways but the big one was framing from my point of view so that meant the question was more “would any single child chose this life style?” Since I can’t imagine someone short of a bubble boy or poor people who can’t afford multiple cars (who’s lives would already be terrible up here). The framing was wrong and should have been as you put it what percentage of the teenage population would chose this lifestyle.
Do you think schools will be offering 100% remote programs in 15 years? I understand programs like @BigT talked about to replace days the school would otherwise be closed but from the stories I’ve read most school districts are canceling their 100% remote programs for next year.
Right, and I guess I should have added in this caviot up front the car would be paid for and maintained by the parents. The same budget could be used else where like I said with Uber above.
Schools that are at least 66% remote will certainly become common as far as the education portion. Kids may prefer more than that for socializing, or maybe not, that’s the part in question here. Most kids don’t need to spend so much time in the classroom and the teachers should spend more of their time on the students who do need the classroom time, and with smaller class sizes and more personal attention too. Many students will not need to spend the time they do now for the educational requirements, especially once they are given the opportunity to choose their own pace. What they do with that extra time will largely be a matter of what is available to them. Clearly a lot of them will spend that extra time online but I do think as I mentioned above their will eventually be a generational change and we may be seeing a high point in online life right now, somewhat driven by the pandemic response.
Nope. It just makes sense to me. Most kids can readily learn much of what they do using online resources if there was just a structure to do it. What do you think they do in class now? A limited amount of it involves direct interaction with people. You don’t need to be in a classroom to listen to a lecture or watch a demonstration or read or work out math problems. So much of the ways schools operate is based on “That’s the way we always did it”. Some of that is true going all the way back to Greeks standing on steps and lecturing their students. Some of it is just an excuse for not trying new things. I don’t think any of this is revolutionary though.
I don’t know about driving, but during the pandemic kids’ outdoor sports were going crazy here. I was shocked that baseball started up last June. Even though it’s outdoors and they had some guidelines about how many kids could be on the bench at once, the fields were packed with people. Swimming (our city’s only indoor sport) came back in the fall and was hella popular. All the high school sports continued, as did band.
We didn’t have summer camp at the city last summer, but this year’s summer camp booked up right quick. I know several kids who are doing multiple summer camps to have different experiences.
At least around here kids still seem to be interested in sports/group activities, and parents are extremely interested in sending them out of the house.
I don’t know how much this relates to teens and driving, though. Everyone I know who has kids doesn’t have a teen. Everyone’s at the age where the parents are driving them to all of their sports and activities, and for the most part they’re staying to watch too.