I think car lust for teen boys might also be reduced lately. My dad and uncles grew up as greasers, and driving cars was in itself a date night activity (Mom tells me stories about all the kids driving up and down what used to be the main street in town, just for kicks!).
Now, I mostly see it for Asian import cars. They also hold their value well, so the threshold to getting one is higher. I was a teen in the last decade and no boys were into domestics! It’s an enthusiast activity, not something every boy is into.
So I think that enthusiasm for cars has morphed into enthusiasm for gadgets and video games for a lot of boys that would have been into cars in the 50s-70s.
It’s true. A US Department of Education report shows that today’s students are more academically focused that previous generations. From 1990 to 2010, the dropout rate has fallen from 12% to 7%. Graduation requirements have risen, and students are much more likely to take advanced coursework, such as advanced math and science. Compared to 1990, 20% more students are completing demanding classes such as algebra 2, precaluclus, biology and physics.
I’d venture that this is in part because many more students are preparing to enter college (79% in 2012, versus 58% in 1982), and college admissions has become MASSIVELY more competitive than even my own generation. Most of us would not be admitted into the undergraduate programs we competed in today’s environment. Due to budget cuts, universities are opening more and more spaces for full-tuition foreign and out-of-state students (as this is the only way they can continue to make ends meet at all) leaving more and more of the university’s traditional base fighting for fewer and fewer spots. The things we did to get into elite schools are what this generation has to do to get into a state university.
And this leads to lifestyle changes. Only 16% of todays high school students are employed, compared to 32% in 1990. When my mother was in school, most seniors only worked a half class load, and spent the other half working and partying. Today’s students, however, are more likely to do community service. We were not competing with ordinary Chinese and Indian students when we went to school. Today’s students are, and there are a lot of very good Chinese and Indian students, and those students are not spending their high school years working at the mall and making out at the drive-ins. Our students have realized they can’t really do that as much, either.
I read it as supporting the idea that today’s young folks have higher priorities than getting driving licences and making out in cars. And I can sympathise with the car thing - I’d rather live somewhere that I don’t need one of those money-sinks - but it would be a real shame if teenagers have decided there are more important things than screwing.
Still only a minority. You expressed incredulity at the idea that teens-- or, seemingly, anybody-- decide against getting one.
That’s you, right? You’re saying here that you can’t imagine why anybody wouldn’t get a license, even if they don’t have a car and can’t afford to operate one. You, who were put in a wheelchair because of your car. I find that odd.
I hate to sound like an impatient, non-compassionate old person, but I’m kind of shaking my head at the notion that kids today are SO busy filling out their college apps that they don’t have time or desire to drive. The grouch in me is thinking no wonder such risk-averse and narrow-focused individuals are having a hard time finding a job.
Every day I pass by a temporary/day labor place. There’s a sign on the window that says, “DRIVERS WANTED. MUST HAVE OWN VEHICLE AND DRIVER’S LICENSE.” How many of the guys who line up every morning don’t have either of these things and desperately wish they did?
As I said earlier in this thread, I know driving isn’t the end-all, be-all of anything. But in this hyper competitive world, a person who chooses to forgo a license is making their life a bit harder than it has to be.
Driving requires having enough money to get your own car, or it’s pointless. Driving your parents cars doesn’t work, as they wouldn’t have them unless they need them. Until you have a job, you really don’t even need one, and getting a job early on is a lot harder now.
For a lot of people, going places just to go to places seems stupid now. A lot of driving was just so you could meet up with your friends and talk. It’s not like there was much to do, and there’s even less now. Gas prices make it where you have to plan out what you are going to do, and of course you are going to take cost cutting measures like socializing online.
And, monstro, none of those jobs are allowed to be fulfilled by teens in my experience, due to insurance issues and all that. I know my sister wasn’t allowed to drive for any of her jobs until she was 25.
Driving requires having enough money to get your own car, or it’s pointless. Driving your parents cars doesn’t work, as they wouldn’t have them unless they need them. Until you have a job, you really don’t even need one, and getting a job early on is a lot harder now.
For a lot of people, going places just to go to places seems stupid now. A lot of driving was just so you could meet up with your friends and talk. It’s not like there was much to do, and there’s even less now. Gas prices make it where you have to plan out what you are going to do, and of course you are going to take cost cutting measures like socializing online.
And, monstro, none of those jobs are allowed to be fulfilled by teens in my experience, due to insurance issues and all that. I know my sister wasn’t allowed to drive for any of her jobs until she was 25.
Driving your parent’s cars absolutely can work, unless you must have instant access to a car at all times. Except when my husband and I are both working, one car is usually parked. That will leave a car available to my kids every evening and all weekend.
Your sister was presumably driving company cars- otherwise the employer wouldn’t have any insurance issues. That’s not what monstro is talking about. She’s talking about jobs that require people to have their own cars either because 1) they may need to work at locations not easily reached by public transportation or 2) the jobs involve using your own car (and insurance) to deliver pizza or newspapers or otherwise travel to different locations in the course of a workday.
What I was saying there was I failed to see the logic in not getting a license *simply because *you can’t afford to buy your own car. That is not the same thing as saying ‘I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t get a license, even if they couldn’t afford to buy their own car.’
If you can’t afford a car-don’t buy a car. But are you going to be in the same financial situation forever? Or will you wait until you can afford a car, however long that might be, to even get certified to operate one? That was the question at the heart of my post. Not what you were trying to characterize it as being.
I wasn’t talking about teens, but people in general. And you are simply incorrect that people in their early 20s are never hired as drivers. Go to your local Domino’s Pizza and you’ll see plenty of 18 and 19-year-olds driving around with pizzas in their backseats.
Presumably teens who are so concentrated on school that they don’t have time to learn how to drive are concerned about their employment prospects. That’s the reason the vast majority of people concentrate on school. But I’m thinking getting a license is one of the best things a person can do to make themselves competitive in the job market…especially the current job market where college grads vying to be hired for everything from newspaper reporter to newspaper deliveryman.
The other thing (and it’s probably already been mentioned here) is that learning how to drive as a teen is usually a lot easier than learning how to do it when you’re older. I suspect that the same invincibility curse that causes teens to do wreckless things also keeps them from psyching themselves out when they take the wheel, so they get the hang of it sooner.
If you really think about all the risks associated with driving and all the variables beyond one’s control (other drivers, the weather, pedestrians, traffic, bad roads, sun glare), it’s kind of nerve-racking. So I could see how adults who have never put themselves to the test of beating these risks could become too intimidated to ever learn how to drive. Doing this as teenager innoculates you from this baggage, I suspect.
Which is why teens 16-19 are three times more likely to die in a car crash than a 20 year old. And for both of these groups, car accidents are the most likely thing to kill them.
All the stats non-drivers and parents of non-drivers post certainly expose the dangers of inexperienced drivers, but I’m having a hard time imagining young teens busily researching statistics which reinforce their reluctance to drive.
It seems much more likely that online social networking and helicopter parenting are to blame for the decline in teen drivers.
Teenagers are more likely to do stupid things in cars than adults. Doesn’t change the point I made, though, and with your emphasis on fatal accidents, you’re kind of helping me make it. Non-driving adults overfixate on the costs side of the equation, rather than looking at the benefits of having a skill that is taken for granted by 90% of the able-bodied population.
Driving is not the same thing as being licensed to drive, either.
My daughter got her license last year at age 16, but of her friends, she is the only one so far. I know someone upthread mentioned the costs and that is the case with her friends. When I was a teen, drivers ed was part of the high school education, but it is not now. Her class cost $500, and frankly most of her friends parents can’t afford that, coupled with the increased insurance, etc. so the kids don’t get their licenses right at 16. Most seem to get them at 18, as you can take the exam then without having drivers ed here in Wash. State. It is unfortunate but taking drivers ed out of the school system seems to have put more drivers without training on the road it seems.
For my daughter there was no question she was to get her license at 16. Both by her internal pressure but pressure from Mom and Dad! We were tired of hauling her around! But she also wanted the freedom, and hated taking the school bus. We live in a pretty rural area, and so she was the first on the bus in the morning and last off at the end of the day–she took at 45 minute trip down to 20 minutes by just driving. She also just got a job this last summer and now drives to and from work.
None of her friends have jobs or licenses, whether there is a correlation there I don’t know, but possibly.
On a personal level, I got my license at age 16, as my wife did as well. It just seems to me to be a good thing to have, both the license and the ability to drive. But then again I also think knowing how to drive a stick is important too (my daughter knows how to drive a stick btw). You never know when you may be required in a pinch to drive and you should know how. Obviously ‘where’ you live is a big factor in that statement but I still think even living in a urban environment it is a good skill to have. YMMV obviously.
It’s an enthusiast activity, not something every boy is into.
(what are you addressing with this post?)