Yes car culture is definitely dying. Statistics are showing the younger you are, the less likely you care about or feel you have a need for a car.
This is interesting. If anything, public transportation in the US seems to be getting worse, not better. I wonder if there is some correlation between this and more children continuing to live in their parents’ homes rather than moving out on their own. Perhaps it’s as much a matter of affordability as anything else.
Police can now expect to be recorded when they confront someone. We have multiple threads here devoted to the results.
Socially, if you don’t have a lot to say it’s easier to say it. 
For the introverted, online interaction is better than nothing; and text messages are great when you don’t need a real-time response and you don’t need to say anything more than “call me whenever”.
3D printing is still where cars were in 1895, but it’s rapidly approaching the breakout point where it’s going to make a huge difference.
It could be Uber and similar ride services having an effect here. I was talking to a woman last night who said her ideal would be to have a personal chauffeur to drive her everywhere all the time. When I was a teen I wouldn’t have even dreamed about that, since as ITR champion said, the freedom of being able to drive my own car anywhere I wanted was something I cherished and which made me feel more grown up.
It does seem younger people aren’t as into adventuresome road trips anymore. There’s less wanderlust in the culture for some reason. The landscape is more monotonous than it used to be, with the same box stores and chain restaurants everywhere, but that can’t be the sole reason that people are staying put more.
An interesting social benefit for folks like me who are habitually “on time”. In the past I’d get really, really annoyed, because I was just standing there waiting and the only thing I could really do was to stare off into space. Now, waiting for folks to join me still annoys me but far less than it used to, because I can spend that time checking Facebook or Twitter, or playing a game on my phone. Makes me in a much better mood to hang out.
A big part of it is younger people are flocking to cities that often have good Public transportation.
I think there are several reasons why you see a lot less emphasis on driving for teens:
Used cars are relatively more expensive. Old Toyotas with 120K miles are still viable primary cars–there isn’t such a level of hyper-cheap unreliable beater that is appropriate for someone who has another car in the household.
Liability insurance is mandatory everywhere and it’s incredibly expensive for teens, especially teenage boys. Even if you don’t have a car, if you have a license and a car in the household, it’s really expensive.
Present moment excepted, gas has been a lot more expensive–enough to make casual 2-3 hour road trips a bigger expense.
Fewer teens work part time. It’s not as worth it as it used to be: minimum wage is lower (relative to inflation), and college more competitive. Generally speaking, it’s a better investment to put time into keeping up grades and activities and advanced classes than working a job so you can pay for a car so you can get to work so you can afford your car.
Like I said, public transit seems to be getting worse, not better. Though I suppose a freshly minted 18 year old won’t know that 10 or 20 years ago their local transit system had longer hours, more routes, better maintained buses and trains, etc.
This is related to one of the changes that I hate. It seems that because people can easily get hold of one another, they no longer can be arsed to frickin’ be where they say they’re going to be at the time they said they were going to be there. Being kept waiting doesn’t annoy me because I can’t possibly find a way to entertain myself for ten minutes, it annoys me because it’s inconsiderate.
I’ve noticed this among my peers too, and I’m in my mid-30s. It’s annoying as hell.
I saw a pretty good tweet about that went something like: “A no RSVP means I hate you. Maybe means no. Yes means I’ll cancel at the last minute. The polite thing to do is not RSVP at all.”
Oh, I don’t see any difference in tardiness. Only now, I can reach the person to give me an ETA whereas before I was left completely in the dark.
A positive change: You can walk down the street talking to yourself, and as long as you’re wearing some kind of earplug or headset, no one will take notice. They’ll just assume you’re on the phone. Comes in very handy if you’re a crazy person, like me.
You know how everyone warns you about those drunken, naked selfies on Facebook, how they’ll never go away, prospective employers will see them, and you’ll never get a job?
Well, I’m sort of starting to notice that it’s not as important as one might think, because the people doing the recruiting all have their own drunken, naked selfies on Facebook. I have a feeling that it’s kind of becoming an accepted norm.
For all the talk of “kids today with their noses in their phones,” I have to admit that my nose, and my husband’s nose, and my friends over 40’s noses, are in our phones far more than our kids’ noses are in theirs.
That’s not to say the kids aren’t way into their phones. They are. My daughter’s entire social life outside of school is electronics based, and she’s 10. But that “phone out in public, at the restaurant, on the bus…” stuff? That’s the middle aged farts, not the kids. They actually sit there and talk to each other, like some sort of psychopath club.
The only place I see them using the phones more than us is at parties. Which cracks me up. They’ll sit there on the couch, next to each other, texting each other. Why? So they don’t have to shout to be heard over the music. 
I had a job for a while where I was communicating with people in the same room by e-mail. That was slightly surreal. It did actually make sense though: It meant that we didn’t have to get up and leave our workstations.
As a bonus, it was good for shooting the shit and goofing off without anyone noticing.
Re: above post: Come to think of it, maybe it’s not all that weird, and that I would find it strange is just more proof that I’m now officially an old fart. I mean, emailing the person in the next room over doesn’t seem weird, so…
The idea of standing in a long line at the DMV used to be dreadful, but now I kinda look forward having yet another excuse to whip out my phone. I used to stare into space and get lost in my thoughts, but not anymore. I can’t remember the last time I was bored.
Thanks to the net I don’t have to stand in a long line at the DMV, since I can make an on-line appointment which cuts down the waiting time a lot. When I had to show up for a new license the whole process was much, much faster than 45 years ago when I got my first. In fact faster than getting a new phone at Verizon.
But when I am in a long line I agree.
That is not my experience at all. My nieces can’t put their phones down for 2 minutes. They have them at the dinner table or reading a book. They are often tired because they stayed up too late texting (granted staying up too late has been a teen-aged trait since Cain and Abel).
One big social change is the ability to get free anonymous crowd-sourced feedback on problems too “shameful” to be shared with people you actually know.
Straight Dope and other like forums allow people to ask for advice about financial, sexual, interpersonal, social, parenting etc problems they would be too embarrassed to ask about “in real life”. And even if they did muster up the courage to ask someone, that would just be the opinion of one, possibly quite poorly informed, person.
I think in a very quiet, non-quantifiable way this is leading to more people having better lives. Thank you technology!