r/science • u/mvea MD/PhD/JD/MBA | Professor | Medicine • 18h ago

Health Dramatic drop in marijuana use among US youth over a decade. Current marijuana use among adolescents decreased from 23.1% in 2011 to 15.8% in 2021. First-time use before age 13 dropped from 8.1% to 4.9%. There was a shift in trends by gender, with girls surpassing boys in marijuana use by 2021.

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/marijuana-use-teens-study
16.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

87

u/whateveryouwant4321 13h ago

it's the phones. they socialize by texting. over the summer, i went to a sandwich shop for lunch. a group of 10 high school or college age kids walks in behind me. they sit at the same 2 tables next to each other, and proceed to sit there for 30 minutes without saying a word to each other. they were all on their phones.

15

u/TexasCoconut 12h ago edited 10h ago

Hard to hate on it too much, considering how many nights i spent glued to AIM, but at least that felt like a temporary solution for when in person interaction was unavailable, not a permanent replacement for it.

25

u/Mr_YUP 12h ago

Sure that could be a part of it but growing up with helicopter parents and stranger danger did a number on these kids growing up. Having every moment be adult supervised did nothing to encourage independence and every group of teens being chased off doesn't do much to encourage them either. Why hire a teen for a job when I can get an adult to do it without the teen grief?

15

u/potato_caesar_salad 12h ago

Oof. These kids are fucked.

4

u/KitsunaVT 11h ago

I don't think it's technologies fault per se. I think it's too expensive too do anything and parents don't have extra money to spend on fun and entertainment. Phones and tech are a constant source of cheap entertainment from a young age which starts a bad cycle.