Finally, a Mainstream Social Science Article that Doesn't Trash Young People

A new article by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is one of the very few mainstream articles that truly tell it like it is in regards to young people today.  Looking at trends in various risk behavior (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, crime and violence, traffic fatalities, teen pregnancy, unprotected sex, etc.) the author found what renowned sociologist and youth-rights activist Mike Males has been saying all along:  young people aged 13-18 today are actually better behaved overall that previous generations were at that age, at least going back to 1990.  But don't expect the ageist mainstream media to let mere facts get in the way of a good moral-panic story, of course.

Most interestingly, the authors attempts to delve into the causes of such positive trends since 1990.  Two such general explanations--public policy changes and changes in parenting practices/styles--were examined but were found quite lacking, in part due to data unavailability and in part due to no significant or even perceptible time-series correlation (sometimes even in the wrong direction).  The third explanation--the massive increase in smartphone and other media use among young people--is in fact the one that seems to carry the most weight.  Counterintuitive as it may be, such media use, for all of its faults, is quite a time sink that perhaps keeps young people too occupied to get into trouble as much as they otherwise would.

These trends have occurred despite the deteriorating behavior of the adults around them, and also seem to be more pronounced in the USA compared to other industrialized countries.  No explanation explains all of it, and some of it may simply be reversion to the mean or societal evolution.  But one should note that since 1990 there has been no further change in the drinking age since all states were already 21 by then, so there is no evidence that any trends since then were the result of that particular ageist abomination.

In fact, we actually have a very good yardstick (or perhaps meterstick) for what would have happened had the USA not raised the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s.  It's called Canada.  Again, there is no evidence that the 21 drinking age is responsible for such trends.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  Sorry, try again, ageists.

So what else could it be?  Well, one likely candidate could be the retreat of an old villain--preschool lead poisoning from paint and gasoline--after its phaseout.  While the article does not mention it, the fact remains that young people today (except perhaps in Flint, Michigan) were exposed to far less lead (a known nasty neurotoxin) than previous generations were, especially the Baby Boomers.  And the phaseout of leaded gasoline began in 1976, so those born in and after that year reached adolescence in 1990 or later.  And the phaseout began and finished earlier in the USA and Canada than it did in most of Europe, the UK, and Australia, let alone the rest of the world.  In fact, only Japan phased it out significantly sooner than we did.  At the same time, the USA was also much slower in phasing out lead-based paint (1978, much later than the League of Nations did in 1922), and had significantly higher gasoline consumption per capita than the rest of the world, so the "double dose" of lead from gasoline and paint together in the mid-20th century was higher than most other countries, hence the reversion to the mean after 1990 or so.  So that explains at least largely why the trends since 1990 are more pronounced, or at least earlier, in the USA than most other industrialized countries.

Food for thought indeed.