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Gen Z is choosing not to drive
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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Years ago when my Gen Z nephew was turning 16 (minimum driving age in USA), the conversation went like this:
I thought about my own Gen X early driving experience with the freedom to go to the mall or the movie theater whenever I wanted and to drive to school or work.
I couldn't really argue with his logic. Years later he did get a car when he moved out and lived farther away from work. However, it was many years after the minimum driving age which was a big departure from generations prior.
For me the appeal of a car was having somewhere private to do drugs, awkwardly make out with girls, and hide from my parents.
I feel like those things are somewhat timeless?
All of those things can and always have been accomplished without the use of a car.
Doesn't mean it doesn't make it easier, or make sure that when your friends are smoking you are there getting free hits and your gas money. Between the free beer, weed, and gas my shit box might have paid for itself.
Parents force their kids to share their location, so it isn't like the kids can hide as they used to.
I’m so glad I grew up when the internet was only used by nerds like me…
Even as someone who didn’t try any drugs until I was 20, I fully agree with you. But also gals and bois for me.
My son is about to turn 18 and is of much the same mind. We pushed him a bit to get his license but he rarely drives and has about zero interest in owning his own car. He just doesn't have anywhere he needs/wants to go. I imagine it's a little different for kids with more activities outside the home. Sports, clubs, jobs... He doesn't have any of that going on at this point. I'm admittedly a little sad about that, but I can't really force him to be interested.
Part of it comes down to that we killed a lot of the other places to go and do things along the way (called Third Places - not home or work, but a secret third thing). Kids don't have malls or something to hang out at anymore. If they're not hanging out online, then they're probably at somebody's house. It costs money to be anywhere else. Plus, gas and cars are expensive. So there's no desire to just go out driving for the fun of it. Instead of being an expression of personal freedom, cars are just about getting you from point A to point B. When I turned 16 almost 20 years ago, this was how I and the older sister of a friend of mine felt, too. There was nowhere to go really in a vacation town where traffic is so bad in the summer that you don't want to drive and everything is closed the rest of the year. So a car was just a way to get to school/work and back home again.
The whole expression of personal freedom thing feels like older people parrotting something they heard on a TV commercial. It makes sense considering that a generation or two would go television commercials were highly effective method of brainwashing and statements like that have little bearing on reality
I completely agree, as I'm pretty sure it was a line fed to Americans by the government and car companies as part of selling the suburban American Dream to them while they bulldozed entire neighborhoods to put up a highway overpass.
that makes sense. were the past couple of generations just stupid or was the media environment just so limited they had no way of knowing they were being lied to? or was it a bit of both?
Definitely the second one mixed with the specifics of the time period and the fact that nobody knew where this would lead combined with corporate greed. This was a time when we didn't even know that putting lead in gasoline was a bad idea and having a TV in your house was a futuristic idea. Before the TV became common, they barely had a way to know what was happening across the country, and they definitely had no idea what would happen to end up where we are today.
The suburbs and cars were sold to the post WW2 American public as these symbols of the burgeoning wealth of the new middle class (plus the suburbs meant that white people didn't have to look at black and poor people). The idea that everybody could own their own house and drive across the entire country on the newly created international highway system (just ignore all the stuff paved over to make it happen, it was mostly just poor people's houses anyways). They were sold the dream that you didn't have to live within walking distance of the factory anymore, you could live in a nice house with a white picket fence, and drive to your fancy office job in a skyscraper.
The only reason my kids want to learn to drive is to go on road trips to visit their friends across the country. Which sounds awesome and I want to buy a couple beaters so we can do the trip together.