[autoexec]

> “Going to the mall has gone down. Driving in the car for fun has gone down. Going to the movies has gone down,” she said. “We’re talking about kids who are spending five, six, seven hours a day on social media.”

The malls are dead, gas is overpriced, helicopter parents don't let kids out of the house, and movies (sitting next to each other in the dark staring silently at something else) is barely social interaction anyway. That all assumes teens can afford to do anything anyway.

Give teens more freedom, give them places to hang out, give them more autonomy and trust when they're younger so they have more confidence, but they'll still be staring at their phones a lot of the time because there is a ton of pressure to respond to everything immediately. Phones are designed to encourage it and to pull our attention back to the screen every few minutes. Teens want the instant validation and some semblance of connection.

[Pet_Ant]

> Give teens more freedom, give them places to hang out,

They don't have bunch of disposible income, so what's the economic incentive? I mean can you imagine the shit storm if a tax was levied to fund a space of teens to hang out? I can hear the whinging from parallel universes where it happened already.

[floor2]

Huh? We already have taxes to fund spaces for teens to hang out.

Taxes pay for parks, libraries, nature preserves, swimming pools, schools (with after-school sports, musicals, various clubs), museums and galleries. Many local organizations receive grants from taxpayer money to provide services and activities for teens.

Within a 10-mile radius of where I'm sitting, a teenager could skateboard at a taxpayer-funded skate park, swim at a taxpayer-funded pool, read a magazine at a taxpayer-funded library, play basketball on a taxpayer-funded court, walk through a tax-payer funded art gallery, etc.

[throw9away6]

10 miles how is the teen supposed to cover 10 mile distance in urban America? No sidewalks or safe bike routes

[autoexec]

I know long term thinking is basically impossible for most people, but their could be economic advantages over the long term. If teens start spending more time in person and have spaces to run away to maybe they'll start having sex again and the population will boom.

[survirtual]

Yeah, but will that make money next month?

Didn't think so. New plan: let's rip society apart and sell it. Huge profits right now in that market.