• LangdonAlger [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I live in a city and see teens fucking around and going skating or whatever all the time. Makes me wish I didn't grow up where the nearest store was a dingy gas station with a dirt driveway two miles along a two lane highway from my house.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      thx fucked american culture, getting a license and access to a car for teens can be the difference between a solitary existence and having friends and doing things. also thx, i am a grown adult and i basically can't get drunk anywhere but home responsibly, since to get to my friends' homes or a bar requires driving or riding a vehicle of some kind that I steer.

    • LoudMuffin [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I do that shit as an adult STILL lmao

      My older brother tells me like "why don't you go outside and make some friends?" and I'm bitch where? It's just houses for miles and everyone mid 20's has bounced out of this shithole

      I mean this is just the result of growing up in a suburb

      • bigboopballs [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        My older brother tells me like “why don’t you go outside and make some friends?”

        I'm so fucking tired of hearing that exact phrase from billions of normie fuck-wits. THERE IS LITERALLY NOWHERE TO GO WHERE I'M GONNA FUCKING MEET PEOPLE. And yet everyone talks to me like aLl yOu GoTtA dO iS gO oUtSiDe aNd yOu'LL mAkE fRiEnDs.

        The only god damn people I encounter when I go for a walk are middle-aged people walking their dogs, and even when I pass by young people it's not like they're gonna stand around and talk to every stranger they walk past on the street when they're probably just trying to go somewhere or enjoy a nice walk to clear their heads like me.

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Same. My entire four years in high school, I had a friend come over or went over to a friend's place probably a half dozen times, it was just such a huge pain in the ass to go anywhere and have a plan to get back.

      In middle school I was in walking distance to every place worth going, and I "played outside" just about every day. Suburbs are cancer.

      • SerLava [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I lived in a town that didn't build any major roads for decades, so the whole town was like 7000 people on a single 5-6 mile long stretch of highway, with a few side streets going 1 block deep.

        And no sidewalks at all. And the 2 lane highway had no shoulders.

        So you literally had to walk 4 or 5 miles through tall grass, rocks, maybe sprint through little bits of road and hope you don't get run over, to get to anything without a car.

        There was also literally zero public transport. None.

  • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]M
    ·
    3 years ago

    Nah it's both. My life was so much better before I got a smartphone. I don't think I could part with it now simply because everyone else also has one.

    • RNAi [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Mine too but there are other factors confounding the experiment

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I don't have a smartphone myself. How do they make things worse?

        • s0ykaf [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          did you get fucked by doing that or did you start doing that because you were already fucked in the first place

          • crime [she/her, any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Nah I've got adhd and having a Skinner box in my pocket has definitely made things worse, but it's hard to say which came first cause I've had one since high school and I'm 30 now

  • DasKarlBarx [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I grew up in a poorer suburb and like we just rode bikes in the streets to the nearest field or some shit and pretended to be pro wrestlers on trampolines.

    Do people not do that anymore?

  • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I like my smart phone. I get to talk to people I otherwise would not be able to and plan things without having to go to their house or use a landline which I hate.

    Convenient tbh

  • guppyman [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Smartphones have had many ill effects on youth but there's no way loneliness is one of the worst or even on the short list. They literally connect people, all it takes is the slightest bit of effort and you're communicating with like minded people.

  • Shrek
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    deleted by creator

      • Shrek
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        deleted by creator

        • RNAi [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 years ago

          It's kinda funny you get lost so easy

          • Shrek
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            deleted by creator

  • AtomPunk [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Idk there were kids in my neighborhood when I was growing up but they were more hood than I was, and I was always more of a homebody so I couldn’t connect.

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    I'm in my late 30s, so I remember having no choice but to call my friends up on the phone to organize anything together. Absolutely hated it. Telephone calls are really not great ways to socialize and even then they (practically) only involve 2 people. But with messaging on my phone, we're able to have good discussions as a group that everyone can join in. We don't hang out in person as much because we're all old and that's just what happens when you get old. Not to mention some of us no longer live in the same town (like me). A smartphone had dramatically increased my satisfaction with my social life.

    • bigboopballs [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      We don’t hang out in person as much because we’re all old and that’s just what happens when you get old.

      It's fucking lame that being in your 30's is considered "old" and time to stop having any friends or doing anything.

      • star_wraith [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Well true, I usually just call myself "old" here. because by the demographics of the site I'm well on the old end.

  • BigAssBlueBug [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I grew up in a "rural" area. I could walk to school, but all my friends lived miles and miles from the town, so I legit never saw my friends outside of school and I was never able to hang out with them unless my parents drove me