High School Then and Now: Data show big shifts in behavior
Most trends are negative, but the median student remains okay
In a previous post, I used data from a government-funded U. Michigan survey that asked high-schoolers the exact same questions for nearly 50 years, allowing us to compare behavior across time.
This data aren’t more widely used because U. Michigan provides it in an annoying format. So Maximum Truth extracted the data and graphed it:
Behavior changes
High-schoolers read much less long-form content
Again, it’s the magnitude of the trend that’s surprising:
Some of the long-form decline is surely made up for by 12th-graders reading things online. But I worry that more of it is being replaced by shallow Tik Tok videos and memes.
The survey in general suggests that phones seem to be replacing many (but not all) activities that used to help people grow up.
High-schoolers date much less
The magnitude of the change is a bit surprising: About 50% of 12th graders have never dated, as shown by the red line below. Just 30 years ago, that was 15%.
On the positive side, this probably helped bring about fewer teen pregnancies. On the negative side, I suspect this partly explains why college students now seem so fragile — they don’t have as much life experience as previous cohorts of students had. So they turn to administrators to act as their extended-adolescence parents.
High-schoolers are less likely to drive
This matches the general trend of students engaging is less adult and independent behavior:
Again, this is a double-edged sword, because teen driving deaths are down, but kids also seem to be becoming less independent.
High-schoolers go out less
High-schoolers are more sleep deprived
That plunge in healthy sleep came despite a concurrent fall in tough social activities. Are people staring at addictive screens late at night?
Some activities have held steady
Sports participation has mostly stood firm:
Several other activities that have not decreased: music, arts and crafts, and volunteering. I won’t drown you in every chart, especially since those ones are flat-ish, like sports.
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Attitude changes
Kids are enjoying school less
The proportion of kids unhesitatingly saying they fully “agree” that school is enjoyable has fallen from 23% when I was in 12th grade (2005) to just 10% in 2022.
The decline happened after the introduction of the smartphone (the iPhone was invented in 2007, and took several years to proliferate.)
Teens see much less connection between schoolwork and success
This graph shows a dramatic decline in 12th graders thinking that schoolwork will lead to success.
The proportion of 12th-graders fully agreeing has fallen by half in just 10 years.
Here are some theories:
Kids’ models for success are Instagram / Tik Tok influencers. They’re making millions without caring about school. According to a Morning Consult survey, 54% of young people said they “would become an influencer, given the opportunity.” [Side note: CBS News misreported that as 86%. No wonder people are turning to Substacks by independent journalists.1]
Grade inflation and universities going test-optional may have made high school success less meaningful. As schools de-prioritize measuring merit, has it become harder for good students to distinguish themselves?
School-taught skills may be less tied to what the job market demands today. You can now get a better job by teaching yourself computer coding than by diligently reciting modern poetry in English class.
Teens are becoming more pessimistic about “our system of doing things”
Presumably “our system” implicitly refers to “the American system,” though that interpretation is left up to student respondents.
When I was a 12th-grader, 48% said that our system was the best in the world (answering either “agree” or “mostly agree.”) Today, that’s fallen by nearly half, to 25%.
The percentage disagreeing also roughly doubled, going from 18% to 36% over that time.
Teens are becoming less religious, but many remain devout
A substantial minority of about 30% continue to be religious enough to endorse “just leave things to God.”
The trends are not as dramatic as trends in dating or reading books.
Could the relative persistence of religion partly be because religious people have more kids? One study looked at traditional conservatism (which is different from, but correlated with, religion) and found that: “Traditional-family conservatism is more prevalent than it would have been if each person had the same population share as his or her parents. …It accounts for 7.9 million of the nation’s 54.8 million opponents to same-sex marriage.”
Overall, are the kids “alright”? Many trends are bad, but the median student is still fine
Happiness is down, but most students are still “pretty happy”
In 2022, more than twice as many students reported being “not too happy” as did just 10 years prior.
The number of “very happy” students also plunged by nearly half.
At the same time, most students are still plugging along, identifying as “pretty happy.”
Self-satisfaction is down
The proportion of students saying they’re “completely satisfied” with themselves fell by half in the social media era:
Solutions? Adapt more to technology
The trends suggest that school principals should consider Jonathan Haidt’s proposal to “get phones out of schools now.”
The governor of Utah recently also urged that:
Some Utah schools are already doing this with very positive results. Delta High School in Millard School District is one of them. Delta High students put their phones in a clear pocket that hangs in front of the classroom. “It was a battle to begin with, but it has been so worth it,” said Assistant Principal Jared Christensen. “Students and parents have all adapted, our teachers are happier and learning has increased.”
At Evergreen Junior High in Granite School District, students can’t use phones in classrooms, halls or lunchrooms. “It’s so much easier to just ban them altogether,” said Principal Ryan Shaw. “Learning has improved, and our scores reflect that. Bullying and fighting have decreased. The students connect with each other in a more meaningful way.”
I’d like to get the actual data from those schools, as the formal studies on the subject cited by Haidt, etc, all seem to have weak methodology. But it sounds promising to me.
Other theories for these trends:
— The rise of helicopter parenting. Though where did that come from?… from too much wealth? From too few kids per family? Both?
— The rise of a mentality and ideology which elevates victimhood, thus both discouraging excellence, and encouraging people to mope around about their lot in life.
All those factors could all be in play. But the graphs seem particularly in line with smartphones and social media displacing healthier and more challenging activities.
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Specifically, CBS uses the headline: “86% of young Americans want to become a social media influencer.” I almost cited that in my post. But then I checked the actual study. 54% said they “would become an influencer, given the opportunity,” which was the closest question in the survey (though “would” is still weaker than “want.”) What 86% said yes to was a different question in the survey: “would accept money to promote a product on one of their personal social media channels.” Which seems pretty different to me from “want to become an influencer,” as it suggests a one-off trade, not a career.