If you could choose would you have preferred to be a Teenager today

Lara said:
John C, you are spot on, the music and movies were magical in our day. Even the younger generation agrees with that regarding our music. Many are still giving concerts to sold out crowds.
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Rock music has gone downhill since the 60's and 70's.
 
Ameriscot said:
Rock music has gone downhill since the 60's and 70's.
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Sturgeon's Law:

The first written reference to the adage appears in the March 1958 issue of Venture, where Sturgeon wrote:
“I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.[SUP][1][/SUP]

In other words 90% of everything is crap.
 

I do not favour most of the movies of my younger years, in my opinion, they were overly sentimental fluff for the most part. Yes, I still love the music of my youth, but modern music has it's genius also. The music has not died, merely changed, as have I.
 
Shalimar said:
I do not favour most of the movies of my younger years, in my opinion, they were overly sentimental fluff for the most part. Yes, I still love the music of my youth, but modern music has it's genius also. The music has not died, merely changed, as have I.
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I totally agree Shali I really love some of the modern music, it has evolved a lot and some of it is truly beautiful, and more complex than that of previous generations. I agree with the Cookie quote 90% of everything is crap, but the remaining good stuff has improved in my opinion.

Regarding movies I feel the best of the latest ones ( 90% are crap rule applies here too) are far superior to the ones of earlier decades, they are more relevant to the current world and to my mind the acting has improved, its become so much more natural. With the exception of a few I can't watch old movies from my youth as they have aged so badly, and are as Shali says generally overly sentimental fluff.
 
QuickSilver said:
For the most part NO... I wouldn't.. However, in looking back on how it was for females in the 60's in HS.. yes..
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I'd say the same for the 50s except that I also remember the "red letter" stigma attached if any young woman became pregnant. Birth control was unknown. "Just say no" didn't work then and it doesn't work now.
 
Shalimar said:
Rocky, didn't anyone use condoms?
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I had to smile at that question ... they were around even then, of course, but if you were actually prepared rather than "swept away in the moment", you were a marked man, "easy" woman. So there were trips young girls made to stay with an out-of-town relative for awhile. It was an extremely prudish time.

I was working for doctors when the law was passed legalizing abortion. We'd seen first-hand the results of the back-alley efforts. And yet, here we are all these years later and we're right back in the 50s mentality all over again.
 
Thanks for clarity Rocky. I remember when abortion was legalised when I was in my early twenties. Wonderful, but too late for my best friend who had been rendered sterile four years earlier due to a back street abortion. She almost died at the tender age of seventeen. She was never the same.
 
Cookie said:
I would prefer to be a teen now --- the biggest complaint I'm hearing about being a teen in today's world is the phones and technology, which doesn't seem like such a hardship to me. Present time teens have better career options, more money, life choices, freedom to be themselves and know the world, technology, freedom to be whoever they want and access to knowledge and happiness. I think I'd rather be a world-wise teen with an I-phone than an isolated teen in the 50's and 60s, wearing ugly clothes, as most teens were. Today's world offers so much more -- transportation, communication, education, health care, even entertainment.

I think many older seniors have romanticized their childhoods as being idyllic, innocent and free of cares... which I don't think was the case. We had plenty of cares, but usually no one to talk to about them.
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Absolutely! Agree 100%
 
Ken N Tx said:
View attachment 20407...Early 60's, I switched over to Country Western...
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...which these days sounds like 50s rock. o_O

I am not saying that is good or bad, but instead that I often can't tell whether I am listening to country or rock. Both seem to have cranked up distorted guitars and lead lines and a lot of pounding, though there is still country that sounds like country to me in there too. It is easy to see why that happened. There seem to be far more country music fans today across a much wider age group.

In our condo building, there are speakers built into the ceilings of the hallways. When we first moved in, there was a station playing what was commonly called "the music of your life" from a local FM station that featured it. That music was orchestral versions of pop, show tunes, and standards. When that station changed their programing to something else (probably talk shows), we experimented with different kinds of music. We found that country music seemed the least objectionable to the most people, so that is where the dial has stayed for years now. The country stations seem to stick around without having to change format to remain relevant in the market.

Tony
 
I enjoyed my youth back in the 60s, I was care-free and happy. My life change after Vietnam, and there was no "going back" to those childhood days. Learned a lot about life for sure. Oh, but to answer the thread question: no, I would not want to be a teenager in today's world.
 
Nathan said:
I enjoyed my youth back in the 60s, I was care-free and happy. My life change after Vietnam, and there was no "going back" to those childhood days. Learned a lot about life for sure. Oh, but to answer the thread question: no, I would not want to be a teenager in today's world.
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I couldn't have said it as succinctly since my history mirrors yours, so better that I quote you instead.

Tony
 
hollydolly said:
I saw this somewhere else and thought it was a good question so I bring it to you folks... :D.

Take away your wisdom of age and all your life experiences and just concentrate on your teen years ( without any rose coloured specs)...and compare it to the lifestyles and opportunities, of todays' teens.

Would you have preferred to have the life of todays' youth...or do you think that the decade you were a teen was the best ever...and please feel free to give your reasons ?
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Absolutely not today. Today's kids can't take simple instructions and they've got a bad attitude about everything. They don't care about anything that's not on their cell phones. No thanks.
 
Yes. I'm up for the challenge of youthful purpose in a beautiful, healthy Young body with a lot of devices. YES.
 
If I were a kid in this day and age, I wouldn't hold much hope for my future -- not in the U.S., anyway. Of course, growing up in the '60s and '70s, there was always the threat of having to go fight in Vietnam looming in our future. I'm not sure I thought about it that much, though. I'm not sure I knew that much about it. We didn't have the easy access to information that we do now, and my parents didn't subscribe to a newspaper that I can remember. We had the evening news. That was about it.
 
One aspect of the OP's question to consider is that we are considering whether we would want to be a teenager today, but we can't help but look at it from our own perspectives which do not necessarily match the perspectives of a young person today. This can help explain many of the responses we are seeing in this thread. Of course we would want life as we knew it when we were teenagers.

I don't have a lot of interaction with younger folks these days, but when I do, I am constantly reminded how different their perspectives are from mine. I don't see their perspectives as wrong and mine right (or vice versa). However, I am well aware that they are growing up in a world very different from that which I grew up in.

I believe that if I were a teenager today, my perspective of the world would be quite different from what my current perspective is, and therefore would probably relate to my world today pretty much in a similar manner as I did to the world I grew up in because it is what I would know.

Would I want to be a teenager today if I had the perspective and world view of a teenager growing up in the 60s? Probably not, but that is how most of us are probably going to answer in this thread because we simply don't have the perspective of today's teenager. Remember that today's teenager has no experience with a world that does not have smart phones, computers, the internet, streaming services, and a myriad of other differences in politics, national attitude toward religion, lifestyles, etc. It is all very different just as the 1960s that we grew up in were very different from the world our parents grew up in.

Tony
 

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