[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Redway

The funny thing is though is that in spite of all that exposure to social media today’s teenagers (in the last five years anyway) seem to be increasingly infantilised. I’d love to say I have a reverse crystal-ball of experiencing teenagers grow up throughout the ages but I’m not Methuselah so y’know. But what I have definitely observed is that 16-year-olds of (say) 2009 looked and acted much older than the ones around now, especially the boys (girls are a bit more mature than boys and do have that advantage of make-up to make themselves look much older). Shows like World’s Strictest Parents and Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents (or whatever it was called). Today’s teenagers might smoke a bit of pot (like they always have done) but cigarette smoking is completely out of vogue with anyone under a certain age and they don’t seem to have much stomach for alcohol anymore. All they seem to want to do is vape and watch TikTok videos.

That's so true, I moved to America when I was 18 and fresh out of school, I was in London by 19 with an Aussie friend I'd made in Boston(we're still good friends to this day actually and she's coming to Ireland for a visit in June ) and we really were thrown in at the deep end of figuring life out money/accommodation/work/keeping ourselves alive etc The only contact I had with family and friends back in Ireland then was letters and the occasional phone call from a payphone (it was pretty expensive back then to make international calls)