Thread:DatAsymptote/@comment-30068319-20180902061738/@comment-3991308-20181215213948

That makes sense! Do what's best for you, obviously. As for state, I'm somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region ( hint: it's Maryland ).

Dear Grimm, highschool seems so long ago and I know the culture drastically shifted. I honestly can't blame highschoolers themselves, but the way things are marketed to them and the lack of proper influence in their lives is... concerning.

Juuling is one of those things - we almost killed nicotine addiction in the youth, smoking is on its way out, but now nicotine addiction is making its way back in juuls and the Public Health research isn't being done fast enough to determine the long-term detriments, and while I do fundamentally believe that teenagers are smart and clever and earnest and angry, it's really up to the adult responsibility to realise and critically think if something like Juuling should really be marketed to teens, or whether Fortnite/Blizzard Games should really use gambling systems and cause addiction.

Because like, if something was built or designed or marketed that way, can we really rest the blame on teenagers for falling for it? We spent the first decade and a half of our lives being told what to do by parents, we get to highschool and hit adolescence and want to do things our own way, and often times the schooling system (especially in the US) hasn't been properly designed to allow us to critically think about the things we do. I literally didn't learn the Baconian Scientific Method until taking Psychology and Philosophy classes, neither of which are hard (as opposed to soft sciences, not hard as in difficult) sciences.

That said, "issues" in highschools are wholly dependent on which schools, etc. It's especially attentuated in poorer and underprivileged areas. :( which makes me sad, because if you grow up in a poorer area you're more likely to stay poor because the education isn't always enough to propell you in "rising above your social class".

Sorry for the ramble, I think about this stuff a lot. My own highschool experience was really tame, but then again I went to a private girls school and didn't do much outside of study and robotics :(