Tomorrow’s James Dean will ride a bicycle
By Nathan Siegel
Mom’s taxi service is going out of business!”
Vivian Hughes, mother of two, was looking forward to her daughter Abby
turning 16 so she could retire her full-time chauffeur service. Alas,
she’d have better luck convincing actual taxi drivers that Uber is good
for them.
“I have no desire to learn how to drive,” says Abby, who lives in
Morristown, Arizona. “I feel kinda bad” that her mother has to drive
her around, she says. “But not quite bad enough to get my license.”
Time was when the car and the carless were the only two strata on
America’s high school social hierarchy. Those with cars had a certain
amount of social power; they chose who got to ride along. And more than
that, getting your license was a rite of passage. James Dean’s Jim
Stark and Ferris Bueller were defined as much by their cars as by the
in-your-face rebellion they drove in on.
Two teenagers in the backseat of a car with a parent driving and
looking at them in the rear view mirror.
But in some quarters, the passionate affair between teens and their
wheels has turned frosty. Even though car sales have bounced back since
the recession, some experts believe the American car has peaked. It’s
not just urban youth, with access to public transport, who are ditching
the car. Nor is it strictly a matter of money. People ages 16 to 34
drove 23 percent fewer miles between 2001 and 2009, even the
financially well off, according to a 2012 U.S. PIRG report. Though it
may be too early to sound the death knell of teenage auto romance, a
profound shift in teen car culture is taking place.
Credit a generation of helicopter parents who cater to their kids’
every transportation whim, an era when socializing = Snapchat and
getting into a good university means being a star quarterback who
studies for the SATs on weekends while planning her NGO’s next trip to
India to promote women’s rights. And if Mommy can’t come fetch you,
Uber, Lyft and Sidecar will happily play cabbie.
It’s a remarkable shift. Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been a drive-in
and drive-thru culture, and for generations of teens, the car meant
independence, freedom and autonomy. For Hollywood, the car became, for
a time, a fetish object: Think of the 1956 DeSoto Firedome Seville in
American Graffiti.
Sitting in the car is the only downtime
Priya Yerasi’s son Nikhil, 16, has, she says. “If he was driving, how
could he text?”
But today’s teens, especially upper-middle class ones, are growing up
differently. “[Helicopter parenting] is an epidemic … from utero until
their children get a job,” says Kathleen Vinson, professor at Suffolk
University Law School. As parental hyper-involvement has become normal,
so too has parental hyper-awareness of threats: physical threats to
children’s safety are on the decline, but most parents believe their
kids are at greater risk than in previous generations.
Another reason for more parental oversight: the ramped-up college
admissions game. Studies show that playtime dropped by 25 percent from
1981 to 1997 and homework more than doubled. In a 2004 study, 70
percent of parents said they played outside every day when they were
kids, but only 30 percent of their progeny do.
With cross-country, academic decathlon, five APs, youth in government,
Eagle Scouts, national honor society, volunteer work and, gasp, a
social life, sitting in the car is the only downtime Priya Yerasi’s son
Nikhil, 16, has, she says. “If he was driving, how could he text?”
Exactly. With texting, Snapchat and Instagram, time-honored pursuits
like, uh, cruising or going to the mall are falling by the wayside.
Time spent behind the wheel is time not spent with friends. The
dampening of teen car culture has coincided with the mass adoption of
cell phones. From 2004 to 2011, teen mobile ownership grew 30 percent,
according to a Pew survey.
You know what that means — dating is changing, too. “It never occurred
to me that by not having a car, I wouldn’t get girls,” says Ryan
Gerson, 22, who got his license and college degree at the same time.
“It was perfectly normal to take my dates on the bus,” says Gerson, but
no one from the ’60s ever.
“Someday, today’s teens will raise
families and, probably, need cars to chauffeur their own overly
protected kids around. That’s what automakers hope, anyway.”
Then there’s the millennial environmental consciousness. From marijuana
legalization to environmental advocacy, green is hot right now, and car
ownership is not as cool as before. Younger people are not only more
likely to acknowledge climate change but also to support
environmentally friendly policies. Public transportation in the U.S.
reached an all-time high in 2013, and bike-share programs have doubled
since 2012.
Whether the car culture downshift will last is another question. It may
be another case of late-onset adulthood: Millennials are “growing up”
more slowly than generations past, and their desire to drive could
eventually bloom. In other words, car fatigue may be just a phase.
Someday, today’s teens will buy houses and raise families and,
probably, need cars to chauffeur their own overly protected kids
around. That’s what automakers hope, anyway.
“I don’t see any evidence that young people are losing interest in
cars,” Mustafa Mohatarem, General Motors’ longtime chief economist,
told Automotive News. He blamed student loan debt — now at more than a
trillion dollars — for the decline in car ownership among young people:
“It’s really economics doing what we’re seeing, and not a change in
preferences.”
Tell that to Abby, who would respond to Mohatarem the same way she does
her mother when asked about getting that license.
“I’ll do it later.”
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