Is there a great difference in teenage years?

It's interesting that an "older persons group" is likely to include people who are a generation apart. I don't recognise the experiences that some people on here say they had of teenage years. To me, those were the experiences of my parents.

Why would you like to upset teenagers, EllanVannin?

I think that a lot of young people nowadays are more sensitive and kinder than we were. I shudder when I remember some of the words used to describe ethnic minorities, gay people etc when I was a teenager.

So-called 'PC' has made that unacceptable, and I think that choosing words that are not going to offend or hurt people is a very small thing that has a very large impact.

AS much as I don't like ageing..I`m 67 and disabled since 45....I wouldn't jump at the chance of being a teenager now......the streets are full of dangers we didn't have as young `uns.

I agree with Calendargirl in the main. Today's young people are much more aware than we were especially with global issues. Many of the comments made are the same ones older people have always made down the years.
Life for us in the fifties and sixties was much less stressful.

Of course there's a difference in the teens of today as many are obnoxious individuals due to this PC society that we've been forced/dictated into------" musn't upset them !"

As a teen, we didn't dare disobey our teachers let alone swear or punch them as is done today. There was a cane in the corner of the classroom but I don't remember it being used.

Idyllic in the 50's ! I was a teen in 1953 . Little crime to speak of no peer pressure, in fact no pressure at all. Quite innocent in those days, no drugs or alcohol problems probably because there was little or no money to spare and the pubs which were few and far between closed at 10.30pm or last orders were then, I'm not sure.

Every home appeared to have a mum and dad, so stability was more evident than now. Nobody cared that someone had more than the other person. I think Persil washed clothes mattered more
Us kids made our own entertainment making dens with ferns up the garden, going fishing for tiddlers or tadpoles/frogs, playing tag or sly fox.

Pea-picking/ fruit picking at the farm for pocket money. Jobs around the house for our pocket money----like filling the coal scuttle, mowing the lawn, cutting the privet hedge.

The 50's was the best for me.

I left school in 1960 and like very many having failed my Eleven Plus exam I therefore had no educational qualifications whatsoever.

However, at that time Britain had more job vacancies available to it than there were people to fill them. Therefore I left school on a Friday and gained my first job interview on the Saturday by just walking into a food store, and began work as a trainee Butcher on Monday. It was as simple as that.

Wages were good even for young trainees and many young people changed jobs regularly in those first few years until they found something that suited there talents and interest.

Certainly, life in Bristol where I was brought up was straightforward and enjoyable and for us lads National Service had come to an end. There was only the Vietnam war to concern us as on several occasions Britain looked as if it may have become involved and that would have brought back National Service.

I lived for my mates, my motorbike and a few girls that would hang around with us until I met my now wife in 1967 and we bought our first house for two thousand seven hundred pounds in 1968.

So, I feel that young persons today have a far harder time in "getting themselves established" as the world is a far harsher place in almost all areas.

To do what I did on leaving education is now impossible.

Yes I recall plenty of drugs around in the seventies.
I think one of the big differences now, is that teenagers are very aware, they’ve had sex education, drugs awareness lessons, their parents are probably quite open about discussing everything and anything.

We were thrown in at the deep end, I left home knowing almost nothing about sex, absolutely nothing about drugs, and I’d never really, beyond the odd sherry at a wedding, had an alcoholic drink!

But I soon learned!

I think a major difference is how much more aware of so many things they are nowadays compared to us in the 60’s .
They learn about the dangers of drink, drugs, unprotected sex,
they know about the environment, climate change, the world is a much smaller place than how it seemed to us.

On the other hand, although they seem streetwise and mature in many ways, I think of my DH who left school at 15, working full time from then in a man’s job. Not many of them have had a paper round at that age nowadays.

I was living in Spain at 17, in the late 70s. Decided I'd had enough of A Levels, much to my parent's horror.

Plenty of drugs out there

I think youngsters today are far more polite and tolerant than I was.

Not interested in lowering the voting age. I'm proof that at 17 you can still be a bit dipsy.

I was a teenager in the late sixties and early seventies, there were plenty of drugs around then.