• EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    I used to work with a lot of teens at their first job, and I found that I got along with them really well when I’d tell them that the biggest difference between them and me was simply that I’d been on this rock a few years longer than they have. If you’re 20 and they’re 15, then you’ve experienced 33% more shit than they have.

    I told them that I wasn’t gonna tell them what to do with their lives, but I’d offer my own experiences to help them make more informed choices. It’s like with little kids: you can tell them not to do something dangerous, but if you explain why they shouldn’t do it, you’ll get better results. At least with the 15+ crowd, you usually don’t have to worry about them sticking forks into the electrical sockets or something.

    • RaccoonBall@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I don’t think I started sticking metal into electrical outlets until I was 14 or 15…

      Bzzzzzaaaap

    • OpenStars@piefed.social
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      2 days ago

      Way more than that. Imagine a 5-year-old who has what, a couple of years worth of memories? So by that token, a 7-year-old is twice the age of a 5-year-old, and a 9-year-old is triple, despite not even having hit double the chronological age yet.

      And there’s all sorts of disconnects beyond that: a 17-year-old driving cars for at least a year while a 14-year-old has never done so (depending on factors I suppose), and a 20-year-old with multiple years of college or trade school or work under their belt, vs. a 17-year-old who tends to have little to none yet at that point.

      And how much have people experienced who joined the armed forces and were deployed somewhere, especially seeing active duty, compared to people who have or will never do thus in their entire lives? A 20-year-old could teach someone 4x older chronologically something, if they had the relevant experiences.

      Okay so I went way off on that tangent, but yeah, totally agree! 💯, and even more than 💯 besides 💪.