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Comment by smithza | Hacker News Reader

I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives, whether acknowledged or no. It is likely the case that parents will forever be the most influential people in someone's life and the positions you take, the behaviors you engage in, and what you teach will stick with them for their whole lives. Take a stance and teach them. They may rebel, they may not, but years down the road your opinion will likely inform their reflections and help guide their future actions.

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>I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives

I don't work in behavioral science, but this isn't my understanding. I was under the impression that research indicates peers are the larger influence, which can be tempered somewhat by parents. For an easy example, whether or not peers smoke is a better predictor than whether parents smoke.

Not true in educational outcome. Almost all educational outcome is correlated with parent situations, effect of the school is within the noise.

Fair point. Most of the studies I came across were focused on aberrant behavior.

Sure but in the long run parents can choose the peer group for children.

I’d argue it may be possible in the short term but not in the long term unless the idea is to raise your child like a house cat.

Well to elaborate on that… kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger.

Those are their peers.

They aren’t their friends. Kids make their own friends, but it’s unusual for them to be able to make lifestyle choices like where they live before adulthood.

To note, your peers aren’t people on Instagram per se. I’d guess a study on the issue would say that a peer group they associate with on daily basis like in school would have more of an effect on their choices than Instagram influencers.

>kids under 16 go to the schools their parents decide on, live in the neighborhoods their parents decide on, and associated with the kids of their parents friends when they were younger.

True, but for most people this is only available within a subset of constrained choices. Parents in rural Appalachia or the rust belt probably aren’t going to have a lot of Phillips Academies to choose from

As a person who grew up in rural Appalachia certainly Phillips was not an option. But, choosing a municipality with an emphasis on the value of education certainly was something my parents actively did. And, we had families across the economic spectrum in my school.

Thanks for weighing in with your experience. I grew up in a dying industrial town in the rust belt and choices were very limited. It might be possible for a slightly better school by moving but it would incur penalties most families couldn’t afford (higher home prices, 2-3 hr round trip commutes etc)

I will say emphatically that parents of teens are the most influential people in their lives

You might say that, but you would be wrong. Parents of teens have been the most influential people in their lives up to them becoming teens. Part of the process into adulthood is to break away from that pattern, to explore and build connections outside the family sphere. That's why teens are the most vulnerable demographic for a lot of things -- their brains are in the process of rewiring themselves for more personal responsibility and less parental oversight. So they're actively seeking to avoid parental control, but haven't yet learned to correctly weigh and assess long-term effects of their decisions.

You can’t decouple the entire growth process from 0-teen though…

Agreed, and the parent comment hasn't done that. Its identified a shift and a period of time that indicates the (usually) first shift of its kind in a person's social life.

While parents may or may not be the “most” influential people in a child’s life, I think it is certainly possible that the influence of parents/family/tribe can decrease in relation to the influence of the broader world due to changes outside of the parents’ control.

I certainly think the internet gave me access to many more humans, ideas, and tribes than my parents' generation had access to, and it would be hard for me to see how it would have been possible for my parents to have as much influence on me as their parents had on them.

I would even say it is indisputable there are forces beyond parents’ control unless the parents opt to live an Amish lifestyle, such as using devices connected to the internet and various social networks. If you do not give it to your kid, someone at school will, and even more, you probably need to teach your kid how to play the game rather than have them start it blind while the other players have experience.

There are different levels of influence, though. Yes, parents can assert a lot of control over their children, but at a certain age they start looking at their peers and being influenced by them to a tremendous degree.

And not all parents realize, or can realize, everything that goes on in their childrens' lives.

Parental control cannot and can never be used as a singular or even more influential factor to societal level problems. Parents can have all the best intentions in the world but if the society they’re trying to raise children in is broken, they can’t protect those children forever.

It isn't about protection. It is about values and moral principles. Parents can teach children tools about self control and mindfulness about evaluating if things are good for them or not. Teens and young adults have to explore and figure out their place in the world apart from their parents, but the skills and values taught are often transcendent of the shifting values in culture.

Let's face it, powerful forces in our society discourage self-control and critical reflection, and culture encourages people to have children regardless of whether they have learned those skills

“culture encourages people to have children…”

That’s not true in any western country :)

This is true, and people with highly involved parents, on the average, destroy their lives with drugs less frequently than those with absentee or abusive parents. We still throw heroin dealers in jail.

Have you ever been a teen? When I was a teenager when my parents told me to stay away from something, I would absolutely check it out.

Have you ever met a teen? Maybe Instagram isn't the party bringing the toxicity.

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