It is stupid, but young people making stupid choices is definitely neither new or in the past only. Some are fortunate enough to not have it impact their life while others die or ruin their lives because of it.
Something is different though now. The degree of risk taking is unparalleled. The thought of jumping down a waterfall would be insane to me or anybody I ever knew back when we were young. Today in places like Lynn Canyon in North Vancouver you can't stop people from jumping off a cliff and in some cases shooting down waterfall(s). Even while doing a video documenting this with film crews and first responders on site all sorts of people jumping.
There have been more than 40 deaths in the last 50 years at North Vancouver's Lynn Canyon Park, plus ‘countless’ injuries
www.nsnews.com
Unfortunate but I'll mention the thousands of needless deaths from the Opioids crisis. No end of warnings about how unsafe supply of any illicit drugs are now but people just keep using.
Death by misadventure has never been higher.
Indeed youth mortality has never been worse than what it is in NA now. What we're experiencing here is somehow much different than most affluent countries.
Life expectancy for the average American is now 76 years, hitting the lowest point in nearly two decades after declining for the second year in a row. Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, joins John Yang to discuss the factors...
www.pbs.org
One in 25 American five-year olds will not reach their 40th birthday
time.com
I'll follow with a comment that this is not judgement. The influx of horrible drugs on the streets much more dangerous than what was formerly readily available is making mistakes of youth lethal today, in ways that hadn't been seen.
I will say also that the dynamic influence of social media and cohort age based influence today leads much more pressure to conform, to emulate, to follow and so that its literally like lemmings jumping off a cliff. To wit in 1970 if a couple people did that and others watched few if any would follow. Now soon as you post up youtube or pictures the trail of carnage is endless. The social pressure to follow is immense.