Never Stop Driving #46: Are the kids alright?
Do kids like driving or not? I’ve been noticing dueling narratives. In the “we’re doomed” category, Substack writer Rob Henderson, a psychologist, explains how today’s kids are more risk averse than previous generations and don’t want to leave their parents’ basements. The percentage of 17-year-olds who have drivers licenses fell from 62 percent in 1997 to 42 percent in 2021.
The New York Times, on the other hand, recently highlighted a group of Southern California youths for whom the car is a cherished means to freedom and adventure. I probably should be celebrating the Times piece—a love letter to the car—but it’s presented in an artsy way, with photos fit for a Forever 21 catalog. My colleague Joe DeMatio pointed out that the article merely confirms that for many young people in America, the car is as important to their social lives and development as it was for the characters in the flick American Graffiti a half-century ago. For the kids in the NYT piece, cars are rolling rec rooms, a way to connect with friends in person rather than through a phone screen. DeMatio found it heartening and hopeful and dismissed my concerns about the photos with a characteristic wave of his hand. Give it a read and let me know what you think.
I have three kids under the age of 20 so I naturally consider myself an expert on the topic. I’ve witnessed the corrosive effects of today’s never-ending digital entertainment stream and often resent the devices that take up so much of my kids’ time. Then I remember that T.V. got its turn in the hurt locker, and most new entertainment technology is accused of being unhealthy. Tastes and behaviors change. The world changes.
That said, I rely on cars to lure my kids off the screens so I can connect with them while they’re still at home. The machines are wonderful gathering points, as I’ve pointed out many times, from a road-trip tale to our book Never Stop Driving, now available in audio format. I’ve recently taught three stick-shift lessons to my 18-year-old daughter, who’s never leaned toward the family business. A kid who’s long viewed cars as her old man’s curious obsession now sees stick-shift driving as a potentially fun and valuable skill to have. During our first lesson in an empty high-school parking lot, she accidentally did three burnouts and laughed each time. I did too. Now she wants to drive our ’86 Mustang to school.
A few years ago, we dove into the topic of kids and cars and concluded that there’s plenty of automotive enthusiasm in the next generation. I still believe that but am aware I travel in self-reinforcing circles. I’m also wary of too much screen time for our kids. Ben Franklin believed there’s virtue in moderation. Except, of course, when it comes to my cars, when too much is just enough.
I’m grateful to work at a company fueled by a purpose to save driving and car culture for future generations. Hagerty Media contributes to that purpose via the material that we produce, which we hope stokes and spreads the passion. As evidence that it does: One of our time-lapse engine rebuilds, on a Chevy pickup engine, has over 45 million views.
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I have three boys ranging in age from 15 to 29. Their interest ranges from general enthusiast (oldest with a GTI he bought new & now has 112k miles), to largely indifferent (middle son, prime EV candidate) to rabid enthusiast (youngest, who can’t wait to learn manual and has already filled out his high school parking permit application a year in advance!). Plus there are plenty of kids showing up at our local cars & coffee events that do their own wrenching. For better or worse, social media is definitely driving a flavor of enthusiasm as well. So I think the future isn’t looking too bad.
Larry – love your weekly column and I also love the fact that you’re an ’86 Mustang GT guy! I became a huge Mustang fan at the age of 15 when I bought a ’66 coupe that I still own today. Later, in college, I scraped enough money together to buy a silver ’86 GT convertible. Loved that car but sold it when I got married and bought a more “practical” Explorer. About 3-4 years ago I started yearning for my old ’86 GT and went on a search for a silver one just like the one I had. Part of the justification of buying it was that I could teach my daughters how to drive a stick shift. My son had already learned some years ago on a ’68 C20 pickup that he drove in high school. Couldn’t find a silver one at the time so I ended up buying a red ’86 GT convertible in Virginia and my 82 year old dad and I flew out and drove it 1380 miles back to Dallas. A fantastic experience and the car drove like a champ the whole way. I subsequently found that silver ’86 vert and now I have two of them! My oldest daughter has taken a couple of lessons on stick shift driving in the red car but still has some work to do to get comfortable. The youngest one will take some lessons this summer and I hope to get a couple of her friends to join in and learn as well. All three of my kids have had plenty of exposure to the old car culture due to my old car disease and I think they have all embraced it. My daughters are now begging me to buy an early Bronco. Yeah, gonna have to save a few more pennies before that happens…. Good news is that there are at least three young ones in the 18-26 age range that have developed an appreciation and respect for classic cars. Hoping they will carry it forward and help to keep the car culture alive for the next generation!
Hello fellow Mustang enthusiast! I thought the Stang would be a good car to learn on for it’s torquey V-8, but also because I replaced the clutch last winter, lol. Sound like you and your kids are enjoying old cars!
I wonder if you have statistics for teenagers having licenses in Montana alone? As a whole, only 42% of teenagers have licenses now? “Down” from a percentage in the 60s? Holy mackerel! Surely, in Montana, the percentage of teens not having a license is in the low single digits? We just don’t run into kids who don’t have licenses here. As a teen, I remember having a cousin visit us from Chicago who was my age. She didn’t have a license. She was a real foreign commodity to us!
Well let’s be fair – it’s a LOT easier, and probably more necessary, to have a vehicle in Montana than in Chicago. Jus’ sayin’. 🙄
Larry, I live in upstate NY , where we uncover our pride and joy. The car shows , cars and coffee and car cruises start around May 1st. Must off people who attend are in 50’s- 80’s ( I am 72) and I very fortunate that parents belong to a Sports and Rally Club in the late 50’s . Cars have a been a large part of my life and still are. One of the Car shows that I attend last year, in drives a clapped out VW Karmin Ghia driven by very young man and his girl friend. You couldn’t wipe smile off his face, he was proud of his ride. He reminded me of my self, when I a senior in High School I bought a clapped or 1962 MG Midget, I was proud of that car. I added up how many cars my wife and I have owned , it totals 36.
Yeah, I think that there are still plenty of young people interested in cars. The ones who are not getting a license are no different than the previous generations who looked at cars as a needed transportation tool.
Loved the Where We Are, The First Car article. I am glad to hear kids today have the same hopes, dreams and anxieties we had in our youth. We’re all not so different are we. I thought the photos added a hopeful yet melancholy feel to the piece.
Lots has changed, but there is lots to factor in:
-city/suburb/rural divide in the populations being compared
-diversity and the percentage of drivers among various groups and income brackets
-cost of vehicle ownership and insurance factoring inflation
-drive in movies are not the social hub they once were
-laws and restrictions on younger drivers
-% of those working full time vs. being in school at 16, 19, 21 vs. 50 years ago
-If your event doesn’t think a 2009 Evo is a cool car (or doesn’t let stuff newer than ___ in) you are missing out on interested people. There are many ways youthful automotive interest is gatekeeped out or not acknowledged (i.e., looking down on “ricers” and “tuners”).
-Most “hero cars” in media of the last 30 years are way out of reach to young people. Make a Vanishing Point, Two Lane Blacktop, Smokey and the Bandit, etc. using vehicles made 95 and newer that are 6-figure vehicles and maybe that changes what we see in the McDonald’s drivethru?
*are not six figure
no edit function is a pain…
My addiction started with drag racing at 16 and moving up to SCCA autocross and road racing throughout the subsequent years. Despite attending numerous race weekends, my three kids, two boys and a girl, only my daughter got a smattering of the automotive DNA from me and was the only gearhead. I taught all three the basics of auto maintenance, oil and filter changes, tire changes etc. My driver’s age grandkids seem to have no interest in things automotive. All are aware of my BMW 2002tii but none have expressed any interest in riding in it much less driving it and learning to shift gears. To them it’s grandpa’s old car. Nothing more.
A huge factor is cost, not only in the rising prices of used cars, but also “what else is competing for that $$$?” Not all kids match the stereotype of a spoiled kid with parents that buy them whatever they want — these kids save up what they’re earning at part-time and summer jobs to buy the latest $1K phones, their own Netflix subscription or $60 video games they’ll play for the next year. But in 1990? None of those were even an option for me, and it only took me one month of caddying at a ritzy country club to save up enough cash to buy a 6-year-old Chevy Citation. ONE month. Today? A 2017 Civic costs an arm and a leg.
Here in this part of Virginia- not rural, but outside the DC suburbs- we see kids at the local car wash gathering on the weekends, an odd but happy mix of slammed “rice burners” with exotic wraps, lifted Jeeps and pickups with 35″ Cepeks, and a sprinkling of ‘classic’ muscle cars, 1980s European badges, and 2-3 brand new cars probably borrowed from Dad — they park together, dry and wax together, hang around open hoods and point, and give me faith that the next generation values that combination of freedom, self-expression… and let’s be honest! a way to woo the young ladies (even if they don’t use the word “woo”, that’s EXACTLY what they’re doing – it’s still 90%+ boys driving these cars, with young fillies stopping by in their convertible Minis to chat 😉
Where is this car wash? I’m going to be in Manassas Park in a few weeks, and I’d like to stop by and visit with these young people and take a look at their rides – sounds like a fun time!
I think the problem is quantity, not quality. Yeah, there’s youth that are into driving, but they’re not packing the seats of car sporting events like those pictures I see of the 1955-(1971?) period. It seems like cars were the cool things then, and now they’re kind of just another thing and Tik Tok dancing (or something) is what they’re really into. So the advertisers, businessman, etc. keep going after them through the digital. So our sport sees more tracks shut down, etc.. This is my gut feel; we don’t have enough steam. We need more. Roadkill and (the good) Top Gear helped immensely but… I don’t have high hopes for the future.
Watch Mighty Car Mods channel on youtube. They’ve come a long way in 10+ years.
Get you non-so-car-interested connections to watch “temples and turbos”. It’s transcendent.
Marty and Moog espouse a love of car culture and life. One doesn’t need to like the specific thing they like to get it. Niche tribalism worked in the idealized stereotypes we have of greasers, mods and such from the 50s and 60s. You can still do that (only hang out with 70s Datsun owners or whatever) but it doesn’t grow or revitalize the hobby in a greater sense.
Well here is the true feature why kids no longer are as active in cars. The social system cars made up have been replaced by the internet.
Cars were the basis of our social system. Be it cruising or just going to a mall cars were how we got there. Today the meet on the web and fight aliens in the web on video games. They even went to school on the web during Covid.
Our cars were our shield, image and how we socialized.
Today Cruising is now an even many leave at 7 pm to be dark home because they can’t see. The malls are closing because the youth no longer go there. The ability to own a cool car is pretty much a dream today.
We bought numbers matching 1964 GTO’s in the 80’s for $3k now that will not even fix a crappy Honda.
So cost and lack of available cool cars at prices kids can buy are limited and most no longer can even work on them to to complexity .
We are just in the perfect storm. There is still a small segment that are involved but many have moved on. Trucks and Jeeps are the life line to keep many involved.
I have been in the performance industry for 30 years and our customer base is getting older. The kids are not there like they used to be.
I don’t expect things to change for the better with EV models coming and ever tighter regulations on ICE. Some places just a cat back exhaust is a violation anymore.
The cold harsh reality we are the last of the wild ones.
While we used to live out adventures in and around cars my son is out today collecting Pokémon what Evers on his cell phone in parks and on my front law. He said he can see em?
There is hope he has taken interest in my new Corvette but it will be a few years before I can let him drive it due to age limits on insurance.
Add into all of this the lies about environmental issues especially cars and we have a difficult future ahead.
I wish I can see a different outcome but this is only going to continue to decline.
There will be small segment like we have riding clubs with horses but cars are just becoming an appliance or just a way there vs a social statement.
Fyi the stability of the performance aftermarket is at great risk. Most companies have closed or merged due to dropping sales. I mean big names.
Groups like Holley own closing on half the major players.
The retailers are gone and only a few web companies control 80% of sales.
To be fair these large groups have kept the lights on as if not for Holley or other large retailers much of this would have been gone.
I’m encouraged by these responses, but we also have to look in the mirror. How much of this supposed lack of automotive enthusiasm among The Youth is due to gatekeeping, either culturally (“Those _____ aren’t real cars”) or financially. Sure, in the 60s and 70s you could get “interesting” cars for nothing because pretty much every car was seen as a disposable appliance. Now? Everything that has even a whiff of “not milquetoast to drive” is a ClAsSiC and gets speculated out of affordability by the guy/girl with an after-school job.
The main issue facing our car crazed youth today is that the fun cars are too damned expensive, I’d love something fun but even with a full time job, I have a hard time justifying the prices for something fun, and I’m 23
I think there are plenty of inexpensive fun used cars out there. From the Fiesta ST to Miatas to Honda Preludes, to Minis. Here are just a few ideas. https://www.hagerty.com/media/magazine-features/hagerty-magazine/can-you-find-a-cool-car-for-5k/
Taught daughter to drive a “three on the tree “ Vega Kamback wagon….yellow w/spots to school. Beats walking or the Bus. She finally melted it down after the first melt, only had 93K 😢