We trace the paths of hundreds of teenagers, starting in 1997, to see how their childhood experiences affected their life outcomes. View the interactive version at pudding.cool/2024/03/teenagers
This is actually pretty depressing. Basically "hey kids, if you have a crappy childhood, remember you probably have a crappy adulthood to look forward to!"
Ironically that adult who had a crappy childhood will just get told to man up and not blame everyone else for their problems... when in reality, other people did cause the problems.
Not true. If you check the happiness figure, still about 66% of the ones in the bottom group were happy. They are just more likely not to be, but most actually have good lives too
@@adamz7038And tbf although the bottom group's incomes was initially a lot worse than the higher groups, by 2021 you can see it had balanced out a lot more between the groups. This is probably from managing to work their way up through company positions (i.e. from shelf stacker to manager).
dear Americans, world dont give a shit about this date. İt was just a normal day for everybody but americans. 2008 is way more important@@Megamind_mog
@@turplexx233 I feel like there's at least a few other countries that were bombed into non-existence that probably care about the date, or the numerous countries who have been victim to subsequent attacks that likely started with the war on terror. 2008 may have never happened without 2001 coming first. Also, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth was completed ONLY with kids in America....so it's relevant to this video and impacted every single person represented in the data. I grew up during this time frame and 2008 was barely notable for many people, but 2001 completely changed everyone's lives.
Amazing video, but please put percentages because sometimes simply saying that a section is longer than another isn't helpful when they aren't the same height(misleading data)
Different heights actually makes it easier to see percentages. It’s about proportions relative to the group size, we’re not comparing the group sizes to each other
alright, you're probably not looking for it, but I'm gonna give some feedback: the data was rather hard to properly interpret using your way of displaying it. I understand you're going for a cool looking representation but here it's really detracting from the message. the numbers are percentual but you also include how many are in each group which makes it rather hard to track. Using the same colors for different data that changes rather rapidly also makes it rather hard to see what's going on. the only way I 'got' my information was by whatever you were saying, by the facts you recounted, not by the visual on the screen. prime example: "you can see that a HUGE portion of kids..." (4:05) I was taken very of guard, because it is almost impossible to interpret how big it is in comparison. percentually, looking at the colors, it's not that different from "no adverse experience", but then again the horizontal 'width" of the no adverse experience group is stretched meaning you can't make a good comparison. Then I saw that the middle group is way bigger and there it was even harder to gauge how the percentual numbers stacked up. The whole visual makes me (at first glance) think that there is barely a difference here, while you say otherwise! but yeah for the rest, cool vid idea, conceptually cool visuals. Feel free to ignore this critique, it's just my POV.
I also agree, this video is very fascinating, but the visuals are hard to make sense of compared to the other visuals. I will also add on that I think the link to the NLSY should be available in the description for those who want to look through the survey themselves.
Correct! News flash for some; real parents sacrifice for their kids. They do w/o themselves so their kids can have; they throw their careers under the bus to raise their kids; they put in overtime to benefit their kids; they move across states to better their kids education. Far too many just read this & said, "oh hell no, not me!!!"
@@kathyfahey5469 That's not a live I would want to live. You just got to enjoy the benefits of adulthood, then get a child with 25 and for the next 20 years - your BEST years (healthwise) you just pause yourself? Maybe having a kid is worth more than I think it is, but right now living for someone else does not seem appealing to me. Also "I will sacrifice myself so they will have it better one day" does not really make sense to me if "they" then sacrifice themselves aswell and infact have it NOT better than me. But that is just my point of view, based on not much experience, I don't want to offend anybody. If it feels right to you, good for you. And I agree that parents have responsabilty!
It is so difficult to be a good parent but it is absolutely vital to the success and wellbeing of your children. No kid should suffer parental neglect.
I'm a teenager and I was thinking I would adopt a child when I grow up, but I likely won't. I realized that a child isn't simply an accessory to add onto my life; they would be a giant part of my life. There would be an abundance of stressful and uncomfortable situations where they would be relying on me and I would have to be "the adult," I would be responsible for their safety, and mistakes I make could have a lifelong affect on them. When I go home, they would always be there, sacrificing privacy and alone time. I might not want to dedicate that much time and effort to a child, and I wouldn't want to put one in a situation where they're being neglected or feeling unwanted. I think it may be better if I just get married and focus on my husband, maybe do some charity work or help out at my church, and spend time making art. Or who knows, maybe I'll change my mind.
Btw sorry if my big paragraph doesn't relate much to what you said, it kind of led into other stuff and I ended up writing a lot, you don't have to read that
@@BarelyConsciousPotato Oh yeah totally. Once you got a kid you live your life basically for the purpose of raising the child and providing them good virtues in life. I'm not trying to diminish the joy of parenthood however it isn't for everyone.
@@thatguytj1775 ikkrrr and i don't get the social norm...if you exist you must reproduce....ikk that's how nature works but the population is already quite enough and I don't think bringing a child into this chaos just to fulfill your unsaid duty is a right thing to do.
@@BarelyConsciousPotato You know, there are people who think that others who don't have children failed the purpose of life. But I think it is better to be a good teacher, docter, what ever - a "supporter" to a child than just the creator of one. Having ten people have ten children with bad lives is more failure in my eyes than having ten people with 5 children with good lives. So, yeah, don't feel useless or something. I am thankful for you wanting to do charity work or help the community in other ways :D
Remember, correlation is not causation. This is an observational study with many unmeasured variables. I was both held back and bullied as a kid, but being held back has helped me with school and being bullied has left me to focus more on my grades and not where I stand socially. Now I am going this year to pursue a master's in architecutre and design with scholarships :D
Hehehe I like how the little people run Also the lifelong adverse trauma is pretty interesting, especially reflecting on how adverse experiences have shaped who I am today. I'm in the emerging adult stage and I feel being in college has definitely helped me slowly prepare to be an adult. The fastest way to get to where you wanna go is slowly. Take it easy, find an outlet for your stress and you'll be there soon.
One problem is acknowledging things. I've been around a lot of bad stuff, but.. how much did it effect me? I like to say it didn't, but it can't have done absolutely nothing lol. It makes sense that having issues in your upbringing can cause problems in the long run. After all, those are the years in which your major formation occur.
Well if what you're saying is that some kids with childhood trauma grow up to be "successful", yeah, they might. But the point is that childhood trauma can have a negative impacts on your "success", or more accurately, your mental health and development which can translate to worse outcomes along the line. And a lot of kids who come traumatic backgrounds (especially true with immigrant households) may have been pressured to perform well in school, others may have done well in school to escape their backgrounds etc etc. And it's important to understand that financial/educational success does not equate with the quality of someone's life, which includes things that childhood trauma can affect such as mental health.
@@Keith_online We get it. We do. What WE also get is that ppl who should NOT be breeding are the ones doing exactly that. Then we pay for their screwed up offspring in more ways than 1. Incidentally, the Asian population (immigrants) push their kids hard to succeed. And they do. contrast that with black & brown.
@@Kamabushi999 Financial/educational success can contribute to the quality of someone's life, but mental health, physical health, the quality of one's relationships with friends, romantic partners, and family also contribute heavily to well-being. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) place populations at greater risk of dying from 9 of the 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. These causes of death include heart disease (#1), cancer (#2), and stroke (#5). And we all know that no matter how much money you earn or how educated you are, you can still become debilitated by or die from these conditions.
Interestingly, the graph at 4:46 also shows, that the group with no adverse experiences had less "happy all of the time" people, than the other two groups.
I think it's because the people who had adverse experiences were more likely to be put in stressful/deprived situations because of their trauma, leading them to be more grateful as they don't take their situation for granted.
One of my complaints about this video is the scaling of the three bars. If, at the timestamp you mentioned, the bars were scaled identically, the first bar would look even closer to the second bar.
Why didn't you show percentages or quantities at any point in the video? I understand you're making an artistic choice, but at some points (the happiness graphic, for one) the data directly contradicts your statements.
I found this really annoying. He'd say, "Here are those who are unhappy, as you can see there are more in the many adverse experiences section." But then all three sections have the exact same amount scaled to how many are in their section. They all looked to be around 10%
As someone who is in their period of limbo from childhood to adulthood with negative childhood experiences, I now worry what the future will look like more than ever before. As a child and a teen, you're encouraged to put so much trust in the system that is supposed to reward hard work, but I wonder if all that work really makes any difference. It's rather depressing knowing I might not be able to escape where I've come from, but also terrifying and exciting knowing I have the opportunity to make my own of it.
I don't usually watch videos like this but the youtube recommended thought I needed to watch it, and I did need this. I often hear the argument that tragic experiences shape the person and prepare them for their future. This is not the case. Looking forward to seeing what you do in your future.
The software you used to depict the graphs is an interesting gimmick, but often hard to read. You place the tiny legend at the top in reverse order, the stacks are different in thickness, so it's hard to visually read the ratio depicted.
very well made, but next time, keep the diagramms on the same length, with different lengths for number of adverse experiences it is not easily comparable, instead more increase in the vertical direction, as you did for them too
Yes, I agree that struggles and adverse experiences during childhood are challenging. However, the message that people can use their childhood experiences as an excuse for not doing well in adulthood is a terrible message to send. I was abandoned as a child, struggled with speech problems, and others tried to hold me back with their low expectations. Now, through striving to do my best and developing self-confidence, I am graduating as the co-valedictorian of my high school class. Don’t let challenges early in life hold you back.
As a middle and high school teacher, I'm always bothered by how much adults blame kids for their own situations. Other teachers and parents, they are always saying kids have to take responsiblity, that they are "already grown up" and it's their fault when something goes wrong (this starts as soon as 11 or 12 years old, in my experience). And then we adults also control and micromanage every aspect of their lives. We control what they can and can't do and sometimes even force them into choosing a single option, and then we blame then when it all goes wrong. Even in households that have none of those "adverse experiences" you mention, they still have issues that can scar them. Perfectionists parents that ask too much from them, rich parents that are never in their home because they need to work 2 or 3 jobs to mantain their lifestyle, or their job keeps them travelling most of the time, exposition to higher class standards that makes them feel bad with themselves when they can't reach the stupidly high standards of the people that surround them. We adults fuck around too much with them like they are not real people, and then get angry at them when they don't consider themselves real people. We seriously need to stop. For me, it all starts in education. Most adults went through that experience when they were teenagers so they think that's the only way to treat a teenager. But a single parent or teacher can make a big change, IMO. If you interact with a teenager, just talk to them about this, give them the chance to choose, listen to them, tell them that yeah, you also went through that and you also think it's bullshit and SHOW them that it is possible to be treated differently by an adult. That teenager will grow, and become an adult that doesn't replicate the cycle with the teenagers in their life. It's a slow process, but it's the only way.
As a retired HR and Training guy, I saw first-hand the "Alex's" and the social challenges they brings to a workplace. I actually had a young woman say that she loved work because it was where she was "safe" and sought overtime work to delay her inevitable trip back home. I never chose to have kids of my own. Too many examples of parenting failures around me growing up. We (as a species) NEED to do better if we CHOOSE to become parents!
The format is very nicely done. But it moves through the conclusions/commentary very quickly, you have to pause at each thing to confirm the diagram matches what he’s saying. And honestly it seems like sometimes it doesn’t. The box highlights certain intersections of groups and looks at just their size, rather than comparing their size to other relevant intersections to establish a baseline. Rough example, it’s the difference between pointing out that many people with many adverse experiences have low income, and comparing the intersection of low income and many adversities with low income and some adversity, and low income and no adversity. And other ways to slice the data
@@canofsouls282 I’ll grant you that it’s easier to criticize than to create. But by the same token, where’s your 100k+ views to cast aside constructive criticism without any discussion? I acknowledged the strengths of the video as well as some weaknesses. The entire point of a comments section is to have some element of discussion. If it bothers you that I don’t just slurp down content uncritically, then that’s really on you, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not gonna stop using my brain just because I’m not a RU-vidr.
College being an intermediate between highschool and adulthood is so true though. I'm a freshman in college about to be sophmore and I feel like I'm still a kid but trying to act like an adult. I don't know how to explain it better than that, weird period. But honestly so much better than highschool though im ngl, done with that part of my life.
btw this video tries to imply that childhood adverse experiences are the primary cause economic hardship, which is not something you can say from a corrolational study. It could just as well be that the economic hardship of the parents (or some other common factor) causes economic hardship for the child and adverse experiences are just a side effect.
I think the visualization, while cool, lacks clarity. Having a different number of rows and columns per category, and a different number as years change is silly. There seems to be a lot of "look at the size of the box" i.e. the absolute number of people. But if there're more total people in a category that could make one box look bigger despite having the same percentage. At the bare minimum put percentage or pie graph on the side as well!
Great video, one critique though is that you use different row/lengths for each group. I understand the numbers are changing, but it makes it hard to visualize the data. Maybe have 3 fixed rows, instead of 2 for the 1st group, 4 for the 2nd, and 3 for the 3rd.
I think it's a great message that you are portraying, I think that every person should strive to take as much responsibility for yourself as possible. The more responsibility you take in your life, the better the world will be. I believe this to be true.
Amazing and informative video. I loved the visuals, the voice over/script, and the music! I hope this topic becomes more widespread bc it is super important
Maybe you could explore what this means, ie that people growing up in risky environments are more likely to financialy struggle when they reach adulthood, other than that it's really good!
@@Danuxsy Which really helps show evidence against the whole mindset of "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, everyone has an equal opportunity, if you're not rich you're lazy."
@@PappyP I find it so funny that that phrase is said unironically since it was originally said as a joke because of it being physically impossible to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” and yet people use it as a genuine argument
This is the most important visualization The Pudding has ever released. I am subscribing in the hope that you will post more such stories based on real world data. Thank you.
Such a phenomenal video! So well put together and informational! As others have said, and I agree, I think a title update would do much better for enticing others to watch this!
the two things i got from this are that if you have a rough childhood, you're going to carry that with you and it'll make things hard in the future and even if you have a great childhood you can still have problems in adulthood.
Would be super cool to also look at the CDC/Kaiser Permanente ACEs study as well, it shows a similar dose-dependent relationship between ACEs and health outcomes. I wasn't aware of this study and it was really great to see the results and your cool animations! Good work, looking forward to more!
The graphics are very pretty, but by presenting the data as a set of discreet points, effectively volume, it is hard to process the visuals as comparable datapoints without visual aids cool topic and great video
Such an insightful piece shedding light on the long-term effects of childhood experiences on adulthood outcomes! 🌟 It underscores the importance of addressing childhood trauma and providing supportive environments for our youth to thrive and reach their full potential.
you should add percentages and go a bit slower with the introduction of new colors, cause it was a bit hard to follow. Other than that, this was the most intresting video i've seen in the last week, I love the style and dedication that has been put into it, keep it up!
Subscribed! Amazing video, it honestly is a trip to see how experiences will ultimately shape your life. We are living it, so to that, make 'good' choices because in the end, we make the bed we lay, some may even start without a bed; at times it may be hard to realize, but we determine how far we take it and how much we push. I wish good health and wealth to all of you no matter what color or creed. Peace ✌
I've read this book called "Switch: How to Change Things when Change is hard" and in it says sometimes we're so wired to look for problems that we overlook the bright spots. The bright spots are purple kids in the group that is majority pink. Why are their lives different? Is there anything we can learn from them that we can give the others in their same group?
The gods of the RU-vid Algorithm showed me this channel, and thank god they did. This video was an amazing watch and the interactive website as well is so fascinating. Thank you for making this.
you don't control any variable that determine who you are, how you think, what you can think, etc... genetic (epigenetic) discrimination is everywhere always.
The data visualization with the human figures is visually pleasing but statistically ambiguous. I found it hard to gather from a glance the proportion of each group in each data category. This is because the adverse experience groups were all of different size, so looking at absolute numbers doesn't give a complete comparison. I think including the actual percentage breakdowns for each group in addition to the shown visuals would have been a useful addition.
Yeah, you probably can't blame something really drastic on it, but i think that if you have suffered, it overall grants you a right to hurt those who haven't. There should be at least something good in suffering, and that would probably be that you will either become a good person or gain an excuse for your behaviour. The kids from this video, who have experienced no bad things, should at the very least feel guilty, otherwise it's unfair, isn't it?
@@jekylljekyllhyde821 I strongly disagree, but it's kind of subjective However, by thinking that way you are actually making things fair by dragging average hapiness down. I think there's a better way to make things a little bit more fair without dragging average hapiness down, and it starts with being a little more socialist for example by giving aids/scholarships for the kids in need
Great video. Awesome animations and storytelling. I feel like it could use a little more exploration of the background research and statistics to support the idea that adverse childhood experiences are this most important step in the causal chain. I think it'd lend the argument credibility and selfishly, I love research and stats so it follows that I'd make such a demand. Nonetheless, kickass video. I may have just found a new favorite channel
I was verbally and physically abused by both my parents, I was bullied at school, I had mental and physical health problems. I didn't go to colleges because of financial reasons. It lines up...
Thos was a Amazing Narration and Visualisation of the Study and the Words at the End were great. I remember from a British Study that reading a book to the Kid before sleep helped suprinsingly a lot. Being Poor in Love is more detrimental than in Money.
Nice video. Very professional looking and great narration. My only gripe is when you say which group "mostly" does or has something. The numbers are almost always higher for the middle group in every case you brought up. Sure, percentage wise, those that reported they experienced no adverse experiences/many adverse experiences, may have a higher chance for a given thing, but when you look at those numbers, the largest percentage of people in general are the ones who experienced some adverse events. This isn't a really a problem, I guess. I just think it could have been reworded a bit. Oh well, the general point is understood and that is what really matters after all.
the video is really nice, i hope there will be more videos like this in the future, but i agree that using different colors for different data would make the video easier to keep up with
I can see others have commented the same and I do want to say I respect and value the artistic effort put into the video, but the visual form of the data presentation was extremely difficult to follow. At first I thought oh this is neat they have little animations, but by the time I was halfway through I had given up on trying to interpret the ratios of groups with all the rapid movement and lack of text presentation to match. And to be clear I don't think it's just the movement and colors, I think the formatting/presentation of the groups and trying to represent outcomes in other categories, with the presentation of rows of tallies with some each grouping having a different number of rows, is very tough to visually digest.
I loved this! Aesthetically, how you present the information, the subject, the ethics. Thank you Also, while I was whatching this I thought that it would be so interesting to see how neurodivergence (autism, ADHD, dyslexia and others) affect us in the long term run. I am a 25 year old autistic woman (also with ADHD) diagnosed last month and many of my friends are autistic, so I know that for us the chances of getting bullied are higher, or getting socially ostracized, for example. The academic performance also varies. In my case, my special interests related to science and art and sociology helped me retain the information I was asked to know, but when executive functioning was required (planning ahead, doing homework, study in advance) I failed. Not every neurodivergent person is the same, but for many of us, we were considered "gifted" because school was easy for us, but as we get older and more consistency and work is required, the grades start to falter and people get dissapointed becuase "you were so smart. And we, whom have been reliant on or academic performance in a way to get approval, because maybe we were not popular or not liked, end up feeling like we're good for nothing, and that ends up hurting our career prospects, future and mental health...
This makes me scared for how the COVID pandemic will affect children growing up from 2020-2023. I was 14 when it started, I'm almost 18 now. If factors like uninvolved parents can affect a person's life outcomes, I'm wondering how an entire generation of children will be hardwired differently. I'm thinking that it will make us so much lonelier and more depressed/anxious. e.g. a lot of children in middle school right now are extremely dependent on TikTok, I find them to be less sociable and more impolite (?) to service workers.
I think experiencing a year of social isolation + misinformation and fear can be considered "many" or at least "some" adverse experience for an entire generation.
agree with other comments. would love to see a remake of this with an easier-to-follow structure; otherwise, it starts getting a bit annoying. very cool idea though, looking forward to improvements!
I hope that at some point the comments in this comment section begin to acknowledge the work that seemed to be put into making this video, evaluating such a large dataset always takes a lot of work so just wanted to mention that that work is much appreciated :)
I think the biggest reason the new generation acts like they do is because we know we’re cooked our future isn’t up to us but in the hands of old people who won’t feel the impact of the choices they made in the last miserable years of their ancient lives those consequences that effect the world will only be felt by us
Old miserable people don't give a sh* about us cause 'gonna die' mentality. so my logic is why care about them, they're gonna be goners anyway just ignore their entitled as*es. Be the change you want to see in the world.
some days ago I heard "being a good parent, doesn't mean you're a good person and viceversa"....I realized that I prefer a good person being a bad parent than a bad person being a good parent
Truly a great video! Although it was confusing for a second there with the colors but i quickly understood what was going on maybe a heads-up next time would be good & i almost didnt click on this video because of the title & thumbnail Good thing that i eventually did :)
I liked the video, consider adding percent's instead of visually showing sizes like that with the boxes, also consider adding onto what exactly these people gave data for, its a bit subjective and my big curiosity was "what are some more adverse experiences that would land you on that list" ,and "what other factors effect that family risk score". Knowing how subjective some things are that would be nice to know, and I assume many watching dont want to go and read the referenced pdf for that info. Also consider making it closer to 10min I heard you get better ad revenue money and engagement.
That's why as a 16 years old girl who have 2 little siblings im trying my best to let them be raised properly to avoid screaming at them or even slapping them it's kinda hard because this generation is a lil messy but we can really see how childhood well affect adulthood sm. A very good video wgood infos thank you❤
The changing of colors and quick video doesn't help how great the explanations are or your hard work. Also I think you highlighted many sections that you said were large but were definitely not any larger or larger at all compared to some other groups. It makes me not believe what you are saying which I really want to. I think just a bit more time on those few aspects could have truly impacted and optimized this video. Otherwise really good job and I hope you keep up this work.
