What Do Today's Teens and Teslas Have in Common?

My friend Lou is a mechanic who owns a well-regarded auto repair shop near me. We were talking over drinks recently about how things have changed in our respective careers and we discovered some interesting similarities in our work. Though it might not seem the work of a psychologist and an auto mechanic would have much in common, there's one area in which there's considerable overlap: with each passing year, the subjects of our work — cars for him and young adults for me — have become increasingly complex and capable, but in certain ways, less sturdy and resilient. This discovery led us to ponder: If today's kids were a car, what car would they be? We quickly agreed that the car which best represented today's youth was a Tesla, for better and worse.

As our civilization progresses, technological advances allow humans and machines to achieve more than their predecessors. But improvements in sophistication usually come at the expense of durability and resilience. In this way, people are similar to cars. When I asked Lou to compare one of the iconic cars in automotive history — the 1952 Buick Roadmaster — with one of the "it" cars of today — the 2021 Tesla Model S — our discussion got even more interesting.

1952 Buick Roadmaster

Source: John Lloyd / Wikimedia Commons

Lou explained that the '52 Buick, like most cars of the 1950s, was a sprawling tank with a body and bumpers made of heavy steel. Because of this, its top speed was just 95 mph; it took a whopping 16.5 seconds to go from 0 to 60 and it only got 14 mpg, but it could survive a crash with an oak tree with only minor damage.

In contrast to the '52 Roadmaster, the body of the 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid is made mostly from plastic, aluminum, and lightweight steel. It can go 0 to 60 in a lightning-fast 1.99 seconds with a top speed of 200 mph and has a rechargeable electric powertrain that can travel 396 miles on a single charge. Furthermore, the computer technology of the Tesla allows for myriad "smart" features, like self-driving, autopark, and smart summon (i.e., a car's ability to navigate to your location on autopilot when summoned by your cell phone, like KITT in Knight Rider). It also comes standard with many safety features that nearly all cars of the 1950s lacked, like seat belts.

Tesla Sports Car

Source: FaceMePLS / Wikimedia Commons

But a Tesla would be utterly destroyed by a high-speed collision with an oak tree, and even running over a large branch could put a sizable dent in the soft metal fenders — something that would never happen to the hard, heavy steel fenders of a '52 Buick.

According to Lou, the Tesla's greater complexity makes it much more difficult to repair. Every important engine part has a sensor sending regular feedback to the car's main computer and these sensors all need to be in sync and calibrated for the car to work properly. Think of the annoying "Check Engine" light that comes up on your dashboard and won't turn off, multiply it by a thousand, and you have the 2021 Tesla. Most of the time the Tesla's sensors transmit accurate information, but often they're not calibrated correctly or they're too sensitive to changes in the system. As such, Lou tells me that most repairs on a Tesla involve something related to a digital sensor or the computer system, not a physical engine part, and because of this his job better resembles that of a Geek Squad technician than a traditional mechanic.

Like a Tesla, today's kids are not just more technologically advanced, they may also be more intelligent than kids of previous generations; however, they also have many more sensors to alert the world that all is not well, and as a result, they are much more sensitive. On the one hand, their greater emotional sensitivity allows them to better empathize with the suffering of others, including those experiencing myriad forms of social injustice. But on the other hand, their enhanced emotional sensitivity makes them more vulnerable to emotional injuries and more likely to shut down when encountering obstacles that would barely register with kids of previous generations.

An area in which this point is most salient is on the subject of bullying. In previous generations, bullying was predominantly physical — think of the movie A Christmas Story as an example — with typical interactions involving a large, strong kid (usually a boy) slamming a smaller kid into a locker or physically intimidating him some other way. As time progressed, bullying evolved from something that was mostly physical to something that involved direct verbal harassment, including various forms of shaming for personal characteristics (e.g., weight, race, religion, etc.). As the Gen X parents of today's Gen Z kids will attest, during this phase of bullying history, (circa the 1980s) the extent of anti-bullying training consisted of little more than reminding kids the old phrase: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." How naive we all were: Words do hurt, and in recent decades we've discovered just how damaging verbal insults can be. In fact, in my clinical experience, I've found that verbal abuse can often result in traumas that far exceed physical abuse.

With Cyberbullying, Anyone Can Be a Victim or a Bully

Source: Hatice Erol / Pixapay

Now in the internet age, cyberbullying has become the most ubiquitous form of this practice. To individuals raised in previous generations, it is unfathomable that a person could be so wounded by insulting words, presented on a screen, delivered remotely (not even in person) that they would be moved to commit suicide. But of course, we know all too well that this has happened many, many times.

Furthermore, the power bestowed by our digital devices means that bullies no longer need be physically strong or intimidating to punish their victims. Again, it would be inconceivable to those of previous generations that a 90-pound, 12-year-old girl could bully a 150-pound, 16-year-old boy, but on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok, size, age and gender are irrelevant. In fact, regardless of the demographics of the victim, a 2010 study by Hinduja and Patchin (cited by Favela, 2010) found that girls (21.1%) are more likely than boys (18.3%) to be the perpetrators of cyberbullying.

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Crumple Zones

In contrast to the cars of the 1950s, which were made of heavy steel and designed to withstand impacts with obstacles large and small, today's cars are made of plastic and lighter metals, which enables them to crumple on impact. Although durability would seem an optimal trait in an auto body, it is actually the ability to crumple, according to Lou, that enables modern cars like the Tesla to absorb the impact of collisions at multiple sites in the vehicle, and this feature (along with seat belts and airbags) is what makes today's cars safer than their predecessors.

Similarly, today's kids, unlike their predecessors, have numerous crumple zones to buffer the impact of stressful life circumstances. In previous generations, kids were taught that "when the going gets tough, the tough get going," but this often led to them denying or suppressing problems until they exploded, or to them self-medicating with substances. Today, kids are taught to nip things in the bud and acknowledge their problems — whether they be related to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders or myriad forms of abuse — rather than let them fester. In this way today's kids, much like today's Tesla, always seem to have a "sensor" going off that requires care, however, they are also much more likely to get their brakes fixed before driving off the proverbial cliff.