I already posted, but this post bothered me so much that I wanted to say my peace. You can tell that OP and everyone resonating with them is from ~~Canada or the US~~ a country with car dependency. How? Because our urban environments are uniquely awful, since they're built for cars, not people. The suburbs are far from anywhere you'd like to go, and even if you had the gumption to walk or bike a mile or more each way, the infrastructure to do so is flat out dangerous or hostile in a lot of cases. The suburbs keep a low population density, and there's no real cause to meet anybody else ever since they have no third spaces, so unless you hit the neighbor jackpot, the suburbs are a super lonely experience. Big box stores, chain pharmacies, and chain restaurants being the dominant businesses in your area is also a car-centroc urbanism thing, since if you have to get in your car to go shopping, you're just going to go where you'll only have to make one stop or where you won't have to leave the car. It's even in the meme: parents too busy to teach [them] how to drive, which matters because the city is fucking inaccessible otherwise.

I live in a city of 90,000 in California and, while California is generally head and shoulders above the rest of the US in bike infrastructure, it's still goddamn hostile to try and get across town on a bike or on foot, and that's assuming the weather isn't miserable. I've had five exchange students from different countries (Japan, HK, Russia, Netherlands, etc) and they all found the suburbs / US urban design to be isolating. All of them were used to just being able to bike/tram/bus/train across the city and even between cities completely on their own and it was no big deal at all. It's easily the hardest thing for them to cope with.

It's not this way in the rest of the world, and it hasn't even been this way forever. It got this way due to decades of deliberate policy choices, and it can be changed. Your local city and county government has a shocking amount of power over this kind of stuff, and those are levels of government that, unless you live in a big metropolis, are actually accessible to laypeople. Start organizing, get your friends together, make some noise, let them know what you want; local politics can actually be pretty responsive to this stuff.

Edit: in case you want more information, there's several really good channels about this stuff, but I'd recommend NotJustBikes and AlanFisher on YouTube for a start.

Edit 2: OP is not, in fact, from the US or Canada. Took a gamble and lost.

Car culture turns children into prisoners in their own homes.

Have you tried drugs?

That is extremely American looking

This one hurts. It wasn't my experience, but it's too common and I hate it.

I live in central europe, I could travel across the entire continent in a day for not that much money and could go anywhere in the eastern part of my country for 60€/year, I could go to any western part of my country in 5h for less than 20€

this dark magic I could use is called a "train system" also reffered to as "good public infrastructure" by many

Ha. I grew up across the road from the beach so just surfed every daylight hour not in school. No friends, no cool things around, no games, no hobbies, but didn't care at all because surfing trumped anything you could offer a kid.

This was my adolescence except miles removed from Cowtown, the second largest municipality in Pigshit County, Ohio. People wanna talk about car culture and how the suburbs ruined everything, and I get it, but rural life as a teen was depression on top of the depression I’d already developed in elementary school.

If I hadn’t been able to drive my busted-ass ‘85 Toyota Van when I was 17 I don’t know if I would have made it to 18, I was hanging on by a frayed thread. Even then, my hometown was utterly worthless, I’d have to go at least half an hour on the highway to go somewhere with a veneer of life.

I would love for the semi-rural suburb where I currently live to modernize and become walkable and bikeable, but I’ll still take this any day over what I had 25 years ago.

I'm 27. This has basically been my life for the last 10 years.

this was my youth, we still fucking walked / biked everywhere, even in the deep south's 100+ degree temps. people who think europe is an non-automotive utopia: this is a recent trend - it took time to build out the infrastructures (PLURAL) that replace driving everywhere, and even then it's taking time to get the cars out of the cities.

https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/08/the-car-free-myth-netherlands-is-great.html

It's something we have to work at together, and the vroom-vroom crowd who want to murder cyclists with their coal-rollers are very much in the way.

Lack of reliable tech or computer made me explore my city on bicycle with friends. Good times.

This is so relatable that it hurts

Hah, or you can be me. I grew up in New York City with the ability to go pretty much anywhere unsupervised and I never did - I spent all my free time either reading books or playing videogames anyway. I had almost zero interest in the real world (I think it's pretty boring even now that I've been an adult for a while) but I still feel like there was something wasteful about not bothering to experience things that so many other kids would have really enjoyed.

The worst part was college. I attended a famous party school but went to zero parties, zero dates, etc. At least I managed to graduate in three years with a double major. (By the time I got to college, I did want more social interaction but I thought that I was incapable of it so I didn't try.)

Don't forget COVID

Me:

Ah yes parents teaching their kids to drive at 16 and scary traffic, this can only be the US...

As someone who's had a teenagehood like this, what should I do? I have friends abroad and I travelled to visit them by myself a few times. It doesn't make the other 350 days of the year any less boring though

Forgot most of it because how boring it was, and then I talk with people I knew from those years and it's always the same topics, the same histories, like they are stagnant on memories because their life peaked at highschool.

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but in the US my parents were elated when I reached the age where they could start teaching me to drive, which in my state is 15 and a half years.

They helped me buy my first beater car for $500, then told me to get a job to pay for gas and insurance. After 16 I was never home, I was working, at school, or out with friends.

Public transportation instead of a car could have taken me to some of the densely populated areas, like the cities or the beach. But with a car I could go to the desert, to the mountains, camping in the middle of nowhere with my friends. When your state/country is HUGE then public transit might be nice, but a car means freedom to get out of the urban areas.

I was basically self sufficient, and my folks were happy to have some time back for themselves.

Bold of you to assume that we have parents? :-P