It's a trend that I like to see, but I wonder how they get around without a car. If you like in an urban area with good public transportation it's easy but that's not always the case in the US. There was no way I (or my parents) could afford to buy me a car when I was in high school so I mostly got around with friends who had a car or I hitchhiked.
Now I can afford a car but I prefer public transportation or riding a bike, but I also live in a city with one of the best and cheapest public transportation systems in the world. There seems to be more to the trend than just the bad economy. do social media tools really minimize the need for seeing people in person?
Driving is becoming so last century. Since the end of World War II, getting a driver's license has been a rite of passage for teens, but that's less and less the case. The share of people in their teens, 20s and 30s with driver's licenses has dropped significantly over the past three decades, not only the United States, but also in some other wealthy nations with a high proportion of Internet users, transportation researchers have found.
One possible explanation: Virtual contact through the Internet and other electronic means is reducing the need for face-to-face visits among young people, researchers say.
From 1983 to 2008, the share of 16- to 39-year-olds with driver's licenses declined markedly, with the greatest decreases among drivers in their late teens and early 20s, according to a study at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor. About 69 percent of 17-year-olds had a driver's license in 1983. By 2008, that had dropped to 50 percent. Among Americans ages 20 to 24 in 1983, nearly 92 percent had driver's licenses. Twenty-five years later, it was 82 percent.
