Another reason Gen Z sucks: Now they are scared to drive

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Teenagers are slamming the brakes on the time-honored rite of passage of getting a license at 16, either out of fear or because they're put off by the process or the costs. And that means a lot of Gen X parents are stuck behind the wheel longer than they bargained for.

"When I was 16, we didn't think this way about driving at all. Driving meant freedom!" Christina says.

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Even so, she admits Colton doesn't feel quite as ready for a license as she was at 16. "He's not very observant and tends to live in his own world," she says. "I don't think, without GPS, that he would even know how to get to the grocery store from our house that we've lived in for eight years. So, the idea of him dealing with traffic lights and other drivers makes me nervous, too.

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In 1983, roughly half of US 16-year-olds had a driver's license. That number fell to 25% in 2022, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration

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Even a strong parental nudge isn't always enough to get a kid to the DMV. When Sarah Wilson, a mother of three in Nashville, stopped offering to ferry her 16-year-old around town, her daughter didn't sign up for driver's ed; she started taking the bus. She's now in college, and still doesn't know how to drive. She gets around mostly on her bike or by catching a ride with friends.

"It becomes frustrating when she can't help with long drives or simple errands," says Wilson, who's 50. "It's a form of independence I want her to have, even if she's been slow to claim it."

Robert Roble, a Lyft driver in Auburn, Georgia, a small city 42 miles from Atlanta, has noticed an uptick in the number of driving-age teens requesting rides to afterschool jobs, sports practice, or the mall. "I had a 22-year-old this week that hadn't gotten his driver's license yet," says Roble, who's 59.

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Delayed Driving goes hand in hand with a broader trend: Gen Z is falling behind older generations across a range of social markers. They're having less sex and waiting longer to couple off and start families. They don't go out as much and drink less alcohol, in part because it's so easy to socialize, shop, and order meals online.

"If you think of why those 16-year-olds — 30 or 50 years ago — were so eager to get their license, a lot of it had to do with wanting to drink and have sex," says Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts and author of "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties."

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