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She doesn't drive — or even have a license.
"I had wanted to get a driver's license, but it was very easy to put it off because my parents could easily drive me around," says Cade, an honor graduate from Boone High School who's attending Valencia Community College. "It was easy to say, 'Oh, I'll get one next week. Or, it doesn't matter if I don't get one till I'm 18.' "
A generation ago, Chantelle Cade would have been considered an anomaly. When kids turned 16, they couldn't wait to get their driver's licenses. It showed freedom, power, the first mighty step into maturity, and feedback to the call of the open road. The perception was that kids who didn't have a license at 16 either were really bad drivers or uncool.
How times have changed.
Today, many youngsters are deciding to wait to get their driver's licenses, a shift documented in several recent studies. It's been one year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the percentage of high school seniors who had a driver's license fell from 85% in Protected content 73% in Protected content . The study analyzed the results of a survey given annually to 15,000 seniors from Protected content and private schools.
What's less clear is whether the decline is a fundamental change in how young Americans get from point A to point B and the end of an entrenched national tradition, or whether it's primarily a reaction to the Great Recession.
Some technicians, like Michael Sivak, director of Sustainable Worldwide Transportation at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, argue that at least part of the drop is strong and that it's part of a global decline in driving among young people. He contends that part of the shift is rooted in the majority of access to the Internet: Modern teens can connect through social media, so there's less of a need to get together by driving to popular hangouts or by cruising.
"I believe that a large part of the drop is permanent," says Sivak, who was one of the first researchers to document the trend. "It's not just teens. It's people in their 20s and 30s, as well. When we asked people (in a new national survey of young adults without a license) when they planned to get a driver's license, 21.5% of all respondents said never; 35.4% of those aged Protected content never. That tells us that a large part of the drop we see is permanent."

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