So much of the work I did before I was 18 would be forbidden to me were I that age today because it is 'dangerous', from farm work to heavy construction. In those days, if you were big enough to do the job or responsible enough, you got the job--I never did work for minimum wage--always more. Now kids can't even run a french fry machine.
You are correct. Teenagers used to work. Now they can’t (and won’t, and their parents if they happen to have a couple, won’t/can’t force them, it’s against the law, they have no work ethic, etc.
I think there are many, many who are 100% unfixable.
About 20-25 years ago my wife and I were eating lunch at new Pizza Hut in Acton, MA on a Saturday. Next door a new office building was going up. As we sat there eating, a kid about 11-12 years old was operating a payloader, scooping out the basement for the new office building. We watched in bemusement as he moved the dirt into piles playing with the biggest honking Tonka toy in the sandbox. No apparent adult supervision in sight. After we polished off about four slices of pizza, the kid parks the payloader and climbs into the rear of a pick up truck parked on the site, tosses out a 20” bike with ape hanger handlebars popular in those days, hops on it and rides off into the sunset.
I guess he must have eaten all his Brussel sprouts and his reward was being allowed to play with dad’s toys. Still pretty kewl.
Bet he was seldom “bored”.
These kids are far, far better off than the current resident kids in New London, who are doped up on riddeln (whatever), dumped in from of an electronic box, or pestered by schoolmarms. Andrew Carnagie started off as a bobbin boy in a mill making nine cents a day.
The "horrors" of child labor pale in comparison to sterile, lonely and useless pursuits of kids today.