America's Teenagers--Myths and Realities

Media Images, Schooling, and the Social Costs of Careless Indifference

Sharon L. Nichols, Thomas L. Good

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135615949
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The media's presentation suggests that American teenage culture today is the most violent, sexual, and amoral youth culture in history. In this book, Nichols and Good deconstruct the negative images held by large numbers of adults. Recognizing that many teenagers are left by adults to socialize themselves and the consequences of this "careless indifference," the authors' goal is to influence a more positive view leading to stronger social policies and better services, resources, and programs to meet the needs of America's youth.

Unique features of America's Teenagers--Myths and Realities: Media Images, Schooling, and the Social Costs of Careless Indifference include:
*powerful analytic lenses used to revisit typical depictions of youth;
*a wealth of information brought to bear on understanding teenagers' behavior; and
*consideration of a broad range of adolescent behaviors across critical socializing settings.

The book begins with a discussion of the continuing myth of adolescence--how and why youth are devalued, and an overview of current beliefs about youth drawn from two 1990s Public Agenda Polls. This is followed by chapters on youth and the media, and the pressures that youth face in various dimensions of their lives. Topics include youth violence; the sex lives of teenagers; tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and teens; healthy living and decision making; working teens; and youth and education. The concluding chapter pulls together themes generated throughout the book and provides examples of policies that would underscore the value of viewing youth as a social investment. General guidelines are provided for teachers, parents, policymakers, and citizens to facilitate responding to youth in meaningful, proactive ways that improve the quality of life for teenagers and the broader society.

Chapter 1
The Continuing Myth of Adolescence

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

—C.Dickens¹

By any standards, America ‘s young adolescents have a great deal of discretionary time. Much of it is unstructured, unsupervised, and unproductive for the young person. Only 60% of adolescents’ waking hours are committed to such essentials as school, homework, eating, chores, or paid employment, while fully 40% are discretionary.

—Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1992²

Adam suffered from nothing more serious than adolescence, a disease that would eventually pass, like a particularly virulent episode of chicken pox: ugly to look at but temporary and certainly not life-threatening.

—R.Russo, 2001³

Charles Dickens’s vivid description of life in 18th century Paris might also be said to capture the contradictory experiences of adolescence. Adolescence is riddled with ups and downs, defined by radical biological transformations and characterized by boundless energy and enormous pressures to excel academically and to fit in socially. At a time when teens must cope simultaneously with numerous social, academic, and biological pressures, they are also experiencing a lot of firsts: first kiss, first dance, first taste of alcohol, first car wreck, first steady boyfriend or girlfriend, first breakup. As they experience these and other daily struggles, they may also be confronted with negative adult attitudes (“I told you the child was a loser”) and media reports (“You attend a failing school”).

Given the enormous pressures and numerous and varied expectations adolescents face, it is distressing that so much of their time is unstructured and devoid of adult guidance and supervision.⁴ We must point out, though, that how teens spend their discretionary time varies greatly. Many reflect the “Hurried Youth” stereotype that David Elkind described and lamented more than 30 years ago—scheduled from dawn to dusk with structured activities.⁵ At the other end of the spectrum are young people who return to empty homes in dangerous neighborhoods and have little opportunity for constructive activity. Of course, most teens fail somewhere between these two extremes.

WHY WE SHOULD VALUE YOUTH

American teenagers are not valued—or not valued highly enough—by many American citizens. Even more baffling than society’s devaluation of youth is the large number of Americans who fear and distrust them.⁶ Increasingly, young Americans are seen as needing harsher sanctions to make them behave in a civil manner. But to view teenagers as out of control and in need of correction is inaccurate and a dangerous underestimation of their capabilities and potential—teenagers are vital to society as its future workers, citizens, and decision makers. The quality of American life in decades to come will depend on decisions that our youth will make and initiatives they will take when they become adults.

We should view our youth as a critical resource. Birthrates are down, and older Americans represent an increasingly larger percentage of the total population. As baby boomers and echo boomers age,⁷ fewer Americans will be available to maintain the various roles required by a productive society. In 1960, children represented 36% of the U.S. population. By 2025, the proportion of children in the United States is expected to be less than 24%. In 2025, there will be more Americans 65 years of age or older than Americans between the ages of 5 and 17 years.⁸ Given these demographics, the health and education of American teenagers and the formation of their attitudes toward society should be of acute concern to parents and policymakers. The first step toward cultivating the resource America has in its youth is to understand why young people are generally not valued or seen as good investments.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

In the first part of this chapter, we explore the origins of youth devaluation. We present evidence that young people have been heavily criticized by adults for a significant period of time. In addition to showing that adult conceptions of youth are pejorative, we illustrate that negative beliefs have grown more prevalent over the past 50 years.

We then explore why youth are more seriously devalued by society today than ever before. This brief historical analysis reminds readers of what life was like in the past and also illustrates that both the social conditions in which teenagers live and society’s expectations for them have changed markedly. We ask readers to reflect on their own youth. One reason why many adults devalue youth is because it is easy to forget what being an adolescent was like.

We end the chapter with an analysis of public attitudes toward today’s youth, based on evidence from two national polls sponsored by Public Agenda. Data from these polls are frequently cited as evidence of adult devaluation of youth.

HOW ARE YOUTH DEVALUED?

Youth as a Time of Storm and Stress

Pejorative perceptions of youth in the United States can be traced at least as far back as 1900, when adolescents, as an emerging subculture in America, began to be viewed as a separate and strange culture. G. Stanley Hall introduced the concept of adolescent sturm und drang (or storm and stress) to explain the strangeness of youth.⁹ He argued that adolescence is a separate phase of development marked by antisocial behaviors and attitudes that invariably “spring up” with a rush of hormonal activity and changes resulting from physical development. Hall’s descriptions of youth were internalized by society as a way to describe the typical teenager.¹⁰

This powerful argument has become difficult to reverse. In the 1960s Albert Bandura reported that published research data showed that the then popular view of adolescence as a time of storm and stress was unwarranted.¹¹ Bandura argued that, in general, teens were not excessively combative and did not experience the conflicts with parents that many assumed took place. One reason he cited for the widespread belief in the storm-and-stress phenomenon is consistent with our argument; namely that the mass media sensationalizes adolescent behavior.

In a 1999 American Psychologist article, Jeffrey Arnett revisited the notion of storm and stress. He documented the current pervasive belief that storm and stress is a universal adolescent experience but also noted that data strongly refute this view of adolescence. He pointed out that although some adults understand that characteristics of storm and stress may not apply to every individual adolescent, when asked about teens as a group, adults were more likely to characterize them in universal terms:

studies that have investigated perceptions of storm and stress inquire about people’s perceptions of adolescents in general. People’s responses endorsing the storm-and-stress statements indicate simply that they see storm and stress as characteristic of adolescents taken as a group, not that it is characteristic of all adolescents without exception.¹²

Because teenagers’ “bad behavior”¹³ is often viewed as inevitable and unchangeable, youth tend to be treated not as an investment worth nurturing but as a group to be feared and punished for bad things they do or will do.

Notably, it isn’t just the average citizen who holds a storm-and-stress view of youth. There is evidence to suggest that experts also view the typical adolescent experience as a stormy time of life. Daniel Offer found that when asked to describe the normal teenager, psychiatrists were likely to describe the psychology of a normal teen as significantly more disturbed (e.g., characterized by mood difficulties and relational conflicts) than normal teens would actually report themselves. Furthermore, before taking a course on adolescent psychology, undergraduate students were more accurate in describing normal teenage psychology than were the psychiatrists.¹⁴ Perhaps these psychiatrists’ perceptions are biased as a result of their extensive contact with “troubled” youth. This is a provocative finding that raises questions as to mental health diagnostic accuracy in the mental health profession. It also reflects how difficult it is for even mental health professionals to accurately characterize what normal teen life is like.

Recent research on adolescent depression also illustrates the complexity of differentiating normal from abnormal teenage mood difficulties. The number of diagnosed cases of adolescent depression has risen over the past decade, which raises the question of whether more adolescents are depressed or whether medical and psychological professionals are becoming better at diagnosing depression. Some have argued that teenage depression was underdiagnosed previously because adults attributed the depressive symptoms they witnessed in the teens with whom they were involved as the normal storm-and-stress-induced downs of adolescence.¹⁵ Fortunately, we are learning more about the relationship among youth depression and social pressures, inadequate coping skills and support systems, and biochemical causes.¹⁶ Still, many professionals and nonprofessionals alike have far to go in understanding the difference between normal and unhealthy adolescent behavior.

Evidence of Increasing Devaluation of Youth

Throughout history, the younger generation has always been viewed with suspicion by adults;¹⁷ however, evidence suggests that Americans are becoming more negative toward teens. Adults’ views of teenagers going back to at least the 1940s are low and have been declining ever since.¹⁸ In 1946, a poll sponsored by the Gallup Organization found that 43% of Americans thought youth were behaving worse than when they were teens. In 1965, the Gallup Organization asked adults, “In what ways would you say teenagers are different today than when you were a teenager?”¹⁹ The top response (41%) was that teens were “more irresponsible, too wild today, drink too much, more independent, less restricted, and freer in action.”²⁰ By the 1970s, in another poll sponsored by the Gallup Organization, only 24% of adults said they had a “great deal of confidence in teens facing up to their own and the country’s problems in a responsible way.”²¹

Another study conducted in 1989, asked adults to compare teens of that time with teens of 20 years earlier. In comparing 1989 teens with those from two decades before, more adults viewed 1989 teens as selfish (81% vs. 6%), materialistic (79% vs. 15%), and reckless (73% vs. 14%), whereas fewer described them as patriotic (24% vs. 65%). In her review of polls on youth, Margaret Bostrom, a researcher for the Frameworks Institute, argued that adults’ skepticism about the morals of youth is perhaps more widespread today than ever before, She noted that the percentage of adults who believe young people today do not have a strong sense of right and wrong has grown from a minority 50 years ago (34%) to an overwhelming majority today (82%).²²

Many adults characterize today’s youth negatively, using adjectives such as “irresponsible, wild, and rude.”²³ They fear youth and believe them to be violent, remorseless, and amoral. More adults today view youth with suspicion, skepticism, and negativity than ever before.²⁴

WHY ARE YOUTH DEVALUED?

Role Expectations Have Changed Over Time

What accounts for this increasing devaluation of youth, at a time when young people’s future contributions to society are clearly so essential?²⁵ One hypothesis is that adults are not sensitive to how youth’s roles have changed over time. Although there are many ways life for youth has changed since 1900, two of these changes seem especially significant. Youth’s economic value to adults has changed over time in that modern youth generally contribute less to the economic stability and vitality of the family and more to society than the youth of the past. Second, adults’ knowledge of youth has changed from a localized context (e.g., living in the same location together) to a more diffuse, unfamiliar, globalized one. There are less enduring face-to-face relations between adults and young people.

Economic Value and Family Expectations. In the 1900 teens’ economic value and contributions were viewed primarily as immediate. Teens worked on the family farm or in the family business, served an apprenticeship, or worked for a neighbor. Commonly, a teen’s role in helping to sustain the health of the family business was critical. Families were more stable because most parents stayed together longer—80% of women and 81 ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Continuing Myth of Adolescence
• Chapter 2: Youth and Media
• Chapter 3: Youth Violence
• Chapter 4: The Sex Lives of Teenagers
• Chapter 5: Tobacco, Alcohol, Drugs, and Teens
• Chapter 6: Healthy Living and Decision Making
• Chapter 7: Working Teens
• Chapter 8: Youth and Education
• Chapter 9: Enhancing the Future of Youth