A few weeks ago, a father told me that when he became a parent, his father reminded him that parents must give their children two things: roots and wings. Give them roots to keep them grounded through tough times. Give them wings to soar above everything, explore new worlds and fly farther than we ever did.
I think that this is important for most parents to remember….
In college, many of my friends worked at teen outreach programs. They helped kids who were on the street, suicidal, struggling with addiction, working as prostitutes, or engaging in self-harm. Often, they got money from the city or state to distribute condoms and clean needles, do prevention education and do outreach social work.
With sites like LiveJournal, Xanga and MySpace, many teens are expressing similar kinds of out-of-control behaviors. Are there any digital teen outreach programs? Are any social workers or therapists reaching out to teens who are clearly battling tough issues? I recognize that these websites are not the best place to do actual therapy, but neither is the street. A huge part of what teen outreach programs do is help direct teens to places where they can get help. Are there any such outreach programs on the web?
Unfortunately, it seems like the only people reaching out to these teens are friends who are scared by what their friends say (this is not a good way to do outreach). There are organizations who have set up help websites, but they rely on people to find them via search. Wouldn’t it be great if concerned social workers and outreach organizers could hop onto MySpace and reach out to some of the teens who clearly need help?
I’ve also seen religious organizations do outreach. Some is simply missionary work – reaching out to convert teens. Unfortunately, though, the bulk seems to be religious individuals approaching queer teens to threaten them with damnation. 🙁
Compulsory high school education began in the Interim period in the US. There were high schools before that, paid for by public funds, but they were mostly only used by the wealthy and those who valued education. Only a small fraction of the population could afford to have their teenagers spend their days learning rather than trying to help support the family. In this way, they ended up in two different tracks in society. Of course, there were many who never went to high school but did some amazing things in their lifetimes and there were plenty who went to high school who didn’t do very much. But the class system was there.
Today, every child has access to high school paid for by public funds. Of course, the irony is that there is still a complete class system. Those who have money and those who are willing to go into debt because they believe in education send their kids to private schools. I’ve been looking at high schools that cost $28K+. ::gasp:: In places like Santa Monica, there are 22 private schools and 1 (yes one) public one. Needless to say, Samo services a very different segment of the population than the private schools.
Have we equalized the system? Not even close. Then you have No Child Left Behind which regulates the public schools (but not the private ones). Interestingly, most elected officials send their kids to private schools so they don’t even feel the effects of this. Accidentally, as a part of my research, i’ve been watching what all of these standards do to our kids. They are not learning to write because standards only test things that can be measured in checkboxes. A lot of what they learn assumes they are middle class and heading to college and most of it is set up by college professors who have an unrealistic understanding of what non-college-bound youth need. Teachers have no time to actually dive deeply and help kids learn to think – they have to force data down their throats. It’s so depressing and we’re going to be worse off in the long run because of it.
Of course, we all like to kid ourselves into thinking that high school is about education. For the non-college bound, it doesn’t prepare them at all for the service jobs that most of them are going to be stuck doing. What it does measure is that they are able to show up on a schedule and follow rules. A diploma is a stamp of obedience to authority.
Of course, every teacher hopes to help their kids get into college. What about the kids who could never afford it? And frankly, not all students are meant to go to college… or at least, there are not enough jobs that are supposedly gained post-college. And unfortunately, working class notions of success are gone.
Gah, it’s a depressing picture to spend too much time in schools. I’m in awe of the teachers in this country who can maintain hope and dedication in the face of grim realities.
Rumors are (once again) flying around that people are going to be charged for sending email, postage stamp style. The details are uncertain, although the NYTimes has their version; apparently, Yahoo! and AOL are involved in this and there will still be free email, but paid for email will be given priority. The logic is (always has been) that companies should have to pay for bulk mail in order to minimize spam. There are arguments concerning the effectiveness of this and there’s the issue of variable global economies and how this might hinder poorer companies, non-profits, and anyone who doesn’t have the economic capital of the porn industry. There are lots of good arguments on both sides, but i don’t want to focus on that.
What i want to highlight instead is an aspect i haven’t heard discussed in the context of this: email is already dying amongst youth. Right now, most of us in our 20s view postal mail as the site of bills and junk mail; the occasional letter and package is super exciting, but we can almost always predict those (they are usually correlated with birthdays, holidays and the one-click button). For youth, it’s the same story with email – you get notices from parents, adults, companies, junk mail, and the occasional attachment that was announced via IM. Add postage stamps to this and email will become even less valuable; your friends won’t pay for it so the system will highlight the companies over your friends – yuck. Even those who appreciate sending email will be alienated by turning this into a capitalist enterprise. Yuck. Bye bye email, hello IM and SMS and alternative asynchronous message systems. There’s nothing like giving corporations a preferential position in the system to destroy a communications platform.
Many of the texts i’m reading these days are talking about the move from childhood to adulthood and the liminal/transitional stage in-between. Although the concept of “teenager” is relatively new (created during the American depression to keep younger people out of the workforce), most societies have a transition period between childhood and adulthood. Of course, girls’ transition has been historically marked by menstruation while boys tend to go through some ritual of moving into adulthood. In almost all these texts, adulthood is seen as a desirable state to be in, full of all sorts of privileges. It is assumed that children want to move into adulthood and that part of the liminal stage is about taking on adult privileges (sex, drinking, …) while still having childhood responsibilities (a.k.a. few). In most societies, the key to the transitional phase is the removal from the core community to a separate one and then a return…
Contemporary American society has really stretched the liminal stage to include mandatory high school and socially required college. Rather than moving into adulthood at menstruation/male strength periods, we have another 10 years to wait before we are deemed adults. We don’t even leave home until 18 even though menstruation has dropped to 12 and below. With the liminal stage stretched out, there’s a drastic increase in participating in adult behaviors with childhood responsibilities.
I started thinking about Burning Man (yes, i bought tickets this week) and how, in many ways, it is a celebration of this liminality. We all go to the desert to act like some peculiar combination of adults and children, represented in the imagination by romping around, making ourselves all messy, sex & insobriety, building large Lego-esque projects, having little responsibility. I was also thinking about rave culture. On one hand, we are all trying to take on privileges of adulthood – sex & insobriety, lack of curfew – while working hard to look like small children – big painted eyes and phat pants that create the impression of child-like proportions, bright colors, pacifiers.
I’m kinda torn in resolving all of this. In many ways, i feel like half of my generation doesn’t want to grow up while half is working hard to do so. How much of this has to do with our inability to inherit certain other privileges of adulthood (power, money) and our lack of interest in dealing with adult responsibilities that are getting increasingly harder like money and health? As adults live longer, there is more pressure to remove youth from the workforce, from any position where they can compete. How much is this fucking with the dynamics? How much is the generational divisions and the efforts to legally regulate young people (both now and in their futures by faulting them for their youth) part of adults’ need to maintain power at risk of losing it to a larger liminal generation?
When the idea of teenagers was created during the depression, schooling became mandatory. In some senses, this was ideal because it meant that a larger portion of the population was prepared for the future. But over time, a high school diploma no longer served as a ticket to a better life. And then it was college. And then it was graduate school. What next? And what about the fact that we no longer have a construct of “success” for working class kids? By removing unions and life-long well-paying factory gigs and government jobs with pensions, we’ve turned “success” into a game that can only be acquired through pre-existing privilege or a lottery (becoming a “star”). This really marginalizes a huge chunk of today’s youth culture. What if you aren’t really meant to be college bound? What then? The service economy is not exactly appealing. No wonder drugs are continuously rising both because using them lets you escape and dealing them provides a way out.
It seems to me that we’re running full speed into a crisis stemming from a build-up of pushing off moving into adulthood, increasing doubt about the opportunities of adulthood and the complete failure to provide necessary support structures for the population. I’m not sure i have my head entirely yet…
Am i crazy? Can we really have a stable society without a feasible success route for non-knowledge workers? Can we really function with adulthood being pushed off into the mid/late 20s?
Did you know that teenage video game players are the 21st century version of the droogie gangs depicted in the novel, ‘A Clockwork Orange’? Yes, that’s right – video games are forcing kids into an evil lair where their minds are dreadfully manipulated and they’re learning terrible lessons.
Of course, my favorite part of this article is:
In this connection, we recall the horror of Columbine High School in Colorado. Both Columbine shooters were drenched in the play of ultraviolent video games. At the time, the murders caused a backlash against violent video games, but nowadays, the old ultraviolence has returned like an old friend.
I guess no one informed the authors of this article that it was pretty well shown that Columbine had NOTHING TO DO WITH VIDEO GAMES (or goths or industrial kids). It had everything to do with alienation though. But fear of violence sells newspapers. Just as fear of our kids does. And thus, here we are, another completely inaccurate portrayal of youth and technology.
Here’s another great quote:
Moreover, the addictive quality of video games also encourages kids to stay inside and play in virtual reality. But kids need to be out in the world to become socially capable as well as physically fit. How many of our youth have become emotionally stunted from years of seclusion, unable to relate in normal fashion to the demands of ordinary social relationships?
How many parents allow their kids to go out and play? I live in San Francisco – do i ever see kids on the streets? No. Why? Because parents are afraid. They’re only allowed to go out under supervision, only allowed to play in very specific ways, in formalized activities, in community centers. They can’t hang out on their stoop, play on their streets, play in the park. They can’t socialize because parents won’t let them. Video games let them go into a world that is not controlled by adults, a fantasy world where creativity and exploration are allowed. It is quite common for youth to play with their friends, to have a fantasy world to share. Who wouldn’t prefer the fantasy world to the surveillance world? What would happen if we allowed fantasy to come back to the physical interactions for youth? What if kids could go on adventures outdoors like we used to? Until we deal with our culture of fear, video games are going to be *much* more appealing than everyday space. Not because they are addictive, but because they are simply more fun.
At the back of Ms. Magazine, there’s a section called “No Comment” where they re-post advertisements of various sorts that are just so wrong it hurts. They don’t analyze them but they know their audience will get it given their voice in general. Well, given my actively pro-youth culture voice, check this out:
What’s the Buzz? Rowdy Teenagers Don’t Want to Hear It
::sigh::
I’m tired of mass media perpetuating a culture of fear under the scapegoat of informing the public. Nowhere is this more apparent than how they discuss youth culture and use scare tactics to warn parents of the safety risks about the Internet. The choice to perpetually report on the possibility or rare occurrence of kidnapping / stalking / violence because of Internet sociability is not a neutral position – it is a position of power that the media chooses to take because it’s a story that sells. There’s something innately human about rubbernecking, about looking for fears, about reveling in the possibilities of demise. Mainstream media capitalizes on this, manipulating the public and magnifying the culture of fear. It sells horror films and it sells newspapers.
A few days ago, i started laying out how youth create a public in digital environments because their physical publics are so restricted. Since then, i was utterly horrified to see that some school officials are requiring students to dismantle their MySpace and Xanga accounts or risk suspension. The reason is stated simply in the article: “If this protects one child from being near-abducted or harassed or preyed upon, I make no apologies for this stance.” OMG, this is insane.
In some ways, i wish that the press had never heard of these sites… i wish that i had never participated in helping them know of its value to youth culture. I wish that it remained an obscure teenage site. Because i’m infuriated at how my own participation in information has been manipulated to magnify the culture of fear. The culture of fear is devastating; it is not the same as safety.
Let’s step back a few years. Remember Columbine? I was living in Amsterdam at the time and the coverage was brilliant – the Dutch press talked about how there was a school shooting by kids who felt alienated from their community. And then the US coverage started pouring in. Goths (or anyone wearing black, especially black trench coats) were marked as the devil incarnate. Video games were evil and were promoting killing. Everything was blamed except the root cause: alienation. There were exceptions though. I remember crying the first time i read Jon Katz’s Voices from the Hellmouth where numerous youth poured out their souls about how they were treated in American education systems. Through his articles, he was able to capture the devastation of the culture of fear. My professor Henry Jenkins testified in Washington about how dangerous our culture has become, not because there are tools of rage, but an unchecked systematic creation of youth alienation. He pleaded with Congress: “Listen to our children. Don’t fear them.” And yet, we haven’t. In response, youth went underground. Following one of his talks, a woman came up to him dressed in an array of chaotic pink. She explained to Henry that she was a goth, but had to go underground. What kind of world do we live in where a color symbolizes a violent act?
We fear our children. We fear what they might do in collectives. We ban them from public spaces (see “Mall won’t allow teens without parents”). We think that we are protecting them, but we’re really feeding the media industry and guaranteeing the need for uncountable psychiatrists. Imagine the weight that this places on youth culture. Imagine what it’s like to grow up under media scrutiny, parental protectionism and formalist educational systems.
During the summer of 1999, i was driving cross-country and ended up at an outdoor rave outside of Denver, Colorado. I was sitting in my tent, writing in my diary when a group of teens wrapped at my door asking if they could come in and smoke because it was too windy outside to light the damn thing. I invited them in and we started talking. They were all from Littleton and had all dropped out of school shortly following Columbine and were now at a loss for what to do. I asked them why they dropped out, expecting that they would tell me about how eerie the school was or how they were afraid of being next. No. They dropped out because the media was hounding them everywhere they went. They couldn’t get into the school without being pestered; they couldn’t go to the mall or hang out and play basketball. They found underground venues for socialization. Here we were, in the middle of a field outside town at a rave, the only place that they felt safe to be themselves. The underground rave scene flourished in the summer of 1999 outside Denver because it was a safe haven for teens needing to get away from adult surveillance and pressure. Shortly later, the cops busted the party. I went and pleaded with them, asking them to let the kids camp there without the music; they had the permits for camping. No; they had heard that there were kids doing ecstasy. Let’s say they are – you want them to drive on drugs? Why not let them just camp? The cops ignored me and turned on bright lights and told the kids that they needed to leave in 10 minutes or they would be arrested. Argh! I’m not going to condone teenage drug use, but i also know that it comes from a need to find one’s identity, to make sense of the world removed from adult rules. These kids need a safe space to be themselves; overzealous police don’t help a damn thing.
How do youth come of age in this society? What good is it to restrict every social space that they have? Does anyone actually think that this is a good idea? Protectionist actions tends to create hatred, resentment. It destroys families by failing to value trust and responsibility. Ageist rhetoric alienates the younger generation. And for what purpose?
The effects are devastating. Ever wonder why young people don’t vote? Why should they? They’ve been told for so damn long that their voices don’t matter, have been the victims of an oppressive regime. What is motivating about that? How do you learn to use your voice to change power when you’ve been surveilled and controlled for so long, when you’ve made an art out of subversive engagement with peers? When you’ve been put on drugs like Strattera that control your behavior to the point of utter obedience?
We drug our children the whole way through school as a mechanism of control and wonder why drug abuse and alcoholism is rampant when they come of age. I’ve never seen as many drugs as i did at pristine prestigious boarding schools. The wealthy kids in our society are so protected, pampered. When given an ounce of freedom, they go from one extreme to the other instead of having healthy exploratory developments. Many of the most unstable, neurotic and addicted humans i have met in this lifetime come from a position of privilege and protectionism. That cannot be good.
We need to break this culture of fear in order to have a healthy society. Please, please… whenever you interact with youth culture (whether you’re a parent, a schoolteacher or a cafe owner), learn from them. Hear them from their perspectives and stop trying to project your own fears onto them. Allow them to flourish by giving them the freedom to make sense of their identity and culture. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t risks – there are. But they are not as grandiose as the press makes them out to be. And besides, youth need to do stupid things in order to learn from their own mistakes. Never get caught up in the “i told you so” commentary that comes after that “when i was your age” bullshit. People don’t learn this way – they learn by putting their hand in the fire and realizing it really is hot and then stepping back.
Post-Columbine, we decided to regulate the symptoms of alienation rather than solve the problem. Today, we are trying to regulate youth efforts to have agency and public space. Both are products of a culture of fear and completely miss the point. We need to figure out how to support youth culture, exploration and efforts to make sense of the social world. The more we try to bottle it into a cookie-cutter model, the more we will destroy that generation.
In line with Henry’s claim to Congress, i want to plead to you (and ask you to plead to those you know): Listen to the youth generation – don’t fear them and don’t project your fear onto them.
(Note: my use of the term “kids” references the broader youth population using a slang very familiar to subcultures where an infantilized generation reclaimed the term for personal use. I am 27 and i still talk about my friends as kids. What i’m referencing is youth culture broadly, not children and not just teens.)
“Nat Torkington, noted children’s auteur, creates an updated list of the words you can’t say in school. It’s beautiful, salient, and screamingly funny.” — Quinn
I forgot to re-cap the teen panel at Computers, Freedom and Privacy last week due to traveling. I had an absolute blast. The teens were chosen based on their comfort with speaking on stage and their ability to articulate their thoughts and reflect on the attitudes of their peers. They were by no means “average” teens but their perspective was so valuable for helping folks think about their constructions of privacy. Plus, i absolutely adored talking to them. Late night IM sessions planning the panel, goofy conversations on the floor of the conference hall that often emerged from someone saying “well, duh, everyone knows that” and me going “umm… actually, i’d bet that lots of folks here *don’t* know that.”
Although i haven’t read it, Wired seems to have a transcript from the event. To paraphrase one of my favorite interactions that occurred:
me: so, how much do you use file-sharing these days?
teens: not much… everyone seems to say it’s illegal and there’s definitely a bit of fear
me: so do you buy CDs now?
teens: definitely not
me: how do you get your music?
teens: we go over to others’ houses and copy music from their computers or make ripped CDs for each other or….
There were lots of conversations about how whenever industry or adults try to make it difficult for teens to do certain things, they always figure out how to do what they want anyhow. The thing about file-sharing kills me though because it reminds me that the sharing of music is still, always was and always will be a sociable process, shared between friends. Just because we’re trying to put locks on the ability to trade music doesn’t mean we haven’t always done this and won’t continue to do so. I remember the art of tape-recording from the radio station to make perfect mixed tapes for friends. Same practice, new technology.