404: Your Point Not Found

First, a summer class, then the entire galaxy!

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Examples of media influence on youth.

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PRIDE is the LGBTA caucus for the West Circle neighborhood at MSU.  While they aren't primarily an 'activist' organization (they mostly just meet weekly and discuss things and do different activities) they do occasionally join up with other organizations on campus for different events like pride week and activist conferences. It has it's meetings in Landon hall (as fitting its history with west-circle) and anyone can go, but traditionally its members are MSU students that are LGBT or are interested in LGBT issues and live in or near West Circle.  It (and the other caucuses) started in roughly 2000 because the 'main' LGBT activist group met in the union and many students wanted to participate in an organization that was closer to them.  So the caucuses are the result of a sort of an informal sub-division.  Many members of the caucuses also involve themselves with the larger groups.

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Interview Reflection

I interviewed my friend's younger sister, who's in high-school.  The interview process was marred by one big problem, that she didn't like to give descriptive answers.  Every question, every topic was a battle to get some words out beyond "I don't know" or "kinda."  In the end I think I had to put more words in her mouth than should have been necessary but I didn't have much to go on beyond some vague opinions.  In retrospect, I should've asked her to prepare some remarks beforehand, because I think that this was the first time she had thought about her history (my topic was dating) in a broad, overview, sense.  She seemed not exactly self-absorbed, but absorbed in her immediate surroundings, she never really stopped to develop some opinions on things more complex than favorite foods/music, etc.  I think that might be indicative of the intellectual maturity of many youth, who are mostly concerned with their own lives and are passive absorbers of knowledge in school and life, and haven't yet developed the analytic mindset that universities tend to bestow on people. (intentionally or not)

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Juvenile Justice "Help" Leaves Families in Dark

This article is about the Pennsylvania Justice System's handling of crimes committed by youth, but 'youth' meaning minors.  Even though as minors, they often qualify for special rehabilitation/foster care setups rather than simply jail time, the system is still very punitive.  Even in cases were there was no abuse or neglect on the part of the parents, children who were sentences are often put in foster care or rehabilitative institutions and heir parents are denied access.  The parents often aren't allowed to see or sometimes even talk to their child while the sentence is underway. This is an example that backs up Giroux's argument.  Even in the case where the child is not actively being punished with 'hard-time,' the justice system needs to find someone to blame and punish and in this case it's the parents and the child by being denied access to each-other.  The article gives an example of a mentally/emotionally challenged 11 year old boy who was 'sentenced' to a mental institution for harassing a girl on the school-bus.  Despite the strong possibility that his behavior was linked o his condition and not terrible parenting, the parents were forbidden from seeing or even speaking to their son.  This punished not only the parents but also the child, who likely wouldn't have particularly enjoyed being ripped from his loving parents for 40 days and being forbidden to even speak to them on the phone.  While this is a case involving a youth who is much younger than the ones that Giroux looks at, it still shows the overall punitive attitude of the justice system with respect to youth that Giroux explains.

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‘Stop and Frisk’ Stirs Up, Rather than Deters, Youth Crime | TIME.com

This article is about the recent evaluation of random "stop & firsk" tactics used by police in various states.  They found that among youth were stopped and searched, or those that had other "scared-straight" exposure to police early on, there was a much higher rate of delinquency and arrest in the next few years than those that only had positive exposure to police.  The surveyors adjusted for profiling based on things like age, sex, race, and previous delinquency rates but found that the findings still held and concluded that youth who were exposed to random stops or other 'negative' police actions were much more likely to commit crimes in the future than if they hadn't been stopped. This story is thematic, because although it was written in response to the publishing of one study, they cite other, older studies as well, and they discuss the broad implications for police forces and youth throughout the country.  No individuals are discussed in detail, only the statistical trends. This story frames youth as reactive, the story is about the effects of the actions of police initiatives.  If I wanted to reframe the youth as proactive, I would have looked up more statistics on the youth that weren't stopped, and how they would have been productive members of society by default.  I would discuss the positive efforts of police such as anti-gang programs and other police outreach programs that aren't scare-tactics.

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Why 30 is not the new 20

The TED talk by Meg Jay explains that many 20-somethings hear "20 is the new 30" and that their careers and marriages and 'adult life' will come later and that they have this time to do nothing.  This causes many of them to often do just that, then they rightfully complain when they turn 30 and have nothing to show for it. I chose to respond to this piece because it talks about (or at least mentions) what might be a cause of the delayed entry into career/marriage etc.  It doesn't just talk about the effects, it brings up how many say that they don't feel pressured into ambition until it's too late. I agree that there isn't much external pressure, especially from peers, to be overly ambitious in work or eager to settle down into a marriage.  There seems to be a 'do what it takes to get by' mentality in many ways.  I've always been a very internally-motivated person, so it hasn't much affected me, but looking back at my own life personally, I don't think I was ever pushed to set and achieve goals.  My parents wanted me to hit the default status-quo ones: graduate HS, graduate college, get a job, move-out, but my peers never encouraged me to try and advance in my education or career, and there isn't much emphasis on it in the youth culture of today.

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European, Young and Unemployed?

This article is about the EU's delayed response to the high (sometimes as much as 50%) unemployment rates among youth in many European countries.  The author is very critical of the EU in general for its reactive, rather than proactive, tendencies, and shows the their plan is only to move forward the timeline of implementation of an already existing budget that isn't even that large.  This article really only applies to youth in Europe, but the apathy towards youth employment in Europe may be indicative of a larger trend.

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"I'm not invisible anymore,"

Joel Brimmerman, in a NYTimes photoessay titled "Coming Out"

"Are we witnessing a shift in our country’s thinking?"  Yes we are, 100 years ago, homosexuality was very underground.  It was dirty secret, especially because most people over 20 were in heterosexual marriages, and thus homosexuality usually implied adultery.  50 years ago, awareness of the existence of homosexuality became more widespread and less taboo, but it was a result of the interest in Freudian and post-Freudian psychology and thus it was seen as a medical condition to be treated and possibly 'cured.'  Many people today still hold views reminiscent of these past eras but their numbers are much fewer and many LGBTQ people can now wear their orientation/identity openly with much less fear of reprisal or discrimination than in the past.  What's more, we are currently witnessing the beginnings of the legal foundations of recognition and acceptance to try and further marginalize those who would attempt to see the 'moral' standards of the past reinstated culturally and legally.

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This is a group of my brother's friends from my hometown.  They are opening presents at an outdoor birthday party.  This shows several traits that many youth have: a large social circle (no pun intended), a material culture that values the exchange of goods as a social custom, and an emphasis on somewhat unstructured hierarchy, as seen by the fact that they're all in a circle even though there is one who actually has the birthday.

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This is a picture of 4 skinheads at a concert. Skinheads are a more diverse group than one might think, they're defined most generally by the shaved heads from which they derive their name.  The movement started in the working-class youth of the UK in the 60s, but eventually spread to the United States and continental Europe and became associated with the far right, particularly with regards to race relations.  In many ways, early skinheads were in opposition of and a reaction to the long-haired hippies that were mostly from the middle-class.  Today, there is a countermovement within skinhead culture called SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) to try and distance the skinheads from those few members who still hold such views and remove the association with skinheads in general.  There are many different subgroups of skinheads with regards to taste in fashion and music, but the clothes tend to be simple and practical (stemming from the working-class origins, where expensive, cumbersome clothes would be a hindrance) and the hair is usually short, even for women.  Music tastes vary from reggae, to punk, to rock and others.  While most skinheads today aren't racist or violent, there is still a stigma in the name and people in the 'mainstream' are often distrustful of skinheads.  While anyone can be a skinhead, they tend to be white, working-class, males, and the racist subgroups are even more likely to be white, working-class, and male.

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Who Are The Millennials?

This info-graphic shows the demographic makeup of the millennial generation, as well as the group’s interaction with various technologies. This graphic supports many of Stein’s assertions about the generation: heavy use of social media, emphasis on popular culture, etc. 

Link: http://cdn.pamorama.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/who-are-millennials-social-media-marketing-infographic.png

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This infographic is interesting because it has a bunch of seemingly unrelated information, but there's some interesting connections if you think about it a bit.  For example, only 25% of millennials are or have been married (which makes sense because they're everyone between the ages of 13 and 33), but 52% think that being a good parent will be the most important thing in their life.  That's some forward thinking right there.  The other thing I noticed was that only 14% used twitter, which I find hilarious because if you look at any print or television news source, they seem to think that twitter is synonymous with all social media (right behind Facebook) and they're constantly talking about the 'next twitter' but I don't know many people personally who even use it. The source is a post titled "How Can Brands Connect With the Facebook Generation?" from a blog on marketing and branding via social media.  I think that's an anecdotal clue on to the generation one or two steps older than ours.  They see the social media phenomenon and think, "how can my company exploit this for marketing?"

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I scored a 90/100 on the "How Millennial Are You?" survey. Those results are slightly skewed though because of the text-message question (I sent/received 11 messages in the last 24 hours, which put me in the '10-49' category and I rarely do more than 15) and the "did you watch more than an hour of TV in the last 24 hours" question, which I answered yes to, because I watched more than an hour yesterday but that's not representative because I rarely watch TV and watched exactly zero hours in the 2 weeks prior.

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Getting Inside the Youth Walletfrom MTVPlay.in A breakdown of how much income Indian youth have and where they spend it.

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Virtually all adolescents (ages 10–18) live at home with one or both parents. In contrast, most emerging adults have moved out of their parents’ homes, and their living situations are extremely diverse. Virtually all adolescents are experiencing the dramatic physical changes of puberty. In contrast, emerging adults have reached full reproductive maturity. Virtually all adolescents attend secondary school. In contrast, many emerging adults are enrolled in college, but no-where near all of them. Unlike adolescents, their educational paths are diverse, from those who go straight through college and then on to graduate or professional school to those who receive no more education after high school, and every combination in between. Adolescents also have in common that they have the legal status of minors, not adults. They cannot vote, they cannot sign legal documents, and they are legally under the authority and responsibility of their parents in a variety of ways. In contrast, from age 18 onward American emerging adults have all the legal rights of adults except for the right to buy alcohol, which comes at age 21.

Jeffrey Arnett, on the differences between adolescence and what he calls Emerging Adulthood, that he believes is an important phase of development

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They embrace the system. They are pragmatic idealists, tinkerers more than dreamers, life hackers. Their world is so flat that they have no leaders, which is why revolutions from occupy WallStreet to Tahrir Square have even less chance than previous rebellions. They want constant approval they post photos from the dressing room as they try on clothes. They have massive fear of missing out and have an acronym for everything (including FOMO). They're celebrity obsessed but don't respectfully idolize celebrities from a distance. Thus Us magazine's "They're just like us!" Which consists of paparazzi shots of famous people doing everyday things.) They're not into going to church, even though they believe in God, because they don't identify with big institutions; one-third of adults under 30, the highest percentage ever, are religiously unaffiliated. They want new experiences, which are more important to them than material goods. They are cool and reserved and not all that passionate. They are informed but inactive: they hate Joseph Kony but aren't going to do anything about Joseph Kony. They are probusiness. They're financially responsible; although student loans have hit record highs, they have less household and creditcard debt than any previous generation on record which, admittedly, isn't that hard when you're living at home and using your parents' credit card. They love their phones but hate talking on them.

Joel Stein, on the millennial generation