Entries in Peer Pressure (10)
Abercrombie's Hierarchy of Hotness
August 28, 2008 
Sometimes I read news stories that just sound crazy. Today that news story comes from The Dallas Morning News and is about Abercrombie & Fitch’s practice of discriminating against employees based on their level of attractiveness. In the article, several employees of the teen targeted retailer report being pulled from sales positions and placed in the stockroom because managers determined they weren’t beautiful enough to talk to customers. To me this just sounds crazy and I would imagine that it is somewhat illegal. However, it would only be illegal if employees were discriminated based on race or gender, not ugliness. The danger in all of this is that it communicates to young employees that their worth to their employer and the rest of the world is based solely on their appearance and not on their ability to do a job well. There’s a lot more to say about this subject, but it might be best if you just read the article here. Comment with your take on this issue and I’ll keep you updated as this story develops.
Teen Magazines, Body Image, and Identity Cannibalism
August 21, 2008 
Here’s a quick series of stories about teen girls and their search for identity in the media saturated world we live in. A story talking about the effect of teen magazines like Seventeen, Cosmo Girl!, Teen, and Teen Vogue on girls can be found here. It’s a good read and I suggest you check it out. And to find out what your teen daughter is reading this month in those magazines, head on over to Ypulse and check out their summary.
After you finish reading those articles, you can head on over to Australian paper, The Age, and read an interesting article by Celia Walden about identity cannibalism among teen girls. To explain that peculiar term for you a little bit, here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Focusing entirely on those whose personality or physical attributes she covets, there is a new breed of woman who longs to be someone she isn’t, as if it were as easy as creating an avatar in some paradise-like cyber-universe. By definition, these identities cannot be acquired; but that does not stop the covetous from trying, and young women are ending the first decade of this century in a black hole of impossible desires. They are Identity Cannibals — or Cannibelles — desperate to be anyone but themselves, willing to steal another’s clothes, look and lifestyle to create a new “me”.”As we approach a new school year and a new set of expectations and pressures from teen boys and girls alike to conform and fit in, this is an article all parents, educators, and youth ministers should read.
Too Busy Teens, 10 year olds with fake tans, Peer Pressure and Body Image.
July 16, 2008 Too-Busy Teens Feel Health Toll
The Washington Post has reported a number of teens around the country have been grappling with the consequences of an over scheduled life. These include increased amounts of stress worrying about education, college, career and their future as well as poor health that results from constant anxiety, stress, and reduced amounts of sleep. Sometimes parents, teachers and other adults out so much pressure on teens to succeed that they miss out on being a teen. While preparing for the future and getting a good education are important, it’s also important that young people are given proper opportunities to enjoy their adolescence. Read the full story….
Peer Pressure Can Carry Great Weight in Girls’ Eating and Exercise Habits
Peer Pressure has and likely will always be a part of being a teen. In adolescence young people are desperate to fit in and are sometimes willing to go to great extremes to ensure acceptance. Recent research has found that while TV, Movies and other forms of media do affect a teen girl’s body image, another huge decider of her exercise and eating habits are peers. Here is a column from yesterday’s Washington Post that goes into greater detail: Read the full story…
Parents encouraging pre-teens to get fake tans
Here is a weird story from India that is about kids in Australia that I want to share with my audience that is primarily located in America. Apparently, parents down under are taking their tweens to spray tanning salons in order to keep them from visiting tanning beds or hanging out in the sun at the beach. While this may reduce the risk of a young person getting skin cancer, what does it communicate to a 10 year old girl that thinks she needs to get a tan before she has her school pictures taken? To me it seems they might be sending the wrong message about beauty and body image. Read the full story…
The Pursuit of "Cool".
June 26, 2008 
The pursuit of coolness is a top priority in the lives of most teens. I mean, when I was a teen my friends and I committed significant amounts of time and thought to doing the stuff that we thought was really cool and I think I can be so bold as to say that this is a universal thing that has always, and will always, exist. Frankly, you will have a hard time convincing me that, at any one time, there isn’t a teenager somewhere in the world asking some form of the question “what is cool?”. This article is my attempt at busting through the unrealistic definitions of cool to outline what it takes to be genuinely cool. I think I am cool enough to at least give this a try.
Teen Headlines: June 11, 2008
June 11, 2008 Teen survey shows virginity pledges can work.
Virginity pledges do deter some teens from having sex, according to a study by the RAND Corp. that surveyed teen virgins over three years to see whether they stayed that way.Of 1,517 adolescents ages 12 to 17 in 2001 when the research began, teenagers who vowed to remain virgins until they were married were less likely to be sexually active than others who didn’t make a pledge.
About one-quarter of the adolescents surveyed (23.8%) made a promise to wait until marriage to have sex; 34% had broken it by 2004, compared with 42% of those who didn’t make the pledge and had sex during that time.
Study: Teens Heed Parental Warnings against Drugs and Alcohol But Indulge When Left Unguided.
A new survey released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the MetLife Foundation has found that parental guidance and example has a profound affect on their children’s use of alcohol and drugs, especially at such “coming-of-age” events as prom and graduation parties.
The survey indicates that when parents engage their children in discussions about alcohol and drug abuse the teens take their parents’ message to heart.
“Only 16 percent of teens whose parents set a zero tolerance policy reported their individual likelihood of using drugs or alcohol, whereas 45 percent of teens whose parents didn’t set such boundaries reported they were likely to drink or use drugs at prom or graduation parties this year,” the report states.
Teen girls fight body image battle.
For teens, especially girls, it may be very difficult to accept themselves as normal in appearance.
Health care authorities say the “body image” that teens have of themselves is often distorted by visual media that relies heavily on images of thin women and muscular men.
Recent high school grad Madison Hayes, 18, said it is very common for girls to be critical of their appearance.
“On a daily basis I hear girls complain about things like their jeans giving them a muffin top; the little love handles above their hips,” she said. “Girls are so picky about how they look.”
Hayes said she believes media influences are probably 90 percent of the reason that young women think there is something wrong with their body shape.
Teens listen to less radio, more Ipods.
Teenagers are beginning to desert radio in favor of music from personal devices and computers, according to Coleman Insights, which studied teens’ listening behavior in a major market.
Long observed by media pundits, the trend is finally having a measurable impact on audience size in the teenage demo. Specifically, Coleman found that 84% of the 14-17 cohort listen to music daily on an MP3 player, iPod, or computer, versus 78% for radio. Coleman described these results as evidence of a “tipping point” in audio consumption: “Coleman Insights has for the first time detected greater use of them than of FM radio in a few specific instances.”
Another Coleman study found the 15-17 cohort favors iPods and MP3 players as primary destinations for listening to music, with 41% choosing the personal devices, compared to just 22% for FM radio.
Living together: No big deal?
An analysis of cohabitation, marriage and divorce data from 13 countries, including the USA, shows that living together has become so mainstream that growing numbers of Americans view it as an alternative to marriage.
The National Marriage Project study of a sampling of Western European and Scandinavian nations, Australia, Canada and New Zealand found that cohabitation elsewhere is far more common and indeed viewed as an option to matrimony. The study found that anywhere from 15% to 30% of all couples identified themselves as living together, compared with about 10% right now in the USA.
“We’re still the most marrying of all these countries, but the data are clearly headed in the one common direction. It’s headed in the direction of cohabitation as an alternative,” says David Popenoe, the report’s author and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, which studies marriage and child well-being.
Are teens really that bad?
June 5, 2008 
As a teenager I remember reading innumerable news stories about how crazy my peers and I were and how teens were a troubled group of sexually promiscuous, drug addicted party animals that cared about nothing but themselves. I always found this to be a little off putting because I knew that I wasn’t crazy, sexually promiscuous or drug addicted and I was pretty sure that the majority of my peers weren’t either. But I still wondered if I was an abnormal teen that was just out of the loop about what was cool. This bothered me because like most teenagers I desired to fit in and be normal. I wondered, “Am I expected to experiment with drugs and have sex? Am I uncool if I don’t?”
Parents can help teens stand up to peer pressure
May 20, 2008 
Peer pressure is one thing that all teens have in common. No matter how popular or well liked a teen is or how mature they may feel, sooner or later all teens will have to face peer pressure. Whether it is pressure to conform to a group norm or pressure to act a certain way, all teens make dozens of decisions a day that are influenced by what the people around them say and do. Experts say Children Today Growing up too Fast
May 14, 2008 
Children today are growing up too fast and acting like adults at a very early age, child health experts say.
With television and the internet playing an increasing role in their lives, children are often exposed to ideas and issues they cannot comprehend fully. They are coming under influences that were kept away from them in the past , and sometimes their parents are to blame.
Teens aren't crazy, They're just being Teens.
May 2, 2008 
“I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”
The other day while reflecting on my teen years I remembered this phrase from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and I realized that when I was a teenager I did a lot of really stupid and dangerous things. It probably seemed like I was crazy to my parents but in reality I was just being a teen.
Of course it’s tempting to think adolescence is a period of temporary insanity. How else do you explain young people who don’t seem to grasp the dangers of driving too fast, driving drunk, having unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, and binge drinking? Do they think they are invincible?
Closing the generation gap
April 1, 2008 
Today’s generation of teenagers is both valuable and vulnerable. Corporate America knows this because to them teens represent $150 billion in spending each year that can be influenced through exploiting their desires and insecurities. To many adults, today’s youth are important because we know that they are literally our future. Because of this it is imperative that we as a society advocate for the well-being of those who are transitioning through the precarious years of adolescence. But before we can help teens we must first understand the cultural environment that they live in.